12 minute read
We're all playing the same game, and while regular players can (usually) appreciate that professional players are much better than them, they cannot grasp the full extent of this difference.
The games that you are playing and the games that professional players are playing are not just different - in many ways, they are polar opposites of each other.
This article will delve into these differences and how you can use this knowledge to improve and start winning more of your solo queue games.
We'll be looking at the four topics where this difference is most prevalent, with each topic being divided into the following two parts:
Theory
What are the differences between pubs and pro games when it comes to [topic], and how does this difference affect your pub games?
Practical Advice
Now that you have this knowledge of the differences related to [topic] and their influence, what should you stop doing and what should you start doing in your games in order to win more?
Topic 1: Game Design
Theory
The game is (mostly) balanced around the competitive level. There have been some instances of heroes running rampant in pubs and getting nerfed despite being untouched in pro games, but for the most part it's the tournament gameplay that sets the standard and is used to judge what is too strong or too weak.
Heroes with unique mechanics whose weaknesses or counters involve teamwork or team-wide strategy are going to be inherently stronger in solo queue, where said teamwork is far weaker - prime examples being Legion Commander, Meepo, Arc Warden, Tinker, Slark, Broodmother, etc.
Then there is the actual game design from the point of view of enjoyable gameplay - what the game's immediate feedback tells you is good and bad vs. what is actually good and bad when it comes to winning methods.
Large amounts of creep kills, hero kills and especially streaks give by far the most visually and audibly satisfying immediate direct feedback to the player, from the flashy text visible to everyone and the announcer to the increasing numbers of gold and experience.
Dying gives incredible amounts of negative feedback, from the gold loss to literally getting timed out and then being repositioned all the way in your fountain, far from the action. It's no wonder everyone enjoys getting a lot of kills, not dying, reaching high numbers in hero / creep kills, gold, gaining levels and talents, many items, etc.
And yet, very often situations arise where standing still and hiding in the trees is the best possible play - despite also being a play that yields zero positive game feedback.
In the same way, there are situations where farming creeps is one of the worst plays, despite the player receiving tons of positive game feedback; increasing numbers, +numbers popping up, coin sound, etc.
Depending on your role even dying is often a correct play, despite the immense negative feedback the game gives you for that.
Getting a streak and several kills in a row is probably the most positive feedback you can get from the game, without necessarily leading to increased chances of winning and sometimes even decreased chances of winning (building up a kill streak that you're bound to feed away later, getting kills on the wrong heroes, diving for kills instead of taking objectives, etc.)
Conversely, taking objectives has a far more guaranteed positive impact on your chances of winning but until the 24th of March, 2016 it didn't even show up in the event log as something actively done by a player but rather a passive event; the activity log would print the message "the dire barracks have fallen".
Practical Advice
First of all, when it comes to "cheesy" heroes, accept that the lack of teamwork from your team will make it hard to deal with them unless you understand them well. Chances are that Arc Warden / Meepo / Tinker will never become your favorite heroes, but if you want to stop struggling versus them, playing them for 2-3 games will go a long way towards helping you understand how to counter them.
Secondly, regarding the game's feedback - that is something you must learn to ignore.
When you're playing Windranger mid don't just keep going for kills on the enemy support over and over. Ask yourself:
"Does using Focus Fire to make the enemy 0-4 Warlock go 0-5 really change how the game will play out?"
You don't need to be an immortal player to figure out that he can cast his spells no matter how many times he died, that his Fatal Bonds, Upheaval and Chaotic Offering will be equally strong regardless of his farm, and that once his main spells are maxed it really doesn't matter all that much whether he's level 12 or 18.
So next time you're in this situation, if your main objective is to win the game and not to enjoy being the star with the sickest stats hearing the announcer shout "Godlike!", you're going to do whatever leads to the best chances for making that happen.
Getting an observer ward and smoke for yourself because your supports won't do it; making sure you have enough mana saved up to be aggressive; rotating to Focus Fire the enemy offlaner who's already 3-0; being okay with your 0-2 carry taking the kill - this is all a hypothetical situation but it's a solid example of actions that feel bad ("wasting" money on "support items" like smoke, "wasting" time rotating, missing out on creeps, not taking the kill gasp) but depending on the game may ultimately lead to much higher chances of winning than the actions that feel good would.
In short: use your brain to figure out what actions are most likely to win you games, learn and have confidence in your own conclusions, and do not rely on the game to encourage you and tell you you're doing a good job through flashy kill cues and high numbers.
Topic 2: Teammate Perception
Theory
Playing on a (semi-)professional team with someone means you trust them. It doesn't mean you turn off your brain and blindly follow every word you're told, but you give your allies the benefit of the doubt and aren't afraid to follow their plans even if it may not be the first thing you thought of. Some plans and moves work out, some don't, and at the end of the game you can discuss what went wrong, why, and improve for your next game together. In order for a team to work well, all 5 players need to feel like they're on the same level.
Compare this to pubs - nearly every single player feels like they are better than the people they get matched with and that they deserve a higher rating. Regardless of how exactly you feel about your teammates, chances are they consider you a worse player and therefore won't have full trust in your call, or will have a fake defeatist kind of trust that evaporates and leads the way to forfeiting and accusations as soon as anything goes slightly wrong.
On a team you can and should specialize and focus on some specific tasks in the game, trusting that your team will take care of the rest. For example, focusing on disabling the enemy and boosting your team's survivability, trusting that your carry will deal the necessary damage. It's a good idea to rely on your team as much as possible, since this is the superior strategy in competitive and professional team vs team Dota.
What happens if you try this in your solo queue matches? It'll work in some games where your carry is on the same page and doing well, but then in many other games it'll just be a guaranteed loss when your carry is having a bad day / trying a new hero / isn't actually a carry player / etc.
That's why you should try to take care of as many tasks as possible by yourself, and rely on your team as little as possible in solo matchmaking if you want to maximize your win rate.
Practical Advice
Picture these lineups:
Now imagine you're playing Luna here. You know that once Invoker and Faceless Void get farm and levels they'll just Chrono + Cataclysm you every single teamfight, and because there are no saves on your team, there's not much that can be done about it.
However, you also know that Luna is extremely good at grouping up and pushing early, before the enemy team gets the items and levels necessary for their combo to reach its full potential.
So you try to communicate this to your team:
You: "Hey guys, their early game is weak so I'm gonna get Dragon Lance before Mask of Madness and max my Lunar Blessing before my Glaives, which will allow us to push very early while they are still weak"
Your teammate offlane Necrophos: "ok, in that case I'll rush Greaves & Pipe"
Your teammate support Ancient Apparition: "and I'll get a fast Solar Crest to buff you further when we push"
...but then you wake up and the cold, harsh truth of solo queue hits you:
Your pub offlane Necrophos: "> Well played! > Need 4158 gold for Radiance"
Your pub offlane Ancient Apparition: "> Well played! > Need 3624 gold for Aghanim's Scepter"
That's why going for a build that doesn't maximize your farm on a core hero in pubs is basically griefing yourself and giving up your control on the outcome of the game, while it can be a game-winning decision in a team match.
Now, you might think: "Clearly my teammates just lack the experience to have the same foresight that I do; if I can just explain things with proper argumentation they will surely come around and follow my strategy!"
Discussing what the best strategy is with them is not just pointless but in fact detrimental to your team winning, because you're distracting everyone, potentially encouraging others to start criticizing in retaliation, and making yourself likely to get muted.
Lastly, no one ever did or is going to seriously learn and change their views on the game due to something their solo queue teammate told them, so you are not impacting the game positively in any way, nor will this impact any of your future games in a positive way because once again it's solo queue.
So, going back to the Luna situation: Trying to take it late game and relying on a right-click AA support and a scaling DPS Necro vs overwhelming magical damage is... not very likely to work. However, that's the strategy your teammates are going for, whether you like it or not. Therefore, once you find yourself in that situation your only choice is to go with it - if you try to go against it, to rush Dragon Lance, max E and hit towers - you're just going to die on your own while your offlane Necro is farming his Radiance in the jungle and pinging your death timer, spamming
"> Well Played! > I think someone should purchase Mantle of Intelligence"
Topic 3: Teamfight Coordination
Theory
When you run in as a carry Gyrocopter without using your BKB, you know that once the enemy team tries to chain-stun and focus you down your allied Oracle will be in position and ready to False Promise you, giving you time to pop BKB & Satanic and lifesteal back to full HP, while the fact that you drew the enemy team's attention gave your Magnus the opportunity to get a 3 man Reverse Polarity, setting you up to unleash your damage on the stunned enemies.
That's what high-level team Dota looks like; everyone knows what to expect from each other, and is able to make plays that rely on their teammates executing properly.
What's gonna happen if you try to do the same in your ranked solo queue games?
Maybe Oracle is out of position so he gets silenced, cannot ult you and you just die; maybe Magnus didn't notice his blink getting canceled and therefore whiffs his RP, ruining the entire teamfight; or maybe either one of them isn't there to begin with, or is actually out of mana because they spent it all farming neutral camps and didn't bother to itemize against mana problems.
Do mistakes never happen in pro games? Of course they do, but there is no raging and no whiner that's gonna keep talking about that one miss-click for the next 15 minutes, which massively decreases the pressure compared to a pub environment and results in these mistakes happening very rarely.
Think about how many of those raging whiners are in your games... Hell, you may even be one of them. That means people in your games are 1. less skilled, and 2. under more pressure. With those things in mind, how often do you think mistakes are bound to happen?
Practical Advice
Instead of playing immobile and stun-less cores that rely more on teammates (e.g. Luna, Sniper, Shadow Fiend, etc.), you can pick cores that are more self-reliant and threatening on their own (e.g. Slark, Faceless Void, Ember Spirit, etc.)
Likewise, instead of playing low-damage supports that mostly just enable their cores (e.g. Oracle, Ogre Magi, Warlock, etc.), you can pick supports that are more self-reliant and threatening on their own (e.g. Jakiro, Witch Doctor, Hoodwink, etc.)
Topic 4: Teamfight Purpose
Theory
Teamfights in pro games (usually) only happen for a reason, meaning there is an objective to be taken after said teamfight is won. This is because playing the game professionally, the way it's meant to be played, means not really seeing it as a game. Good players see teamfights as a means to an end; a method to reach a step which will help with ultimately winning the game, and they are also good enough to see when the best way to reach that step involves not taking a teamfight.
If you compare this to the way things work in pubs, the difference is night and day. First of all, 99.99% of players never play in a team vs team environment, and even those that do cannot really bring themselves to play that way in their solo queue. The average player looks at the game as a game, and to the average player a teamfight is an inevitable part of it: something that just happens.
You see a guy, you run at him and try to kill him. More people show up, you try to kill those too or maybe run, boom it's a teamfight. Hero strength peaks, item timings, risk-reward ratio regarding the potential objective gain of winning this teamfight, should we be taking this teamfight at all - all these thoughts fly out the window the moment people start fighting an enemy hero, if those thoughts were even there to begin with.
And perhaps most importantly, nobody is asking themselves 'Why are we taking this fight?' If you ask all 5 players individually, all 5 of them will say 'well I saw my team going for it so I had to join or I would get flamed'.
The chaotic nature of teamfight occurrence and lack of understanding as to how they are decided in pubs also shows in the actual execution of the teamfights themselves.
Teamfights in pro games are generally quite predictable, when team A hits a strong timing team B will generally look to avoid them, so team A will force objectives and team B won't contest and look to split-push and get more farm out of the map so they can hit their own timing.
What decides teamfights in pubs is generally completely illogical and unrelated to strategy. Missed spells, passive BKB's, focusing different targets, dying without managing to use anything, fighting while 300g away from a major item, frontliners lagging behind while backliners charge forward, tunnel vision on the first visible enemy resulting in a team clumped up so badly it makes you wonder whether there's a Dark Seer in the game...
Practical Advice
Avoid forcing 5 on 5 teamfights unless you have the numbers advantage - this can be achieved mainly in two ways, with method 2 being generally easier to achieve and often superior to method 1.
Method 1 - Get the Aegis. Seriously, the majority of players are allergic to Roshan and never ever do it, while it is an integral part of the game in higher level Dota.
Once you have a slight advantage, win a fight nearby, or just have heroes good at taking Roshan early (this is in your control), you can grab the Aegis and create a 6v5 situation for your team.
Now I know what you're thinking: "My teammates are bad and they don't know how to use the second life properl-"
Let me stop you right there. Yes, that is true, but what is also true is that the enemy team has no clue how to fight around a second life either. So it remains a strong advantage regardless of your bracket.
Method 2 - Force enemies to split up across the map and take fights when they are not together. You achieve this by pushing lanes; applying pressure to enemy buildings; forcing enemies to teleport back to defend; backing off once they do, and potentially TP'ing to a fight in which you now have the numbers advantage.
Of course, this is easier said than done, and it is a topic that deserves (and perhaps will get) its own entire article. Still, even being aware of and trying to do this will already put you ahead of many players and help you win games that you wouldn't have won otherwise.
What's next?
You have finished the article and now know better how to approach your solo ranked games!
To help you improve further, I can offer the following:
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Thanks for getting this far, and remember:
Balance in all things.