Understanding and being honest with your own skill level

Chances are, (after having understood the basics of the game) you have real good potential to be a really good player. You have made big plays, you have great map awareness, and have seemingly understood all there is to the game. (I firmly believe there's always something to learn in Dota, even after having played for 7 years)So what can you do to unleash that potential in you? First of all, and the most important of all..Recognise and reduce your most common mistakes. Some of which you yourself are fully aware of. You don't necessarily make these mistakes every game, but they can be quite frequent on a "bad day". It's only when you decide to face yourself, accept these mistakes and work on correcting them, that you truly improve as a player in terms of consistency and skill level.However, if you are unable to recognise what your common mistakes are, invest some time to watch a couple of game where you play decently well (no point in looking at extremes and imbalanced games), and try to spot for mistakes which you know you shouldn't have made, or think of how you could have made a better decision. Look out for small details that harms your efficiency, whichever role you're playing. Even as you play, you could articulate what you're doing and if it makes sense to you, otherwise, don't do it. If you're not even able to verbalise what you're doing, you clearly don't know what you're doing.Mistakes I used to make as a support:1. Over-aggression without substantial farm, especially after unsuccessful rotation in early game.Farming in the jungle using pull-camps, stacking for you cores, or hugging a tower on a free lane would have been much better. Or simply carry a tp and be prepared to counter initiate on enemy heroes that are diving deep into your tower.2. Using tp without discretion, which could have been saved to tp support your cores.3. Inefficiencies in jungle: lapses in noting the timing and moving towards camps to stack.Common mistakes I observed in pub games:1. Not taking advantage when the team has gotten an advantage such as a mek or a big ulti like ravage before the enemy does. Farming for too long instead of seeking to take an objective could cost you to lose this hard-earned lead. The converse is true, avoid fightining and get farm on the important heroes until the team is capable of fighting. Don't lose more than necessary.2. Not puchasing tp on core heroes which have a big ultimate off cooldown. A tp could potentially turn a big teamfight around.3. In late game, fighting into the enemy line-up while your carry has been caught out of position and has died is a really bad idea. Don't force your own team mate to buy back unnecessarily.4. Buying parts of an item (commonly bkb) which you're putting in your stash anyway is really meaningless. The gold could have been utilised more flexibly such as for a buyback in case you get caught.5. If an objective(even first lane of rax) is most certainly lost, don't lose more than you have to, such as by throwing a short ranged spell and risk yourself getting caught. Wait for your teammates to respawn and punish the enemy if they overstay their welcome.6. Not noting enemy's big cool down timers and forcing big teamfights at roshan or towers while their's are up while yours is not.7. Repeatedly getting team-wiped while attempting to push highground instead of pressuring lanes and waiting to gain one or two more items before going high ground.8. Not looking around the map and click on enemy heroes to check their item progression.9. Not understanding their hero well enough. While certain mid heroes are expected to gank(more so for supports in current meta though), certain mid heroes such as viper, OD, and storm spirit requires substantial farm before doing so. Be patient, farm up before you help your teammates, notify them about your plans and request them to play safer.10. Attempt for more than just kills when you're making an early rotation as a core hero. One good example would be to kill enemy's offlaner and heading into a push while the siege creep is coming into the lane. (Starting at 03:00 and every 7th wave thereafter, 6:30, 10:00 etc.)It's really easy to be good, all you have to do is remove the bad, whatever's that left will be good.If you watch competitve players, one of the reasons why they're professional is due to their consistencies in delivering what they're capable of almost every single game. You too make big plays like they do in your own games, but the hardest thing to emulate is to be so consistent in avoiding mistakes in 90% of the games you play.Let's assume that there are 33.3% of games where the game is won without you having to play well, 33.3% of games where the converse is true, and are near impossible to win. Then there's that 33.3% of games where YOU actually decide the outcome of the game by playing at a skill level above that of others. Aim to win all of these games if you really think you're that good. That gives you a really good win rate of nearly 67%! Take a look at the win rate of the list of verified players on DOTABUFF and you'll find that's approximately the win rate they've got.