Surviving 3k: Finding the Niche

The most common question among pub players is: how do you raise MMR? Some people say to spam this hero or that. Some say to jungle for 10 minutes and come out with the intention of of snowballing your team to a victory. My advice and what has worked for me is to find a niche and fill it.

Lets use some abstraction to understand this.The pub scene trends toward certain picks, strategies, and styles of play. Because the pub scene favors certain heroes, strategies, and styles of play over others, this creates a deficit somewhere. Sometimes this deficit is well founded and sometimes it isn't. Right now, when it comes to support, it isn't. The pub scene at 3k is lacking the support duo currently (Fluff gives a good talk about this here). Rather than having a hard 5 and greedier 4, there's an awkward 3.5 and 6.5 position hero. This is bad.

Most importantly is that no one wants to play the 6.5 position because they are getting sacked so hard. Buy all the wards and the courier and share your tangos. Forget about getting brown boots until minute 12, buy all the smokes and it's your fault for not putting up enough wards when some one on the team gets ganked. Moral of this story is help your supports through buying wards, sharing tangos, upgrading courier, buying smokes and not flaming them.

The second most important point is that having a 3.5 is a liability, most of the time. There are small exceptions. However, the majority of the time picking a greedier support will help your team out way more than having a 3.5 because they will be active on the map and help buy support items during the beginning of the game. The goal of the first 10-20 minutes in a game is to win the laning stage and transition into the mid-game with a lead. The best way to do this is to have a dynamic support duo who matches up well against the enemy team.

Now I know a lot of you out there are going to still play a 3.5 hero, so here's my recommendations:

Enigma - fastest farming jungler there is. Can push early, gets an early mech, and has great team fight ulti.
Chen - maybe the second fastest farming jungler there is. Pushes early, gets mech, and has a great team fight ulti.
Ursa - everyone knows your going for Rosh by 7 minutes. After Rosh, it's time to get aggresive
Bloodseeker - Global ability that powers you up and gives vision when people are low seems like a good deal.
Crystal Maiden - getting a quick level two and ganking the mid lane is how I like to play her. Just make sure to get quick boots because you are slow. Your aura helps your team win the laning phase.

these heroes get active before the 8 minute mark and create pressure on the map naturally during the laning phase. They all have things in common: they pressure the enemy team in ways traditional heroes can't because they don't show on the map until it's too late.As a 3.5 position, you need to help your other support. Like it or not, you need to compensate for your lack of direct laning presence by empowering your other support.

In current pubs, there's a place for a 4 position support or a super active 3.5 position hero. Trying to pick a sub-par jungler like Legion Commander is a waste of time and a pending loss. Fill the niche your teams needs and be rewarded with MMR.

Developing the mindset of a winner

Every once and a while, I find myself sliding from 3.6k to 3.4k MMR or lower with a series of games, most of which I couldn’t have done anything to change the outcome. When this happens, I need to refresh my mindset because it’s draining. I don’t want to get caught up in the negative aspect of the game I just played. To avoid this, I take advantage of two powerful feedback mechanisms that everyone has: reframing and perspective. The reframe changes your mind set from your current state to a desired state. Perspective gives you a reference point for progress in your game. With these two strategies, I perpetuate the mindset of a winner.

I am a senior electrical/computer engineering (EE or ECE) student at a small private college. The EE curriculum is a mix of required classes and technical electives.  The one technical elective that all EEs should take is control systems. In controls, the idea is to keep a system stable, i.e. keep the system from tilting, using a certain type of controller.  You mind operates on some of the same principles which means it’s up to you to control your attitude. A very easy way to do this is called the reframe. The idea is that every time you feel yourself descending into a mindset that you don’t want to identify with, you physically and mentally change that mindset. There are a few simple strategies you can employ to do this:

-          Tell yourself something out loud. Phrases like “I’m still the best”, “even good players have bad games”, and “I’ll get them next time” can go a long way to improving your attitude.

-          Watch a replay of yourself playing well, a highlight reel (like DOTA Cinema’s Symphony of Skills) or favorite player. These will help get your head back into a winning mindset

-          Develop a pre- and post-game routine. There’s a reason sports teams huddle together to pump each other up before and shake hands after a game – it works! This doesn’t have to be some super in depth ritual. I always begin my DOTA session by watching some live games to get myself in the right mind set and get some water after each game to walk around.

In controls, the reframe would be called a feedback approach and the perspective a feedforward approach. Basically, you use the game you’re playing today to influence the game you will play tomorrow.  While you’re playing the game, the only moment that exists is the current one. After the game is over, you can look at the whole game, noticing how certain events shaped each team’s play. This information translates into a greater understanding of how to play in those situations the next time they come around. If you watch professional players, they do this as they play because their reference experience is so large that they see minute details and courses of action that the average doesn’t. They then translate this into an advantage and that advantage into a win.

When you combine these two ideas, you create a potent control system for your game. It helps you stay positive, get more enjoyment out of the game and progress as a player. In order to really embrace these ideas, you need to do them constantly so that they become part of your normal thought patterns. Remember, however, to only focus on improving one thing at a time. I would recommend starting with learning to reframe because the time investment is smaller and you will see results from it sooner.