Table of content
1.Introduction:
2.Setting a practicing mind:
3.Training:
3.1.Individual training
-the last hit practice
-watching replays
-reading guides, forum posts and analyses
-final words about individual training
3.2.Team training:
A)When you dont have your entire team
- the lane practice
- getting competition inside your team with small inside tournaments
- playing pubs and leagues
B)When you have your whole team and putting emphasis on your training
- strenghten your lanes
- improve your teamplay
- develope trategies and improve your dessision making as a team
- the importance of finding a team to practice often with
- practice with different teams
- improve your communication and friendship
4. Final advices of how to improve your practice:
4.1. Sheduling practice:
4.2. Keeping high motivation:
- people oriented motivation
- influence oriented motivation
- goal oriented motivation
- how to use this knowledge
- other advices
5. Conclusion
Introduction:
In this article I will be talking about practicing, how to improve your practice in order to get a better team and individual player. I will try to explain how to practice effectively and bring good results from your training session. But before we proceed to the sessions I would like to put emphasis on practicing mind.
Setting a practicing mind:
This is the most important part of becoming better. It is very important to get the correct mind set when practicing. When training you try to achieve results in order to get better. This is why you and everyone in your team need to keep full focus and concentration on what you are doing. There is no point to waste time training if your whole attention is not into the training.
Why I am saying that? Training creates habits and attitude if you are not concentrated in what you are doing you may obtain the wrong ones. Instead of improving you will be just wasting your time.
But also keep in mind that this is just a practice. Do not get mad when losing when playing a training match. Remember you are just training. There is no need of drama. Instead put a time in analyzing your mistakes.
What else is important is the correct attitude towards constructive criticism. I will repeat again constructive criticism. There is no place for shouting and negative emotions when criticizing. Instead make it constructive thus you and your team mates can get the most of the critics, move on and improve.
Now when we have the correct mind set we can move on the training sessions, but I just want to add that getting a good training mind set can help you also achieve the correct professional mind set which is also very important if you want to become a good player and a good team.
Training:
I will separate the training into two groups - individual and team training. Beforehand I want to explain that the most individual and team skills are hardly improvable and only the experience of playing matches and watching replays will be able to improve them.
What you need to do first is to create 4-5 basic strategies where everyone in your team will be playing 4-5 different heroes so everyone can practice this set of heroes individually when they got a chance. When finding out new strategies add the new heroes to the hero set. For example your carry player has a set of heroes of Meduza, Drow Ranger, Morfling and Sniper. But you have just seen a nice strat with Obsidian so you need to inform your carry player to add Obsidian Destroyer to his hero set so he can put time to play the hero individually so he doesn’t feel uncomfortable with the hero when you are team training.
Individual training:
It is very important to practice with your hero set at every chance given. When playing a pub pick a hero from your hero set. When playing in a league, ask your leader to pick you some of the heroes you need to play and I am sure that every reasonable leader will pick you that hero. Remember practice makes perfect. There is no point to play heroes and roles you won’t play with your team. You want to specialize in a role and in a set of heroes thus you are as much helpful for your team as it is possible.
I will actually recommend you to stay out of the leagues and pubs as much as it is possible, because they create wrong habits, behavior and attitude. Play them as less as possible, because they will damage your team play, your strategic thinking and a lot of other important skills. I don’t want to get out of topic and critique the leagues, but in general they are full of people that want to shine and flame instead of play DoTA and you have no time to play with such individuals. However playing in high level leagues will help you achieve the minimum individual skill level and maintain it. So playing in leagues and pubs might be useful but never play them too much instead you can do a lot of more useful things.
Last hit practice
Some of you might have heard about this practice some of you might not. A lot of these that have heard about it are criticizing it that it is useless and a huge waste of time; others even laugh at it. The truth is that it is very useful. It makes the difference between the good last hitter and the average last hitter. Why? Because this practice creates habits and teaches you to concentrate into this little detail of DoTA, last hitting. The most of the supports for example are either too lazy to last hit or think it is too boring; others even think they are too good to last hit (I am dead serious about this). This is why the coach of Ehome, DC, called the European players “auto attackers”.
What you need to do? Start a single player, pick a hero from your hero set; go to middle lane (it is hardest at mid) and start last hitting and denying for 10 game minutes. The result you want to achieve is 60 creep kills and 60 denies. At the beginning you might get starting items (4xbranches, 2xsets of tangos and 2x salves for example) to get used to it, but later you need to do it without any items and without any skills learned. After 10 minutes restart and pick another hero from your hero set. It is recommended to do it once with every hero from your hero set (4-5 times at the beginning).
It takes just about an hour or about 1 DoTA game. But it is much more useful than playing a pub game. It creates habits in last hitting that make you concentrate on it when you have even just a little time of a free farm. It helps you to improve your lane dominance since you teach yourself to control the creep flaw and you will become a better last hitter. It will help you get your items faster since after time you will be able to get 1 creep more per wave. It makes a huge difference. Remember practice makes perfect!
Watching replays:
Watching replays is crucial in improving as a player. It is sad that a lot of professional player do not even watch replays of better teams or better players (they think they are too good to do this). The truth is that you are never too good. There is always a room for improvement. Another truth is that getting to the minimum skill level required is easy and the rest individual skills come from analyzing replays or trough experience from playing with your team. And when your team is not available for a practice watching replays is the other available way to obtain an important skill such as the strategic thinking.
Almost every professional Warcraft or Starcraft player spends a lot of time watching and analyzing replays. This process makes your mind think. It improves your strategically (yeah I am repeating myself but just in order to get you think about it before rejecting this suggestion). Strategy and strategic thinking itself is according to me are the most important skills one good player must have. The individual difference between the top Chinese player and the top European player comes from the difference in the level of their strategic thinking. You might barely see any strategic mistakes done from a Chinese top player, while when watching a European player you can notice lots of mistakes. A lot of them do not know even what to do. If you watch back some of the ESWC replays of Ehome you will notice how a lot of players facing Ehome have literally no clue what to do.
This is why watching replays is an important process. It teaches you what to do under different situations. It shows you different ways to deal with a given situation first and then makes your brain think about it if it is really the correct way to deal with it.
Recently I got a comment at playdota.com after a post I made that the guy that was posting would never think about the things written at my post if he didn’t read it. He wouldn’t see and realize the stuff I was talking about at all. I am writing this in order to give you a tip how to notice everything and pay attention to details in every replay you are watching. Ask yourself “why” always. Why did he move to there? Why did he ward there? Why is he building this? Why is he staying there? Why are they going to push? Why are they defending? Why aren’t they pushing? And etc. This how you will get your brain thinking and answer yourself eventually. This is how you will improve your decision making.
Do not only watch the whole team performance and the team battles, pay attention to the guys playing your role too. You can learn a lot of useful things about positioning, map movement and in general get a huge strategic knowledge.
As a supporter you might learn how, when and why to ward at different spots. How u can protect your carry at different situations. Where u can position for a defense, push, gang or a team fight. Just keep on asking yourself “why is he doing that” every time you see the player is doing something.
As a ganger you might learn new pats or ways to gangs. For example I learned how to treat 2 lanes and in the next moment to gang a 3rd lane where they do not expect me from a replay. Just “fail” a gang at mid, move to a lane where you know it is warded so they see you and once you get out of the ward range port to the tower of the other lane. This is how you threat 2 lanes and create an illusion you gang 2 lanes but in the end you are the 3rd lane where no one expects you. Again you can see useful positioning tips; to learn how, when, where and why to gang and etc.
In general replays are guides that you need to learn to read (analyze) and as you know guides are very helpful in becoming better. Just as get someone to guide you if you want to go to fitness and get a sexy body shape. Or just like football players that have coaches that guide them how to play.
Watching your own replays and analyzing your mistakes and good moves is also important. But first of all you need to get yourself to a strategic level where you can decide what is correct and what a mistake is. I know a lot of people that are just watching their own replays but they have no clue if they have played right or wrong. In this way they get the wrong conclusions about their game and improve really slowly.
Reading guides, forum posts and analyses
This is even more boring than watching replays, but… BUT it helps a lot. It is always good to read them because you might find some new information or at least get a different opinion about some strategy or basically anything DoTA related that can help you improve your strategic thinking. It is always good to get a second opinion about anything before making final conclusions about what is right and what is wrong.
I have to say that personally I have read lots of guides and analyzes from gosugamers, playdota, sgamers, rapturegaming. I would recommend you sgamers and rapturegaming, because there are some nice analyses and articles. Also Heldarion’s warding guide might be a little out dated but is still informative enough for the most players. And for the sake of the improvement please learn how to ward. This goes generally to the carriers that think they shouldn’t place wards not to mention buying them. Please if you want to become a good player learn at least the warding spots no matter of your role. The supports are not supposed to walk around the whole map and ward and in the same time lose gold and experience, because you don’t know where to ward. Not to mention that if you know basic warding you improve your map awareness.
Final words about the individual training:
Getting to the minimum skill level is a quiet easy process. Maintaining it is important. What makes the difference between the average, the good and the best player is their strategic thinking, their sense of teamplay and their performance with their team. My advice is to play pubs and leagues just enough to maintain a good form. Instead of over playing in such environment, practice your last hitting, watch a replay or two in order to develop the rest of your skills and train/play with your team. Actually playing and training with your team should be your main focus.
Team training
Team training is the most important part of your practice session. DoTA is a team game on which the team work makes the difference between the average and the good team, between the average and the good player. I actually started writing this guide because I was fed of the attitude of my own ex team mates toward the team training and their model of training at all.
The most European players have a wrong attitude towards the team training also; while in China as far as I know they put a huge emphasis on it. TEAM TRAINING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT!
Everything you do with your team is better than what you do without your team
There are a lot of occasions when someone is missing for a team practice. It happens, do not go emo about it. Instead here are some advices you can follow up in order to get your training going even if someone is missing or is late:
1) Practice lanes – practice some lanes you play. Make 2v2 or 2v1 lanes that you play; for example if you have in your strats a ES + SF dual lane and lets say Kunkka + VS lane go and practice them.
Play them for 10 minutes, restart and change the lane. Set some goals a lane needs to achieve. For example the SF + ES lane can strive to achieve 30 cs; 15 denies and no dead; while the Kunkka + VS lane have to get at least 20 cs, 10 denies and get at least 1 kill in that lane. Practice 2v1 lanes, 2v2 lanes; even if you are full you can practice double vs triple lane, instead of waiting to find an enemy for hours.
In this way you will improve your lane dominance, improve your teamplay, and even improve your communication. I call this the lane training. In Counter Strike for example a lot of professional teams do such practice session in order to improve their positions as counter terrorists or improve their rushing as terrorists. Not to mention how many hours they spend in mindless shooting 1v1 or 2v2. This is way better to practice than to play a league game not to mention a pub game.
2) Make 1v1 or 2v2 tournament inside your team if you get bored. Yes you can laugh as much as you want, but again playing with your team outside of the leagues and pubs is better than getting involved in all these whining and teamplay destroying environment of the leagues and pubs. Instead play some little inside tournaments in order to create some competition between the players in your team and to learn to play under pressure.
3) Stack 2-3 people and go play a pub or a league is the last think I would recommend you as a team. I would go freaking Roshan siegeing or jungling with a team mate instead of doing this, haha. But still it is a nice way to practice when you are not full.
When you have all of your team mates the best way to practice is to play a game against another team. But what is important also is to know where to put emphasis in your practice. You have to know your weaknesses.
If your laning is weak I would suggest you to either follow 1) or when playing against another team to try different substitute heroes for your lanes in your strat.
If your team fight and teamplay are your weak point go and train push strats. I actually read that from an interview with ppx and Yamateh before a tournament in Thailand if I remember correct. In push strats basically you force team fights and you stick together a lot. In this way you spend the most time of your games together and in this way you will be improving your teamplay and your team fights.
There is also another important thingie about the teamfights. Protect each other. As a carry protect your support by staying in front and hitting the people that approach your supports and that the supports are hitting and disabling. As a support stay back well positioned to get hardly approachable and protect your carry. Hit one and the same targets the ones that are disabled. This is how you create this package movement you can notice in the Chinese replays. Time your disables. It is really important to have a team fight plan; to have it discussed and to communicate during the teamfights.
If strategies, executing them correctly and decision making is your weak point you better sit as a team and watch and analyze some replays together. In this way you will see some new strategies, you will see how to execute them well, you will get a model for decision making when executing them.
Actually watching replays the whole team together can be very useful, because the whole process of improving the individual strategic thinking now applies for your entire team. Having a team with high strategic knowledge is really helpful. It leads to less mistakes during the important games and much better team decision making. And as you know less mistakes equals to higher chance of winning.
The tip I want to give you is you to find a team about your level and your time schedule and practice with them as much as possible. Use the same strategies against them so they find ways to counter them. First you will learn to play against hard counters of your strategies which will improve your strats’ power by much; second you will know which heroes exactly counter them so when you use these strategies in official matches you would know what to ban. Then third you will always have an enemy if you can not find some.
Back in the days I and my Counter-Strike team were playing against only 1 team on lan, because of the lack of proper internet connection. But when going to a tournaments we were very confident in our strategies, because they were tested against so many counters and we were almost perfect in executing them when they were no countered and we often got nice results, although the bad training environment and the lack of sponsors.
However practicing with different teams is also important. You will see different strategies and you will find out ways to counter them. You will also see different play styles and may be find out what is your play style.
There are also other thingies like communication and friendship that can beimproved. If you are a lan team it is really easy. Go to a café together, go play some sports together, go seduce some girls in a night club together . You can’t do this stuff if you are an online team, but what you can do is to find another game to play together (WoW anyone?). In general as much stuff you do together as better you team become.
Some final advices:
Scheduling Practices
Before you start signing in leagues and tournaments, be sure to schedule some practices for your team. Reasons for scheduling practices may be – improving team dynamics and developing strategies. To schedule practices, you also need to know where and how you will practice, and you also need to pick a day/time that is convenient for most of your teammates.
Once you have signed a league and you player competitive matches, be sure to schedule more practices to help your team improve.
Keep the motivation
It is easy to say you need to schedule practices and train a lot; however DoTA is not a job even for the professional players. I do not want even to start discussion about the lack of a good sponsorship and that our game is considered from the sponsors not as the best competitive, eSport game to sponsor. Should we even mention the teams without any kind of sponsorship? Keeping the motivation level high is a big challenge for all the teams – from the beginners to the professional teams, thus leading to scheduling practices and training a very hard job to do.
We all know that a motivated team will achieve more than unmotivated team. The difficulty is to create one. I want to introduce you some of the factors behind the motivation.
As a team leader you will often be stuck in a situation close to that “I have goals that I strive to achieve but when I set my team goals they just ignores them”
Well, maybe they are not motivated by goals. There are three basic orientations that people have:
People Oriented: these people are motivated by the relationship between themselves and the people they come into contact with. Teams are critical to their achievement. They tend to no like working alone. People oriented use words such as “we” and “us”. They have good relationships or would like to have such. They are the one that like to organize social events. They hate doing tasks alone.
Influence Oriented: such a person is concerned with their status in your team. They look on each task as an opportunity to display their own skills and be recognized for doing so. For them it is very important how you perceive them. They are leaving their options open for a change of direction. They sound like they are qualifying their positions. They would like to know what other people think before taking a stance. A task that will require interaction with influential people is one they will put their hand up for.
Goal Oriented: this person is motivated by achieving things. He is focused on targets and will do everything to achieve their target. They love challenges and reaching a goal. They are the easiest to spot. They are definite. They use words like “We must”. “We don’t have to fail”. They want decision made now. Often they are perceived as poor communicators but people who get things done at all costs.
So how do we use this knowledge? So much theory but how do we put it into practice? First you should know yourself. Understand what motivates you. Next understand the people in your team and know what will motivate them.
Let’s suppose I want to schedule a practice before an important tournament match. I have found replays of the last games of our opponents and we need to discuss their strengths, weaknesses and strats and to find out and practice a proper strat to win the match with them. I can use the following approaches to three people with different orientations.
People Oriented. "Hi, Adam. How are you going? We must organize another team meeting in that café with our team. There is a lot of pressure on the team at the moment and it would be good for the team if we could practice again before that important match. We will make sure that the team can attend our little event to get us started with the training session. You know, discussing strats and stuff. It will certainly take some heat away and allow the team practice better and perform well in our match. We might even meet and watch the replays together."
Influence Oriented. "Hi, Cody. I am really happy with the practice and our results from the previous time. I really need to tank you for the big effort. I have another high profile job which is to make a big practice session before our important match. I would like to give brief information to our sponsors about how good we prepare for our matches and how much you did for this. They see this as an important step in our project. It will be very appreciate by the team and the sponsors if we could practice even more this time before our important match and if we spend time to watch our opponents’ replays."
Goal Oriented. "Hi, Mike. I noticed you are the only person to watch the replays and meet our goals at the last practice session. Well done. Thanks to you our practice went well. We have another important training to do before our next important match. We need to watch the replays of our opponents I found, do some practice and put together the conclusions. Do you think you can achieve this?"
Same task – three different approaches. Each approach is designed to present the person undertaking the task with the motivational reward that appeals to them.
Getting things done is only one aspect of motivation. Giving people feedback is equally important to make them feel connected and have a pride in their work. Using the same approach, you can make sure that what is important to the person is passed back to them. For example, in the example above, each started with some feedback as to how their motivational aspirations were being met. It may be team mood, recognitions from the superiors and the team or achievement of goals.
How to keep the motivation level high? Some general advices
It is a really hard task for the team leader. First of all it is very important when someone has finished a task to no matter how big it is (i.e. watching a recommended replay) to talk with the person and even offer recognition if your objectives are met (define a strategy by one of the teams used in this example). It is also really important to recognize good attitude when you practice or play important games. It is possible that just showing a good attitude may not lead immediately to a good result but there is no doubt that the end result will be positive. Apart from good attitude you can recognize and reward your team mates for teamwork, risk taking and making important decisions, showing initiative, taking extra tasks and duties, helping teammates. Be sure you also do these things. It will show that you are motivated and enthusiasm often spreads like a disease to the rest.
Just a quick warning – don’t give recognition without the proper justification. The time you congratulate someone from your team for a well done job is cherished by them; don’t make in a routine. It has to be unexpected and this is why it is so special.
Conclusion
Stop bullshitting in pubs and leagues and play/practice/do stuff with your team. This is the best way to get better as a player and as a team. Your main focus is your team and your team performance.
