The Best Way To Improve At Dota 2

Hey everyone,

Dojo team here.

Happy New Year to everyone in the Discord. If you did not see our New Year post, we wanted to take a moment to properly say it here. We hope 2026 is starting off well for you.

Over the last few weeks, we have been meeting as a team and refining how we approach coaching inside the Dojo. This email is about one of the most important conclusions we have come to.

We're talking about the best way to improve at Dota 2.

And more specifically, why replay analysis leads to real improvement, while live coaching often does not.

When we opened up one-on-one coaching with BSJ a few weeks/months ago, people were saying they wanted to do live coaching with BSJ.

The idea is simple. Play a game, have a higher MMR player sitting over your shoulder, and tell you exactly what to do in real time.

If you are a 3k player and you have a 10k player directing every move, you will probably destroy people at your bracket. As long as you follow instructions well.

That feels good. It feels effective. And in the moment, it looks like improvement.

But it is not.

This led to a problem that BSJ voiced quickly after doing his first few sessions. Rather than actually helping players improve and helping understand their thinking, BSJ found himself just talking at people, telling them what to do the whole time.

What we learned is this: live coaching almost always turns into micromanagement.

“Do this. Go there. Buy this. Take this fight. Back now.”

The problem is not that these instructions are wrong. The problem is that they bypass your thinking entirely.

You are not learning how to evaluate the game. You are borrowing someone else’s evaluation.

The moment that voice disappears, so your performance drops.

This is why players can look incredible in coached games, then immediately fall back to their old level the next day.

Nothing internal changed.

There is another type of coaching that BSJ actually prefers.

We were actually debating doing this sooner but we thought it was worth it to try live coaching first to “give people what they said they wanted”

Lesson learned: the doctor often knows more than the patient.

The other method we're talking about is a replay analysis.

Replay analysis does something very different.

Instead of telling you what to do, BSJ watches a game and asks how you arrived at the decision you made. Or forces you to re-calculate based on the information at that moment of the match if you forgot.

You have time to go back and forth and together, you explore your thinking fully to find what is correct and what is lacking.

He’ll ask things like:

This is where real improvement happens.

The goal is not to give you better answers. The goal is to build better questions.

Think of it like a math problem.

If someone shows you the solution, it always looks obvious after the fact. You nod along and say, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

But if you were never taught how to solve the problem, you cannot do it again on your own.

Live coaching shows you the answer.

Replay analysis teaches you how to solve the problem.

This is the same idea as being given a fish versus being taught how to fish.

Live coaching feeds you for one game.

Replay analysis changes how you think forever.

And Dota is a complex system. You cannot brute force it with instructions. You have to understand it well enough to navigate it yourself.

We're not trying to create the types of players that need to be told what to do in order to do it right.

We want to teach you to be self-sufficient so you can go out and improve on your own or even pass knowledge forward. That's the measure of whether you have true understanding.

This is why our coaching going forward may feel more question-based than what people expect. But it's also much more impactful.

For the right type of student this process is challenging but leads to way more aha moments than live coaching ever could.

Plus it sticks for the long term.

If we can change the way you interpret situations, your decisions improve naturally, without anyone needing to sit in your ear.

That is the entire goal.

As we move through 2026, this philosophy is going to shape everything we do in the Dojo.

How we coach.
How we run events.
How we spend our time.

Less micromanagement. Less telling you what to do, more understanding of how you think. That way we can give you personalized answers and meet you exactly where you’re at .

We hope this idea connects beyond Dota as well.

If you are trying to improve at anything, this same framework applies.

These skills are not just useful for Dota improvement. They are useful for personal development in general.

Because of this, we are going to be shifting our coaching very soon to focus almost entirely on replay analysis and question-based learning, rather than live coaching.

As an aside, there is nothing wrong with live coaching. It can be fun, and it can feel powerful in the moment. It just does not match our long-term goals, or the type of player we are trying to help.

If this new approach excites you, you are exactly who this community is being built for.

We will have more news on coaching reopening over the next few days. We have been speaking with our previous VIP students first before reopening 1-on-1 coaching with BSJ to the public.

We've got some exciting changes to share with you. Stay tuned!

– The Dota Dojo Team