Happy New Year! It’s time for a fresh start and embark on another year of Dota. Time to set resolutions, take a deep breath, away from the anxieties of the game, and find out how you want improve. Some players may have lofty year-end goals to hit a MMR benchmark, while others will have measurable goals and timelines to set themselves up for success. That’s where Dotabuff’s tools and charts can help.
But resolutions aren’t always about self-improvement. Goals don’t have to be about getting a larger percentage of last hits or upping your win rate. They can be about simply enjoying the game more, getting upset less, or being more involved with the Dota community. Here are a few suggestions we have for setting New Years resolutions. Feel free to share your own as well.
Watch More Dota
With the ongoing pro circuit, there’s always a Major or Minor around the corner. The difficulty is keeping up with what’s happening as games are played throughout the week and in different time zones. Our pro circuit page is a great way to see at a glance the most recent tournament results and team standings (QPs and Earnings). As always, you can catch up on the highlights, since every pro match will have Clips available. Watch more Dota to enjoy the game away from the anxieties of actually playing it. Or watch Dota to improve by learning from pros.
Track Your Progress
Tracking the progress of your last hits/10 minutes
Using our trends graphs and laning stage feature, you can your progress from match to match and over a period of time. You can focus on refining your fundamentals and see how your last hits/10 minutes improve over time. You can practice smarter by setting measurable goals to improve in Dota, such as combat damage dealt with a hero, wards purchased and denied, and kill rate participation.
Play A Different Hero or Role
What’s the balance between your core and support games?
Pub players often have a stable of heroes they cycle through, and they usually remain within one role—core or support. Dota is already dense enough as it is, and even full-time pros have a rotation of heroes they’ll lean to for matches. But that rotation of heroes changes with the meta, and the best pros will be able to adapt.
The new year is a great time to try to break out of your comfort zone and try a different hero or role that you don’t usually default to. You’ll play worse, and teammates will question why would you play a hero you don’t know, but everyone has to start somewhere. Consider it research. One benefit will be a greater understanding of the weaknesses of a hero or role. If you play carry, you can try various support heroes to understand why it might be difficult to zone an opponent, why there aren’t any wards on the map, or how to make the right rotation at the right time.
Introduce A Friend To Dota
Valve’s True Sight series last year gave a behind the scenes look on the journey of pro Dota teams
Almost three years ago, on Valentine’s Day, kawaiisocks endeavored to teach his significant other how to play Dota. For the new year, explaning Dota to a friend can give you a new lease on why you play in the first place. What motivates us to dedicate hundreds of hours to play Dota? You can talk about it from your own point of view, or point to Valve’s classic documentary Free To Play or last year’s True Sight series.
Good Luck, Have Fun
“Glhf” is the opening mantra for a Dota game, but it tends to be forgotten as soon as someone on your team makes a mistake. Are you really having fun when all you can think about is how the rest of your team is worse than you or how helpless your hero is against this lane matchup? On this topic, we’ve written extensively on how to flame your teammates in a conducive way, what to do when you’re in a tailspin of losses, and the psychology of rage. The central idea is to care less about what you can’t control, or as phrased in last year’s non-fiction best-seller, “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck”.
In this approach, the resolution isn’t about self-improvement, but accepting that nothing is wrong with you. You don’t need to last hit better. You don’t need to raise your MMR by 500 by the end of the month. Whatever faults are in your game, that’s everyone else’s concern. Just have fun.
