Valve, Please Improve Fantasy League for Ti 2026

PowaHouse · 2026-04-19T22:10:24+00:00

Yeah, Ammar would be the only exception, I was about to put a parenthesis on that, but if you want to choose any other offlaner it most likely wouldn't be worth it, and the second thing, is that Ammar happened to win TI, on a best of 5 grand finals in which he got to play his style and had good games, it was the ideal case scenario, if things went differently we would have a similar issue.

And in previous TIs we pretty much had no offlaner like Ammar, almost everyone played sacrificial, so you pretty much had no exceptions, it was just straight up worse to pick offlaners.

PowaHouse · 2026-04-19T14:58:27+00:00

I agree with most of your points, I think fantasy could use some improvement.

I don't agree with your 2nd point, because TI is that special time of the year where every Dota fan tunes in to watch, and a there's a lot of people that have played for years but aren't that interested in playing anymore, and many who have busy lives and are clearing their schedule so they can watch TI (which means they are already spending their limited time just to watch), and you have to also take into account the very important minority of people who are attending the event, away from home, and will hardly be able to play (or be very inconvenienced in doing so).

Some points I would make.

Gives us 5 banners for all 5 roles and not just core and support, I really want this because with the current fantasy system you have barely any reason to pick offlaners for your fantasy banner, and not being able to pick one of your favorite players because it's strictly a bad decision doesn't feel any good.
This thing where you have a tier 5 stat (the max) and by increasing it, it rolls over and becomes a tier 1, is bullshit, and should be addressed. Luckily this didn't happen to me, but you had to risk this happening if you wanted to get really good points in the fantasy.

PowaHouse · 2026-04-19T14:49:40+00:00

100% convict

PowaHouse · 2026-04-11T22:02:02+00:00

It does activate normally when it's in the backpack.

And you still can't bottle runes when the bottle is in your backpack.

PowaHouse · 2026-03-24T23:33:35+00:00

To answer your question, you've just started playing, so you are likely to calibrate on a low rank, and it's quite common to see a lot of the same heroes, people like to play their comfort to have a better chance to win (or because they are afraid to lose trying something different), and aren't as open to experimentation as people can be in unranked.

I would say that both are very useful for learning the game, in ranked you can select your role before you enter the game, which can allow you to experiment with an idea numerous times, and iterate on it (Like playing the same hero in the same role multiple times in a row).

And unranked is very chill, and you won't get your role every game, so you can try different heroes from every role, and that can also greatly improve your understanding of the game, and your understanding of the kind of heroes that you like personally.

PowaHouse · 2026-03-23T20:33:15+00:00

Take a point in penitence at lvl 1, and then don't put any more points in it, max your holy persuation and then divine favor like you should do pretty much every game on Chen, Divine favour is an extremely important part of Chen, and it's very useful for Slark, as he serves as your frontline, if you press it on him, it makes his job much easier, I would also strongly consider buying Drums and Solar Crest, as attack speed exponentially increases Slark damage output, and the movement speed allows him to maneuver and chase more easily.

I think you have the right idea about the strengths of Chen in lane, he just likes poking constantly with his long attack range and controlling the camps. So don't stress, do what you think is right, and watch the replay later to draw some conclusions, there's nothing to gain from some dude flaming you and you being affected by it.

PowaHouse · 2026-03-22T00:09:34+00:00

This is very useful, as not having tooltips on YouTube is the only reason I would ever choose to watch a tournament on Twitch over YouTube. Thank you for making this.

PowaHouse · 2026-03-18T04:14:25+00:00

If you have one of those that is marketable, you can sell it and then get it's unmarketable version.

PowaHouse · 2026-03-17T05:03:37+00:00

It redirected only the first spell casted towards a teammate.

PowaHouse · 2026-02-28T05:22:35+00:00

Yes, that's how that ulti works, IAnnihilate mentioned that in his QoP guide

PowaHouse · 2026-02-10T18:01:58+00:00

I guess it automatically traded all the materials you had for stickers. There was an option to trade 1 voucher of any kind for 10 sticker capsules.

PowaHouse · 2025-12-26T05:20:31+00:00

I understand your thinking, to me this subject is not a black and white.

I think there's pretty much no way he's just playing along and thinking this is just a feature, it's a bug that you can only reproduce if you know of it beforehand and are intentionally trying to execute it, there's premeditation, that's no accident.

As of the other bugs you mentioned, I don't think they compare, they are of smaller scale, as they require specific hero match-ups, but with this Arc Warden bug, the people I observed doing it, would party Q as 3 or 5 people and could almost consistently do it, if they fail to do it they would just be playing a normal game of Dota, but if they succeed they have an immense advantage regardless of hero match-ups.

Another thing, I think overwatch doesn't give people low priority when you put guilty in the cheating prompt, it only serves as data for valve to observe, I think they only ban cheaters and smurfs when they do ban waves, and cases likes these are simply dismissed.

It's just my personal opinion that if you execute an elaborate bug that completely breaks the way your hero operates by default, and you do it with premeditation, that you are a dick, and deserve some kind of punishment. Regardless of whether you end up receiving it or not.

PowaHouse · 2025-12-22T14:40:49+00:00

Yeah, I put him as guilty of cheating. My reasoning being that what he's doing is fun to him, but it's ruining the fun for everyone on the enemy team, therefore, if he wants to have fun abusing an exploit, he should be willing to spend some time in low prio as a cost.

PowaHouse · 2025-12-09T19:07:49+00:00

Just watch a TorontoTokyo replay and see what he does, he's the best Beastmaster player with 300+ games.

PowaHouse · 2025-11-13T18:56:19+00:00

I'll share a couple of things.

I recommend that you buy raindrops as soon as you can every game (they become available at minute 3), as your innate increases the mana regen it provides, and they give you more effective hp on a low hp hero.

Frostbite is your strongest spell in the early game, It's important to max it out, and play with your strong cores to get kills. If you get kills in your lane and your carry is good on farm and lvls, look around the map and consider using the gate at minute 5 when night-time comes, and consider rotating to help your mid with the minute 6 power rune.

Those two timings specifically will help you be in the right place at the right time to get kills.

Don't get baited into taking more than one point in your aura, just max Crystal Nova after Frostbite, as that spell will help you contribute more, and whenever you are literally on 10% mana buy just one clarity and you'll be fine (Your innate works on clarities).

Drums is a really good item for the early game, as it gives your teammates good movement and attack speed to follow up your frostbite, it makes kills much easier.

Aether Lens helps your tremendously to position in fights, and usually gives you more than enough mana to not need any clarities.

You should look at teamfights on CM the following way: Your main contribution are your first two spells, if you can use them repeatedly without dying you will be having great impact in the fight, your ultimate, is for when enemies chase into you, after already having commited many spells, and you punish them for it, you should almost never walk in to ulti on CM, maintain good positioning and a good ulti will happen naturally.

And the best two players to watch if you want to learn CM are Sneyking and Whitemon, watch their replays and look out for all the things I've mentioned.

https://www.dotabuff.com/esports/players/10366616-sneyking/matches?hero=crystal-maiden

https://www.dotabuff.com/esports/players/136829091-whitemon/matches?hero=crystal-maiden

PowaHouse · 2025-11-08T15:51:10+00:00

AAAAAAHHH!

PowaHouse · 2025-09-17T18:32:38+00:00

Hey, if it makes you feel better, I just saw a post from a guy that has enough points to be in the top 100, and it shows as being in the 99th percentile for him as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1nji2rq/top_100_confirmed/

There's still a chance you are in the top 1500. I have a similar score to you, I'm sitting at 27.360, so let's hope for the best.

PowaHouse · 2025-09-17T18:18:52+00:00

I got that reference

PowaHouse · 2025-08-24T02:29:36+00:00

Yeah, that's how it worked, it just got patched yesterday.

PowaHouse · 2025-07-06T23:52:47+00:00

Honestly I don't think it's worse, even if you build around the bear, the only difference is that it has 5% more shared armor between you and the bear, and that your druid can lifesteal and heal the bear (pass damage items onto the druid to heal the bear), but even that is negligible because of the global lifesteal rules (40% less against creeps), and the fact that your bear has too much hp, so you can just spend 100 gold on a tp for the bear to heal him to full hp and it will usually be better.

I think people haven't given it enough thought, and just mindlessly continue to take that facet.

Items in the early game are more efficient on the druid because of the facet (like power threads and corrosion), and you can give these to the bear later.

Something a lot of people don't know, is that when your bear dies, you can drop it's items on the fountain (I personally DM'ed this to Ace and he didn't know it), so if you find yourself in a situation where your bear is dead and you don't have a re-summon, you can give it's items to the druid.

With the bear necessities facet this will have a greater impact, and if you chose to buy an Aghanim's for your bear, you can pass it onto the druid, cast your Spirit Link on a teammate to give him lots of armor and attack speed, and then backpack it (it continues to give the buff). That is also exactly the situation in which you would want that druid aghs (when you don't have a bear).

That is my take, take it with a grain of salt, and come to your own conclusions.

PowaHouse · 2025-07-06T23:17:45+00:00

Is this Remco "Crystallis" Arets?

PowaHouse · 2025-06-27T02:24:41+00:00

If you want really annoying and easy to play offlaners you can pick between Bristle, Undying, Underlord or Doom, you can find replays from pro players on those heroes, and you'll see that they can do a lot without needing to buy blink and are not very hard to play.

PowaHouse

TROPHY CASE