Surviving 3k: Encouraging your allies to pick around you

Every match, you should be doing certain things:

1. determining how your team is going to communicate
2. assessing how flexible your team is going to be in roles, picks, and lanes
3. trying to convince your team to pick strong heroes, counterpick the enemy, and pick around the hero you want to play

There are many other things, but these 3 you can determine right at the start of the game. For the purpose of this post, let's focus on the last part of point 3. If at least one other person picks a hero that synergizes with what you pick, you multiply the effectiveness of both heroes thus increasing your chance of winning.

Surviving 3k means you need to use all your skills, not just DOTA related, to get that coveted MMR. If you play a great hero x and you know you pair well with hero y, then encourage someone to pick it if they're good with the hero. A few notes about this approach:

• Try a logical argument. for example, if the enemy team has a Storm Spirit and you want to play Omni, you could try: "Antimage counters storm and will play great with my Omniknight because you won't have to get a bkb."
• If the logical argument doesn't work, then try an emotional one. Generally, people make decisions based on emotion; how a decision makes you feel impacts greatly what you decide to do. With that said, most people will respond positively if you ask nicely, but some might respond if you are more aggressive. Caution: people tend to hide behind their anonymity on the internet so being aggressive isn't usually as successful as asking nicely. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is the old adage.
• Sometimes, no one plays a hero that partners well with you, like you want to play LC but no one picks heroes with burst damage.
• When some one says no to a line of reasoning, try another; sell your idea any way you can. Always keep in mind that the goal is gaining MMR, not making friends or enemies. If you happen to make those, that's fine too, but this is solo queue not social hour.
• Don't constrain your hero pairs to one that will only be in your lane or play a certain role. Try to harness the strength of your team's abilities using snap judgments and making quick decisions. If those decisions don't work after a couple tries, move on to something different.
• Don't get emotionally involved with a hero, hero pair or strategy. Being involved with your significant other is fine but this is, again, solo queue. There is work to do and whispering sweet nothings into your microphone isn't going to get you that +25 at the end of a match. If the game calls for something outside your comfort zone, do it. 
• On the other side of that coin: if your team wants you to pick a hero you aren't good at, try to find a compromise hero, otherwise tell them to pound sand. You are responsible for your destiny. If you're going to make it to 4k or 5k or whatever your goal is, you have to do it. Picking Techies with Tusk may sound like a good idea, but if you haven't played Tusk before, you will be a burden to be carries by someone else.

How do you determine what heroes to pair with? Make sure to check your dotabuff and see what heroes you pair well with. You should be spamming between 3-5 heroes in solo queue (another post for another time) and will therefore build up stats related to those heroes. With those stats you can make more informed decisions about playing the game, include what heroes you pair well with.

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.