Dota 2 is one of those games that either you play a ton, or you don't engage with it at all. Maybe you don't like the genre. Perhaps you feel cosmetic items are meaningless in a top down game. You might even hate it because of the people that play it. After all, Dota 2 is well known for bringing the worst out of people and ruining your day.

But there has to be a reason why so many people keep playing these kinds of games right? Let's watch a clip from a recent tournament, featuring a top player named Miracle. He's playing the hero Shadow Fiend.

So here's what happened. After a teamfight that happened right before this clip, we see one team trying to escape while the other team tries to find stragglers. Miracle is found while teleporting back to his base. He gets stunned which cancels the teleport. As he is nearly dead, he decides to use an item to spawn two illusions of himself. 99% of the players will try to run their hero away while hoping that the illusions block the path long enough to make it out alive. Miracle uses this knowledge to trick the opponent. As he uses the item, he quickly selects one of the illusions and moves it away , while he puts a hold command on his real hero to prevent it from moving. The opponent is tricked and starts chasing the illusion while his real hero stands still next to the other illusion. This is when Miracle, makes a run through the trees. Now this is a place where he can safely use his blink dagger to escape (similar to how you can blink away with Corvo in Dishonored 2) and be happy about staying alive. This is what a sane person would do.

But Miracle wants more. He knows that it's a 1 versus 2 situation and his blink dagger gives him a huge advantage when it comes to moving across the map. Therefore he runs all the way to the trees on the edge of the map. Now Shadow Fiend is hidden in the fog of war, out of vision. Since he walked towards that spot, the opponents know that he is there. They have to make a choice here, either let Warlock use his ultimate spell which will stun and deal enough damage to get a guaranteed kill on the nearly dead Shadow Fiend , or give up the chase. Note that Warlocks ultimate has a cooldown of 165 seconds , which means that if it's being used here, his team will have to play without that skill for quite a long time.

As seen, Warlock uses the ultimate in the right spot to kill Miracle. But Miracle is aware that the ultimate will come, since it's the only skill that will be able to quickly expose him between the trees. His fingers are prepared to blink away as soon as he hears the first soundqueue. The warlock ultimate is wasted, Miracle is able to walk away, kills a courier that randomly flies by and gets healed by a teammate.

Now this all looks very flashy and impressive, but could have been all for naught if he would get hit one more time, or if he was a fraction too slow with his blink dagger. And that's why we keep playing to improve. You learn to recognize which items you will need against certain enemies to have the highest chance of staying alive. You learn to pick heroes that are effective against certain heroes. You might still die while having better knowledge about the situation you're in. But where you first had a 1% of surviving, you slowly start to increase that chance of survival to the point where you can do somewhat similar escapes. That feeling, of making it out alive against all odds while outsmarting multiple opponents is amazing.

Ofcourse, this particular play requires you to be very intimate with the game and have absolute knowledge about the heroes and items in the game while being mechanically skilled enough to make this all play out as it did. But as long as you learn how to increase your chance of survival , you will slowly become a better player and do some incredibly satisfying stuff. Even when you're playing at lower skilllevels. Like the unknown player in the next clip:

Could he be killed if everyone played perfectly? Probably. But that doesn't matter. Players will make wrong decisions and make mistakes. You will make wrong decisions and make mistakes. It's the nature of the game. But where many players would have died here, this player recognized how walking in the trees gives him a bigger chance of surviving than walking out in the middle of the road, where enemies have full vision of their target at all times. When the game ends, he will still think back at this moment with fondness.

'But Onemanarmyy, this is all very individualistic and hardly matters if your teammates are bad', i hear you say. This is true, sometimes you play with people that are angry, have a bad day or play a hero they don't understand. Some games are just not winnable. But you can still try your best, be the best version of yourself to inspire your team to start caring about the game and make it easier to play for your teammates.

Here's the thing. If you are able to keep 2-3 opponents occupied by playing relatively dangerous, your teammates will not have to deal with those opponents and can play at the safer spots of the map. This is the connection between Dota being a game about teamwork and individual skill at the same time. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your teammates is to be nowhere near them and just waste the time of the opponents. Sometimes teamwork is to walk behind someone casting spells on him. Sometimes teamwork is to wait for a teammate to catch up so that you can combine your spells into killing an unsuspecting target. You think it feels satisfying to outplay multiple opponents by yourself? Imagine how it feels when you do it together with a teammate. Now imagine how it feels when an entire team does exactly the right things. That is what makes Dota 2 a fantastic game that i'll never get tired of.