bc | Sheepo · @sheepsticked
3rd Aug 2020 from TwitLonger
It’s been 3 years since I said I wanted to play Dota professionally.
For 3 years (and a few months) I have sat at an average MMR of 5.5k, not fully committing to this goal, nor any other goal. My ‘career’ right now is as a streamer, but I haven’t fully jumped onto content creation due to the fanciful idea that I might still be able to get good at Dota suddenly. I would have bursts of watching a few replays here and there and convince myself I was being active about my passion and dream, but looking back on it now I’m just ashamed of myself.
I wasted 3 years.
I was lazy, I didn’t stick to any plans, I talked big and took help from several friends who were willing to put in some time to help me, but then I never worked off the back of the effort they put into me. I’m truly and utterly unhappy with myself for that. On a non-personal issue I played Meepo constantly and also switched roles every other month. I played carry and worked on that, then I switched to 5 and played that, then 4. Every other game I would play a mid game of Meepo because why not, it was some free mmr. I did not improve as a player at all over this time.
Last year in January I grew sick of the game and stopped playing for 3 months. When I returned I played a lot of position 5 and finally reached 6k for the first time in May. This was also the same month I attended Waga’s training camp and got to be coached by some high mmr players. For some reason I decided I wanted to be a mid player after that trip? So I returned home, lost all my mmr, dipped my toes back in 4k mmr for a hot minute, and then dropped mid and started playing randomly again.
This year in January I started to work on my YouTube. With some support from others (namely Slacks ily babe <3) I launched my Guidance series and started making more memes and leaning more into this content creator role. I had given up on pro dota because I ashamedly felt I was too lazy for it, and I guess my end goal for now would actually be to end up working dota events? I greatly adore the people in the dota talent scene and working with them would be my second dream after playing on the stage. Then covid happened.
Suddenly there were no events, there was nothing to work towards there. Yes I could keep making my videos, but as the weeks went on it seemed like there wouldn’t be any LAN events until next year so why not take this as a sign? I became serious about my gameplay, and this time it has stuck.
I chose the offlane as my role and started playing and playing. I didn’t climb much mmr at first obviously, and it turns out that when you cheese out 1723 Meepo games you’re not actually any good at dota. I also stopped playing Meepo (helps that icefrog gutted the hero so he’s not fun or good anymore). I’ve had to learn how to look at my minimap, how to lane, make myself click heroes for their items more, all this basic shit that I just never cared about before. I watch a lot of high mmr replays now as well as most of my own replays, and do exercises with those that some people suggested, such as
- every time i die, rewind 30 seconds and watch the minimap to see if i could have known it was about to happen
- when watching a pro replay, pretend i’m playing their hero and see what the pro does differently and reason why
I also (funny meme) subscribed to game leap and watch their videos. Speeed is amazing and can not be praised enough for the effort he puts into his videos on there. Similarly I watch d2bowie’s videos and Jenkins’ videos. All 3 of these have highly educational content worth checking out. I have always been pretty skilled mechanically, as a Meepo player I would hope so on that too, but my general knowledge is really lacking. These videos have helped me a lot. As of the last month I started watching Khezu’s stream too, he explains his thought process and this is very helpful to me.
I can proudly say that I have become an exponentially better player over the past few months, I can feel it when I play, I’m making good calls and good predictions, seeing stuff that’s about to happen before it does, I actually look at my minimap now and don’t die to stuff I would have died to a few months ago. There’s actually so much stuff I feel I’m better at and I’m climbing MMR. My average MMR had already gone up from 5.5k to about 6.1k, however I’m currently on a hot win streak and am 6390 mmr, which is the highest I’ve ever been. A lot of these games I’ve been captaining too.
I know I have much more to learn and get better at. I need to keep spamming offlane heroes to be as comfortable as possible on them/learn their matchups. I could be watching my minimap even more, and I need to learn to focus on concepts during a game, such as preemptively realising my powerspikes during my lane to act on them when they occur, and knowing what my role is as a hero and what enemies I need to target in fights, etc. I have a whole list of the problems I still face in games. :P
My goal is this: 7k MMR by the end of the year, or I quit this dream and go into content creation full time and aim to be dota talent next year. If I can hit 7k by the end of this year then I will feel confident that I’m learning fast enough to keep going. If I keep stagnant at 6k for the next 5 months then I’m in no way cut out for this and I will finally let it go. It’s time to put hard deadlines on my improvement so I don’t waste another 3 years. If my MMR is really in a bad place I might do an early revision and drop it earlier. I'll write another twitlonger at the end of the year. Right now I’m actually truly enjoying playing this game so I’m totally psyched. I understand this post may serve as another “talk big but no action” on my road, but my current love for the game as well as the deadline should keep me motivated.
If you’ve read all this then I hope you enjoyed it. If there’s one final thing I might mention, it’s that a lot of people have been dicks towards me for my first twitlonger about this 3 years ago. If I showed up on Reddit a bunch of people would mockingly ask me what happened to going pro to make fun of the fact I hadn’t achieved anything. I never actually got upset by any of this, because there was nothing wrong with me announcing my intentions. I would live my life in regret if I didn’t give my one true dream a good shot, and no one should ever be made to feel bad for trying to do what makes them happy. That’s all. Have a good day. :)