Translated by Wolliver Twist
These three stages are the basic principle of DotA Science, this whole blog is based on them. Therefore I am going to explain them in a very detailed way, using examples to clarify. DotA Science contains topics like "Playing in the Dark", Picks, Ingame Rotations, mechanical tricks and their execution.
Macro
The Macrostage is probably the most important one, as it frames your options for the other stages. Whenever you talk about strategy, you discuss (even if probably unaware of it) Macrostage events.
The draft and influence on it are the key to the strategy a team is aiming for. Your heroes limit yout strategical options, so you either have to adjust your strategy to your picks or pick accordingly to a strategy you have in mind.
To draft properly you have to answer these questions:
-How do we want to play (Playstyle)?
-Who is our opponent?
-Which Playstyle do our opponents prefer?
-With which strategy/heroes had our opponents success recently?
These questions are highly relevant. On the highest levels the draft can be gamebreaking and depends on a lot of preparation. But sometimes preparing becomes nigh impossible due to tight schedules or Playing in the Dark. Teams with (close to) no official matches have an advantage intelwise over a team that recently dominated a tournament with a certain strategy. Causing this situation is the general agreement "What happens in a scrim, stays in the scrim".
In "The International 2012" Puppey talks about how hard it is to make surprise picks: 11:40-12:20 (Puppey talks about strategy); 17:20-17:40 (Puppey talks about skill and teams).
Examples for strategies:
-Chinese teams establish trilanes during SMM 2009 ("Four protect One")
-The masterful splitpush by [A] before and during TI 3
-The Newbee-Deathball at TI4
Specific counterpicks for existing strategies are part of the Macrostage. Your laning is completely based on your draft. The laning, the anticipation of the enemy's lanes and pregame movement are part of the strategy and will therefore be discussed in the next chapter.
Meso
The Mesostage includes every decision, from pregame movement to the "GG"-call, and commonly used phrases like "rotations", "midgame movement", "lategame movement" are part of the Mesostage-terminology.
Spectators usually struggle the most to grasp this stage, as you only regocnize the execution of an already made decision rather than the decision itself. It is nigh impossible to know who made a certain call and under which circumstances (id est what is the state of the team's Ingame Knowledge).
As i mentioned above, your picks frame your strategy. Some calls are only possible due to it (for example early Rosh with Lycan), others are limited (playing tri vs tri with inferior heroes). Usually there is an agreement who makes calls under which circumstances, for example one player calls whom to focus in fights, but another player calls tower pushes, Rosh or to go highground.
Decisions are influenced by a lot of different factors:
-What is your position right now in these game (Ingame Knowledge: Gold-/XPadvantage, scaling of your and the enemy's heroes)?
-Which oppurtinities offers your lineup (Pickoffs with Lion/Storm [...], Rosh or towers with Rhasta/Krobe [...], Teamfights with big Ultimates like Ravage or Black Hole)?
-Which oppertunities do your opponents have?
-How can you catch the enemy team off guard?
-Are your player able to execute the call efficiently?
These questions are highly relevant, especially the first one. Knowledge improves the quality of decisions.
To make profitable decisions very fast, players need experience, creativity, even genius. Because of the game's complexity, situations never occur twice, which causes both an enormous amount of decisions and makes a lot of them very hard. Situations might be very similar, but a small difference.
Outside of the big calls, every player has to make decisions in every situation. 4:47-4:59 Beautiful Mind (FreeToPlay)
Examples for calls and small decisions:
(Earlygame): Taking lasthits over denies, harassing over lasthitting or stacking ancients instead of leeching XP in lane.
(Mid-, Lategame): Farm all Radiant/Dire camps, take Rosh, Ward locations, pushing lanes out, smoke gangs.
These decisions can change the outcome of the next minutes (and therefore, the remaining game) or only determine the next rightclick. Hence, the Mesostage is about your actions in the next minutes where the Macrostage is about the whole game ("Gameplan"). The execution of the decisions and calls will be discussed in the following chapter.
Micro
This is probably the most famous stage. This is what spectators and casters alike recognize the mostand where discussions about "skill" take place. The ability to execute calls are generally considered Individual Skill. Concentration, dedication, talent and presence of mind are make or break on this stage. A lot of these Individual Skills are hero-specific and tightly bound to to the mechanical knowledge of the player. Muscle Memory and repitiion are often key.
Microstage skills are ones you can work on most properly in publics – mechanics, timings (e.g. Naga Illusion micro without blocking camps). To successfully elaborate the higher stages, a high level of mechanical knowledge should be provided. Your Gameplan is worthless if you are unable to execute it properly. And, accordingly, the higher your abilities, the amount of heroes you can play, the more options and room for creativity are granted.
Examples for Individual Skill on the Microstage:
-Orbwalking/ Hit and Run: Give a 'move'-command after each hit animationto cancel the backswing, which actually offers a huge improvement to the trivial rightclick.(Video Example)
Timing the cancellation perfectly means a huge boost to your dps. Getting to the edge is hero-specific and usually correlates with work and repetition.
-Stun chaining: To avoid stunstacking (i.e. wasting stun duration because of too early usage of spells) timing and patience are needed. Yet again, this ability grows through time and repetition and is hero-/ability-specific.
-Shifting: To improve the efficiency of a fast succession of actions, you can chain them by holding the 'shift'-key. Tenth of seconds matter in DotA and shifting PB, movement orders to lanes or to the teamfight after a TP can be decisive. I will discuss this technique on Tinker, where it has an insane impact, especially had before the E-Blade change (projectile instead of instant). Experienced players uesed to queue up Blink, Dagon, Soulring and Rearm during BoT channeling time.
Another example would be Epicenter, Blink, Veil (Stun). At the same time, you should be aware of situations whre shifting can backfire: Spells are queued up with backswing animation, which you can otherwise cancel (check 'Orbwalking'). Learning proper shift queueing is a nice boost to your gameplay. To get more efficient and precise, the spells and items should be queued up as late as possible. This way, you can adress changing teamfight locations or targets. To negate a queued action (e.g. blink after Epicenter), you would have to cancel the channeling. Exceptions are spells with castanimation which you can cancel with proper timing (e.g. Timewalk afer a TP).
These examples illustrate the exceedingly high amount of possible improvements on your Individual Skill.
Closing Words
As you need to have a basic level of Individual Skill to properly execute on the higher stages and you can easily improve them in publics, my next posts will focus on the further definition and caontainments, with the Meso-Micro borderline skill Positioning as a main focus.
Topics I will adress are:
-Positioning (Fog of War)
-Juking
-Animation faking
-Mindgames
-Micromanagement of several Units
-Quickcast
-Item dropping
-Campstacking
-Quick skilling
-Statusbar checking (buff/debuff duration)
-Reaction time
-AoE-efficiency
Furthermore, i will discuss Teamfights and explain so terms used in this post
-Ingame Knowledge
-pregame movement
-Teampositions (1/2/3/4/5/ppd).