60 hours of mentoring: Origins, Technique, and Analysis

After 60 hours of work over the span of two weeks, I have come one step closer to creating a reliable mentoring system. Please bear with me, as some of the links in this article lead to ads and it is practically the only type of compensation I get for my work during this phase of development. If you don't care about my journey and why all of this is important, then here is the link to skip ahead. I understand that my personal journey and rambling about the importance of having a technique to improve can be boring for some, so I give you the opportunity to skip it.

MENTORING EXPERIENCE, TECHNIQUE, AND ANALYSIS

WHY A TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVING IS IMPORTANT
Almost a year ago, I was an average 1600 player. I was angry at what many people in this community are angry about: trolls, noobs, bads, mads, tryhards, OP heroes, and whatever else you can think of. I spent much time looking for other 1600 players to try and mitigate the damage done by these terrible people that I was so angered by. What I found was interesting.

1. In some respects, I was happier. I found people with a similar urge to be better. But what I didn't find was a way to do it or a will to find one. They wanted to play more than to develop themselves.
2. I made mistakes. They made mistakes. I wanted to find ways to fix them. They wanted to just keep playing.
3. Our MMR neither rose nor fall when together. Sometimes, we were even better off solo queuing.

I was tired of being around people who had little interest in development. I decided to take matters into my own hands and start myself on a process of self-improvement. This is when I got results.

To improve you must either: 1) find others who are also serious about improvement and work together to find/execute ways to better, or 2) take your advancement into your own hands. I chose the latter, but I am also starting a community for those who are in the first category. Click the link below if you are interested in Project VM. One of the following sections will share my rationale behind starting this community.

Project Victory Mindset Mission Statement

HOW TO IMPROVE, THE FIRST STEPS

I thought about ways to progress. What if I analyzed my replays? I did that for some time and it helped a bit. What if I watched professional gamers play? I did that for some time and it helped a bit. Now what if recorded my mistakes in a notebook, analyzed them, found methods of improvement, and executed them. My records were very basic. Every game, I recorded my hero, KDR, and the simple mistakes I made. They were usually the mistakes that either led to my death or mistakes that frustrated me so much because they prevented me from getting a kill. One of the major causes of failure was my lack of mouse control, as I spent countless seconds trying to click the same hero over and over again just to either die before casting my spells or have them run into the fog. So I spent hours and hours fixing my problem and I came up with the following article.

How I improved my mouse control.

One of the following sections will also describe how I take notes of problems and how I fix them in greater detail.

THE MINDSET TO IMPROVE: LIFE AND PROJECT VM

Even with the slow-moving yet constant improvement I was experiencing, I was still frustrated with the world. Why was I still losing even if I was improving? Nobody else was doing the work that I was doing and as hard as I tried, I was still in the high 1600 bracket. I was close to quitting HoN for good until I encountered the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It describes the methods by which success is derived from. I realized that I gave up on my goals too many times in my life and if I continued the pattern, I would ultimately be a failure. I also realized that the greatest people in history didn't achieve success alone. They brought those who had similar dreams and desires up with them. The people I surrounded myself with would be the reason that I get to where I want to go, and I really believe that it is one way how success is born. This is why I wanted to mentor people as soon as I had time and this is why I want to start Project VM.

Looking on HonRec.com, I traced the date of my disgust with my lack of progress and the start of my desire to be a better player to November 7, 2012. You'll see that I was a 1750 player before my huge drop. I got sloppy and I started getting angry with the people I was being queued with. To be honest, it was most likely my sloppy play and my disregard for furthering my improvement that caused my demise. Here is the chart.

Source: http://adf.ly/Gpwvx (As of the 1/2/2013, HonRec is still not operational)

I wanted so badly to win. I stopped conceding games and changed my mindset to one of complete self-responsibility and I believed that every game was winnable. Think and Grow describes an attitude of perseverance and belief. I put those beliefs to the test and it worked for me. It prompted me to write multiple articles to inspire others to do the same. Many players came to criticize my work, but looking at their stats made me really wonder how profitable their strategy and habit of mentally giving up was. But then I realized that only those who want to be helped are reachable. The many who are happy with their position of rage and defeat will remain unreachable and forever in a pit of their own failures. It's the sad truth of life I've come to accept.

Reasons to keep playing in the face of defeat.

A quick and easy mindset change to improve.

The importance of mindset in HoN.

I was tired of failure, so I took action. Inspired to share my work and passion with others, I started to mentor and improved my own play in the process. So without further ado, here is the meat and the main subject of the article.

MENTORING, INITIAL TECHNIQUE AND DATA

My first mentoring cycle started December 17 and ended January 1. It was an incredible experience for me. Going into mentoring, I had a clear goal in mind: to create a mentoring technique in which the trainee can constantly look back at their mistakes so they can focus and improve on them. I created a spreadsheet for each player I was mentoring, defined a few goals and focuses, and watched them play games. I explained their mistakes in detail and I worked with them to correct them. I joined practice games with them to practice individual skills. I played a few games on some of my other accounts in their bracket to show them how to properly capitalize on the mistakes of other players on their level. I also told trainees to focus on one hero at a time so they can focus on and master them. Here are the results from mentoring and training. The first link shows the actual work done while the second link is a compilation of all of the data. I will write about the compiled data in another post.

All of the training records from this mentoring cycle.
A compilation of the results from my mentoring.

PROBLEMS AFTER ANALYZING IN RETROSPECT
My technique proved varying, yet generally positive results. Some players heavily retained information and techniques while others struggled with it. One player moved up a bracket and a half while many advanced in a smaller magnitude.When I collected the data, most players were only slightly ahead of where they started. If only the HonRec website were up, I would've collected the data from each trainee to display...

The beginning with each trainee was always filled turbulence. Nothing was done consistently and not much was established from the start. The only thing both the trainee and I were definite about was the fact that I was mentoring them.

I find it strange because I've seen them hit improvements of 50 MMR in the middle of a cycle, only to drop to a level near their starting MMR. I saw a sort of oscillation, a repetitive movement of MMR up and down. They are capable of performance, yet they lack the consistency needed to properly execute most, if not all of the time.

I told each trainee to look at their spreadsheet before they played every game. Some spreadsheets became long and messy. This was not conducive to improvement and had to be fixed. There was no way to distinguish problems that needed attention and problems that were already solved. This meant that I was hoping that the trainee themselves would distinguish, even if it was my job to tell them if they were making progress or not.

There was also no cycle of improvement. We didn't wash, rinse, and repeat. We washed, rinsed, washed, repeated, washed, repeated, rinsed, washed, washed, repeated, and rinsed. Having no iterative process leaves many things to chance. I am not looking to leave things to chance. I am after making things happen because of actions taken.

SOLUTIONS
After careful thought and analysis, I came up with a plan to remedy my errors. The fixes, though quite simple, took time and careful thought to develop.

1. Make a process to follow to make mentoring smooth, manageable, and consistent.
2. Make goals more clearly definable. Also start to keep track of more metrics as time progresses.
3. Theorycraft before any in-game mentoring about the hero the trainee will be focusing on. This will allow us to focus on execution rather than learning new facts.
4. Restructure trainee spreadsheets to make them neater and compartmentalized while accommodating for the new process and objectives.
5. Create a 'Current Issues' and 'Resolved Issues' to help focus the trainee while away from the mentor while showing tangible progress to further encourage work and progress. 

I created a flowchart of the process I will be doing my best to follow from now on. It should stop the random mentoring sessions that sometimes end fruitful while sometimes ending right back where we started.

VM Mentoring Process

This will be explained further in a different post, but it is how future mentoring will be conducted. All of the other fixes have been included in the following spreadsheet below. The following spreadsheet will be a template for any future mentoring.

My baby, the Phase 2 Mentoring Spreadsheet.

FINAL WORDS
If you got to this point in the article, THANK YOU FOR READING! I really appreciate the time you and every other reader have spent in reading my article. After spending 60 hours mentoring and probably another 10-20 hours finding ways to improve, I'd be glad that someone cares! I hope to see many responses on my technique and if anyone is interested in this type of mentoring. One day, I hope to become a paid mentor and manage a group that is doing the same. I am also interested to meet many other people who have a similar passion for self-improvement in this game and in life.

Feel free to contact me through one of the following methods, if you are so inclined:
IGN/Forums: HarassMeNow
Skype: HarassMeNow

[SUMMARY] Transitioning from EARLY to MID/LATE game: Tactics and Priorities

Properly transitioning from early game to mid/late game tactics is vital to winning. Players that do not master this transition may find themselves winning their lanes, yet unable to make use of their early lead because of poor strategy and/or poor planning. I will highlight key points that will help make your transition much more smoothly. Below is a TLDR summary of my article, but I urge everyone to read the rest of it.

1. Heroes that don't need farm to be effective should gank as soon as possible.
2. Heroes that need a specific item to be effective (Moraxus with a Portal Key, for example) should prioritize farm until they get it and gank immediately.
3. Heroes that need a significant amount of farm (Hard carries) to be effective should farm while the rest of their team ganks.
4. Farming after getting your core build will show diminishing returns on your farm. Fight after you get the item(s) that you need.
5. Find ways to deny the enemy money and experience. An example would be taking the enemy's jungle and leaving a small creep behind.
6. If possible, focus heroes on ganking heroes on the other team that need farm instead of constantly killing heroes that don't.
7. Find ways to bait and finish off turtlers. An example would be to build a massive advantage by taking their jungle/ancients and then Kongor after that.
8. Plan ahead.

Here is the link to the full article: 

[EXTENDED] Transitioning from EARLY to MID/LATE game: Tactics and Priorities

Reasons to keep playing even in the face of "defeat."

Everyone that plays competitive games has been in a losing position, but not everyone has the proper mindset to climb out of that position.

What do you focus on when you're losing? What items the enemy has? What levels the enemy has? How many of your towers are down? How many towers they have? Are these the right things to focus on if you are trying to turn a losing game into a winning one? If you don't care much about winning, go ahead and press the green thumbs up button on the concede vote. But if you care about winning and have a truly burning desire to win, keep reading.

One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man's familiarity with the word "impossible." He knows all the rules which will NOT work. He knows all the things which CANNOT be done. 

Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become FAILURE CONSCIOUS.

 - Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)

Too many times in life, we think of reasons why things are impossible. We think of reasons why our desires aren't going to become reality. We create artificial shortcomings for ourselves and those around us. We say we can't do something because X or because someone else is Y. We create limitations for ourselves and sabotage ourselves. We find reasons why something will not happen or something will not work and we give up. Inaction will NEVER yield any results. If you TRULY want to accomplish something, why should you limit yourself and give up?

Let's all be the better man (or woman) and forget about failure. Let's think about how we can be successful and win the game. Even if the game looks like a lost one, why not work as hard as you can and turn it around? Failure will come to those who allow it to saturate and consume their mind. The ones who cry for concede votes are the ones who will be losing the most games. They give up before the other team has defeated them. They would rather predict a loss and be correct than trying as hard as they can. I truly realized this after reading the following quote:

Most people would rather be CERTAIN they're miserable, than risk being happy. 

- Robert Anthony

Think about that quote for a second. When people give up and beg for concede votes, isn't this what they are doing? They would rather be certain they've lost instead of doing all they can and risk winning? You know that these people have a habit of giving up. They have a habit of being defeated in life, and their habit perpetuates itself in all other parts of life. I'm writing to pull people out of their terrible attitudes and to inspire them to be better and stop giving up. This game should be a way for all of us to become mentally stronger people, not a place for us to practice giving up. We can make it that way one step at a time.

Focus on the right things, and you can turn a losing game into a winning one. The best part about working hard from a losing position is that even if you don't end up with a win, at least you didn't beat yourself and you made your enemy defeat you himself. By pressing the concede button, you have beaten yourself. You've saved your opponent much trouble. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu describes the process of winning.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself ... Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

- Sun Tzu

We can never truly be certain of our success. All we have the power to do is to make sure WE don't make mistakes ourselves. That is the first step to winning. Capitalizing on the errors the enemy makes is the second step. As Sun Tzu says, the enemy must first make an error. Without their error, you cannot win. Considering that, the enemy can't win if you don't give them an opportunity to defeat you. Surrendering makes no sense at all if you are sincerely trying to win. You have not done all that you can to secure yourself against defeat. In fact, you are the ultimate cause of your own defeat by surrendering.

Work to secure yourself against defeat while waiting for your opponent to give you an opportunity to defeat them. You can't say that the enemy "won't throw" because that is not something you are in control of. You are only in control of yourself and indirectly, your teammates. Only your opponents can control how they react to you and your team's actions.

Being defeated is only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

- Marilyn Vos Savant

Be the one on the team who makes defeat temporary. What is giving up going to do for you? What will it do for your team? Nothing. Work to change "defeat" into something more productive. And if you ever want to blame your enemies, read the following article and make the change that ensures your success and development.

How to improve your mindset to deal with bad teammates.

6 Steps to Improve Your Skills

When people ask others for tips on becoming a better player, they get very general, unspecific responses. How does this really help someone genuinely trying to improve? When someone is told that, will they just keep playing over and over and hope for the best? You can be in control of your improvement. When one asks how they can get better, they are often told:

• "Practice makes perfect."
• "Just think about what you're doing."
• "Practice your fundamentals."
• "Play over and over and you'll get better."
• "You'll get better with experience. Don't worry. It will come in time."

They're all encouraging words, but it can be hard to act on them and get results. Sometimes, you get more specific answers. Those are few and far between, and usually lead nowhere because the person asking for help doesn't even know where to start! The problem with a lot of these responses is that it leaves your improvement to chance. Leaving things to chance is NEVER the way to go. In this article, I'll be writing a step-by-step process on improving your skills one by one. But before I begin, we must know that any improvement begins with realizing that you are doing something wrong and it needs to change.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein would kick your ass in any game he plays because he knows how to improve.

(Picture Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)

You must realize that doing the same thing over and over again will result in the same thing. If one strategy does not work, you must adapt. If you lose, but change nothing about the way you play, you can never hope to improve. We have all had times where we say one of the following statements:

• "I should have done X."
• "I can't believe I did X."
• "X seemed like a good idea..."
• "How could I have made a simple mistake as X."

Replace the X's with your favorite mistake. Instead of "remembering" them and keeping them in mind, these X's should be recorded. I used to keep a notebook the mistakes I made whenever I played. After pages and pages of games and faults, I scanned the notebook for mistakes that I commonly made. When I found my common mistakes, I put them all on one page and decided to do something about them.

In this article, I will use myself as an example and how I improved. In the past, I struggled with mouse control. I was constantly missing skills I shouldn't have missed. I constantly clicked in the wrong place, and missed opportunities I shouldn't have missed. I set aside an hour everyday to practice. These are the steps I took. Recently, I bought a new computer and I have to work on it again. The resolution on this monitor is DRASTICALLY different from my old one, and I have to get used to it. I lost my records from my previous endeavor and will be sharing my current progression. And without further ado...

THE SIX STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS

1. Find a weakness to focus on
2. Rationalize your training
3. Find a way to improve
4. Set time aside
5. Track your progress
6. Work and reflect

1. Find a weakness to focus on.

If you don't focus on your mistakes one-by-one, you will leave your improvement to chance. If you just keep playing the game believing that you will get better in time, you are right. The keyword in your belief is "in time." You are giving control of your improvement to something other than yourself. By giving it to time, you don't know when you will improve. You don't know how much you improved. You don't know how it will happen. You just know that time will give it to you eventually. Take matters into your own hands and make your improvement happen.

While playing over and over again will result in improvement, it leaves things to chance. What if you have a game where your mistakes don't matter and you still win? What if the game you're playing doesn't require you to focus on the mistakes that you have? For those reading who play sports competitively, you understand that improvement comes a step at a time. You didn't get better by simply playing over and over again. Though it helped, I'm sure you also spent time improving your skills individually. If you focus on one task at a time, your skill in that task will improve at a fast rate and you will be able to focus on other tasks after that.

After logging my mistakes, I realized the things I needed to focus on the most. Too many times, I saw that I missed skills because I couldn't click the target. I also missed some skills because I aimed them incorrectly because I overshot/undershot with my mouse pointer. These mistakes are unforgivable and I had to do something about it. I chose to focus on this.

2. Rationalize your training

Find many reasons why you need to improve this skill. Find many reasons why NOT improving will lead to your downfall. By rationalizing your training, you further motivate yourself to do what you need to do. These reasons will push you to learn what you're trying to learn. It will also make you realize why what you are focusing on is important. Maybe in the future, you can communicate these things with others who are also trying to improve themselves.

Some of my reasons for working to improve my mouse control:

1. I will be able to click what I need to, when I need to with confidence.
2. I have an urge to win, so I must be able to take every opportunity easily and precisely.

What will happen if I don't improve my mouse control:

1. I will keep missing my skills. By missing my skills, I miss opportunities. By missing opportunities, I have lost the game for myself.
2. I will be too busy focusing on using my mouse to focus on more important aspects of the game.
3. I will keep losing games because I missed too many skills. Mistakes add up and actually amount to something.

These two lists are a few of my reasons why I work to improve my mouse control. I have MANY more, but there is no need to go through every single one of them. Find reasons for your own improvement, and you will successfully improve in anything you focus on.

3. Find a way to improve

Take some time to figure out ways you can improve your skills. Also take the time to find ways people improved if they're having the same problems as you are. Their methods can probably work for you. When you find something you can do that SPECIFICALLY trains the skill you are looking for, remember it and try it. If you feel like the method you found is beneficial, stick with it and move to the next step.

I looked online for ways people improved their mouse control. I found this forum post that gives three ways of improving mouse control. I chose one of them and stuck to it. It had a way that I could monitor my progress and it was challenging. I could also do it for either a short period of time or a long period of time, which allowed flexibility.

A Wonderful Article on TeamLiquid's forum about Improving Mouse Control

4. Set time aside

Know how much time you will set aside for your work. Maybe you'll work on improving for 30 minutes a day. Maybe you'll work on improving for an hour a day. Work on it for a week. Work on it for two weeks. It doesn't matter. Make a reasonable commitment that you will be able to fulfill. Also make sure that your commitment will yield results. If you are going to work on something for only 30 minutes everyday, make sure you work on it for a while so you see results. You can only take out as much as you put in. Something for nothing has yet to be discovered.

I set aside an hour a day to improve my mouse control. Before I played a game, I practiced my mouse control for an hour. Some days that I had more time, I set aside even more. Since I had a reason to improve, I had no problem in setting aside extra time in a day if I had it.

5. Track your progress.

To make sure you aren't aimlessly working, track your progress somehow. Keep a paper, a spreadsheet, a sticky note, or anything that you can write information on to keep track of how you are doing. If you can, also take notes on how you can practice even harder. Take notes on what helps you and what doesn't help you. It will allow you to further focus and get more out of your practice sessions and in your games in the future.

Whenever I practiced, I kept track of what I was doing in my sessions. To practice, I chose a game that challenged my mouse precision. As I said earlier, it had measures of accuracy and difficulty so I could see how much progress I was making. In just one day, I made progress. In my spreadsheet, I noted every variable I found useful. I also took notes on what helped me succeed in my practice sessions. Have a look in the link below for an example of how to track your progress.

Here is the spreadsheet I used to track my progress

6. Work and reflect

As you work, think about your improvement. Are you really improving? Do the records you're taking show slight improvement? Do games you play out of practice show your improvement? If the answer to these questions is yes, you are doing good work. Remember what you are doing well. Keep doing what you're doing and keep finding ways to improve. If the answer is no, then maybe you need to go back to Step 3 and find a different way. As Einstein said, don't do the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Reflection helped me find MORE reasons why I was practicing mouse control. I thought about what I was doing and how it could help in my gameplay. It kept me going on my work and it helped me write this article to help everyone else who either might be having trouble improving or help those already good at this by making them better.

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear improvement stories or anything. I write to inspire people to be better and I hope I accomplished that here. :) Happy gaming.

Why HoN will always have a place in my heart

I have been a MOBA player (AoS anyone?) for 5 years. I started with RoC DotA, moved to TFT DotA, and now I play HoN and LoL. Before you start flaming because I play both, please wait for what I have to say. I still believe HoN is a superior game, though I start to give LoL some credit nowadays. It's not as terrible a game as many make it seem. I really believe that until you reach a high rating in BOTH games, you cannot make a fair judgment. That is one reason why I am playing LoL. I am also playing league to expand my thoughts and knowledge so I can reach out to more people.

Anyway, on to the subject: Why HoN will always have a place in my heart.

1. INNOVATION AND VARIETY

The way DotA has a place in my heart, HoN will have one as well. I have grown an appreciation for innovative lineups, a jungle that actually gives money, innovative strategies, and more. I have reached level 30 in LoL and I have started on my way up the ladder in ranked. I'm glad that I have extensive experience and a modestly high rating in HoN because it continues to help my LoL gameplay. What I find concerning in league is its stale metagame. A solo lane, a mid lane, a duo lane with the AD carry and support, and a jungler. As a HoN player, it concerns me. A LOT. While the top and bottom lane may swap in LoL, mid and jungle usually remain the same. HoN was always the more versatile game. 2-1-2 lane can work. 3-1-1 lane can work. 2-1-1 with a jungler can work. I also recall double jungle working at some point. (Or maybe it was just attempted) Maybe this just applies to THIS league metagame, but people are very strict on it.

2. THE JUNGLE

I am a jungler at heart. I love to play the jungle. I love coming out of the jungle, ganking, and receding back into the shadows to play with creeps and get money. In both games, I enjoy jungling and roaming. League's jungle is very different from HoN and DotA's jungle. HoN jungle creeps give a good amount of money and can be stacked. This means junglers can either 1) jungle, gank, then go back to the jungle or 2) focus on jungling and FARM HARD. In league, the jungler is practically just a glorified roamer. I just like having many options, such as a Legionnaire coming out with a PK early in the game because nobody on the other team bothered to check if he was low HP because he was taking triple stack medium camps. You can do silly things like get to level 6 in 3 minutes, or close to it given the right circumstances

Sycko's Level 6 Legionnaire in 3:15 Video

3. THE PLAYERS

Many think HoN's RAP system sucks. Imagine a system you are judged by peers, and not by people who have gained the respect of the HoN community and staff. If I am not mistaken, is that not how it works? I just find it strange.

League of Legend's "Tribunal" System

Time and time again, I have come across people in LoL who complain over and over about lanes, lineups, etc. I know this happens in HoN as well, but not nearly as bad as in LoL. Instantly, comments like "I REPORT U NOOB THROW" come up and make the game ridiculous. Why would someone report another for wanting to try dual lane mid or some other strategy? At one point in time or another, every dominant metagame was a mystery and had to be tested... People threatening to report is all too common and league and is becoming annoying. If a system were implemented in LoL like we have in HoN, a deposit on report, maybe people would think twice. Or maybe if a 5 minute wait time were implemented. Reporting is silly and too easy in LoL, resulting in too many whiners. Maybe I haven't played enough high ranked games to know.

4. THE IMPORTANCE OF LIFE AND DEATH

In HoN, I really feel like life and death play a huge role in the game; a bigger role than it does in LoL. Money lost on death and buy backs create such an interesting dynamic to the game. Mistakes cost a person more. What better way to learn from your mistakes than to have them cost you a lot? Deaths in HoN really make me think twice about my actions. Will I have money for buy back? Will the money I lose matter? Not only do you lose the opportunity to make money, you also lose money itself. And the fact that killing someone also makes them lose money makes kills much more rewarding and worthwhile. I like knowing that I've messed up someone else's game.

5. THE ITEMS

I love my Kelen's Dagger of Escape. I love my PORTAL KEY. I love my HOMECOMING STONE. I LOVE IT! And most importantly: I love my Power Supply. Enough said.

P.S. Two more words. CODEX FIVE.

A Quick and Easy Mindset Change to Improve

"I did my best to support, but our carry sucked so we lost."
"Our lane was outmatched and nobody came to gank so we lost."
"I'm the carry and everyone keeps taking my farm, so we lost."
"I tanked the entire team but nobody followed up, so we lost."
"I killed mid, but the other two lanes got wrecked so we lost."

In HoN, 1600 MM rating is slightly above average. When I was in this bracket, I used to tell myself these things all of the time and move on with my day. It became easy to shrug off the fact that I could have done better by blaming my teammates. I knew I made mistakes, but that didn't matter because my team is bad. I won some games. I lost some games. For the most part, I stayed in about the same place. I felt trapped in my bracket because of my terrible teammates.

WRONG. For those of you looking to improve, here are the reasons why these things do not matter:

1. Yes, you only make up one-fifth, or 20% of your team. You cannot do everything, so DO EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN DO. Unless you can HONESTLY tell yourself you've done all that you can, then you have contributed to your loss.
2. Learn from your mistakes and avoid making them again. If you truly had a game which you made NO mistakes, then you can blame your team. If you made a few mistakes, you contributed to the loss. End of story
3. If you found yourself in a losing position and did nothing about it, then you have contributed to your loss.
4. If your teammates found themselves in a losing position and you did nothing to it, then you have contributed to your loss.
5. If you have stopped trying to find ways to win, then the game is instantly lost. Never stop believing in a win unless all 4 others have. If you mentally gave up and stopped trying to find ways to win, you have contributed to your loss

If you give up in a game and believe that everything is everyone else's fault, how can your condition improve? If you give up easily in a game where you have nothing to lose from trying, how easily do you give up in life? Be honest with yourself and be better than everyone else who can't. The first step is to admit fault in yourself. Here are some quotes that inspired me to be the better person. By changing my mindset, I climbed out of the 1600 bracket and made my way to 1700.

"One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man's familiarity with the word "impossible." He knows all the rules which will NOT work. He knows all the things which CANNOT be done."

-Napoleon Hill

I see this all too much in ANY competitive sport. When I played tennis, I have seen friends succumb to this weakness. I myself have fallen prey to this weakness as well. In fact, I know ALL of us have experienced moments of weakness like this. We predict failure and find reasons why our prediction is most likely accurate. After that, we take no meaningful action and we fail. If you aim to win and improve, does this make sense? Instead of finding reasons to fail, FIND REASONS TO SUCCEED.

"If you cannot bear the faults of a friend, you make them your own [because you have not the charity to correct them.]"

-Publilius Syrus (Maxim 28)

If someone on your team is struggling, do your best to help them. As the quote says, if you do not help them, you have just made their problem yours. This applies ESPECIALLY to MOBA games. If you are currently not in the position to help, work to be in a position to do so. In HoN, it just might take a level or two and you will be ready to gank another lane. In LoL, it just might take a summoner spell to come up or a level. Whichever the case may be, find a way to help. Make no excuses, just help them. If you don't, it will be your problem later in the game.

"I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but I still can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something that I can do."

-Helen Keller

A blind-deaf-mute who learned how to read and write, Helen Keller is truly an inspiration. She realized that she was an individual in a very populated world. She realized that she was less capable than everyone else, but that did not discourage her from doing her best to reach out and make a change. Upon further research, I found out that she did a lot to better the world through political activity and by publishing work. She was blind, deaf, and mute. She knew her limitations. Yet, she knew no boundaries for what she could accomplish.

If you are interested in Helen Keller's work, click HERE.

If she can be like that while missing three major things we all use to interact with our surroundings, why can't we be like her? Reassess your limitations and then try again. You're just one player out of five, so you can't do everything. BUT SINCE YOU CAN'T DO EVERYTHING, DO AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. Stop fooling yourself that you have done all that you can do. There's always more you could have done. There's always a decision you could have made differently to make things better. Even if you played well, there is always BETTER. Having this mindset is the only way you can improve in ANYTHING in life. Always remember that you can do better, no matter how well your performance.

"Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected."

-Sophocles

Remember the last time you said to your team and yourself, "this game is lost." Was that game really lost? Or did the odds seem overwhelmingly against your favor? More often than not, you will lose when you do this to yourself.

Now remember the last time you were substantially behind and told everyone, "this game isn't over, we can win." More often than not, you find a way to win. You do your best to outplay the other team and take all opportunities they give you. You play much more carefully because you believe there is a chance to win. Your belief in winning has literally carried you and your team out of the gutter. Even if you don't win, you were MUCH closer to winning. If you don't win, you end up making the other team earn their win. Look for an opportunity to win. If you give up, you will never find that opportunity and you make your predicted loss a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Faith is the only agency through which the cosmic force of infinite intelligence can be harnessed and used by man."

-Napoleon Hill

This seems like the biggest hoax in the world. Many will ignore this, but the few who try it will succeed. After thinking about this quote and being honest with myself, I realized that this quote heavily applied to many events in my life. I also started believing that I could win EVERY game, regardless of the circumstances. Slowly, my win rate started going up and my MM rating in HoN up with it. I know it sounds cheesy. I know it sounds silly. I know it sounds like a fantasy. But I also know it works. Join me in putting this little piece of information to work and share your experiences with me.

The importance of MINDSET in HoN.

I was previously woking on a guide to winning in HoN, but I want to adapt it to be compatible with all competitive endeavors. This is what I had for the importance of mindset. Please comment or message if you have any comments.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF MINDSET

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the rest.” – Aristotle

Here are a list of some human qualities and traits we would like to have for playing HoN:

Acuity – Sharpness in thought and sight

Reflexive – Fast, advantageous, and skillful reaction

Perceptive – Able to see opportunities and analyze situations deeply

Conviction – Executing every action with purpose

Aggression – The ability to find and exploit weak points in the enemy’s strategy

Defensive – Ensuring no mistakes are made for the enemy to capitalize on

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines courage as “strength in the face of danger.” All of us have these qualities, but the game of HoN adds danger. We might already have these things, but we must be able to find strength in the midst of the dangerous situations we find ourselves in. I chose to go over Mindset first because of the truth that this quote reveals: courage guarantees all else. Without having the courage to execute, what use is having all of the skill in the world?

“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” – Sophocles (Oedipus Rex)

One may have great skill in HoN, but can they win if they are predicting a loss? Since they expect a loss, they make no attempt to win. The worst part of this at the end of a game, they say, “I knew we would lose.” Their loss will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have lost, but then they find shelter in the fact that they were right. All of the reasons they gave of why they might have hypothetically lost have all been proven correct! Since they were right, they believe they have been excused and they will have no problem in repeating this prophesizing. What good is being right if you have lost? You cannot improve at a rate faster than a snail’s pace if this is the mindset you have.

“Success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis.” – Napoleon Hill

            A win is a win, no matter how many mistakes are made. A loss is a loss, no matter the reasons why you lost. This quote is a strict but direct approach to winning and losing. No apologies yet no excuses. One can only find true solace from the ghost of their mistakes by winning. Mistakes become irrelevant because the fact of the matter is that you have won. When you have lost, failure makes ALL of your mistakes relevant. In the game of HoN, every player could have always done more to contribute to success. It is a truth that many neglect, but those who have a strong will to improve take to heart.

“I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but I still can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do..” – Hellen Keller