Thursday, June 30, 2016

What is my mindset on how to approach Dota 2? A guide to which roles you should play

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my very first guide that does not revolve on a certain hero and his playstyle but rather on the general mindset that you should put in your game to become a better Dota player. As we all know 99% of our casual Dota players are safelane carries, and if they are not, well they go jungle with Legion Commander. Or they overpick mid and you're forced to play position 4 Storm Spirit (I'm pretty sure we've all been through these kind of things). In my opinion, the by far worst thing in Dota are players not playing their role as it is supposed to be played. I will exactly show you why this is the case and what to do to improve your mindset on how to approach the game according to what you want to do in every single game anyways.

What is your motivation to play Dota?

Obviously, Dota 2 is a highly complex game that does require a lot of background knowledge on mechanics, the map, items and heroes. Regardless though people have a certain playstyle no matter what they play. As you might know from first person shooters, there's basically two types of players: The Camper and the Leroy Jenkins. Dota almost exactly translates these two types of players into the Farmer and the Killer. You will recognize people playing Dota usually running around trying to kill people (which is kinda good) or actually trying to win the game by taking objectives and pushing towers (which is definitely good). I don't want to directly incline towards the second because you will obviously need both types of players to win a game of Dota. So firstly, you will have to make up your mind and realize what your own playstyle is about. Are you the kind of player trying to always get kills, creating space and giving your lanes a headstart? Or are you rather the kind of player trying to maximize your effort by constantly forcing the enemy to spread out and just basically being more efficient with what is available on the entire map?

> If you are constantly searching for opportunities to kill or teamfight, you should play support or utility: Try to count how many Anti-Mages with Brown Boots and Battle Fury you had in your games going like "I'm strong now, let's go kill bitches!" and then instantly dying to two supports because there's just no way an Anti-Mage can actually contribute something more than a Mana Void 15 minutes into the game. Basically, they get a great start, maybe grabbing one or two kills on the enemy offlaner and then instantly feeding away that edge your team created. This is a classic sign of a player that has the mindset of a support or utility role but plays carry every fucking game and is highly likely to throw away a ton of matches by repeatingly going for the wrong decisions. If you want to constantly kill heroes, this is absolutely fine and you should definitely play a lot of roaming support or offlane to emphasize your mindset by picking heroes accordingly. Just imagine how easy it is to kill a ton of heroes by just picking Lion and fingering down enemy heroes every once in a while. It really is not difficult if you have some experience in positioning and know when you have to be where. It is though extremely hard to be that aggressive if you pick Medusa because before you get four items you cannot contribute to more than defending towers and farming, farming, farming. Furthermore, you have to get rid of the idea that supports do not win games. If you want to see why supports win games, just watch the best support duos in the world (like Fly and Crit- on OG or Fy and Fenrir when they used to play together for Vici Gaming). The fact players like Miracle- or Arteezy shine is not only because they belong to the best in the game but to the fact their supports set them up to win a game. If you imprint the idea of picking heroes that fit your mindset you will win a lot more games. Obviously, the "Killer" mindset is great for roaming, supporting, and going offlane as these roles are all about outplaying your opponent, setting up good scenarios for your team to abuse and then take big objectives off of that. Also, you can certainly make more high risk - high reward plays without throwing away a game. I believe 60-80% of carry players in the normal and high bracket, even a good amount of very high bracket carry players would do way better by picking heroes like Clockwerk, Bounty Hunter, Vengeful Spirit etc. One of my favourite examples in professional gaming would be Xboct, as I remember him doing a ton of weird things because he has the killer mindset and I always wanted to see him rather play the offlane than safelane.

> If you are constantly trying to force objectives, dodging opponents and maximizing your own efficiency on the map, you should play farming roles: I remember some games where the exact opposite of that Anti-Mage scenario happened as I even caught myself going "My Slark fed three kills within five minutes, fuck that guy I'm going to farm myself now." This is due to my personal mindset of seeing Dota as basically an economy simulator. My idea of Dota is is all about the classic TI3 Alliance playstyle: Kills mean nothing, throne means everything. If I have the chance to trying to not kill a single hero in a game and still win, I will gladly take it. You will always find a player like me pushing out lanes as much as I can creating space and moving around the enemy heroes as they can't group up to push when their buildings are being taken away. Especially pushing out lanes is heavily underrated for carry players because they have the "Killer" mindset and don't care about pushing out lanes to keep their buildings alive. When I play support, a lot of times I will have to tell my teams' farming roles to go push that tower or cut that creepwave to apply pressure on the map distantly. As they always look to help their teammates in a straight engagement or skirmish they lose track of what's really important to do to keep a balance in creep equilibrium and give their teams a huge chunk of gold by getting rid of towers. If you are among the kind of player that I am aswell, you should always pick appropriately to your "Farmer" mindset. Pick heroes like Anti-Mage, Ember Spirit, Spectre, Nature's Prophet or Alchemist. Once you realized that you have the mindset of playing an economy simulator take advantage of it and pick accordingly. The "Farmer" mindset doesn't revolve around killing heroes, it's the exact opposite: You want to maximize your efficiency, play as safe as possible because you know that you will not farm anything while being dead. Every once in a while though you will realize that you have an edge by picking up a major item that helps you contribute in a teamfight or taking a big objective like Roshan or enemy structures. A lot of bad games occur because the player with the "Farmer" mindset is getting overpicked by his teammate that doesn't know how to play as a farming role and then says something like "I'm not gonna solo support here". If you want to improve on how to emphasize your farming playstyle you should definitely watch replays of players like AdmiralBulldog or Hao as these players tend to always be amongst the top 3 networth while you don't see them contributing a lot for kills. I do want to mention though, that the "Farmer" mindset does include a lot of a lane-supports' or junglers' playstyle. Professionals like Aui_2000 or Puppey are great examples of the "greedy" support player trying to maximize efficiency by playing safely, picking greedily and bruteforcing objectives.

> If you don't really feel like a good killer or farmer but have a lot of fun playing with your opponents and moving them through the map: I do want to point out that there is a pseudo-type of player that suites best to what I'd call the "Jester" mindset. These players bring a lot of value to their team not by being most efficient or killing a lot of heroes rather than just having fun playing with their opponents. They are good at triggering (tilting) their opponents, making three enemy heroes chase them for what feels like eternity and then just teleporting out of trouble. They get intel by putting themselves in the spotlight tanking the gank, revealing Smoke of Deceit and denying creeps to the enemy farmer. I'd say that offlane and midlane mostly fit this kind of playstyle and certainly does roaming around. If you want to improve on just being a nuisance to your opponents, play heroes like Pudge, Nyx Assassin or even Puck. You should almost certainly have a look into how players like Iceiceice, Pieliedie or Synderen approach the game as they bring a lot of value to their team by dying a lot (which sounds absurd but if done correctly can win you games).

Finding the right balance

Obviously, no human being will fit exactly into one category or type of person or player. Nevertheless most players have a tendency to what they like to do mostly and finding the right balance on what your playstyle actually is opens up for which heroes suit you the best. For example, heroes like Gyrocopter, Slark or Templar Assassin are definitely considered as farming roles, but they still want to get active on the map a lot to win games (usually when they get their ultimate or e.g. when Lanaya gets her Blink Dagger). So if you like to play creeps aswell as enemy heroes, go play heroes that bring in some tempo control aspect like the ones mentioned. If you don't ever feel like you want to fight at all, play Medusa or Naga Siren. If you feel like you're leaning mostly towards the killer mindset but still like to be efficient, go play Chen, Windranger or Timbersaw as these heroes want to get items but mostly like to have an impact on skirmishes. Once you've actually thought about how you approach the game you will likely pick heroes that suit your personal playstyle and having over a hundred heroes in the game you can be sure that you will find at least one or two of those in most positions available. For example, I do play every role once in a while - from position 1 to 5 - nevertheless I do have a tendency to play safelane and mid more often. I also happened to play a lot more position 3 lately as patch changes could favour offlane heroes that suit my playstyle.

If you want to add anything or have questions, feel free to comment to this post!

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