“Having reflected on what it is that I need to focus on I’d hoped that I would see a noticeable improvement in the outcome of my ranked matches. But, so far, it hasn’t been the case. I think I can chalk up some of the losses to misfortune but I cannot justify attributing all of my failures to the gods of chance. So let’s try and figure out what I did wrong.
Out of the last four games that I played I randomed in two of them and lost both those games. The one game that I did win (as Viper) I waited patiently and sought to choose a strong answer to their potential choices for mid. I also did a good job of directing my teammates and made some intelligent item choices (like getting a blink to accelerate my destruction of the enemy team). We overextended from time to time but mostly made good decisions (like taking Roshan later on in the game to ensure that our advantage was secured).
In my other games I either randomed (Brewmaster, Templar Assassin) or chose a sub-optimal hero (Skywrath). My game as Brewmaster actually went really well but we didn’t push our early advantage enough and Lifestealer did a really bad job of farming and playing Lifestealer. I made the mistake of getting an AC (hoping to help our team on the carry front) as opposed to getting an Agh’s (which would have helped the strength of our early pushes). Overall I feel pretty good about that game despite it ending in a loss. It’s making me reconsider my recent devotion to the mid role as I find that sometimes people do terribly mid but it’s much more rare to find someone who can actually play a hard carry really well.
My Skywrath game I was supporting my friend Kata in bottom lane (on the Anti-Mage) and we were doing reasonably well but it was a constant brawl there and AM was unable to get the farm he needed until much later in the game. I made the mistake of taking my Arcane Bolt rather than Concussive Shot first. Usually Arcane Bolt is a decent choice but we would have been able to secure a first blood had I leveled Concussive instead. It wasn’t necessarily the wrong decision but I could have simply waited to skill my ability until I needed to take action and retained that flexibility. Upon further reflection, Concussive first would generally be better in a tri lane as the slow will allow you and your teammates to put out more damage than the initial burst of damage provided by Arcane Bolt. I made some good plays later on in the game but we lost our bottom lane barracks to a really stupid decision from WR and WK not to TP back and help. Then AM and WR bickered for the rest of the game rather than focusing on playing intelligently and coming back. We lost gradually and there wasn’t much that could be done to stop it.
In my game as TA I fared reasonably well against Brewmaster mid but he was a problem in terms of trying to actually kill him and finish him off (which is something I generally like to do when I’m in the mid lane). An attempted gank on Brewmaster (suggested by Bat Rider) went horribly wrong with Enigma coming to turn it around on us into a double kill. Later on Batrider tried to blame it on me attacking Brewmaster to get his health down but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have killed him when he was at full health before he could use his ultimate. Batrider had a really awful attitude and after a failed gank in the jungle a little later on (him and Riki tried to go on Brew without sight of the lane and most of the enemy team missing) he elected to feed the courier and sell all of his sentries. Generally, I like to try and turn games around and keep trying but there was no way we were going to win with someone deliberately feeding.
So in conclusion, I suppose I learnt from my last few games. I definitely noticed that if you start the game off with a good attitude and laugh off mistakes it helps with preserving your team’s morale and keeping from falling into a pit of despair. Now let’s see if I can turn it around for the next few and start making a push for 4600!
That’s all for now. Have a pezant day!
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Featured image is from ravkavka on deviantart“