The Elite Mindset - I'd Rather It Be My Fault

So this is bothering me right now after reading some recent posts on the official forums and seeing some videos on YouTube.

First, the YouTube video. Get a load of this.



Does anyone else see the problems here? This guy is shooting a video of him in a scenario getting rolled complaining about premades vs pugs hoping to use it as evidence.

Here's what I have.

1. Clicking all his abilities. Really? You can't move effectively and still get off abilities if you do that. You get away with that in Tier 1, but in Tier 4 it's asking to get rolled.
2. Keyboard turning. It's always slower than mouse turning. Being slower than the opponent is a bad thing. It usually ends with hitting the respawn button.
3. Breaking the stagger on a healer without any assistance. Really? No one is going to kill a decent healing WP by himself.
4. Not immediately dumping rage when under focus fire. Berserk makes you take more damage. Berserk can be dropped by using one skill. Or if he's really using Wot Rules? without a pocket guard and healer...yeah.
5. Using potions when out of danger. Potions are to save your ass when you come under focus fire and your support needs a second to come to your aid. Potions keep you in the fight. He was clearly getting heals during the battle. Make it easier on your healers.

You know how I know all those things are problems? I've done them myself. (Minus the dumping rage part since SMs don't use that mechanic.)

Had he not done these things, his side could have very easily won that battle or at least made it more competitive.

The elite player would rather have it be his fault. If it's his fault, then he can fix the problem. He's focused on self-improvement. If it's not his fault, he can only blame others. He's focused on the flaws of others.

I'm not too proud to ask for help. I even put up a post about how I got started on this journey as the first post in this series. Heck, here's the thread I made asking for help on WHAlliance.

Here's the official forum thread in question. I requested a combat log from the OP to potentially see what the issue might be. Going by how the thread is going, I doubt he'll send me one. He'd rather complain that it's broken when he clearly has other issues under his control that could be easily fixed.

I'm done ranting for now. We'll be back to regularly scheduled programming next time.

The Elite Mindset - You Never Rise to the Occasion

Rather you fall back on your level of training. A great example of this happened on the PTS test last Friday. For one part of the test, each side alternated defending Chillwind Manor in Eataine. With friendly collision turned off, defending was much more difficult. I don't think either side really knew how to efficiently defend the BO without it.

In PK, we'd let the attackers in the BO a little bit and kill them as they come in. The attacker's advance would be slowed as they got caught on each other and they would die to our damage as they came in. Sure they might outnumber us 4 to 1, but when we have a warband and we only engage half a warband at a time as they push in, it's quite easy to win.

Defense of the BO failed hard on both sides. Even the outnumbered side managed to grab the BO eventually.

Assaulting the defended position did not change at all. I instantly knew how to beat that from my past experience. I told my side we should hold to morale 3, have a couple tanks go in and drop Challenge and Distracting Bellow, followed by everyone else to mop up. With incoming damage dropped to 35% of normal, it was nothing to get everyone in quickly and safely. The enemy front line disintegrated within seconds on the morale dump.

I'm not yet sure how to defend such a position without friendly collision. It will likely involve having to be much more aggressive though. Once I figure out something, I'll test it and, if it works, train the rest of my alliance on it.

I'm starting to think tanks in WAR are a lot like the offensive/defensive lines in American football at least in oRvR. If your big guys beat up their big guys, chances are pretty good you're going to win.

Team Play and The Elite Mindset - A Video Example

I found this little gem (ok 1GB isn't little, but still) on the RDPS forums and it fits perfectly with two of the topics, so I had to share this. They're speaking French, but it's not hard to tell what they're saying even if you don't know the language.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B2UDT95P

Everything I've talked about in both those series is contained in this video in some form.

Note: avast! says it's clean, and my system is fine so far, but still use your own due diligence before downloading and watching the video. I didn't make it, so I'm not gonna vouch for it.

Original forum post 

Nice job gentlemen. I hope to see more ass-kicking in the future.

The Elite Mindset - Accurate Judgment

The biggest difference in my opinion between WAR and other competitive games like Counter Strike is that you can neither see nor hear you opponents. You fight the silent, intelligent enemy. He doesn't hear your trash talk. He doesn't hear your frustration. He doesn't hear your victory cries. He can't hear your strategy, and neither can you hear his. You are playing a game against an opponent and you are given very limited information about him.

I was flipping through stuff on Hulu and found a rather interesting show. It's called Solitary. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. One of the most intriguing things about watching the show is seeing the impressions the contestants get in their minds about their competition from very limited information. All they get is each players age and 2 other facts. They never see each other or hear each other. It's quite humorous to see just how wrong they are about their opponents due to their imaginations just filling in the rest of the information. Oftentimes, the emotions cloud their judgment. (It could also be the sleep deprivation and hunger, but hey, I'm trying to make point here.)

I see this same thing happen in WAR. Players see a name or guild tag and automatically assume certain things about the player. I've been told on multiple occasions by a player that rerolled from Destro to Order that enemy players would see my guild tag in an empty instance and preemptively give up because of our reputation. (It's rare we get a good fight and we hate it. Most quit after 2 or 3 wipes leaving us bored in stage 2 and 3.) Even when we are on our low RR alts, we still get the effect.

The thing is we're not invincible. Not even close. DROW and us go back and forth often. Sometimes they win. Sometimes we win. It's about even. Sometimes we get beat because we just don't have the ability to form a super strong group with what's online at that moment. I imagine they run into the same issue too. Everyone has their off days.

In reality, the elite guilds aren't really that much different from causal guilds with the exception of the expectation of performance and the level of training provided. One of the first things we have to break in a new recruit is his inaccurate views of the elite enemy guilds. I can't tell you how many times I yell in vent. "Yeah, it's DROW/Malice/Shadows/other elite Destro guild. Don't waffle yourself. Push into them!" Yes we take into account that these guys are likely more organized that the average bear, but we don't let that beat us before we start.

Sometimes we'll charge into a situation we have no hope of possibly surviving. But the warband leader will know this and set the expectation upfront and give the goal. A lot of times it's take a BO from under the zerg and hold it until it locks to prevent a domination flip. We don't go into 5 times our numbers and expect to wipe them. About 4 to 1 is the best we've been able to wipe in a well defended position. Much more than that and sheer numbers will overwhelm us eventually.

The point of all this is simple. Player Killers started pulling off a lot more interesting stuff once we didn't allow intimidation to cause incorrect judgments. Your enemy cannot interact with you much in WAR, so the intimidation comes purely from within yourself. Another example is all the stuff I have here about DPS tanking ToVL. That whole thing came about because I had trouble holding hate in Lost Vale, so I did some research. Once I became confident it would work in theory, I put it into practice and it worked. (By the way, thanks to Delolith for a lot of that research over on WHA. It gave me a good foundation to build my 2 handed tanking strategy.) If I had not ignored all the crap out there saying it would never work, I would still be struggling in PvE trying to use a shield build for everything.

So yeah, don't psych yourself out or you'll never be able to rise to the occasion. Well, provided rising to the occasion is even possible that is.

The Elite Mindset - Immunity to Criticism

Imagine this situation. You're leaving a scenario in which you just got your ass handed to you on a silver platter. The rest of the group is frustrated. The leader of the group admits responsibility for the defeat. Another group member of your same archetype gives you some advice on how to improve your play based on what he saw. How do you respond?

A. STFU N00B! It's my 15 bux!
B. OMFG you're right! I'm such a dumbass!
C. Ok. I'll try it out.

Which one is the elite player's response? It should be fairly obvious that it's C. The elite player is immune to criticism.

Immunity to criticism means simply that the elite player simply takes criticism as it is without any emotional attachment to it. He still listens to the criticism, but he uses him own judgment and experimentation to determine the worth of the advice given to him. Because the elite player does not care what others think of him, he can also easily admit his mistakes in front of others and learn from them quickly. I had to do this during my last ToVL run trying to get Boss 8 back in position after the Casket of Souls fires. I kept pulling him too far, which of course, wipes the group because of the cleave.

The situation given in the first paragraph is part of the evaluation of new prospective Circle of Rage member. If the prospective member exhibits either response A or B, he is denied entry into the guild. A lot of times in combat, adjustments have to be made quickly to save a wipe or react to an opportunity to wipe the opponent, especially when outnumbered by a good ratio. Emotional drama during such a high pressure encounter will cause a group to lose quicker than just about anything else.

I don't know about you, but I don't like losing and by extension, don't like having people around me that can cause me to lose more easily. I'm not afraid of losing, but I'd rather not lose given the opportunity to win.

Become emotionally detached to criticism. If the criticism helps you, implement it. If it doesn't work or is just given to try to aggravate you, ignore it. Improper emotions cloud accurate judgment.

The Elite Mindset - We're All Noobs at Some Point

I wanted to do a series on warband strategy, but I felt this would be more useful overall.  I started having a lot more fun in WAR when I quit running from challenge and started embracing it. Instead of fearing the zerg, I learned to use it's disorganization against it. I went from fearing seeing the Destro elite premades to welcoming them. Instead of being fearful, I became feared (mostly because of my guild tag).

I consider myself to be an elite player that a lot of more "causal" players seem to rail about on the forums. I'm certainly in an elite guild. I don't play a whole lot, and I don't have the best gear, but playing a lot and having the best gear doesn't make one elite. I've managed to earn the title Master Tactician from my guildmates. I wasn't always like this though.

Don't believe me? Here. Watch for yourself. 10 minutes of footage of probably one of the most embarrassing scenarios I've ever been in. (I've muted the sound to prevent the video from being used for other purposes.)




This was shot about a year ago. You've got everything there from lack of fortitude to keyboard turning to not using challenge to not using Guard properly to a crappy, cluttered UI. It's truly pathetic how the heck I got to tier 4 playing that badly.

But I didn't beat myself up over it. I manned up, admitted I sucked and got help.

The first thing required to make the transition from "normal" player to "elite" player is to realize that you don't know everything and that it's quite possible you aren't the greatest thing since sliced bread. The "elite" may seem cocky, but the first true lesson is being elite is humility. A player who thinks he's perfect cannot accept feedback from others and therefore cannot improve.

Truly, the first fear to go has to be the fear of failure.