MOBA Gamers

You see this kind of thing every game.

Most MOBA games are won and lost by how both teams react and play with each other in a 5v5 setting. Sure, there's plenty of farming, lane control, ganking, and many other factors leading up to the climatic team fights, and they definitely have a huge impact on them – but it won't matter much if your “carry” (Typically a weak early game character that can get huge and take on several members of the other team in the late game) is off in the woods picking berries when a fight gets engaged and its 4v5. Suddenly, your team is dead except for Carry, the brave lumberjack, slayer of creeps. Is he going to be able to combat the resulting team push into your base and the assault on your objectives by himself?

If the answer to this question is no, it would probably benefit you to take a peek on how your team functions as a unit. Quite a few games are won and lost as the result of one 5v5 battle – and how it is engaged often trumps item farming, early game kills, and level advantages. Lets walk through a few highly typical situations.

Situation 1: You've just pushed down the opposing teams second tower in the middle lane. (Assume a DOTA or HoN basic map). Team leader Alpha Dog calls for a tactical retreat. Gamma Dog decides he thinks that there may be some of the other team hiding in the woods just above them out of line of sight and takes a peek up the ledge. Hey, guess what, he was right!

All five of them are there and Gamma Dog gets ripped to shreds before he can even key up his Ventrilo push to talk key. Two extremely bad things happen here – assuming the rest of you responded by trying to help him, your situation is 4v5 at best and at worst, you're going to trickle up the incline one by one and be picked off for a hideously crippling situation. Best case scenario no one goes to help and they push with a one person advantage. The lesson here is, if you suspect that there are five men who want to kill you off in the bushes, it is a good idea to not confirm your suspicions.

Situation 2: Farming Freddy sits in the neutral creep spawns for 90% of the game, shows up for one team fight, dies and leaves. This one really requires no explanation. Farming neutrals is definitely an important part of working up a carry or grabbing some extra experience and gold when the board looks dangerous, but when he literally participates in one team fight forty minutes in, he's been letting his team down the entire game and probably cost them a lot. Talk to Farming Freddy and have him at least participate in ganks near his woodland home.

Situation 3: The “I don't want to be first” effect. A lot of otherwise great teams have lost games over this one, many people don't even realize they are doing it. You're pushed all the way to the opposing teams base tower, and all of a sudden your full health, full mana team gets cold feet. Everyone clicks left, then everyone clicks right, and the team sits there like a pack of drooling automatons, twitching back and forth and never going forward because no one wants to be first.

What this does is give the opposing team plenty of time to size you up and plan a quick strategy to kill all of you quickly and efficiently. They can see you, you can't see them, and any numerical advantage you gained on them during the push is fading away as your team squiggles back and forth like a bunch of lurching, brain dead zombies.

After about 30 seconds of this nonsense no one has made a move, and their Earth Shaker blink daggers in and kills everyone. If you're going to push to the base make a decision quickly – don't dawdle outside the enemy gates waiting to die.

Honestly a lot of team errors come from lack of communication and/or lack of common sense. Don't be that guy in the woods during a game winning/losing push. Don't be the guy on the bottom lane when everyone else is top. Don't go running into death traps because you want to see if they are there. Trust me, they are.

Functioning as a team unit can make or break your MOBA experience – that is, unless Farming Freddy shows up 60 minutes into the game and kills their whole team. Communicate with your team, ping the map, call missing and call pushes, and you'll be well on your way to a more fun and enriching gaming experience.