Putting Theory Into Practice

I've just recently started playing ranked (1.5 REPRESENT), and I'm struggling with applying the things I read in guides and on this forum. I mostly play support, and I can't quite figure out how to use the things I learn from, for example, Sando's exemplary support guides

How do you guys apply the mental, behind-the-scenes stuff to your play? I know it has a lot to do with experience, but I'm wondering if there's a better way to learn from game time, if that makes sense.

A lot of the "behind-the-scenes-stuff" comes naturally as you play more, apply the "advanced" stuff one by one. For example if you're trying to last hit better, make a goal of 50 cs by 10 minutes and try to achieve it consistently. If you're supporting, aside from courier/wards try to gank every so often or learn when and how to pull camps. Learn to communicate with the team, not just ping and expect a response especially at your level.

Another example would be if a hero like Tidehunter used his ultimate Ravage and you died from a teamfight because of it. You have at least one minute to push their towers or force another fight since Ravage has a big cooldown. Although the risk depends on how strong your team is, the mentality there is to take advantage of a window of opportunity.

Glad the guides helped, you may also find these videos helpful as they explain some of my thought processes ingame.

For new support players, the biggest mistakes I see tend to involve decision making. You need to weigh up the lane once you know who you're with and against, and work out what your main priorities are - can you kill them? Can they kill you? Can you wear them down effectively? Can you zone them out?

It's just one example, but I just played a game with Ember Spirit as my carry, me as Lich, against a solo offlane Clockwerk. Lets look at the lane:

- I've got great harass and deny.
- My carry is quite capable of killing given the chance.
- Clock can kill me easily if I get isolated, but not my carry.
- My carry needs to get farm.
- I want to minimise Clock's farm and xp.

From there, we can work out our priorities:

1) Don't be alone with Clock, he can trap and kill me easily.
2) The longer the lane goes on, the more I can wear him down.
3) My carry can farm pretty safely.

Basically, we should win this lane, provided I don't feed. I need to hang back a bit, dropping Ice Blasts frequently and denying creeps for mana outside his XP range. I can't risk trying to zone him out directly. We can kill him if his health drops sufficiently.

Therefore, the plan is pretty simple - hang back, harass, deny and don't do anything risky unless my carry goes on him.

Quite often you see supports trying crazy things to try and secure kills. Getting kills is great, and you should try to get them if the odds are in your favour, but dying will be bad for your team. Zoning out is great IF you can do it fairly safely. Be aware of your limitations.

Another bad mistake I see from a lot of supports is that they use their mana badly - throwing out expensive spells for little effect. While you should harass, be aware of when you can do it safely and effectively.

As a self-proclaimed lower-upper-intermediate level player who still has plenty of room for improvement, but has done a fair bit of it over the last couple of years, I recommend taking it one concept at a time.

For example, at the moment, I'm trying to improve my Farming Speed, my goal is to reach 700+GPM. I'll probably use the old Wisp Solo Mid Lobby training to improve my Last Hitting in general, but I'm also looking at my replays and asking "Was that the right place to be at that time?" "If I had TPed in to that fight could I have gotten some Kills?" "Should I have built a Hand of Midas/ Helm of the Dominator and Farmed Stacks?", etc.

Yesterday:-

618
635
631

Today:-

690GPM

You have no idea how gutted I was ^ T-T

So, Imma watch that replay later, see where I could have improved (I'm pretty sure that if Bunkan could hit a stationary target it would have been 700+ 8{3 ), and then try out any improvements I feel I should make, e.g. I'll try to stop doing something that I feel is a bad habit, I'll try to get into the habit of focusing on a specific area (without affecting my map awareness too much).

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I think the mistake most players make is to look at all of their mistakes and improve on everything at once. Start with what's most important, i.e. your Positioning.

Look at every Teamfight:-

1) When did my/their team start moving in for a Teamfight? Were there any signs of this I should have noticed? When should I have noticed the Teamfight was going to happen and what should I have done at that point (TPed in to help, Split-Pushed, use a Global Ability, etc.)?

2) When I was in the fight, when did I jump in? Was this the right time? what could I have done? could the other Team have stopped me from accomplishing my Goal within the fight at this point?

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Finally, one last piece of advice. I see newer players asking how to know who they should focus or what they should be doing during a match. Once you see all 10 Heroes that are going to be in the game, strategize while you buy Items and move into Position as this is the only time you have where you don't need to do much else and have plenty of time to think.

1) Who on both Teams can Initiate/Counter-Initiate fights?
2) Who can easily get Kills by Ganking or picking off lone targets 1 vs 1?
3) Who can Split-Push
4) What can each Hero do in a Teamfight?

So long as you can 1-3) down, you can probably tell how the match is going to play out, what your Team including you need to do in order to win. Some Teams only have a narrow timeframe in which they can win the game, or else they lose earlier/later on. If a lot of Ganks are needed for you to win the Game early on, focus on Ganking if you can. If not, how else can you make it easy for your Team to Gank? Perhaps by Split-Pushing and forcing their Teamto split up in order to Push the Lanes back out?

Try this at the start of every match and you'll find the pieces come together a lot sooner. <}3