Most players watch their VODs like a highlight reel: skip to the fights, feel bad about the deaths, close the video. That doesn't fix anything. A good review isn't about the fight. It's about the decision that put you in the fight.
What to record
Record your full ranked games, not just clips. Your graphics card's built-in recorder or OBS both work. Two things make reviews much better:
- Record your comms. Half of the mistakes I find are in what the team said, or didn't say.
- Focus on games where you lost RP. Those are the games where pressure was on, and where your real mistakes live.
Watch your deaths backwards
Don't start from the drop. Start from the moment you died or your team was wiped, then rewind 30 to 60 seconds. The death is the result. The mistake is almost always earlier: where you were standing, when you moved, which fight you chose.
Five questions for every death
- Where was the zone, and where was I? Was I early, on time, or late for the rotation?
- What did I know about other teams? Had we heard shots, seen a ping, or checked the banners?
- What were my options? Push, hold, reposition, or leave. Which one did I pick, and was another one safer?
- Did I have an exit? If a third team arrived, where would I have gone?
- What did comms say? Did the team agree on the plan, or did everyone do their own thing?
You'll notice none of these are about aim. If you missed shots, that's worth knowing, but it's rarely why you lost the game.
Be honest, not harsh. Every player makes mistakes, Predators included. The point of a review is to find one thing to fix, not to prove you're bad.
Keep a mistake log
After each review, write one line per mistake: what happened and what you should have done. After a few sessions, the same lines start repeating. That's your list, in order of what to fix.
Then fix them one at a time. Pick the top one, focus on it for a week of ranked, and review again. When it stops showing up in your log, move to the next one.
What a coach adds
Reviewing yourself works, but it has a blind spot: you can only find mistakes you already understand. A coach who has played at the top sees the decisions you didn't know were decisions. And because I coach live in ranked, I can catch the pressure mistakes as they happen, not just on the replay.
Get your VODs reviewed
VOD breakdowns of your own matches are part of every ranked coaching session. We play ranked together, then go back over the moments where the pressure got to you. From $25 an hour.
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