General DiscussionSkill Improvement Thread

Analyzing replays
Watch how 5k+ players play, and find out why they do certain things instead of blatantly copying them

Why in the world would anyone max blink last on AM

What match? I probably had a reason to do so. Sometimes when the enemy has too much mages I max Q and E first for the bonus damage and magic protection, and because I don't need escape potential or go afk farm in the jungle. There is one recent match that I won maxing blink last, there was a necro, a skywrath and an invoker as enemies, I had lots of damage and magic resistance in early game and I only needed 1 blink to go in and kill some heroes and snowball, I felt like that rewarded me more than going afk farming in that case, that's why I won with a very high kda and gpm.
It's not common tho, I do it like 1 out of 10 matches, even less.

I've watched 5k+ matches, I never copy pros because builds and choices are situational, I want to learn about how to lead a team, because I feel like every time I don't give orders to my team, they make mistakes, including myself. But when I do, I tend to make better decisions and lead the team to victory, but is very hard in this bracket since, you know, people tend to be veeeeery stubborn.

Another thing that I wanted to know is, does smurf help at all? I have many friends 2k and 3k who smurfed and got to 4k, I want to know if doing it myself will help me improve, I mean it's logical that if you play with/against better people, you will become better too.
(Don't worry I don't plan to play ranked and screw 4k people, once I calibrate I was thinking about playing vhs normal games and practice in vhs, is that going to help me?)

Smbd is still buying dagon eblade on tinker i wonder who that is

me :D it worked, that was one of the few matches that I lost that I blame on others, just inspect that chaos knight afk farming against slark and spectre (and not buying bkb) I told him not to do so, buy bkb and win fast, but he was too stubborn and didn't listen, guess what happended.
cumbak

Dunning Kruger

I studied Dunning Kruger, sadly I I can't tell if I have it or not, probably not because I always try to trust in my teammates, excessive self-confidence leads to mistakes. That's why I lost my recent matches, I had a very good streak and got over-confident about myself and I thought that I didn't need to play at my full potential.
Thanks for the comment tho, if some low mmr player like me is reading this and you don't know what Dunnin Kruger's Syndrome is, go investigate, I hate when people steal a role because "let me core, you suck, you can't play core and I am better"

I completely blame myself in 60% of my lost matches, and I want to know what can I improve or what can I do to become an overall better player and hit higher numbers, because it matters to me

I mostly play core because I'm a trash support anyway

playing with better players wont help you improve in this game

At least get agh man that blind shit is too good shiva is also so good that game because of specter

I've never tried aghs in tinker, guess I'm a nostalfag.

Are you sure Alice? That's not what my friends have said.

Playing with better players won't help much if you don't know what they're doing, same with watching better players play

Does stomping noobs help u improve?

Stomping noobs doesn't help you either, so, what to do? lmao

this game requires in-depth analysis of how better players play for u to improve

this isnt exactly like a fighting game where u get dumpstered 10x in a row by a better player and say "oh that combo fits well i will practice that" then start winning more

the only thing you'll learn from playing with higher mmr players is how to not perform bad enough so u dont become a liability to them

source: i played pt mmr for 1 year and climbed from 2600 party to 2900 with zero improvement

what im trying to say is that u cant really tell the whats, whys, hows the better players do while ur in-game because u have to play ur own game too and focus on stuff u do. you'll eventually have to watch the replay once or even twice to fully understand stuff they do (or sometimes you'll never understand it in a lifetime, youll have to ask them urself) so youre better off saving urself time by not playing and just watching games xD youll improve more and faster this way in my experience

take a look at my activity profile for example. anything before august 2016 was me mindlessly queueing 3-5 games of party ranked with 4100 and it just hovers around 50% winrate. compare that to september up to now where i actively tried to improve by queueing less party rank and doing more solo ranked/watching replays/etc and you'll see more green dots (with a noticeable drop in game count)

honestly talking with high 4ks to low 5ks about dota for 20 mins is far more helpful than playing 800 hours of party queue with low-mid 4ks. even just watching them play the first 20 mins of the game on fast forward sill be far more helpful than you being in a 20 min game with them

tldr: u cant improve in dota by simply playing with better players because u cant focus on ur game impact at the same time as analyze everything the brtter player does in-game

Now the only problem is... I don't have 4k+ friends to discuss, Dota is too unpopular in my country, everyone plays League lmao. I tried it for a month or two and I almost catched up the skill of my gold 4-1 friends in less than 4 weeks. I don't really think they could help me, even the diamond ones.

The only thing that League helped me improve is the speed of decision making and decision making itself, in League, everything you do has a WAY HIGHER impact in the game, it's a lot easier to fuck up and everything is waaay faster phased, when I went back to Dota, everything seemed a bit slower and there were plenty of stuff that gave you sustain and comeback chance, I learned to appreciate those items (Magic Wand, Blink, Force, Shield, Cheap Sustain items overall) that seemed "not important", now I see how powerful they can be.

I also learned to appreciate the importance of early-mid-game builds, you can't just start building an aghanim in qop after building your first item, you need to respect the game time, a qop with 3/4 cheaper items is WAAAY stronger than a qop with only an orchid and aghanim.

And I learned how to kite too, in League one of the most important mechanics for adc's and ranged heroes in general is kiting, in Dota it's harder and slower, but it helps maximize your damage output and it's really important for ranged heroes because it helps you position yourself, which is a very important thing, it can also be done with melee heroes to "shorten" the hit animation and being able to hit 5 attacks instead of 3 in the same time/distance.

I found League very useful for my personal improvement despite the fact that it's easier mechanically, it's way harder when it comes to making a decision or reading the enemy, everything is too fast, the map is also waay smaller and the skill and item animations are short af.

Maybe you can put these in practice too, it's worth it.

ive played league it was a hell lot of fun with friends lol

but i doubt its a game im willing to spend the time sink on. the philippine community is notoriously toxic from what i gather for starters

so i cant pretend im singaporean and show them the superiority of singapore and my english :P

also i think ur misusing the term kiting here. maybe what u actually meant was "orb walking" (a primitive term)

afaik, kiting = positioning yourself properly and using various positioning/movement spells/items to accomplish two things 1) gives a positioning advantage over the enemy 2) reduce possible damage taken while maximizing ur damage output

meanwhile orb walking is simply manual casting autocast rclicks spells or even just regular right clicks and clicking right after the attack to reduce backswing

So LoL compared to dota is like the CS franchise compared to point blank

actually I was talking about kiting, orb walking is too simple, I know what it is.
LoL compared to Dota is like CS compared to Battlefield.
Actually PREEETTY accurate comparison lmao

i don't remember dota being non-competitive and boring

It is slower and Battlefield IS cometitive, just not at the same scale ;)
Any tips for low mmr people or just here to show everyone you're the scum of the earth?

If you understand the mistakes you're making, don't repeat them.

Playing with good players can help you improve, if those good players do their absolute best to make you learn. I climbed my party mmr 2k flat to 4.5k in 3 months playing with 4ks. I try solo mmr, got 2k to 3.5k easy.

Partying with better players only help if you try to know what they're doing and their way of thinking that leads to specific action and have the mental capability to do it
Look at apoop he've played with shittons of 4k and he's still sub 1k
You're not going to become a better player if you're just doing what better players tell you to (omg git wards git sentries babysit me omgggggg)

That's how I learned, listening to better players. They command you, you listen. You try to understand why, you watch replays, they tell you why they make you stand here, make you ward here. Obviously you're talking about people who want to be carried, but I assume the OP wants to learn. I'm telling him playing with better players, or even just getting a coach can be a good idea.

Getting a coach is an option