|
In the spirit of 'Welcome to Dota: You suck', let me preface this musing by saying that you are likely not good at Dota. Albeit we have some particularly great players here on LD, they are certainly the exception, and for the majority of us the reality is that we are not exceptional.
Now that isn't to say that the average reader on LD or the average player doesn't have an average understanding of the game, but this is EXACTLY the point. Chances are your understanding of Dota is more or less on par with most of the players you match with when you play Dota.
Yet so many people seem to think, at least act as if they are 'ahead of the curve', like they have some understanding of the game transcendent of those around them. You see it in players who pick junglers and leave their safelane to be crushed, Who pick fragile or hard to execute carries in unstable lanes, Who choose ridiculous or overly greedy builds Who skip a desperately needed BKB because they think they can 'outplay' the enemy
All in the trivial pursuit of being one step ahead of everyone else. Don't be that guy. Not only are you extremely likely to not be good enough to pull these things off, there WILL come a point where coming up with the next gimmick will stop working, and you will be simply outclassed by your opponents in the most mundane ways. The ensuing nose dive you will take will not be worth it.
If you focus too much of your time trying to stay ahead of the curve, to find the next 'OP' hero or build, all you are doing is cheating yourself out of valuable improvement. It isn't possible to invest an effective amount of effort into improving your mechanics, map awareness etc. when you are so focused on your current gimmick. If you give yourself wholly to improving however, you will be better and more consistent as a player, and your long term improvement will be far better off. Even the players who do have a sufficiently greater understanding of the game to craft effective out-of-the-box strategies actually tend to play very standard. The best players don't win by playing outlandishly, they win by doing all the standard things, but much better than the average player does.
One thing you will notice about players who play the gimmick game, is they tend to be the most negative or toxic. I believe this is because resorting to gimmicks comes as a result of frustration. When you get lost on the road to improvement it can seem as if you are looking at an unscalable wall, and naturally people start looking for a rope. So rather than lecture you further on why its bad to waste your time on gimmicks, my advice to you is to avoid frustration at all costs.
Try this tonight. Jump into some solo MMR games, and play the stupidest most gimmicky hero and item build combination you can think of, which you know is unlikely to work. Do this until you've lost 75-100 MMR, and accept that you're going to lose that MMR. I want you to teach yourself to not be worried about what your MMR is and how much it is improving, because if you're like most people, it is probably is one of the greatest sources of stress you have when you play ranked. You need to free yourself from the stress so you can truly invest yourself in improvement
|
good short read, showing this to my stack
|
Yet so many people seem to think, at least act as if they are 'ahead of the curve', like they have some understanding of the game transcendent of those around them.
so true i think this even includes me although i have to say those greedy and gimmicky stuff that people pull off and fail most of the time are done not because it's "innovative" or "smart" but rather cause it's fun to play it that way although it fails it sometimes works
at least for me taht's how it is
|
On October 07 2015 17:16 goody153 wrote:Show nested quote +Yet so many people seem to think, at least act as if they are 'ahead of the curve', like they have some understanding of the game transcendent of those around them.
so true i think this even includes me although i have to say those greedy and gimmicky stuff that people pull off and fail most of the time are done not because it's "innovative" or "smart" but rather cause it's fun to play it that way although it fails it sometimes works at least for me taht's how it is
Everyone who has played Dota for long enough has done it, shit I've probably forgotten more gimmicky shit than some people will ever learn in Dota
|
TLDR: Go play cliff-jungling dagon-rushing furion in ranked solo-queue.
I heard you, 5k mmr here I come
|
If you cliff jungle you gotta go 4401 or something and just teleport to gank off cd
also nice blog you are correct
|
28055 Posts
Nice blog
I'd agree with most of it and I'm glad someone said it.
|
really well said too bad my friends take the opposite approach and are so far behind the curve it's just a straight line
|
In my experience, I've found getting better at the really dumb, boring parts of dota is what has given me the most success.
I play primarily support, so stuff like knowing when to leave the safelane to pull and use the jungle, when to help out my carry, when to sneak in farm, tping to other lanes to gank/countergank, being economic with abilities/items in teamfights, good positioning and not taking stupid risks have all been far more useful to my growth as a player then learning how to land mirano arrows or pudge hooks.
|
On October 08 2015 04:31 OmniEulogy wrote:really well said too bad my friends take the opposite approach and are so far behind the curve it's just a straight line
The curve my friends play on is more like a line of silly string
|
On October 08 2015 08:47 gaijindash wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 04:31 OmniEulogy wrote:really well said too bad my friends take the opposite approach and are so far behind the curve it's just a straight line The curve my friends play on is more like a line of silly string I wanted to like that but liquiddota isn't facebook.
|
I'd say the same goes to players that abuses good heroes to climb MMR (TA/Meepo/Storm/Slark/Huskar etc), or those that focus a lot on hard counterpicking. You spend so much time concentrating on winning by taking an easier route, that you are not really improving as a whole.
|
On October 08 2015 21:55 DucK- wrote: I'd say the same goes to players that abuses good heroes to climb MMR (TA/Meepo/Storm/Slark/Huskar etc), or those that focus a lot on hard counterpicking. You spend so much time concentrating on winning by taking an easier route, that you are not really improving as a whole.
I agree with counter picking but I disagree about grinding heroes. I would much rather play with someone who knows a small number of heroes very well than a large number of heroes not-so-well. The "versatility" rating is almost always inverse to player skill.
When you grind a hero you learn all the little timings and strength windows, laning techniques, etc. obviously you don't need to grind thousands of games but I think for improvement focusing on 3 or 4 heroes per 100 games is probably a good idea.
|
On October 09 2015 06:21 ahw wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 21:55 DucK- wrote: I'd say the same goes to players that abuses good heroes to climb MMR (TA/Meepo/Storm/Slark/Huskar etc), or those that focus a lot on hard counterpicking. You spend so much time concentrating on winning by taking an easier route, that you are not really improving as a whole. I agree with counter picking but I disagree about grinding heroes. I would much rather play with someone who knows a small number of heroes very well than a large number of heroes not-so-well. The "versatility" rating is almost always inverse to player skill. When you grind a hero you learn all the little timings and strength windows, laning techniques, etc. obviously you don't need to grind thousands of games but I think for improvement focusing on 3 or 4 heroes per 100 games is probably a good idea.
This is something that I left out deliberately, to see if you guys would pick it out to discuss. I think people that people who NEED to rely on hero grinding to raise their MMR are very similar to gimmicky players.
The caveat here is that playing a single hero for a time can be used to help refine mechanics, practice map awareness, communication and teamfight positioning etcetcetcetcetcetc. Keeping to just one hero and role means there is less for you to consciously think about, and you can focus more of your mental energy on practicing those things.
But note how they are two very different intentions and one doesn't justify the other, so yes I agree that hero spamming for MMR is the same but hero spamming to refine your game is fine.
|
That's why I mention the purpose of picking those heroes: to climb MMR. If your purpose is to practise certain heroes, then so be it.
We cannot be so sure if w33 is 8k because he mainly plays meepo and all the OP mid/carry heroes, or that he is just a genius at dota in general. Or if blitz/waga is any good of a dota player without his storm/ta.
|
I think the basal level of ability at the game you need to get to that MMR is pretty high regardless of what youre playing
|
On October 09 2015 06:21 ahw wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 21:55 DucK- wrote: I'd say the same goes to players that abuses good heroes to climb MMR (TA/Meepo/Storm/Slark/Huskar etc), or those that focus a lot on hard counterpicking. You spend so much time concentrating on winning by taking an easier route, that you are not really improving as a whole. I agree with counter picking but I disagree about grinding heroes. I would much rather play with someone who knows a small number of heroes very well than a large number of heroes not-so-well. The "versatility" rating is almost always inverse to player skill. When you grind a hero you learn all the little timings and strength windows, laning techniques, etc. obviously you don't need to grind thousands of games but I think for improvement focusing on 3 or 4 heroes per 100 games is probably a good idea.
i really really really dislike people who are spamming a very small number of heroes. for most mmr ranges there are enough players to fill the game with equally skilled ones. but this means that the guy who randoms every time will be equally valuable to your team as the guy who only plays slark, but will be more versatile and fail less horrible if he is put out of his comfort zone. someone with a very limited hero pool makes his mmr by being over-average in terms of mechanical skill, but he doesnt have an even higher mmr because he is under-average in anything else. (compared to the other players in the same game). you get a very hit or miss kind of game with those players, when they get their playstyle they are very good but if they dont the game is lost from the beginning. with more versatile players the game is much more evened out.
there is also the risk of pigeonholing yourself into a very narrow playstyle when you only play a few heroes which then translates to you playing other heroes in the same, but now completely wrong way. you can avoid that by playing a few very different heroes, but not many people do that. at this point i also bring up the example of one of my former team mates who only played slark and when he tried to practice troll in the troll-op patch he managed to lose 500 mmr very quickly by just playing the most op hero in the game.
i think there are only two skill regions where spamming a few heroes is useful for getting better at dota (and not just the one hero). for one this is the very bottom when you just start dota and there is so much new stuff going on that having a constant makes it easier to learn everything else. the other is high level competitive play where general dota skill is highly developed and you need that extra bit of hero proficency to get an advantage.
|
ive got nothing against people playing for fun and playing a variety of heroes. For the most part, anything in the middling mmrs (say below 5k), youll probably improve regardless.
but if you want to improve beyond that you have to learn a hero or at least a group of similar heroes.
i have a small hero pool of heroes i play at my highest level. earth spirit, lone druid, huskar. I have a sub teir under that: prophet, legion, skywrath, necro, tb, lina. Everything else I'm OK at. some heroes im awful at (oh god invoker). I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
i know i can pick up heroes quickly, moreso than my friends who random every game, because i spent the time practicing a few mechanical heroes. For example, having played a bunch of lone druid makes it easy to play prophet or beastmaster or that kinda thing. Same with huskar, you are very much mechanically better at armlet heroes compared to the random warriors. And as for earth spirit, you get really good at timing your abilities and watching for your spots in fights. Without a doubt my game sense or "crisis management" ala sc has improved because you have to watch battles much more carefully as es.
i have the same group of dota friends over the past 2~ years or so. the only players in our group that improve are the ones who pick a small group of heroes and practice it. that said, improvement doesnt mean enjoyment for everyone
|
I dunno if I've ever done gimmicky shit in this game, outside of the occasional outdated build. What's the lure? Heroes are kinda fun when you do the obviously broken shit that everyone does with them.
|
On October 11 2015 12:04 Acritter wrote: I dunno if I've ever done gimmicky shit in this game, outside of the occasional outdated build. What's the lure? Heroes are kinda fun when you do the obviously broken shit that everyone does with them. Going full, position 1 Sand King with blink, heart, octarine core, shivas, and Eblade has its own merit. It’s not good, but it’s fun. And you get stuff out the hero that you didn't expect.
|
|
|
|