Top 5 Skills You Need To Be An Esports Pro

Getting into the wonderful world of Esports is no easy task. You’ll need a combination of raw skill and a plethora of other qualities and techniques to succeed in this playground of competition. While it may sound intimidating, it shouldn’t be! The journey to be the best is a road paved with trials and tribulations but also with self-improvement at its core. A lot of these skills have a real-world application to them as well so this can level up your abilities outside of the game too! With that said, here are our top 5 skills you need to be an Esports pro.

1. Communication

We’ve said it before multiple times within our content but we really can’t emphasize enough the importance of good communication. Playing on an Esports team requires you to be able to convey your thoughts in a concise yet speedy manner as many things can be happening at any given time. One teammate might have a specific course of action in mind while you may have another. Coordinating these different thoughts together to give the team a synchronous mindset is crucial to securing victory. If you’re playing a team match with a partner in Smash you probably will need to at some point tell your partner to grab the opponent. Doing this gives you a setup to knock them off stage and to close out any remaining stocks which would be much harder to coordinate without verbally talking to your ally. Good communication allows for more synergy with others and can make for some excellent highlights.

2. Research

Playing your Esports game of choice matters a lot but one of the components to Esports that doesn’t really get as much coverage is the research aspect. Performing at your best requires you to learn about the deep mechanics and the meta of your game of choice. Let’s say you’re into Super Smash Brothers Melee but only have a tenuous grasp on the mechanics of the game. You know how to do smash attacks you know how to block, but do you know how to wavedash? Did you know this one technique is used by high-level players to throw off their opponents and to make it so that you can perform any ground attack while moving horizontally? Research also lets you find matchup knowledge on how to take down a particular character your opponent may use. Do you struggle against Fox in Melee? Research may tell you to counterpick them by playing either Marth or Samus to help give you the edge. What if you want to really delve into character-specific techniques? Research gives pros the options they need to succeed such as learning the “wobble” technique for the Ice Climbers in Melee, where they can stunlock their opponent and prevent them from moving.

3. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking, and doing it quickly is one of the most powerful skills you can have on your side within a tense match. Within the span of an 8-minute match, you have millions of micro-decisions being made at any given time. You have to ask yourself things such as will my opponent block my next move? Will they try to air dodge out of the way? Will they retaliate when they try to make it back from the ledge? You basically need an answer to everything and the only way to do that is to condense those choices into your best possible options. Sometimes you’ll need to react, others you’ll need to anticipate. Part of critical thinking within Esports involves the ability to get inside your opponent's head and try to read their minds. The mental battle in Esports is something that isn’t discussed as much but it deserves attention all the same. Asking what your opponent would do after using the same combo string can give you more insight into what they do next. Do they keep doing the same thing and refuse to use their other options? If so, then keep doing your strategy as it’s probably putting them on tilt. Are they catching on to your tricks? Time to hit them with a mixup to throw them off and make them second guess themselves. Mastering your mind while also reading your opponents can almost feel like a superpower when done right.

4. Multitasking

Esports pros might just be some of the best multitaskers on the planet. Imagine how many different bars and meters you have to pay attention to at any given moment throughout the course of a match. In the case of Smash, you need to keep an eye on your percentage, your opponents, and even any projectiles they may have charged up or possibly a meter unique to them! Thankfully in Smash, every piece of key information is transparent to both players which makes keeping track of these components slightly easier. What if we take that sort of multitasking to the next level in games such as League of Legends or Overwatch? Both of these games have a central mechanic known as “cooldowns” for their abilities. You can visibly see your own cooldowns but you can’t see your opponents which means you’ll have to guess which moves they have available to them. In the case of League of Legends, there are further components that can complicate this matter even further such as your loadout or items. Certain items can reduce players' cooldown reduction and thankfully this is visible for both parties. Loadouts can also do this to a degree but you cannot visibly see your opponent's loadout which makes things even harder. We’re not saying you need to memorize a spreadsheet for each game unless you’re playing Pokemon, in which case you do for type matchups, but you do need to keep track of a lot of moving components within Esports.

5. Determination

The real skill that sets apart a casual player from a professional player is the innate drive to keep on going despite the odds. Like any sport, self-improvement is the cornerstone to success and having determination and motivation to push your skills and yourself matters a lot. Putting in the time to get good and accepting both your wins and losses isn’t easy. There will inevitably be a moment where you will learn a hard lesson in the game of your choice. Failure can be a good thing as it gives us the chance to learn from our mistakes and use that to up our game next time we play. To keep our determination strong, we need to celebrate our victories as well. They give us the motivation we need to keep going and tell us what we’re doing right. Having a tangible goal in mind can be a major driving force for achieving dreams of going professional and taking the daily steps to do that can go a long way for keeping the will to win strong.

Becoming Better

We covered a small drop in an ocean of skills and qualities that players need to be a pro. We’re curious to hear your thoughts on this too! What do you think are some of the top skills needed to be a pro Esports player?