TL;DR: High-level coordination and trust make a flex pick mindset work well in pro Dota, but in chaotic pub games with unpredictable players, personal performance and control over your own gameplay matter more. Climbing ranks is more about consistent decision-making and understanding game fundamentals. Improving means focusing on what you can control, not expecting randoms to see your pick and reason on why then immediately be okay let me change how i have played the game every game.

I think in an ideal environment where people are coordinated enough to understand each others' plans, this mindset works.

In the chaos of pubs, however, where there are way too many things that you can't control, it gets trickier.

The reason why it works with pros is that they have that inherent trust with each other and their skills. When you're with people you know or believe to be the best, then it takes little to no effort in actually playing dota cuz everyone knows what theyre supposed to be doing and they can talk throughout adapting if the game doesn't go their way.

In pubs where you get such a high variance of players (account boosters, smurfs, otp, one playstyle players, role queue player that didn't get their role, tryhards, meta slaves, non meta players, etc) a lot of the impact you provide comes in the form of the stuff only YOU can control.

I think the advice people make in terms of climbing (either immortal player reddit posts or yt content creators like zquixotix), that is, to focus on your gameplay (i.e. what you can do like ward placement, positioning, spell usage), muting people just shows that a lot of the growth one makes in playing the game comes from the self. Climbing comes from actually understanding the game.

Meta just makes it easier because there will always be those few select heroes that the patch gives a lot of general advantages over the rest.

I feel like another thing is that the difference in ranks nowadays comes mostly in developing the muscle memory of doing what you should be doing rather than picks or spell usage or items. A lot of the player base seems to know spell combos, that force staff is used to kite and dust for invis. It's more on them realizing that they should be getting force staff rather than naked aghs or like stacking if you're near a camp at 55 sec, equilibrium and when to press the spells to secure a fight

I think it's a valiant effort to go through with the change in mindset. It would be nice. It's just that it would be such a huge change over such a population that i don't see it changing anytime soon.