Pub-training: why it's bad and how to punish people for doing it

[[ID7]banready]

You'll often hear Moonmeander making fun of his enemies for pub-training.

Why is pub-training a sub-optimal strategy and how do you punish a team for doing it?

when I hear of "pub training", I think of a KOTF, Tempest, Defiler, Pollywog, and Forsaken Archer team that hit lvl 6 and start rushing towers together in a pack of 5, never leaving each other's side. I guess the idea is to knock down towers together and use their heavy AOE/team-fighting ults in unison if they get attacked?

[[DrQs]OneSantaPlz]

Or more likely in public games: 5 heroes that roam with 5 to gank every lane.

How to punish: Get a carry to carry tp (See what i did there?) and let him farm EVERY lane while keeping everything warded.

If you win 2/3 teamfights in a row to underleveled pubtraining opponents they will most likely concede. (My past experience)

[XrBob]

Makes sense. It's train-ing as in choo choo train, not training as in learning.

[PrestonLee]

'Team pushing' is not a sub-optimal strategy, it's actually one of the strongest strategies to winning games early. Well-coordinated team pushes are extremely hard to stop, especially with the right heroes in this 'tank' meta.

You call it pub-training when players attempt to utilize a team-pushing strat but have no idea of the actually strategy behind it except just getting together as five and rolling over other pub players who have no idea how to stop it.

Turtling strats/heroes, defensive wards, and/or superior team initiation can dismantle pub-trains, the problem is a well coordinated "pub-train" (push team) is extremely hard to stop if not prepared (with your 4 carry/pub-stomp hero squish team).


'Pub-trains' work because it is usually enough to roll over other pub teams/players who do not have enough teamplay coordination to make the right decisions as a team.. thus some players will not TP to defend, or solo players will get picked off by the 5 man team because of lack of wards/awareness, or teams will just plain waste too much time responding incorrectly ("GUYS THEY ARE PUSHING MID EVERYONE TP NOW" *everyone tp's, the 'train' is actually heading to push bot tower through woods but the team wastes TP's and time sitting mid due to bad/no wards placed; team that TP'ed mid gets nothing out of it and wastes time not farming/leveling, team that trained jungle->bot gets free tower and some jungle farm/experience).


Even decent players/smurfs (ex. MoonMeander) can easily fall prey to pubtrains due to many extremely common tendencies shared by smurfs (lack of wards = "I'm carry I'm not buying wards you buy them because you're bad", shitty hero picks = "I picked Drunken Master/Bloodhunter to stomp you because I'm a better player than you but didn't expect you to actually have teamplay to hardcounter my shitty pick", bad teamplay = "I stay in the back and go in last to cleanup and get all the hero kills because I'm a baller carry, f*** my noob team I want the game to drag out anyway so I can get more kills to boost my KDR")


tl;dr - proper picking and proper teamplay beats pubtrains. But pubtrains beat lack of wards, shitty hero picks, and bad teamplay/selfish tendencies, all of which plague pub games, hence why people do it. It's just abusing the fact that pub players react badly when it comes to teamplay and taking full advantage of it.