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DOTA2 is always evolving. It's a game that changes pace very fast, be it in a game or be it DOTA in general. If you look back at DOTA 1, things changed a lot when DOTA2 came out. Things changed When they released Centaur. And it has always been this way. Either you learn very fast or you fall behind. But if you are concerned about improving your gameplay that means you don't have any catching up to do, you are updated, you know the basics and now you are stuck. A lot of my friends are in the same situation where they are stuck in the same MMR bracket for years and they don't really know what to do to get out of their bracket. So, I decided to talk to a few high MMR players to seek help and they all pretty much had to say the same thing about how to improve your gameplay or which areas you should look for to find your flaw. So, I decided to write on it and see if I can help my friends with this.
BE ACTIVE -
I think it's really all about how actively you work towards improving. There's that guy who repeats his same mistake even though he knows that it's wrong and he was told what was right. And then there is this guy who learns and never repeats the mistakes, he knows what he did wrong and he is not going to do that again. So for a start, stop being that guy. Be the guy who is willing to improve and not just learn but actively uses his knowledge in the game to improve himself. People say practice makes you perfect. Well, before you start practicing the things you learned today, you got to stop practicing the bad habits and the wrong things you are used to doing till now. Being passive is always the worst thing to do in DOTA. Be it being passive in a game or be it being passive about the whole learning new thing in general. STOP. BEING. PASSIVE.
Watch Your Own Replays -
Watching your replays is something you never want to do because you think why would you watch a game that you played just a few hours back. It's boring. You know what happened and blah blah blah. You're not watching this because it's entertaining. You're watching this to see what you did wrong. Like you can just watch your game and be like "oh I should not have been pushing that deep, I knew they were missing". That's it, next time don't push deep into lanes when all enemies are missing unless you have wards and you know for sure that they did not just smoke.
Watching your replays are very important because of multiple reasons. Self-reflection is key.
Reason #1: Watching your replays will show you why you failed the lane, or got caught while jungling, how many times you got caught under their wards and much more. This will make you realize what stopped you from being effective in the game. Once you know what you did wrong, you will not repeat it.
Reason #2: You can watch from different player's perspective. You will notice Things that you did not notice or did not know your enemies did while laning against you. Now you can see them and you can understand what really happened in the game. For an example, you start noticing the time for different heroes when they start getting aggressive. Like Queen of pain, maybe they wait till they are level 6 before they start roaming around and kill. So, from now once you notice your opponent mid lane QOP hit level 6, you will see it coming and play defensively or maybe call for ganking or stop diving aggressively.
There is always something that you can improve at, does not matter what skill bracket you are in, you can never be 100% perfect at DOTA. Focus on one thing At a time. For example,
Laning Phase
It does not matter if you are playing Mid or offlane or safelane, you want to have a good lane. If you win your lane the chances of you winning the game go higher. You need to think about lane match up before you pick your hero. Sometimes you just pick heroes thinking about other things. You picked Slark because you wanted to kill their safelane Phantom assassin but now you are facing a Doom – Lich duo offlane and your life is miserable. If there's a game where you don't have a very good lane support then you can't pick your favorite carry like Slark or Anti-mage, you need to pick a hero that is more lane focused and strong at laning against a duo offlane.
If you are spamming a hero and you have a good winning streak just know it's not gonna always work. You'll see different scenarios where you get countered really heavily and that cost you the game. Probably if you were playing Razor instead of Anti-Mage, you probably would have won the game. You'll see games like this and you'll realize why it's important to pick what you really need in the game and not your favorite hero.
Avoid Flaming or Conflict With Your Teammates
It's really important to stay productive in the game. Because the moment you start blaming your teammates or start bringing them down the game ends right there and you have lost the game. Typing and yelling about what others doing wrong instead of actually playing the game is like giving up. You already gave up and now you are blaming or fighting. Don't do that. Stay focused on the game.
Sometimes, we win these crazy games where they have taken all your tier 1 and tier 2 towers and took your barracks on two sides and you still keep defending. You win few ganks, they make few mistakes out of frustration and you turn the tide, end up winning the game. It's possible. The comeback is real. We've seen it a lot. Internal conflicts can only hurt yours and your teammate's performance. It can never help you win the game. Stay focused and be positive even if someone is feeding, just stay focused and do your job. You might win the game, even if the chances are 10% that's still better than 0% chance because you gave up and started a fight with your teammate.
Communication -
Use the chat wheel. Chat wheel goes across the language. So even if you are playing with people that don't speak your language or English you can still talk to them, send them important messages like, "Hey let's smoke gank" "Hey I need a gank in my lane" or "hey my TP is off the cooldown". When I really want to win a game I use voice chat, It's much faster and much quicker. Typing is okay for telling your team small things like "hey I am making pipe" so your other teammate will not make the same item. So by typing 5 words, you saved your teammates gold which he can invest in some other team item.
Sometimes you play these games where nobody is really speaking. Everyone is playing silently and it's hard to win a game that way. You need to let the information flow through your team to make the coordination better and avoid mistakes like making 3 pipe of insight in one time. That's basically useless and wastage of a lot of gold that you had a hard time to farm. The moment your team communicates better the match becomes much easier to play and win.
Map Awareness -
For map awareness, you want to look at heroes that are a threat to you. For an example, If your enemy team has a Winter Wyvern support in their safelane it probably not going to come to your lane and gank you, even if he does chances are he will not kill you. But if your enemy has a Spirit Breaker and you are playing Midlane with Shadow Fiend you need to be careful every time he goes missing from the lanes. It's really important to be aware of the timing. If you notice that enemy supports are missing around 5 min mark, they are probably taking their bounty rune and if they go missing a little more early then chances are they are stealing your bounty runes too.
If you notice enemy lane has double creep wave with 2 ranged, chances are they are pulling the creeps. You can guess how much time it takes for any hero to move from point X to point Y and assume their position. So if you can guess where they are and doing what, you can avoid getting ganked and know how deep you can push and when you need to get back or when you need to stay in the trees.
Importance of Roshan -
Learn the importance of Roshan. A lot of people Takes Roshan for granted. They only feel the need to kill Roshan after losing a lot of ganks and now they are already at a bad stage to kill Roshan or contest Roshan with the enemy team. Roshan gives your whole team a gold advantage and a lot of XP and it also wins you the next 5 minute of the game.
Aegis is a very good advantage to have on your side before you are going to break your enemy's tier 3 tower or taking the barracks. There are certain heroes that are good at killing Roshan. As an example, Ursa can Kill Roshan at a very early stage and then he gets a gold advantage, a couple of levels and starts getting aggressive and kick butts. There are other heroes like Templar Assasin, she can solo kill Roshan after her desolator. It's also important to defend the Roshan. If you don't have the items or heroes to do Roshan at that point and your enemies do, try to ward and keep an eye on the Roshan. You don't want your enemies to have that advantage.
