Moving on to the second instalment, today we’ll continue on to more mistakes and things which you could have done to win a game.

2. Communication

It’s obvious the difference in what brings the win in solo and team games. It’s something called teamwork. When in a team, talk to your teammate[s]. Don’t keep quiet. It’s really that simple. It usually goes something like this;

In that quick conversation, my team easily accomplished several things;

- break the ice
- you get to decide what you will contribute to the team [air, siege, melee, range or casters]
- amend a prior build you have in mind to fit your teams needs
- decide on an attack plan

That only the first advantage. What if you take it a bit further, as demonstrated below;

See? Not only did we accomplish the things in the first list, we even went ahead to psyche the enemy team. In case you’re still blur as to what happened, here’s a step-by-step narration [this is at Rice Fields]:

- We communicated between Allies and no information gets leaked out
- hamzah hit Shift+Enter [instead of just Enter] to display his message to All, letting everyone [including the enemy team] know his ‘plans’.
- We resumed to laugh to ourselves
- I played along by saying to everyone again, scolding hamzah for ‘being a noob to let the enemy know our plans’.

Here’s the catch;
1. hamzah was UD, and an UD player rarely [if ever] does a tower rush
2. we didn’t do the tower rush, but hamzah went ahead to tech while ksilver and I attacked the upper left base.

We won because the fools believed us and concentrated their forces there [ksilver sent a peon to scout] and we killed over 5 peons before they arrived. By then, hamzah already has a decent army, and we pushed the bottom left base flat in no time.

And communicating isn’t limited to early game chatting, it must be done throughout the game.
- Alert an enemy presence if your team [or teammates] to be walking into an ambush.
- use the minimap signal [aka pinging] to show specific locations
- be prepared to amend your build, and let your team know beforehand
- don’t be afraid to ask your teammate[s] to amend their build, but make sure it’s sensible and fits the situation
- ask to be healed, or offer to heal
- request that they bring/buy certain items [speed/protection/healing scrolls are invaluable in teams]

Oh, I’d like to make an important point when it comes to pinging. Don’t abuse it. If you want to point to a location to gather/attack, ping once, maximum twice. Only ping like crazy when you’re desperate, i.e;
- your base is under attack, and request that they TP to help NOW NOW NOW
- you [or your teammates] get creep-jacked
- you’re attacking a base, and you spot enemy reinforcements coming from behind

Simply put, use it IF and ONLY IF it’s a drastic emergency. Otherwise, ping once. Unecessary multiple pings annoy the shit out of people. That wraps up this part of the guide. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is freaking simple.

Talk.

More to come in the next part!