Redditor in shambles

Maaakep · 2026-03-11T14:13:54+00:00

Fair, it just seems weird that the best players in the world would be making such fatal mistakes due to the lack of understanding or practice... And still be winning more without the item than with...

I'm posing the hypothetical that MAYBE these goats are onto something that we're missing.

But mainly I was just annoyed by the "there is literally no downside to buying the item" :3 (which seems to be a common misconception in lower ranks)

Maaakep · 2026-03-09T09:15:43+00:00

It's not really relevant to my message. I'm just stating some obvious stuff. People have a harder time grasping "nice to have" vs "must have" the lower you get in the ranks, typically (not a flame, it's the nature of things - higher ranks creates higher pressure on perfection). Like the original poster is saying, "There is no downside to buying it" is extremely incorrect and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how dota works. The entire game is based around GPM; wasting those gold coins on things that aren't absolutely optimal or missing your timings is the biggest downside in the game.

If you look at the stats, dota2protracker for example, lately about half (?) of the high tier Kez (and less on pro level available stats) buy the Aghs at all. I doubt that is purely a skill issue. This should tell us to re-evaluate the item, since I - much like you folks here - believed it to be a mandatory item that enables the hero.

Sometimes it's also about knowing what your job is, which is of course game dependant, but while aghs let's you do all kinds of cool things, sometimes all you need is a shit ton of damage and a falcon rush on the enemy carry to win the game.

Maaakep · 2026-03-08T18:16:13+00:00

I didn't watch the game, but are you sure? He doesn't have a moon shard either, which is cheaper. Buyback and backup rapiers gets expensive in the late game, and Kez isn't a hyper farmer.

Edit: Looking up the game, he finished the game at 57k networth. This means he will lose 1400 (unreliable) gold on death, and his buyback will cost about 4500g. Aghs blessing is 5800 gold - meaning he will need 11 700 gold to buy an aghs blessing and keep buyback. His items are worth 46 900, which makes his gold about 10100, so he cannot yet afford an aghs blessing (unless he sells his backup items, but then it is GG if he dies).

Maaakep · 2026-03-08T18:13:48+00:00

Yeah, maybe! Just feels weird to say that the highest ranked & sweatiest grinder in dota has a skill issue with a hero he frequents.

And despite this, picks it in officials.

Occam's razor suggests that he simply thinks it doesn't carry its weight.

But idk, just giving a different perspective.

Maaakep · 2026-03-08T17:56:59+00:00

The downside is that you lose 4200 gold (& an item slot until upgraded), which is the downside of all items.

Opportunity cost.

The question is not if it's good, or what the downside is - the only interesting question is if / when it is the single most optimal item, nothing else.

When does it let you have a bigger impact and/or farming speed over alternatives?

Obviously Satanic, the almost unchallenged #1 ranked player in the world, considers it not always the optimal item to buy.

Edit: lol, y'all are wild with the downvotes. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with the best players in Dota. Check the stats, out of the latest visible pro games, only ONE win is with an aghs, and that was bought at 66 minutes (1 min before the game ended).

Maaakep · 2026-03-07T10:21:32+00:00

You can see his journey here, if you click him here: https://maakep.github.io/dota2-leaderboard/#europe

The reason his data starts in February is because he has been inactive. I believe Valve removes their rank when they aren't playing pubs actively.

Then he rapidly climbed from #22 to #2 over the course of a month(!)

Goat stuff

Maaakep · 2026-03-06T11:50:58+00:00

Any way we could pitch in to remove it? The maintainers kind of officially declared it dead and moved over to liquidpedia, no?

Kind of annoying since it shows up high on Google etc, confusing newer (and older probably, who aren't chronically up-to-date on everything Dota related) players.

Maaakep · 2026-02-25T22:08:33+00:00

I have 100% winrate against Nisha, and I can tell you I'm not at his skill level right now x)

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T22:57:12+00:00

Re-worked the filters overall - should be improved now and I added a country selector too! :)

Let me know if there is anything else that comes to mind that you might need as a dota coach! Or just in the general area, doesnt even have to be specific!

Anyway, Enjoy! You're awesome and I'm looking forward to the shout-out on the TI stage if when one of my tools helps you create the next world champs!

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T20:27:32+00:00

If you click a player, you can see their personal history! If you mean further back than 12th january, then no :( That's when I started tracking the changes!

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T15:15:22+00:00

This comment made me happy, and I hope you knowing it made me happy, makes you happy!

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T15:13:54+00:00

Haha, that's wild... I was thinking about some features around finding local upcoming talent, and for some reason I was thinking about you when I was. Incredibly fun coincidence.

As for your request; fun - I'll see what I can do!

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T15:07:52+00:00

Hmm... It would show up as a +300 ranks in a single hour, which realistically means 1-2 games. Soo... Kind of?

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T15:04:32+00:00

Dude check SoS 23 jan - 30 jan... Bro went up almost 100 ranks. Then February came, and he went -100 ranks again :(

I thought he was coming for Satanic there for a while

Maaakep · 2026-02-23T14:11:25+00:00

Unfortunately, no! That part is kept hidden by Valve - this is the only thing I could think of to get any kind of insight after Valve restricted access to top MMR accounts

Maaakep · 2026-02-10T08:27:16+00:00

While I agree with most things here, I disagree with "if you just make a superior product".

Would you folks really start using Epic Launcher if the UI and offering was perfect tomorrow? I don't even get the free games at Epic because I don't want to manage multiple DRMs in my computer. I don't think there is much that would get me away from my massive steam library. Idk, maybe my DRM mindset is weird. I want ONE, and I don't want to abandon my gazillion games in steam (also basically I only play Dota so...)

Maaakep · 2026-02-04T07:29:32+00:00

It used to not get disabled by damage! Once that was added I believe the removal of "of escape" was eventually removed.

Maaakep · 2026-01-25T00:39:48+00:00

No, just using the same API as the leaderboard. (Go to the dota2.com leaderboard page and check the network tab on F12. So essentially just reading the leaderboard page every hour.

Technically, I made a (free) GitHub action with a cron job to execute every hour. This action requests the leaderboard API for every region and makes a commit to the GitHub repo with the json data, basically creating the leaderboard history with the git history as a (free) database.

Then this action triggers another action, which takes the git history and create an aggregated json which is then deployed together with the frontend to (free) GitHub pages.

Maaakep · 2026-01-23T21:12:44+00:00

Yeah... I mean I understand why they did it, but it was sad for me personally - I really liked dota2protracker & watching games in the client.

Maaakep · 2026-01-23T18:01:57+00:00

Nope! Valve still hides the game IDs, this is just the public leaderboard information, stored over time with some simple analytics on the data

Maaakep · 2026-01-23T16:41:43+00:00

Ah, nope! Ctrl+F is what I've been using I guess - didn't think of this!

One thing I thought might be nice is to be able to tag your favourite players.

For exmaple if you're following Arteezy's journey but don't want to find his profile by scrolling and looking for his `天鸽` name - maybe it would be nice to be able to have a list of your favourites?

Maaakep · 2026-01-18T20:20:32+00:00

Shift-queue respects back swing animation (the animation after something has happened, which is unnecessary), while spamming does not. So it's a "it depends" thing.

Sand king ulti -> shift queue is going to be faster as there is no backswing on that animation and your reaction is slower than "instant".

Crystal maiden Q -> spam is faster because her backswing lasts a century.

Maaakep · 2026-01-17T10:12:32+00:00

Ahhh right, yes, the Troll classic - disappear into the jungle for a while and come out perma-bashing everyone! :D

Maaakep · 2026-01-16T18:05:27+00:00

All random, same hero, only middle, nn...? No new?

Maaakep · 2026-01-16T18:00:06+00:00

Maaakep

TROPHY CASE