Decision Making in Dota 2: Refuse to Lose

Poor decision making is the single greatest contributor to lost games that I have seen (at the amateur level). However ‘decision making’ is a very broad term that encompasses many different aspects of Dota gameplay. In this and future posts, I will attempt to identify some of the most common incorrect decisions and offer alternatives to help improve ones Dota gameplay.

Refuse to Lose

The single easiest to avoid, yet still bafflingly commonplace, incorrect decision in amateur Dota is when a player or players make a direct and conscious decision to lose the game. More specifically I am referring to when players do any of the following: AFK in the fountain, feed intentionally, stop making attempts to defend their base from attacks, grief their teammates, etc. By choosing to do any of these things, players are taking what may have only been a slim chance of victory, and ensuring that the chance plummets to nil.

There are many possible motivations for choosing to lose the game, the most common excuse being that a player does not want to prolong a game that is already lost, however this is an incorrect viewpoint caused by inexperience. For those players that have never come back from being 3 barracks down or from a 40+ kill deficit, these situations seem nigh insurmountable. However that is far from the truth, as with careful and precise play, even the worst situation can be overcome. The game is never truly over until one team’s ancient is brought to zero hit points.

Aside from the fact that tilt situations are not impossible to overcome, playing in a tilt situation is an extremely good way to improve one's skill level. In normal game scenarios, players will incorporate some shortcuts or inefficiencies into their play. For example, if a player finds that their opponents are slow at picking up on gank opportunities, they may play with less care when it comes to grabbing runes, pushing, or jungling on the opponents’ side. While this adapted way of playing may work at their current skill bracket, they will find that players at higher levels than them will not make the same mistakes when it comes to capitalizing on such opportunities. In a tilt scenario, while a player is most likely still playing against people of similar skill to them, there is a sort of handicap (eg: level advantage, map control, barracks advantage) possessed by the other team which forces the player into refining their gameplay to iron out these inefficiencies. Since the player has had the opportunity to practice in such a difficult scenario, when they find themselves facing opponents who exceed their skill level, where similar advantages will be used against them (without first having to have lost several teamfights or barracks), the player will have a much easier time adapting to and overcoming these advantages.

Another way of saying that the player is able to play with others of higher skill and not afford them unnecessary advantages, is that the player’s skill level has increased.