Trial by Fire: Mentality

I'm writing this for the guys in my group. The ones that joined in hopes to learn, in hopes to see progression from their fruits of labour.

Some of you have seen results, others may still be unable to see past defeat. Victory can be obtained in many ways, as well as defeat. You must look for victory and defeat in all your matches.

We all want to finish the game and throw our hats in the air and shout "woohoo!". But too much of this can lead to less growth or even none at all. As you know, In all my games I always know when the ranged DPS is bursting. If I do not this is a defeat for me regardless whether I heal through it or not. Even when I do see it, I ask myself... Was I able to use disable/virus in reaction to this? If not, I ask myself why.

I have many little goals like that such as positioning, rotation and awareness. You should have these too, even if it's as simple as I'm going to sleep the DPS when they are buffing up for a kill. I can feel defeated even in a flawless victory. And vice versa.

By all means feel good about your wins, you deserve them. But don't feel so bad about your losses, especially if you are learning from them. Which should be the purpose of all your games. Solo is a place to learn and test things. Try to understand why something worked in your last game to be able to reapply it in your next. If you cannot identify your success and what led to it, how can you know where and when to try it again? Those that have the mentality of "I should win all these games, I'm better than the other team" lead to many losses where they cannot see what they should have done differently. These players tend to become less team players as time goes on. Have your ego play the game for you and you will suffer.

Finish a game without any reflection and you will suffer. Always think what you could have done better. For me drawing a "Balance", saving it and using it on the DPS that is popping offensive buffs or that guy you can see successfully pressuring the healer like a mad dog. Than just throwing it on anyone because "Every little helps" has done me more favours than the latter.

Build yourself as a player, I bet you never thought your personality would effect your growth huh? Well that needs work before you can learn anything. Character is important inside and out of the game, being able to adapt to who you have on your team is easily done by a humble minded player. Can you imagine an expert healer saying "I'm going to sleep the healer while you guys go for the kill" yet he is unable to time this sleep with his DPS because he expects them all to time their burst as soon as he says "I'm sleeping the healer!". Where as a player who is able to adapt and notice when his own teammates are buffing up will have higher success even off a 1-2 second sleep on heals. Playing Solo Q again I've seen things like this from all roles in there. Many times and it leads to... "Some insult spoken at the end of the game". If you're DPS but you're not trying even the slightest to time your burst with your partner... Well that just sounds, just as bad in writing now doesn't it?

When you lose you don't have to blame yourself or anyone else. But you do have to try to understand why. It is better to lose and understand, than to win and not know all the little flaws in your game. Or even why you won.

With all that being said, you guys are doing great and I have seen great improvements. I'm also learning and teaching myself. Share your ideas, theories and strategies with each other, this step is important. The more you know the better. I'd like you all to hear this

"Thank you"

I'm having an amazing time with you all and it's really nice to see so many of you willing to play this part of the game. Keep it up!

Etro's Soul.

I was thinking about something specifically after playing Tea Pan's WAR, where I found myself locked down and dead without time to react.

It's similar to chess, where reacting to what your opponent is doing will lose the game. Thinking one or two steps ahead will give you a chance against poor or average players. To play on the level of good chess players, you have to be thinking several steps ahead and setting yourself up.

Similarly, it's a game of who makes the first mistake. Most players just won't or can't capitalize on each other's inexperience.

Psychologically, it's probably easier to "scare" people into making mistakes and blowing cooldowns at the wrong time or bait them into a bad position. I loved doing that when I played chess in school, people would overlook the most obvious traps if they thought I'd overlooked something and they could jump on an opportunity.

great advice etro, recently hit over a 1000 games and i still have allot to learn and this thread was kind of an eye opener. I'll really keep that in mind and take the extra step to self improvement by reviewing games and planning new strats