Surviving 3K MMR: Objective Pressure

Objective pressure is that feeling when the opponent just double raxed you. Your team lost a team fight and your opponents decide the time has come to take out your precious barracks. Having had this experience more times than I care to count, I haven't let that feeling of pressure from being down overcome and consume me. Instead, I always ask myself how can I get back in the game? While this scenario takes place late in the game, a healthy pressure should always exist in the back of your head, keeping you alert and focused on the game. With all this in mind, let's dive a little further into objective pressure.

The main objectives are:

1.   Runes – the most important objective during the laning stage but fall off as the game progresses (unless you’re S4).

2.   Roshan – the mascot of DOTA 2 and his aegis represent one of the most important advantages any team can secure.

3.   Tier 1 and 2 towers – objectives teams try to secure after the laning stage

4.   Tier 3 towers and Barracks – the end game objectives, taking these greatly increases your team’s chance for success

5.   Tier 4 towers and the Throne – the penultimate objectives; taking these means you have won the game.

These 5 categories are the most important to understand for learning objective pressure because Dota is a game of objectives. Consider for a moment the following scenarios and decide for yourself if your team or your opponent improved their position, gained an advantage or it's relatively neutral.

• You trade safelane tier 1 towers with your opponent
• You trade damage on a tier 4 tower for stopping the opponent from killing Roshan
• You trade a tier 4 tower for stopping the opponent from killing Roshan
• You trade your safelane tier 2 tower for Roshan
• You trade a tier 1 in the offlane for a tier 1 in mid
• You stop your opponent from taking your tier 3 tower
• You trade your ranged rax for a buy back on one of your team's core and an opponent team wipe
• You trade your ranged rax for a buy back on two of your team's core and an opponent team wipe
• Trading damage on your tier 1 for a bounty rune as a mid player
• Trading damage on your tier 1 for a haste rune as a mid player

And the list goes on. Weighing these tradeoffs usually takes place in a split second. It's generally when we feel the most pressure that we make these decisions the fastest. This in turn is where we are most prone to err if we haven't thought through what we are going to do in those situations before hand. The best way to illustrate this is when high level players commentate about what when wrong for the losing team. Most of the time they use phrase's like: "if Beast Master doesn't buy back there, it's over" or "because the Sven got rooted at this point in the fight, they missed their window to win the fight." To a pro, these thoughts are second nature. This is because they have internalized conscious decisions made before this on what to do in certain situations. For the 3k player, we need to take these conscious decisions and make them unconscious through thinking how different scenarios in the game will play out and practicing.

Let's get back to our situations listed above. I'm sure a lot of you prefaced your answers with "it really depend" or something like that. This important phrase gives us insight into what we need to do when we feel under pressure. There is no pressure more palpable than trying to securing Roshan in the late game. Both teams jockey for superior ward position, trying to find pick-offs, and map control before confront the beast. This imposes a feeling of pressure that encourages you to act. Thus, you must properly identify which factors your actions will depend on. These factors range from your perceived lead to what point in the game it is to how many smokes you have left. This is where the importance of iteration and education (like this blog and others) come in. Playing games provide reference experience and education allows you to compare your reference experience to that of the educator. 

In the end, that feeling of pressure when related to objectives boils down to a feeling about making the best decisions by correctly identifying what factors your decision should be based on. We could go into the weeds of asymmetric information and the fog of war, but that doesn't help you in your next queue. Remembering that the feeling of pressure should be motivating you to make the best decision you know how to will.