Losing sucks. Everyone knows this. And few things suck as hard as losing at Dota.
Dota is a kind of game where losing is incredibly painful experience. First a mistake is made, but you're still not quite sure whose fault it was. So you get frustrated at both pubbers and friends and swing the blame bat around. They didn't stun. Their build is awful. They aren't warding. Blame comes back around at you, and you lose your concentration. Maybe you start forgetting your own stuns. Maybe you start picking fights you know you can't win. Maybe you keep trying to "rush" that desolator that you swear will turn everything around. All this comes to pass, and you're left in well wondering why there's no concede button.
Well, defeat is unavoidable. Half of all played games of Dota are lost. If you're new to Dota, most of the games you play will fall into at least one of two sucky categories:
- You go 0 and 7 and get stomped over, or
- Some prodigy (read: smurf) singlehandedly facerolls the enemy team.
Defeat happens to be a reward of sorts, though. We never learn so much from the games we win as from the games we don't. There are an infinite number of ways a game can play out, and our mind is a limitless well of planning. Only by losing can we trim those creative branches that bear no fruit. So, then, how can we make defeat suck less, so that we may rule out our bad ideas more quickly with less frustration?
Anger management
Defeat is not the enemy - anger is. And anger does not come from defeat. They both come from the same place: from a loss of control.
What feels bad is not the fact that you have been defeated, but the fact that you have lost this control, be it control over your own actions or the actions of others. The second situation above is maddening even if you win, since you doubt your own contributions. I know that I am most angered by situations where I feel I know what the "right" play was but was unable to act it out. I believe we get angry to attempt to intimidate control over others, or "faulty" modules of our own self, but generally all it does is cloud our judgement.
So then, if anger comes from a loss of control, then to quash anger we must get ourselves back in control. Here's my take on how to avoid anger so you can lose gracefully and learn to be better:
- Communicate calmly and without accusation. Anger begets anger, since everyone wants to micro their allies, but nobody wants to be microed. You might have luck with a common technique where, instead of asking your allies to change how they behave, you communicate in terms of how you personally feel. For example, instead of yelling at the supports to ward, say something about how you personally can't farm or gank because the map is dark.
- Focus on what you can still control. If you think your teammate is feeding or playing poorly, forget that you want to micromanage them. Do everything you can to help the team out, regardless of whether or not you think you're supposed to do it personally. Zone in on your own hero instead of the others. If you're a support, just start warding and counter-warding instead of trying to back up your aggressive ganker. If you're short on cash because you keep losing it, spend it on something cheap that will keep you in the game (like drums or a bracer).
- Play with your friends, no matter how much worse (or better) they are. Pubs don't trust you, and you don't trust them. You won't ever feel like you have control over them unless they really open up or you lead by example, and in Dota, usually only one player in each pub game will present the level of skill required to gain trust. If you play with (and be nice to!) your friends, you can calmly direct them, and this will keep you focused.
- Accept that any failure may in part be your own. Even if you made every right decision for your hero, Dota's nature as a team sport means that it's up to everyone to scrape all the data and communicate. You may have been able to explain to the rando what was wrong with his build before he started feeding. You may have been able to call miss on a lane that wasn't yours. Realize that, the next time around, you may have more control than you think.
If you want to learn Dota, you must come to terms with defeat. To get good at a game, you must know what can be done better, and only in the throes of defeat can you learn how to get better. This is going to sound cliche, but it's a lot like weight lifting. Your muscles don't get stronger from lifting weights they can easily push around, they get stronger when you lift weights that break them down. After a good bowl of meat and some rest, they rebuild back stronger than before. And that's where the real victory lies.
Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 26%
Squat: 225 lbs
Bench Press: 130 lbs
Overhead Press: 110 lbs
Deadlift: 255 lbs
Power clean: 75 lbs
(No missed sets this week! Woo!)
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