alright so just like every other comment I post, I was actually thinking about making a video for this topic even though obviously it's not a nuanced subject, but I mean.. I think people come at it from the wrong angle.
what I think is the main problem is that people are too focused on short term things and also I think people are too focused on things that are more straightforward. I'm sure you can understand that when someone says "here's an awesome flash!!" it's very straight forward. a cool flash that can get you kills, but that's a problem.
"here's an awesome flash" doesn't help you in the long run. I mean yeah, a cool flash will get you a couple kills or improve you VERY SLIGHTLY, but the difference between me and hiko isn't my fucking flash knowledge. the difference between a silver and a GE or a GE and a really good player isn't about nade knowledge or other simple and stupid shit. it's about mechanics and it's about the basics.
the basics are -> peeking and movement, game sense, point click aim, weapon knowledge
I'm sure there's a few things that i've left out there, but those are the 4 main things. now obviously they're weighted in importance, but I won't get into that right now.
so what you want to be doing is improving those 4 things. every game you need to be focusing on improving JUST those 4 things.
now this leads pretty well into the first point I made way back at the beginning, that people are too focused on the short term. so I'll precurse this with the fact that I'm diamond in LoL and I've previously been GM in sc2 as well as that I've been GE in CS, so I do have some knowledge about learning new games and the like.
I'll tell you that I have never been angry at my team for losing a game. I've been angry at my team for making me die before, but the main point of me getting angry at anything is me being angry at myself for fucking up something I knew I could fix. in every game, you are the only constant in a game filled with variables. what you need to be doing is entering every gmae with the goal that you're going to do your very best work with that.
to do that you need to go into every game usually with an idea for what you're improving that game. now obviously it's going to be a bit different as you get better, but when I'm lower level in a game and I'm improving, every game I'm thinking about something taht I want to improve that game, whether it's a matchup in a game or something like that. for SC2 even when I got into GM i was still awful at multitasking, so that was always what I was focusing on in that game. In CSGO, I'm mostly focusing on smaller things that I focus on in general. I won't get into it but it's a little bit less specific when you get to higher and higher levels if you don't have major flaws in your game play.
this also translates into taking risks. if you're not worried about the short term (specifically winning a certain game), you should be worried about the long term. well, while not as applicable in csgo as in LoL or SC2, you need to be willing to take risks. have you ever asked yourself the question "can I do X?" well you're in mm FUCKING DO IT!!!. in LoL I have like 600+ games played with Lee Sin, and I know exactly what I can do with him in every scenario you could possibly imagine (or at least I did when I played it a lot). I didn't learn all that by chilling back and playing safe, NO!!! I learned it all by playing super aggressive and when I wondered if I could do something I would say lets find out and try it.
that means that in this game if I'm wondering if I can do something, I try it to. can I flash push this? idk LETS FUCKING TRY IT!! now of course this is a little bit more situational than in other games but it's still the sort of thing you need to try and need to know. you might have to try it a few times to actuall yknow if it works consistently, but that's the only way to really learn. that's the same reason that people say "if you win all your scrims (with your team) then you're doing it wrong". because if you're focused on winning in the short term you're sacrificing the long term.
now of course focusing on the long term (your core fundamentals) is all well and good, but you do need to leanr the smokes and flashes and cool little things as well, but the thing is.. when I first came back to this game after not playing (I came back in september or so 2014 after not touching this game + quitting source in 2012~) I knew literally none of that shit and made it to global elite. That doesn't mean that that is optimal or even specifically super possible for msot players, but what I mean to say is that the difference between your rank and the next rank or your (the universal your) rank and GE is your mechanics and core fundamentals, not your ability to throw a certain nade, and it's certainly not about your teammate's ability to clutch any given round.
Q: how long did this take you to type out? A: timed it at 10 minutes