WoW Round II

[SoloZ-]

Debate question: Teamwork is more crucial than indvidual prodigious skill in leading a team to victory.



Remember the rules still apply:
1) Whole team must post once before the next person can post again. -> Facilitate active participation

2) The round will end after maximum 3 cycles of posts.

Propo: Forsaken
Oppo: Redeemers

[SG_Lancelot]

Teamwork is more crucial than individual prodigious skill in leading a team to victory.




Well if you don't have skills. You don't even need to talk about the teamwork in a team.


Your personal skills like map awareness, TP assisting, gankings, rune control, and warding etc will contribute to your own survivability, before even talking about teamwork.



Well, in DotA, teamwork simply means the chemistry and the synergy of your team. In engaging, having good teamwork means coordinating the timing of when to fire off your spells. In catching, teamwork means the right way to lure the enemy or the right time to initiate.



Let me give a very simple example, a rather exaggerated one. If I have totally no personal skills, or some say familiarity of the game, I can't even last hit; I can't even aim my spells correctly, do I still have to speak about helping out teammates with TP assisting or tricking the enemy to lure them?



In conclusion, TEAMWORK WILL NEVER BE MORE CRUCIAL FOR LEADING A TEAM TO VICTORY. period.

[Ant]

As first speaker for the proposition, I will begin with a few points to build a foundation for our stand, that teamwork is more crucial than individual prodigious skill in leading a team to victory, to start on the proposition's case.

The motion seems to be clear enough, a comparison between the importance of teamwork versus individual skill in a team's victory. I shall start to show that teamwork is more crucial than individual skill by answering a few questions.

First, what does teamwork accomplish? Next, what does individual skill accomplish? Lastly and most importantly, of all the things accomplished, which can only be accomplished by one aspect (teamwork or individual skill) and which is more crucial in leading a team to victory?

To see what teamwork can accomplish, we shall see what advantages a team has by having greater teamwork over another team. Teamwork in DotA is manifested and at the same time comprises of the following - communication, coordination, and something I would like to term as 'correctness'. At the basic level, a team with better coordination will be able to fight battles with much greater success than a team without. A team with better communication is constantly aware of what to do in the game and as a result has players being more 'correct', i.e. making less mistakes. A large bulk of mistakes in DotA are made due to the individual having imperfect knowledge, which can be partially overcome by good communication (and maphack).

At a more advanced level, a team with better coordination and communication is able to gank much more effectively, and is able to achieve greater ward, rune, and map control. With those, as well as good communication, a team is much more able to pressure in and take down towers. A team with better map control, pressuring in with good communication, is very difficult to stop when split pushing. With 3 lanes to re-allocate their forces into, and a victory on any lane assuring them a tower or even a rax, a team with superior teamwork has such a great advantage over a team with less superior teamwork when pressuring in.

Now, what can individual skill accomplish? At the basic level, a more skilled individual will stand a better chance of winning in a lane and stand a better chance of winning in an even fight. A more skilled individual stands a better chance of surviving when outnumbered, and also does better in an engagement by finding the correct position to be in where he can benefit the most from.

In actual fact, a team with better individual skill will only triumph over a team with better teamwork in the laning phase. A skilled individual stands a better chance of escaping a gank, but a skilled team stands a better chance of not getting ganked at all. A skilled individual benefits the most from a fight, but a skilled team wins a fight.

Ultimately, what clinches a victory is the ability for one team to break into an opponent's base, regardless of how well farmed their opponents are. Accomplishing this, as the above shows, requires more teamwork than individual skill.

Another basis for the proposition's argument is this: DotA is a game with too many restrictions for individual skill to make a great impact on the game. You only have so much control over a game of DotA. A spell flying at you is a spell flying at you. No matter how much skill you have, there is absolutely no way to dodge hex, and also absolutely no way to do anything much you're stuck as a critter. A great amount of individual skill is manifested in relatively minute ways, and as a result success is much easier when teamwork comes into play.

I shall leave the proposition to develop more on this basis and end with an illustration for my point. Supposing two players fight each other, say an RK against another RK, and one has much greater individual skill than the other who is a noob, there is still little to prevent the RK who has greater skill from taking a lot of damage should they decide to fight. However, if you have one really pro RK against two noob RK's fighting it out, the two noob RK's, without needing to put in much effort, can easily defeat that one RK.

As a final note, the proposition agrees with the first speaker of the opposition that there is no need to talk about teamwork if one team doesn't know how to play DotA. The keyword here is "prodigious". Perhaps I was wrong in saying that the motion needed no clarification. The issue here, though one between individual skill and teamwork, has one underlying assumption. The factor here is that the individual skill has to be prodigious in nature, and the difference between a lack of prodigious individual skill and a lack of individual skill is very damn huge.