True Dota 2 - Being mindful, mental clarity, and strong willpower |
- Being mindful, mental clarity, and strong willpower
- Dealing with Anti-Mage: Contest, Push, or Itemize?
- Exort invoker early game ganking - when and why (crosspost from /r/learndota2)
- How viable is offlane Lich these days?
- Dusa aghs with TA
- Tusk Tips?
- Brewmaster help
- VP vs LGD Highground Turnaround
| Being mindful, mental clarity, and strong willpower Posted: 07 Jul 2017 03:27 AM PDT Alright, this is something that's been on my mind for a while and I am a bit frustrated that I don't see this topic more often. I believe that in order to succeed in anything in life, let alone Dota, one must be a bit more mindful and take care of himself, body and mind, before plunging into a draining task. So, what I mean by this is establishing great habits. No, I don't mean RTZ-level farming patterns or anything like that, I mean real life habits. There are a few books that I base my information on, and I have found them to be extremely helpful in everything, not just Dota. So, let me start with the whole mindful thing. What do I mean by that? Well, to be mindful means to be more aware of everything which you do, which surrounds you. Being mindful means to hit the brakes on the flame train just before crashing into the support that just accidentally stole a last hit. Being mindful means to have one in mind before doing any action, and allows us to make better decisions. How is one more mindful, though? Well, there is this nifty thing I practice in my morning routine - meditation. Our lives are so full of information, errands and just stuff that we often find that we don't have the time with any of it and, before we know it, we start panicking and it drains us completely. "But meditation?" you may ask. "Isn't that for monks, sitting cross-legged and humming with closed eyes?" Well, not really. In the book The Willpower Instinct, there are a few ideas outlined, a major one being of meditation and its effect on the pre-frontal cortex. Basically the part of your brain that deals with things like making better decisions, having a clearer mind throughout the day, your attention span and general focus. Studies have shown that meditating even as little as 5 to 10 minutes a day greatly strengthens your pre-frontal cortex and, by extension, you received increased focus etc. It is a bit of a paradox because by meditating you are relaxing your brain and giving it some time off from all the stress, but you are also making it stronger at the same time, something hugely useful and important in all aspects of life, not only Dota. I recommend starting with the app Headspace for guided meditation. It really isn't something spiritual/religious, it's just doing nothing for less than half an hour and you'll be better off for it. So, I mentioned a morning routine, something I believe to be hugely important and has helped in numerous areas of my life. The book The Miracle Morning in particular taught me that having control of your morning means having control of the day. NOTE: It doesn't have to be in the morning if your schedule doesn't allow it, it's just what you do for the first hour after you wake up. Don't we all hate it when we first wake up and we check our FB feeds or emails or text messages and we already have a bunch of stuff that needs solving? I know I do, and it is something which can severely diminish your willpower for the day, but I'll get to that later. When we first wake up, however, we have some time for ourselves in which we condition our body and mind so we can seize the day in optimal condition. THE MORNING IS THE BEST TIME TO MEDITATE AND DO SOME EXERCISE. If you do just those two things - doesn't have to be an intense session at the gym, but even a few sets of push-ups or a nice stroll around the block do wonders - then you immediately become more responsive, more aware, and more efficient. It's like farming waves with a Battlefury all of a sudden, and it feels damn good. A thing which I also recommend is taking a cold shower in the morning. Again, boosts your awareness, freshens you up, wakes you up, and the health benefits compared to a warm/hot shower are retarded, to put it mildly. So, having a morning routine and making it into a well-established habit prepares your mind and body for the rest of the day. But I touched on willpower which I really wan't to talk about and it ties in all of this together. You know how we always say that it would be cool if we could see our health/energy meters, right? Well, in a sense you can see your willpower meter, so to speak. It's the clock. In the book The Willpower Instinct, there is this idea that your willpower is a finite resource which depletes with the course of the day after every decision and task. Even mundane stuff like checking emails and throwing out the trash can chip away at your willpower. This is hugely important and proper usage of said resource can have a big impact on you winning games and not tilting. Say, for example, that I wake up and I don't do my morning routine, I immediately check Reddit. Boom, 20 posts later, my willpower already started draining. Need to do some errands but I don't wanna? (first signs of my declining willpower BTW) Welp, there goes some more. Later on in the day when I am thinking whether to play ranked or not? Oh, boy, you guessed it. Shopping in the evening? Well, why not buy some ice cream, for a change, my diet can handle that every once in a while... There is a reason infomercials are at their most after midnight - for the people who stay up late and their willpower is already at its lowest, because they are more susceptible to impulse buy. Do you know how much of your willpower would be drained if you played 10 games a day and had to do other stuff besides that? You would be in tilt city by the time you start the 10th game. It is kind of a tricky thing to balance, however, because the best time to play Dota is allegedly from 5PM to 2AM in your given server, and we've already done some tasks beforehand. So how do we properly control our willpower instinct specifically for Dota? Just don't play that much. I know, you may think that reaching 7k or going pro would require you to devote 24/7 to Dota, but it really doesn't have to be like that. The key is consistency. Playing 4 games every day would yield you much better results if you did 10 games a day or binge on the weekends. 10 games a day is consistent, mind, but unless you have very-well established habits and have ample time to take care of your mind and body before/in-between those games, you're gonna have a bad time. Not playing that much means not wasting your willpower on Dota and leaving nothing for the sometimes more important things in life. We're not pro players here. Most of us don't have the time and resources to devote everything to Dota. That's why we need strong habits to make our life easier. Read The Power of Habit and you will understand that if you do something everyday without fail, at one point it becomes automatic and none of your willpower is wasted on it. You don't think about it even. Brushing your teeth. Making breakfast. Going to school. Meditating. Exercising. Taking cold showers. Playing a game of Dota can't become a habit unless you're professional and you're "numb" to pubs because you know that pro matches are all that matter. Of course, there are things like farming patterns and mechanics which are the exception, but it is much like driving a car. There are a shitton of maneuvers that go into driving a car, but after doing it for long enough, all of it simply becomes second nature to you and you don't even think about it. Of course, picking where to park and changing directions unexpectedly are never part of the general habit. As such, playing a game of Dota always drains your willpower - what items to buy, what hero to pick, what lane to gank, decisions, decisions, DECISIONS. Build some habits, so when you get into a pub your mind is strong enough to handle the toxicity. In short - don't think that much. Be more mindful of what you do, take care of yourself and set your priorities straight. Dota is not going to run away from you, but everyone else might if you stink and look like a caveman if you don't have proper habits. Thanks for reading this slightly erratic piece. Stick with it and maybe you'll take out something useful, but I'm here to clarify some things which I've inevitably made unclear. You gotta be realistic about these things. [link] [comments]  |
| Dealing with Anti-Mage: Contest, Push, or Itemize? Posted: 07 Jul 2017 07:51 AM PDT What are your thoughts on the best method to deal with an AM pick? Is it better to constantly try and hunt him around the map and prevent his farm? Is it better to group and push like mad? Is it better to try and itemize around him? [link] [comments]  |
| Exort invoker early game ganking - when and why (crosspost from /r/learndota2) Posted: 07 Jul 2017 12:28 PM PDT Exort invoker has finally clicked for me and I've been having a blast playing him in my scrub tier games (2-3k) so far. To get good at invoker I've looked both here and /r/learndota2 for tips and advice and everyone tells you to afk farm your aghs before you start fighting and really only help with sunstrike. Just use the search feature and type invoker and you will see what I'm saying. The more games I've played, the more it feels like this is not particularly good advice, or at least not comprehensive enough to cover all situations. I'll outline why I think it's important to gank early and what's worked for me so far but I'd like some insight from better players to see if I'm on the right track. Disclaimer#1: You probably don't want to gank for the first 5-6 minutes, but after that you should be good to do so since you should have quite a few levels in your e, q and w. Disclaimer#2: If your team is doing fine in lanes, you probably don't need to gank and can just farm away. I think ganking is really only worth it, if your lanes are getting dominated too hard by the enemy and your team is asking you for help.
I've watched a few higher level (5k-6k mmr games) and it seems that play in this way (sans smoke because they are smarter than myself). If they see kill potential, or feel like a lane needs help, they'll shove their lane out, run up to a lane to gank then either farm out the jungle or tp back to their mid lane to resume farming. I used to just afk farm mid and tell my teammates not to worry, that after aghs everything will be better, but I've found that ganking in the early-ish stages of the game really amplifies our ability to stay relevant in the game and make sure we don't fall behind if they draft strong laners. My invoker win rate has gone up a lot as a result. This is my interpretation of how invoker should be played but if someone else has constructive criticism, I'd be happy to hear it. [link] [comments]  |
| How viable is offlane Lich these days? Posted: 07 Jul 2017 03:23 PM PDT I just played two solo practice games as offlane Lich and it didn't feel that bad, given of course that there was no one there to contest me. The first game I built Phase > Midas > Hurricane > Eul's > Deso> AC > Daedalus, though I didn't feel like I quite hit the right power spikes with that build, so in the second game I tried Phase > Midas > Force > Maelstrom > Hurricane > Mjollnir > Bloodthorn, which felt a lot better, since Maelstrom and Mjollnir allow you to push waves faster and therefore neutralize the drawbacks of spamming Sacrifice, as well as synergise with your natural AoE Magic damage. For skill build I'm assuming the best would be something along the lines of Sacrafice at 1/3/5/7, Value point in Armor at level 2 for better trading, then max Frost Blast second and armor last, with the lvl 10 talent choice depending on the game, cast range at 15, damage at 20, slow at 25. I tried the Frost Blast cdr the first game, but the cast range felt more suitable as it synergises very well with Force/Hurricane and also allows you to play in a more Sniper-like fashion. One negative of playing core Lich that I noticed is that you are very bound to staying near a lane at all stages of the game to maximize you experience gain, and therefore overall more easily gankable. How do you guys feel about this, has anyone tried this in a real game? Is Lich generally better off played as a support? How hard do you get flamed? I'm 2k btw haHAA [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2017 10:21 PM PDT I feel like most people view Dusa aghs as simply a way for her to get a stun and mostly overlook the 50% physical amp. Normally on her ult the physical amp is kinda forgotten about since virtually no one actually gets stoned anyway and it has such a long CD as well. But if you can reliably stone people that would work amazingly with TA or any high physical burst hero combined with some form of minus armor. With TA specifically I can imagine a stoned target would get shredded by a blink-meld strike, throw a Corrosive Haze in there too and the damage would get pretty insane. Just theorycrafting though as I have no friends to try this with and the 1 sec stun would be way too hard to get a random 3k teammate to jump at the appropriate time. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2017 02:31 AM PDT So lately I've began to realize I tend to do better with heroes I find fun , more than "meta" or top tier heroes, which I suppose should be obvious since a good mood is generally a performance booster in a lot of things. That being said, I like tusk quite a bit, but don't have much experience on him. Maybe 5-10 games tops. So, I'd like to know any and all tusk tips, preferably with the logic behind it. Item choices, build orders, skill builds, match ups, combos , strengths, weaknesses, etc. Any information you'd think would be useful to share. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2017 04:55 PM PDT I'm familiar with which heroes brew struggles against and does well against, but I'm not familiar with what sort of team comp he is best suited to? When should you go midas/not as an offlane brew? In what situations does his aghs work best? When is radiance a reasonable item? Additionally, I'm having some trouble with setting hotkeys for brewmasters spirits. Despite all of my abilities for both brew and by default being QWEDF-R on quickcast (only QWE are relevant for regular brewmaster), the cyclone on the wind-split-spirit is set to regular cast and the aghs abilities for all split-spirits have no hotkey assigned to them. Is there a way I can fix this? Many thanks [link] [comments]  |
| VP vs LGD Highground Turnaround Posted: 06 Jul 2017 07:51 PM PDT |
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