Hello LiquidDota! I figured that I could use this blog to ventilate and analyse a lot of things that goes on in my head every day and every game as the captain of a team with individuals between 4k and 5.2k. MMR is so misleading anyway, we've beaten decent teams, gotten crushed by less skilled teams, et cetera. Today, it's all about outing some of the thoughts I have about DotA and general team play.
Individual mechanics and decision-making, they're such a big deal to a team that doesn't consist of veterans. Bar two people, we've only really played DotA2, since around TI2. I expect my mid to be able to crush certain matchups, my solo to get different things out of different scenarios. In turn, they expect me to have a plan. But things don't always go as you want them to. We can lose a Razor vs Viper-matchup pre-6. We can win a Brew vs DP matchup pre-6. Things don't always make sense for us, but we make do.
Small hero pools are the bane of a drafter until you realise what you as a collective unit like to do. I can draft most things, to varying success. We've tried imitating major teams until we realised what we wanted to do and try to patch our own ideas together from all of them. The theorycrafting never ends, everything from the iceiceice Spirit Breaker to the Fear Visage. From the MMY Tusk to the BigDaddy Pudge.
The hardest thing is facing something over and over without actually getting closer to beating it. We had that issue with Razor. How do you beat a midgame Razor? I didn't know. How do you effectively shut him down or negate his impact? I didn't know. So I had to waste one ban, every single game, on Razor.
Until recently, I've relied on drafting a winning laning stage that can steam roll and eat up the map until we're so far ahead that we can't lose. Finally, we've realized how to be fine with losing a laning stage, at least a little bit. It's sort of like you're investing in the future without knowing the present, the ROI is the inverse degree of execution you need to have in order to come back.
One thing I've realised about people, except for the extremely new meta Dunning-Kruger term, is that people have a hard time letting go of their ego. When you try to be constructive they shoot you down for being the Devil's advocate. When you're in a team, realise that in order to gain mutual understanding and a common foundation to work from, words will need to be exchanged and opinions will most often have to be changed. I'm getting the easy deal here because I pick for my friends. I tell them I need a Blink, a Mek, the Divine Rapier. But telling your team that their plans aren't the plan you play from requires more from the team than from you.
What's most important is that you feel that you want to play together come hell or high water. Friendship makes DotA so much easier to handle.
What's most important is that you feel that you want to play together come hell or high water. Friendship makes DotA so much easier to handle.
Its pretty funny to me that a videogame, something we play for fun, can be so damn traumatizing, but damn you are so right.
Losing is so sour to so many, but we've come to the point where we just shrug it off. It's amazing.
On November 25 2014 00:26 hoepie wrote: May I ask how you guys practice? Do you watch replays together etc, or individual learning + scrims etc?
And how did you beat Razor?
The others do the individual training. Me and one other guy watch replays and tell the others (and each other) what we need to not do anymore, what wards/timings/rotations/ganks work et cetera.
Kill everything else or just put so much pressure early that either him or the rest of his team falls behind. He's very good at being immobile, so pressure is easily applied as long as you aren't 1v1 against him.
On November 25 2014 01:12 teddyoojo wrote: i 100% expected this to be a girl blog
I 100% feel your struggle.. I've captained a squad for 3 years, eventually even moving in with 2 of my teammates since we started at the same university (we were from different parts of Germany). Being a team is way easier if you actually enjoy spending time with eachother. I think a lot of it is very similar to a real relationship (so basically in a way this is like a girl blog huehue), since finding a good way to argue is key. For example it greatly increased our play when we made carrying a tp some kind of game. We would simply write down whenever someone didnt have a tp although he could have and at the end of the day, the person with most missed tp opportunities would have to buy Oreos for everyone. Easy.
Before we had this rule, we always argues about that point. But having that rule actually made everyone pay close attention to having TPs and using them. And it was fun.
Totally agree that friendship makes dota a more enjoyable game, I only really play with 1-2 people that I know irl and I never get mad at them for making a mistake even if they flat out just feed the whole game. I've thought about making a dota team but I figured I'd never find people as committed/dedicated as I'd want them to be.
And what are these grills that everyone keeps posting about? Like George Foreman grills or?
EPT
