Paragon Bronze To Top 100 Advice

Paragon Bronze To Top 100 Advice by Internetz

This post is for all those struggling to get out of silver/gold/plat.

Paragon was my first MOBA ever. I found out about it through the PS4 store a day or two after it was released because it looked pretty cool. It took me about 200 games to get out of Bronze, 100 games to get out of Silver, 500 games to get out of Gold and another 300 games to get out of Platinum.

Here are the key things that help me move forward through the difficult learning curve, elo hells, meta changes, DCs, toxic players etc.

1. Find your strong suit

My first 200 games were with Kallari. I picked her because she looked cool and I couldn’t aim with PS4 controller. This quickly tanked my elo to the 900s because I was choosing the most difficult hero (At the time) while knowing absolutely nothing about MOBAs. I was on everyones dodge list and even my buddies who tolerated me for a long time stopped inviting me to their groups. One day a buddy of mine said to me, “I know you like to play the heroes that no one plays – why don’t you try Dekker and support.. all the pros use her.” In bronze and silver no one uses Dekker in fact its common even to this day for Bronze and Silvers to queue dodge if they see a Dekker.

When I look back, my friend suggesting that I play Dekker was the most important point in my Paragon “career”. Playing Support allowed me to direct my focus on one thing: protect the carry. I didn’t worry about last hits, I didn’t worry about jungle, I didn’t worry about my cp, I didn’t have to think about “where should I be right now” because all I had to do was follow the carry, put wards around him and stun anyone who came to kill him. People started to like me because of this. I got really good using Dekker’s kit to protect the carry and secure kills. While I felt very confident about handing whats im front of me- I still had ZERO map awareness. I had no clue when to rotate or even if I should rotate. I knew in order to improve I had to get out of my comfort zone and learn when to leave the carry and rotate, in order to do this I needed to improve my map awareness.

2. Map Reading and the Subconscious

I knew map reading was an important skill but none of the tips and videos told me how get better at it. They just repeated the same thing over and over again. The human subconscious is very good at picking up on patterns. If you want to improve your map reading use this to your advantage.

While playing, glance at the mini-map as much as possible. At first, don’t try to decipher it just pay attention to the colors and their location. Blue dots, red dots, blue heroes, red heroes, wards, which way are the heroes facing? What you want to do is train your subconscious to make connections between (1) What the mini map looks like (2) Your current emotional state and (3) What is going on in front of you. Are you nervous, are your raging, are you happy, are laughing, do you feel ahead, do you feel hopeless etc, did you just lose a team fight, are you free farming etc. Allow your subconscious to do what it does best – recognize patterns. So for example: I glance at the mini map, see the colors and and their position. I think to myself “I feel safe” while looking at whats on the screen (easy part). Don’t over think it, the process should take 1 second.

The key here is to feed your subconscious those 3 input sources with the intention and trust that in time, it will be able to handle the job. (Why emotion? Because your brain prioritizes situations that have emotion attached to them. Emotions are neurotransmitters that aid in “sealing” in new behaviors)

3. Monkey See, Monkey Do

I wanted to get better at Dekker so I went to the agora.gg leaderboard and found 2 or 3 players who mained Dekker and looked for long games where the fairness meter was near the middle. I copied those replay ids and just watched what the Dekker did and what they built. I learned SO much from doing this. I was building way too much mana, not enough armor, I was too spammy with my abilities – I was playing so different from these guys. After watching about 10 games on 2x speed I built a deck similar to what they built and just pretended as if I was one of them. I did exactly what I thought they would do. When I started regularly reviewing games I was able to get into low Platinum.

Primates learn fastest by copying others. This trait helped our species survive so our brains place high priority on copying another member of our species who is more successful than us. We also feel more confident and safe when we have the same gear/builds as the pros. We want the same mouse/keyboard as the pros, we want a DX Racer chair, we ask for imsKo’s or Jleo’s latest build in stream. When we “gear up” like the pros and emulate the pros we build new neurological pathways, which at the chemical level prime the brain for learning.

4. Poker and Paragon

I played poker professionally for 2 years and through I built a tolerance for variance and bad beats. Solo queing and Poker are very similar in the sense that they are both a game of skill and luck (the hand you are dealt, the team you are dealt). You need to accept that bad beats will happen. You need to accept that you will get a trash team and DCs. You need to expect that people will do things that make no sense and still beat you when you played perfect. This WILL tilt you. this WILL make you quit the game. I quit the game twice because of “gold hell” but came back after a week or 2. Taking breaks is good for you. You will go on 12 game losing streaks playing your absolute best. But you have to understand that these losing streaks happen to everyone. It’s not just you. Even though Paragon and Poker are games of skill and luck… everyone’s luck is the same. And if everyone’s luck is the same – then over a large enough sample size, it becomes purely a game of skill. It’s ok to blame others but don’t waste so much energy on it. Put your energy into developing your Skill.

5. Switch to PC

Switching to PC was the 2nd most important thing that happened in my Paragon “Career”. I thought about it for a long time but I dreaded the adjustment time and didn’t want to tank my elo. So what I did was create a smurf account and bought a Razer Nostromo gamepad (http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer-nostromo), this had a traditional L3 stick just like PS4 but everything else was like a mini keyboard. It was the best of both worlds. All of a sudden aiming was easy, there were less lag spikes and the game felt smoother. It was like I was using an aim bot. I played a few games with Dekker but lost because it was a fresh account and the games were chaotic with no structure. So I picked Murdock and just did EXACTLY what I saw the hundreds of Murdocks I supported do. I think I reached Plat on my new account in about 60 games of Murdock which blew my mind.

To Be Continued

Once I reached Plat on my new account I switched back to Dekker and was better than ever because I knew what it felt like to be a carry. I knew what it felt like to fear the jungler, the despair of being behind, the euphoria of being ahead, how bad it felt to ganked 2 times in the first 7 minutes, etc. Most important of all – playing carry made me learn when it was OK to leave the carry and to help the rest of the team.

There are other things that I’d like to go over but I really want to play Paragon right now. Everything I covered so far is enough to get you to Platinum. The next post I make will cover the things that got me through Platinum and to where I am now at at 1950ish and what my current mindset is.

My PS4 Account: https://agora.gg/profile/The.Internet

My PC Account: https://agora.gg/profile/the%20internet

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