Use Your Brain! {1331 mmr}

Hello MMR Challengers!

This week's subject is that phrase you hear often times while playing Dota 2: Use Your Brain! Since it is a strategy game there is no reason you won't use it. But admit it, you sometimes don't. I know I'm not using it sometimes. Everyone has their excuses. Mine is usually being tired of a full-time day job and my brain being already off after tending some wife and kid issues at home just before I sit in front of the game and have some fun.

I can play 10 to 15 games in a week. That's it! This is how much I can invest in the game in terms of time. This isn't enough to have a steep curve on the MMR vs Calendar graphic. Because of this, each of my limited number of games is very important. I can't have any excuse for not being there 100%. If I feel lazy or I want to play Techies it is still okay, I can have some fun but then I never play ranked Dota 2. I can go play another game or watch a movie. I have to feel and tell myself that I will play 100%. After some games, I really feel exhausted. If I'm tired but still want to give it a shot I know I must feel exhausted when the game is finished. Only then I can say I played 100%. I know at those games I get 4+ commends.

Well, it is not easy to focus all the things I have to keep in mind, especially at the times when it tends to go for a snooze. But I found a solution to remind myself all the ideas I have to focus while on the go!


(i) My current focus ideas

The image above includes every idea that I want to and can focus while I'm playing Dota 2 at the moment. You can't read a page of notes if you are dead and waiting to respawn. But you can take a look at these ideas to see if you are out of your path.

This is a dynamic brain image and it is changing frequently. I remove the ideas or reduce the font size as I get more used to and apply them every one of my games. As more space opens I add new ideas to focus. Some ideas enter from the top and become the central focus like "100% or nothing!" that you can see above. I do this if I realize that I lost a game because I didn't care enough about that idea. Losing a game hurts me the most if I overlooked or ignored something I already know and I lost because of ignoring it.

I open this image every time before I start the game. I switch back and forth to it while queueing, playing, waiting to respawn and after the game. For two weeks I haven't shared my MMR progression with you. It was because I posted an entry about the 7.08 patch on Saturday and there was actually no progression to share with you. The week before I started using this brain image my win rate was 41%. At the start of the last week, I began to use this image to keep myself focused and I raised my win rate to 71%. I'm still spamming Juggernaut. I have 22 more games to play with him. After that, I will create myself a hero pool of 3 or 5 core heroes. I'll keep playing the carry role.

Below are the ideas that I have recently focused using my Brain. :)

Spend Unreliable Gold
I will make quotations from the Dota 2 Wiki for this: "Reliable gold - Any bounty you get from hero kills, Roshan, couriers, Hand of Midas, Track gold and global gold from towers are added to your reliable gold pool. Unreliable gold - Everything else (starting gold, periodic gold, creep kills, neutrals, etc). Dying only takes away gold from your unreliable gold pool.
Buying items use up your unreliable gold first before using your reliable gold.
Hovering your mouse over the amount of total gold shown in the HUD shows your reliable and unreliable gold totals."
Check your reliable gold and unreliable gold frequently. Spend all your unreliable gold before death, so keep some cheap items ready at your quick buy to spam B when you are about to die. This way you will be to spend the gold that you will anyway lose if you die with it. Also while you are not in any kind of danger don't buy items as soon as you have enough gold. Check if you can farm 1-2 minutes more and get your item without spending your reliable gold. You will get richer! I promise.

Avoid Initiating
If you are not playing an initiator role avoid initiating as a carry. I have an impatient and headlong nature. As long as I keep spamming Juggernaut I have to be extra careful about this. Early game Juggernaut will be weak against physical damage. As of 7.08 patch, he has less critical damage. Avoiding hit trading will be wise. By joining later but staying longer in a team fight you will cause more damage to your enemies.

If Someone Is Feeding At Their Lane Go Help!
This is not easy. There are games where the enemy pressures one of your lanes with 3 or 4 heroes. It may not be your lane and you may decide to keep farming. At the later stages of the game, you can push lanes and they'll have to come and defend their tower. But in the early game, you won't be able to push so fast and you won't be able to farm the lane safely if they return to your lane. It is a risky decision but in some games, you have to do it because your teammates will keep doing the same things and die over and over again feeding the enemy heroes. I can't say I have successfully implemented this to my games. Most of the time players start to flame each other and the game finishes in 20 minutes. I play games against the odds and win though which will bring us to the next topic.

Even If You Lose Your Lane, You Can Still Win.
There's Always A Way!
Work Hard! Be Patient! Victory Is Forged Step By Step.
Let's stay there are 3 enemy heroes in your lane and your support has just fled. Don't feed. Don't do stupid things like leaving your lane to have an easy neutral camp and get ganked while you return to your tower with half HP. Be patient. Try to get at least 1 last hit from each creep wave. Something will happen at the other lanes and the enemy will have to go defend their towers and you'll get your farm eventually. If they stay then your other cores will get stronger and you'll have space later anyway. The enemy picks may be stronger against you as well. In low MMR Dota 2, there is no impossible game. If you get the right items you will see you can beat them.

Smoke-Gank Their Carry!
If you do this a couple of times successfully and they do not you will win. EZ GAME!

Micro The Healing Ward More!
This one is about Juggernaut. Well, for some time I was even forgetting to use the healing ward in team fights. Popping the healing ward and just walking away will keep it behind you. It dies in one hit so it is really easy for the enemy to kill it. While you escape you should spawn it in front of you and keep it here as you run. This will keep you busy for some time but this way you will survive and keep your precious resources to yourself.

Gauge Others!
I wrote about this two weeks ago.You have to keep track of what your friends and foes carrying with them and what level they are at. You look stupid while wasting your Omnislash on a Sniper who has just made himself a Shadow Blade a moment ago.

Assign A Killing Order For The Enemy In Team Fights.
This is self-explanatory. If you manage to kill their support first they may lose their crowd control skills and you do your thing as you like it. Going for Wraith King first? Good luck.

Don't Fight If You Don't Have Any Advantage!
The reasons you fight in a ranked Dota 2 game are:
1- To take objectives like towers, barracks, Roshan, etc.
2- To hinder their core's farming and item progression.
3- To stop the enemy doing those two things to you.
I can't think of any other reasons. Anytime you fight without enough information, like enemy positions, items, levels, skill cooldowns, etc. you put yourself in danger. You may be trying to defend a tower. If you see that you are not stronger and you can't beat them, why fighting? To watch your tower go down while retreating is better than watching it go down while you are waiting to respawn.

100% Or Nothing!
I wrote about this at the beginning of this post. If you are playing a carry hero you know everyone depends on you. You can't wander around without doing nothing. You have to be precise. You have to be doing something all the time. You have to push the lanes, you have to go farm at the jungle, you have to defend that tower, you have to go gank their jungler, you have to go fight that fight and you have to take down that tower. You have to keep track of everything. You have to commit to this role and that needs 100% of you. No less.

See you after the next patch!

Game#	Day	Game	Hero	Result	MMR	Gain	Match ID
53	29.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1183	-25	3706736431
54	30.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1207	24	3708375662
55	31.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1232	25	3710100547
56	2.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1256	24	3713671192
57	2.02.2018	2	Jug	Defeat	1234	-22	3713730101
58	2.02.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1210	-24	3713804514
59	3.02.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1189	-21	3715370060
60	3.02.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1211	22	3715732154
61	3.02.2018	3	Jug	Victory	1235	24	3715790601
62	4.02.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1210	-25	3717419891
63	4.02.2018	2	Jug	Defeat	1186	-24	3717486725
64	4.02.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1163	-23	3717607968
65	6.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1188	25	3720873498
66	7.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1212	24	3722407724
67	8.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1237	25	3724055679
68	9.02.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1211	-26	3725708030
69	9.02.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1236	25	3725768475
70	9.02.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1214	-22	3725841432
71	9.02.2018	4	Jug	Victory	1236	22	3725917816
72	10.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1261	25	3727130224
73	10.02.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1287	26	3727578497
74	10.02.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1262	-25	3727703433
75	10.02.2018	4	Jug	Defeat	1237	-25	3727761516
76	10.02.2018	5	Jug	Victory	1262	25	3727842339
77	11.02.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1283	21	3728609585
78	11.02.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1308	25	3729531852

Noob's Patch 7.08 Analysis {1235 mmr}

Hello,

Patch 7.08 has been released. I think it is time to write something about the Meta and how we should approach the game when it is changed. Meta is a cloud of information that comes out as a result of all the mechanics of the game. Not just mechanics. There are so many variations of heroes, lanes, items and play style choices that people will make, I guess even IceFrog himself may not 100% know what will be the outcome when something is changed in the game. After patches, there is a period of trial and error where players try different things and try to figure out what is going to work and what not. This constant change of things is an essential part of the game that encourages players to try different things, adapt and survive. Like life itself.

As I mentioned in my last post I wasn't a man of small numbers. But all those small numbers add up to big sums that define the result of the battle.

This patch has bad news for me since I'm still spamming Juggernaut. Because his passive critical damage decreased from 200% to 180%. What does this mean? On level 4 you have a 35% chance to hit critical which used to be 200% of your normal damage. Let's say your normal attack hits 100 damage and on average you hit 20 times in a team fight. If you hit 20 times 13 of them will be normal attacks and 7 of them will be critical. It used to mean: (13 x 100) + (7 x 200) = 1300 + 1400 = 2700 damage in a team fight. After the amount of critical strike reduced to 180% your total damage in the same fight will be:  (13 x 100) + (7 x 180) = 1300 + 1260 = 2560. This means almost 2 normal hits and this might draw the line between life and death in some rough situations. So I need to be extra careful while trading hits in a team fight and maybe I shouldn't be the initiator and wait for a few seconds behind before joining the fight.

There are also some changes in the items that I pick as Juggernaut:
- Battle Fury bonus creep damage reduced from 60% to 50% and illusions won't have this bonus damage anymore.
- Enchanted Mango restores 25 more mana. This is good news since Juggernaut is very reliant on it.
- Black King Bar cooldown is rescaled to a constant 70 seconds. It used to reduce down to 55 seconds before as the duration decreases after several uses. This means I will be able to use BKB less in late game scenarios.

Juggernaut is mostly weak against physical damage, especially in the early game. Thankfully there aren't any changes to his counters.

See you in the next post.

(You can follow me on twitter or subscribe to the mailing list on the right menu to get a notification when I have a new post on the blog.)

New Focus: Gauging {1208 mmr}

Hello Everyone,

I had a rough week. It started nice, however. I had 5 victories out of 6 games. And the weekend came. The hunger for victory. We all know how it feels, right? And this feeling is what keeps us from victory sometimes. On Saturday I have lost 4 games in a row. I lost 100 MMR in just one day. It was very frustrating. On Sunday I lost another game. Then I decided to watch a replay. I saw myself running around and doing stupid things. I saw how long the time that I've lost was. The time I could just sit in lane an have a last hit or two. I was also very aggressive. I believe that it was because of the frustration that I've suffered from losing too much.
I decided not to play another game on the same day when I suffer 2 consecutive defeats.

After watching the full replay, I took my notes and I've queued for another go. This time it was great! I truly carried that game against two very hard counters: Phantom Lancer and Pudge and closed the game perfectly for my team. I understood that no matter how hard a game is if you play with 100% of what you know you can have a victory at this skill level. Because generally, people don't play with 100%. You can see how that game ended below and watch the game on my YouTube channel (part 1, part 2). See that Mirana abandoned and we played 4 v 5 almost all game. And that Clockwerk complained 80% of the time from the team chat. Against all odds, we won.

After summarizing my last week, I want to continue writing about myself a little bit. After all, this blog is about my MMR journey and you learn a lot about people while traveling with them, including yourself. So you have to realize and recognize your weak sides and deal with them. By doing this you can accomplish the things you couldn't have done as your past self.

I want to make you and me understand what does this weeks topic "Gauging" mean and why it is important. To me, the things you want in life can be acquired with hard work. Whatever it is. And this hard work will overcome anything that comes at your path. This self-confidence makes me strong but it has a backlash. It makes some easy to solve problems more difficult to deal with. How and why?

Well, I believe it is something like this: "If I do my best in this situation, no doubt I will be better than the person that I will be facing!" But what do you know about the problem you are facing? Would you even care about it if you approach it with this kind of a mindset? Well, I'm sorry but I still don't care. At least not 100% and this makes me look ridiculous since I know nothing about what goes on outside myself in many situations. This way of thinking lacks deepness and I'm not just talking about Dota 2 here.

Well, in case of Dota 2, you always have to gauge your enemies and allies. Check frequently what items they have and what level they are at. Some heroes have certain power spikes where they start to take off. This might be getting an item such as Shadow Blade for Slark or Manta Style for Anti-Mage or this might be leveling up a powerful team fight ultimate like Enigma's Black Hole. Therefore you have to check your enemies and allies to see what they have every now and then and try to figure out what's going to happen if you go mass with them or go into a big team fight. On higher levels of Dota 2, you even need to gank that hero at the right time before he gets his power spike item. Now, this is not the case for me of course.

This is something I know but I'm not using it 100% of the time. I forget! I'm a lot better on checking the minimap but I'm not doing that perfectly either. I believe I'm used to my item timings and farming around that clock. But I have to do better gauging to know what to buy. So I'll focus outside of myself a lot more from now on.

Game#	Day	Game	Hero	Result	MMR	Gain	Match ID
41	23.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1232	24	3695696509
42	24.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1256	24	3697494508
43	25.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1280	24	3699157484
44	26.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1255	-25	3700918844
45	26.01.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1281	26	3700994699
46	26.01.2018	3	Jug	Victory	1307	26	3701159385
47	27.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1282	-25	3702958279
48	27.01.2018	2	Jug	Defeat	1257	-25	3703169477
49	27.01.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1232	-25	3703240827
50	27.01.2018	4	Jug	Defeat	1207	-25	3703302325
51	28.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1182	-25	3704050909
52	28.01.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1208	26	3705116398
-	-	-	-	-	Total Gain	0	-