http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2w0av0/the_glimpse_a_look_back_on_this_week_in_dota_2/

<3

Aside from Ice Cream, playing games is the closest thing to an addiction I could claim. While I would not describe myself as someone predisposed with an addictive personality, video games has been my one consistent bastion through, well, all my life. I bet it’s not a stretch to say something similar about you reading this.
Compounding the enjoyment of video games is this often times overwhelming competitive drive. I feel like everything in life is a competition. I don’t just treat every game of Starcraft like I am in a grand finals. I’ll turn things into contests that are just ludicrous. Sometimes walking to class I’ll just challenge myself to get to point X before person Y in front of me does. It’s a problem.

With that being said (yeah sorry that was a lot of personal ranting), these past six weeks have been a pretty dark time. I feel as if I was able to step outside my body and look at myself, sitting on my computer, and just wonder why I could not stop. Why? What was I so fixated on? 4k.

4-fucking-K. Dota 2 solo MMR 4k. I started playing Dota for the first time in invite-beta. Never played a moba before. My experience was CAL Day of Defeat and Counterstrike when I was 11-16 years old. From there it was Starcraft ladder where masters always seemed to allude me. I enjoyed Dota for the game and the camaraderie with friends, because Starcraft just got so lonely.

When Solo MMR came out for Dota 2 I was quite bummed out to get put in the low 3000’s. I knew I was better, and I could be better. As soon as I saw that number, 4k was a personal goal. I was embarrassed to be caste as an average player.

This should not be misconstrued as a guide to 4k. While there might be some advice you can take from my story; I do not have a Billy Mays pitch for you. You know there is no easy way to reach your solo goals.

I mostly played a strong offline, and a good one role. I knew that I could out farm most people in my bracket by testing the waters after a few ranked games. This was back in the day where there was no ranked all-pick mode. I would lock heroes like Lycan over and over again. I could jungle, I could safe lane, hell if I really had to I could mid. Before the end of TI4 in the summer this strategy worked pretty well for me. I could win games by 20 minutes with a necrobook and howl. It felt good to carry the team on my back, but at the same time it felt like I had no soul.

During this time I think I made it up to 3.6 with Lycan and Terrorblade. I would get unreasonably frustrated and tilted when we would lose games. It seemed like most losses could be attributed to: A lack of communication (read as: yunospeakenglishonUSW), team composition (because we all love the 5 core dual mid lineups), or having tilted toxic players on my team. I fell victim to the last of those three when I would lose a few games and play tilted. Odds are depending on how many eyeballs see this that I flamed someone reading this for feeding or just making poor decisions. I’m sorry. Seriously. Everyone needs to make those shit decisions to get better. I know that I have made a bunch and in order to improve really had to analyze them. When games were lost because of me I had to watch the replay and write down what I did wrong. I asked friends to watch and tell me how I fucked up. I kept notes. It really helped.

About 4 months ago I set aside three days when I was free from work, school, and all worldly responsibilities, to dedicate to Dota. I wanted to grind harder than highschool proms. Boy was this a mistake. I lost more MMR in that span than I even care to remember. I think I have PTSD from those days. I was so worked up, and legitimately angry, that it affected my game. I stopped playing carry’s because of the nerf, so this time was also my genesis of being a support player. I thought I would take the high road by playing the 5 when everyone else picked heavy farm heroes. I thought I could peace the team together.

I was wrong. I lost so many points. In retrospect however, I almost feel okay about it. During that time I played so much support that I learned a completely different side of Dota. While I love the glory of being the one getting the kills; I became a better all-around player after dozens of Jakiro, Witch Doctor, and Ogre games. I would read so many people on reddit say “learn to play support and it’ll make you a better carry.” I don’t know why I ignored that advice for so long. It’s great advice not to just make you a better carry, but a better player. Learning to play a role that I knew very little about did not help the MMR climb at all and contributed to the steep decline. It put me back with players where I could learn how to support better.

Never play ranked games tilted. That’s the most key piece of advice that I learned While I would identify as a fun easy going guy, stupid shit in ranked games, seeing that -25, would get to me like not many other things would. I did embarrassing things. Scream, slam my fist on the bed, throw a water bottle. I was worked up and quite frankly embarrassed. I took a break.

Then I had a shift in my personal life. I started school at UCLA. I became the captain of their CSL team. I was playing with players who were legitimately good, and I was again embarrassed by the number attached to my name. I also had to play the support role. I started to climb the ladder once more. The team didn’t care. I cared. I went into ranked with a new mindset. I am going to be helpful to my teammates. I am going to be relentlessly nice to them. I am going to pick last (at this point Ranked All-Pick was now a thing) and play whatever role we need.
I started every game with:

“Hey guys! I’ll wait to pick last, and play whatever we need <3” The plan worked for a while. Sometimes I was a mid. Sometimes I was in the offline. I very rarely got to play my favorite 1 position, and instead got stuck with a lot of position 5. I was never upset at having to pick last and play the support now. I knew that by building a good composition and creating a good environment on the microphone with my team was infinitely more impactful to winning this game than just my individual play. I needed to facilitate my team however I could. That was my goal. This plan worked. I had fun games and was very infrequently frustrated. Yes it sucks to lose a game because the guy who picked Void or Medusa does not know how to last hit. That’s the burden you sometimes have when you’re chilling on Lion just enjoying your ward life. Games like that made increasing my MMR harder, and became the leading reason for losses. When I would lose two games, I instantly stopped playing. I knew it would be no good for my sanity to lose that third game and then dwell on it when I get out of that chair for the rest of the night. Often times I balanced losing with doing a piece of homework, or crossing something off my to-do list, before I went looking for another game. Unfortunately this story doesn’t have a happy ending here. After grinding and grinding I found myself stuck at the 3.5-7k range. I could not get over this hump after weeks of my strategy. 4k was so close that reaching it started to become a serious problem in my life. I found myself withdrawing from social situations, and procrastinating on real work just to play one more game. Just to get 25 points closer. I thought I would mix it up over this last week and conform to the meta. I would drop the Jakiro, drop the Venge, and play……….Juggernaut. Ya know what? I hated playing Jug and thought he was overrated. Actually couldn’t stand it. I then went to Axe for a few games, who I enjoyed a bit more. Really tho, the third hero of the holy spinning trinity was the one who grabbed my heart. Troll Warlord. I loved Troll upon his hero release. I always have done really well with him and enjoy his core mechanic of attack speed and being both ranged and melee. He was also doing very well in this meta, and by playing Troll I found I could just win games. In 6.83b and 6.83c I won 70% of my Troll games. I felt bad being that guy who just picked the carry, but it was working. Sometimes, we did have rage inducing compositions because no would play support and I would kick myself for not waiting and filling that gap. Sometimes I lost games for having poor farm relative to their cores. But most of the time I was winning. 70% in dot air really good. Unfortunately when you have to net 20 games in dota to reach your goal, that’s still A LOT of work. Last night, I did it. Almost a year later I found myself win 4 games in a row under my own power with a team who I enjoyed to hit the dream. While part of me feels dirty because I spammed an “OP Hero,” at this point I don’t care. The joy that I felt when I knew I was going to win that last game was overwhelming. I legit stood up and did a little dance. I smiled for hours. I went to get some of that aforementioned ice-cream. While I know that 4k isn’t great, hell I’d argue it’s not even good, I am so happy. I don’t know if I will ever quest out for 5k. I know that I can with some dedication and work. I always want to be better at everything I do. While today I say no to the thought of ever pressing that ranked button again for fear of a single loss, I know in time it will happen. I also know that I will never be as fanatical about reaching the next goal. I can relax. I can focus on other things for the first time in weeks. It’s a great feeling. If you’re reading this to try and gleam tips for your own ladder climbing experience, I think I would boil it down into two things. Be nice to your team, always. Bite your tongue. Don’t get in fights with them. Understand that if your goal is to gain MMR because you know you’re better, than your teammates are worse than you. Help them get better two. One friendly voice on your team telling you good job and calming people down when things get tight makes all the difference. Be that guy. Second, never play tilted. Just don’t. You will want to, bad. Just don’t. I wish you nothing but luck on your journey up the ranks. <3 Leaf

First and foremost thank you to the warm fuzzy responses from the pilot Fantasy Report last week. You most definitely encouraged me to not toss this project to the wayside, and keep writing about fantasy on the weekly. I aim to not disappoint and keep these articles at a high quality. Thanks.

Is this your first time coming across the Fantasy Report? Welcome my friend. Allow me to indulge you with the world of fantasy dota. While Season 1 admittedly has some kinks, these first 6 weeks have been a lot of fun, and actually quite comparable to my fantasy NBA and NFL leagues. Putting in five to ten minuets a day utilizing the right resources can drastically improve your game, and help you win your league. These Fantasy Reports will be a repeating weekly articles to share tips, highlight rising stars, help with roster swaps, stats, and to discuss everything that is fantasy doto!

Week 6 was quite the exciting one. D2L, Good Play, and Bounty Hunter were all tournaments that ended early on in the week. Monday alone saw 900 points injected from 59 players. Arrow went on a tear winning two tournaments, and EG was equally impressive with their D2L win. When Arrow stopped playing, EG went on to end the week by playing 8 games Sunday and taking second place in ESL. Empire saw some action in D2L, but they gained some serious points by shit-stomping NaVi.US on Wednesday. Fun stats below.

Week 7 is going to be the foil to 6’s action-packed crazy antics. 7 is sure to be a real snore. As we build up to the start of TI4 in week 8, week 7 is our calm before the storm. I have done extensive research attempting to aggregate all of the match information this week. It was much harder than I thought it would be. Week 7 is going to be fantasy hell, as we see very, very, very few active fantasy teams and players. Even more so there is no good resource (gosubet, liquipedia, ingame calander) to schedule players off of.

By my count there are seven active leagues that *might* be playing games this week. I have them all collected with these notes for easier access in the google doc below. Final’s for EU/NA/Asia are all still going on. They have been for a long time. Unfortunately no word on when the games will resume. Similarly in the land of “hey when the fuck are these games actually being played,” we have and Both of these events are organized by DotaTalk, and it seems as if they are just completely unable to efficiently communicate information about their tournaments. Fun fact: Datbet was scheduled to end May 18th. AMD D2M might have games too? I have no fucking clue.

Speaking of shoddy organizers, can anyone tell me who is running ? They didn’t even have a liquipedia page until I made that for them. For the life of me I cant find information about them on the web. However they do have their games on gosubet, and look like they will being played on a regular basis. Other current tourniments that have websites, and will be playing games this week, but I had to make Liquipedia pages and . Making the liquipedia pages was oddly enjoyable. I just wish that we had more tangible data for these leagues. At least we know that these three will be playing games. The four mentioned above….who knows.

If every one of these leagues were active, these teams would be participating in X of them:

* 5 – Arrow
* 4 – Titan
* 3 – Scythe, Invasion, Mineski
* 2 – Union
* 1 – Orange, CNB, XGame, PowerRangers, VP, hehe, MYM, SNA, MVP

We see yet another week of heavy SEA bias. However I believe that this might be misleading. If we assume that only GG, VECL, and BoraDota play games, then the chart looks like this:

* 1- Arrow, Scythe, Mineski, XGame, PowerRangers, Union, CNB

Whining about tournament information aside, week 7 is going to be rough. I can not tell you for sure who will be playing, and when they will be playing. JoinDota and GosuBet are not gonna do that much of a better job. If you want to stay on top of it be ready to trade daily, watching both their and my calendars. Good fucking luck comrades.

If your league is super competitive, I might even consider throwing a week away in prep for TI4, which will start Playoffs in week 8. More on that below.
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Tools:

Rehashing last weeks post, I again encourage you to check out and use my spreadsheet. I have compiled a google doc that has each player’s daily point earnings. This should be valuable information in letting you pick up only the best, and most active players. In addition on this document you can find overall team totals, and a handy calendar that will tell you what teams are playing when. USE THE CALENDAR! If you do not have active players every day then you’re losing points. Don’t lose points yo.

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Tips:

With this week being pretty dull, I am going to go over some more basic tips this week.

TIME-ZONES! – is the time zone that fantasy dota exists in. Time zones are pretty tricky. Valve tried to resolve this confusion by posting, in bold, what time your rosters lock. If you live in PDT like I do, we are seven hours behind CEST. Therefore midnight roster locking occurs at 5pm my time. I need to make sure to do all my swaps and trades before 5pm. In addition to rosters locking, all games played follow their date in CEST. A game played at 5:30pm for me on a Monday, is actually a Tuesday match. This is why the time zones can get messy, and it’s super important you understand when games are played. Fortunately for everyone Gosubet and my calendar convert all the times to their CEST equivalent.

Best of X – When a team plays a Best of X series, not all of the games will always count. If a team plays a Best of 3, and wins/loses 2-0, both of those games are recorded to their stats. However if the set goes to all three games; the fantasy system takes their 2 highest scoring of the 3 games, and uses those for their stats. Similar in a Best of 5, a player’s top 3 games will be recorded, and extra dropped.

1 Trade, but All the Swaps – Every day you can drop 1 player from your roster, and add a free agent from the large available player pool. This is something that we have already gone over, but it is critical to succeeding. Especially in a week like this one with very few players playing! Take advantage of your daily drop to secure players who are….playing. Even tho you can only preform one trade, you can swap player’s limitlessness. Make sure that your active players are not on the bench!

Only Ticket’d Events Count – Something I myself learned after last week, if an event does not have a ticket in the store (v games) then their matches do not count towards fantasy points. Now that I know this I will make sure to only include teams playing in events that have dota store tickets in these analyses.

TI4 Prep – Play-ins start Tuesday the 8th. Round robin group of 16 is the 9th through the 12th. The 13th is day 1 of phase 3 brackets. There is not going to be a lot of time between Week 7 nothingness and Week 8 awesomeness. It might be best to snag a few good players with your leftover trades now in preparation for next week. Dont be left with a roster of shitty SEA/South American players when it’s showtime. I’ll totes go more in depth on this week in the TI preview next week. =]

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Week 6 Pickups:

Arrow.ddz – ddz is god. ddz is life. ddz is the first fantasy player to score 500 individual points. ddz has the highest weekly average. ddz should be drafted by every league. If by some chance you can still get your hands on him, please do. His stock should be dropping after this week when Arrow gets outclassed at TI4. However if most of those tournaments have surprise games that are currently unlisted, Arrow is going to dominate this week (again) in points. If you cant grab ddz pick up another arrow player and just lit him sit active. You might get lucky!

Mineski.Jay – Jay is the only player on Mineski who gets to have a fantasy profile. He must be a pretty cool dude or something. He gets the nod for support player this week. He consistently preforms well as a high scoring support, and he will be playing some games for sure. Should be a safe pickup to ensure points this week.

Scythe.poloson – Playing some SEA games this week in the VECL, Poloson is sure to top the charts as Scythe’s mid player. We know he will be playing, so he is worth a pickup.

PR.Chshrct – Another player who can be seen towards the top of the weekly average list is Power Ranger’s Chshrct. All be it I do not watch many PR games, I do not see how they lose the GG League. He’ll probably lop up a shit ton of points in at least 2 BO3’s this week.

xGame.Watafaka – Much like Chshrct, Watafaka is sure to win a few BO3’s stomping his random euro opponents. Sure he will probably lose in the GG finals, but I don’t even know if those games will take place in Week 7.

Week 6 Drops:

All your players who have no games and have shit changes in TI4 playoffs – Self explanitory, right? Most of us probably have a few players on our teams who are now useless as we get into TI4 playoff time. Time to dump the trash and start loading up on your DK, Newbee, IG, EG, and [A] players before it’s too late. Drop your low profile, low scoring players this week in favor of those who are actually playing, or those who will be in TI4 round-robin. Nobody gets a specific highlight this week.

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Stats:

Highest Earning Player – Arrow.ddz – 144.1
Superstar Support – Arrow. Mozun – 112.9
Highest Earning Team – Arrow – 616.1
Most Games Played – IG ~17 Games
First Player to 500 Individual Points – Arrow.ddz
Player Leafeator most wants to engage in coitus with – Arrow.ddz
ESL Weekend Points – 1203.7
Best ESL Performance – EG – 276.5 (IG – 227.2) (Na’Vi – 56.1)
Total Week 6 Points – 3963.5
Average player score (active players only) – 38.9
Week 6 Average Total (sum of daily active player means) – 623 ___________________________
So how did you do in week 6 of fantasy? Were you able to pass average score? Was last week’s article helpful in improving your game? What would you like to see from these articles in the future? Go ahead and comment below.

I was personally disappointed with my week 6. I only left with an abysmal 535.3 points. Next week’s points are looking to be even grimmer as the number of tournament games being played falls off a cliff. This will only make trading for good players who are actually playing games even more necessary this week.

GLHF dominating your leagues in week 7. Actually GLHF getting active players on your roster. Hell that in and of itself will be a challenge.