Why players get stuck at Crusader
Typical reasons that keep players on the Crusader rank:
- Picks and items are often taken "for your favorite" rather than for the situation.
- You don't use camp stacks and lane pulls — you lose farming efficiency.
- You miss the enemy's ganks and rotations across the map.
- Farming between fights is inefficient: lots of downtime.
A separate blocker is emotion: on tilt you throw even won games, so keeping a cool head matters as much as mechanics. How to do it — in the guide on how not to tilt in Dota 2.
A plan to climb to Archon
A checklist that actually moves your rating up from Crusader:
- Pick heroes and items for the enemy lineup and the stage of the game.
- Master stacking jungle camps and pulling creeps on the lane.
- Push creep waves so you can farm safely and under the enemy tower.
- Read the map: a missing enemy is a signal of a possible gank.
Keep your conduct in the green at the same time: a high behavior score gets you saner teammates, and that feeds straight into your win rate.
Rating grows from your win rate over the long run, not the number of games. It's better to play fewer matches, but focused and on your role, than to grind "on autopilot". A detailed breakdown of climbing is in the guide on how to raise MMR.
Which heroes to climb on
At Crusader it's time to widen your pool: 2–3 confident heroes for your role to cover different situations. Don't spread yourself across the whole hero pool: a small set of practiced picks for your role gives a more predictable result than "a hero for every game".
Which heroes are strong right now and carry games most easily — see the tier list of heroes for MMR boosting. And for the breakdown of roles and what to do on each position — the guide to roles and positions.
How much MMR to Archon
One rank in Dota 2 is about 770 MMR, and a win brings roughly +25. So to get out of Crusader into Archon you need around 31 net wins (counting losses, it'll be more matches). At low MMR the system is less sure of your level, so a win often brings more — up to +40 — and the climb frequently goes faster than this estimate: see how MMR is calculated.
The medal thresholds here are the last ones Valve published before the MMR squish of 31 July 2026; no new boundaries have been announced since. That does not change the plan — medals, stars and the order of ranks were left alone. Treat the “this many wins to the next medal” maths as a guide, not a promise: it is counted on the old scale.
| Star | From MMR |
|---|---|
| Crusader 1 | 1,540 |
| Crusader 2 | 1,694 |
| Crusader 3 | 1,848 |
| Crusader 4 | 2,002 |
| Crusader 5 | 2,156 |
| Archon 1 — the next medal | 2,310 |
Where exactly the boundaries of every medal fall — in the Dota 2 rank table.
If you want it faster
Climbing out of Crusader on your own means dozens of games and time. If you don't have it (or you're sick of toxic matches), your rating can be raised by top‑1000 EU boosters: by solo boost or in coaching mode, where you play yourself and a coach points out mistakes along the way — that's closer to coaching.
Whether it's safe for your account and whether a ban is coming — an honest breakdown in the guide on whether MMR boosting is safe. Over 5 years and 8,228 orders we've had 0 bans.
And once you've settled into Archon, the logic is the same — the next step is covered in the guide on how to get out of Archon.
