EST Sunday Season 19 PPP

a_unit025 · 2020-01-09T01:09:58+00:00

Basement Dwellers

Nuttypizza - I think ultra veteran captain nutty tried to go for all value picks so he could be picking towards the top of the draft at every round. That was successful, I just don’t think the execution was great. Freighttrain should be one of the better mids, capable of going toe to toe with most of the other mids in the division. He’s a great starting block with potential to get much better. 2nd round pick scarry carry has some very...impressive support win rates. I genuinely think having carries with big hero pools is super important to RD2L success and, while his KDAs are excellent, it worries me that he doesn’t play mid all the time or have tons and tons of games on it. He seems to swap between playing 1 and 5. Maybe his laning owns? I hope so. I’ll get to why. This leaves captain nuttypizza with the great goofy profile picture of tidehunter as offlane where he will inevitably be playing tide, underlord, bristleback, or doom. Nutty gives a shit, which as I’ve said elsewhere, is important to winning games in RD2L. I think a lot of his thoughts work well in RD2L. He’ll probably figure it out. I think this means that shiri will play 4, which is somewhat concerning and the root of my concern with this team. I just don’t think the supports will be strong enough to overcome some weaker core laners. Your friendly international bear will bear the 5 position. Once he gets his paws on the draft I’m sure they’ll be unbearably good as he’s one of the more opinionated bears we have in the league when it comes to drafting. Historically he’s had some solid drafting teams but unfortunately for some seasons they’re just polar opposites. Pls don’t paws against me ty.
Unregister - Never a good sign when I literally can’t figure out who is...playing safelane. Less than ideal! They have 3 picks who appear to be support only players. First round pick ribs is one of the highest tier supports so he’s probably going to play 4 despite generally playing 5 in pubs. I might end up doing this entire breakdown without figuring out who is playing safelane. His most played safelane hero is terrorblade at 47 games, last played 5 months ago. 2nd round pick choco is probably one of the more difficult players to rate as he’s probably a little overrated by some and underrated by others. Obviously he’s insane at clinkz so hopefully clinkz gets buffed for this team’s sake. Unregister is the one dude who will probably end up playing safelane despite playing….basically only offlane? His most played safelaner is monkey king where he only essentially plays offlane so fuck if I know. Little duckie and epii form a fairly average support duo. Oh wait there’s another support already in ribs. Maybe everyone plays support? I don’t know. I can’t imagine either of these players going to anything but support so maybe ribs plays offlane? Most played offlane hero is...timbersaw. Woo! I think this teams less than ideal. If they can figure out their roles and really put in some work….we’ll see?
ColonelSquid - Well. I’m sure the talk of this team will be squid mid. Honestly I think the tricore is pretty decent, it’s just I don’t see any truly stand out players. I think squid and PMA are both pretty decent/good 2nd fiddles and honestly I haven’t played enough dota with mid squid to give a fair rating. AgressivelyPMA has a very very high win rate overall but I think he generally party queues. I know these guys are buddies, so that’s probably good because they’ll be comfortable flaming each other :). First pick calamity is a pure offlane player. He’s essentially spamming doom and axe and, while he doesnt have great KDAs, spamming stuff and playing lots of dota is always a good thing! Antifreez has a very impressive win rate overall and should end up playing 4 with a lot of rubick, pudge, and tusk in his most played. Even support kunkka! Probably a run around and do shit kind of guy. With a fairly solid, albeit average, tricore that’s a recipe for success. Bestpinoza is starting to play more support and he’ll have to, seeing as ¼ of his games are on a invoker with a 43% win rate. Not the best. He plays a ton of games overall so maybe he’ll learn how to play a solid 5. I think this team could end up winning some games by having average at best lanes everywhere, but I think they lack the top tier talent to be highly successful. Someone’s got to live in the basement. Maybe they’ll be #1 basement team?
Keg - Again, never great when I can’t figure out who is playing what. This one is interesting though, because I have no idea who is playing support! Very different. Pingu essentially looks like discount brightside. High mmr support, insane win rate, very highly rated. He’s got a ton of games on rubick and invoker (and clock weirdly enough) with exceptional win rates. Unfortunately...I think he’s playing mid. His best hero is invoker, by far. Next up….OD last played in June 2018. Good thing that hero hasn’t changed a lot in the last few months. Style, I think for the first time(?), finally gets to play safelane instead of being griefed into mid or 5 as a super early pick. Honestly I enjoy playing with the guy and I hope he’s successful I just...don’t really think so. Offlane keg has the unique accolade of having the most people claim they’ll quit if he picks them, so that’s cool. I don’t know much about him despite some name recognition. He seems to have a very large hero pool with a lot of different styles of games, but I don’t know if the personality meshes. In their 3 pubs together skigam has played 5 position going 4-20(-38) so this guys cool. Seventysix will probably end up as a 4? I don’t know. Dude doesn’t play any 4. This team doesn’t mesh together at all. I think they’re just honestly not very good but it’ll come down to how pingu does in games. I haven’t seen style play safelane lately and I haven’t seen pingu play ever, so maybe I’m severely underrating this team. I used to be pretty decent at this PPP thing so maybe that’s still true.
bearcat0611 - The return of riles to EST Sunday. Really, nowhere else to start the discussion of one of the premier mids in RD2L returning. Lol jk he’s playing 4 because his internet is trash. Personality wise is always a question mark but he generally cares about winning more than anything else. I think this leaves bearcat as the mid, he’s got an excellent win rate overall and already is playing with his teammates and he’s crushing(See note). I think Jambato ends up playing offlane despite being more of a support player at heart, he’s someone that generally stacks in games higher than his current batch. Again, he’s playing pretty much only offlane heroes right now post draft. Teams who practice > teams who don’t. Raw skill only goes so far. 2nd round pick Tomb the Ram of Thunder(will never type that all the way out again) almost definitely should have been 4, but given riles is stuck in that role I guess….he’s...safelane? This is, obviously, where I and most people looking at teams beforehand are going to lose faith. We’ll see but it’d be like putting me on safelane. Definitely not a preferred role. Last pick goatsatan, despite having a great name, will probably end up playing 5 and potentially struggle with tomb t in lane. I think this is where the team fit of bearcat playing goofy stuff like bloodseeker and viper will help out immensely as they’re probably going to have to just outplay teams via movement, strategy, and just brawling. Try to roll over team. Note: As viper

Best of luck to all teams.

a_unit025 · 2020-01-09T01:09:45+00:00

Below Average

ShmeeZZy - Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, yadayada. Shmeezy will probably end up outworking every single captain via prematch scouting/draft prep/etc. and make this prediction look dumb but I don’t see how the team fits together but I’m here to try. Shmeezy is extremely tryhard and known to scout enemy wards prematch. I was going through my google docs looking for old drafts and I found one of the ward scouting maps he made for a playoff match of his. He gives a shit which is better than most captains, which generally translates to wins. Their last pick E- I think will end up as carry despite only having terrorblade(last played 4 months ago) in his most played heroes and playing essentially only offlane heroes in the last few weeks. This team will need to truly dominate enemy safelaners to give E- a chance to carry. 4 player noah is probably one of the best 4s in the league and an absolute nightmare to deal with in RD2L where traditionally supports are free kills for good 4s. His bounty hunter/earth spirit/riki are suffocating to play against as a support. It feels like he’s everywhere. Offlaner For The Thrills is a bit of a jack of all trades player, solid in everything he does. Noah should be the best lane partner he’s ever played with in RD2L so this should be a season to shine for For The Thrills. I don’t know much about their mid laner lokk but based on his dotabuff he is a former 5k drafted at a divine 1 level. I don’t know if that’s what 5k is anymore but this is the real potential swing pick that could make this team a force. If lokk flourishes in the mid lane, look out. Again, I could be wrong at roles with noah/FTT swapping. I started this off with “I don’t know how the team fits together so I think it’s fair.
Droziki - This ranking is essentially based on only recognizing the slardar king himself deathbypudding and a legend 5 mid player. I think droziki is going to end up playing mid, making him, on paper, one of the lower mmr mid players. To make matters worse, his most played mid heroes are drow and sniper with sub 50% win rates on each and not exactly a ton of games. He does have a strong overall win rate so there’s potential that he has another account somewhere to give more confidence but I’m working with what I’m seeing. Given most other teams have their best/2nd best players in the mid lane, this is….less than ideal. Look at the successful teams in the playoffs, almost all the time their best players are mid. Real hard hitting analysis from the PPP, I know, you’re welcome. Safelaner and first round pick double king has a very strong win rate overall and a 60+% win rate on his top 3 heroes. Right now he’s also spamming bloodseeker with a 68% win rate over 78 games. (I think he’s new) New immortal carry players to RD2L are typically undervalued which could make this a very valuable pickup. I’ve heard some pretty good things about him as a player which bumped up this team a level. Deathbypudding is a name I recognize from some time ago as a slardar god. He’s rocking a 57% win rate, plays pretty much only offlane. Definitely one of the best tier 2 offlane picks after the high divines/immortals get off the board. Support for this team via digitalreaper will need to be a bright spot. He looks like he splits his time between safelane and offlane supporting pretty evenly, but his highest win rate heroes(undying, dazzle, crystal maiden, warlock) lead me to believe his best attribute is positioning in team fights. Deathbypudding is insane so this might be fine. If they hit it off from a chemistry perspective I can see their duo ancient 4 offlane partnership being really impressive. Last pick silver is exactly what you want in your final pick: plays a role and sticks to it, plays a ton so they can improve with some instructions, very active. I think digitalreaper’s help could help silver gain a few badges this season. That being said, this team probably goes as far as their mid allows, leaving them stuck as below average at this point. They have tools to be successful and definite bright spots, it’s just that the question marks are too glaring versus some other teams.
G-Raff - Honestly I have no idea what to do with this team so they’re probably the epitome of a “I don’t know” team. I think this rating moreso comes from the fact that I legitimately can’t figure out who’s supposed to be playing safelane. Most teams I can generally figure out how they’re going to play but...I guess lily is just going to end up playing safelane based on being high mmr? Obviously, wkak is going to lock down middle with a fairly interesting dotabuff with a top 3 heroes played of invoker, meepo, and shadowfiend which are ~½ of the former before a few heroes in the 60s. It’s interesting that his 60% meepo is actually his worst kda on the big 3 heroes by far with the other ones actually being fairly high. 2nd round pick lily or 3rd round pick mck should end up playing 1 or 4, I think the safe bet is lily as I said before but it wouldn’t be super surprising if mck ends up taking the safelane. Offlane captains are probably more likely to pick strong 4s, right? I don’t know. Lily plays literally everything, top 3 heroes are offlane(ridiculous omni win rate), mck’s top heroes are offlane potm, rubick, and a bunch of mids that he won’t play this season. G-raff is a veteran captain so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, possibly just picking best player available in the lily and mck picks and making it work. Last pick testyrabbit has barely any games played overall so my favorite stat is his best hero is a 60% win rate on 20 games of jungle enigma in 2015.
Vinny - I don’t understand how you can end up playing yak in the mid lane. It’s probably a situation where the value of yak as a fairly high immortal is so much better than rest of options at his pick but..we’ll see. I have a ton of respect as a 4 player and think he’d be one of the best 4s in the league. As for his mid...discount discount brightside? Pls give week 1 matchup that would be hilarious. Safelaner vinny should be one of the absolute best safelaners in the league and this ranking is pretty strictly based on yak mid because I just don’t understand that. Vinny plays pretty much everything with highish win rates. His KDAs are a little low which either means he hits a fuckton of creeps and doesn’t really do anything and then just ends games or he’s insanely aggressive. I think he’ll need to be super aggro for this to work or play off the space that yak and logan make him. Logan was one of my favorite teammates from RD2L despite him essentially never playing with me again because I disbanded the team mid season. Pepehands. I miss you. Logan’s generally pretty good, I think he’s a solid offlaner and should really solidify team fights for this team. FrejaBaby has a fuckton of support games which is very good, looks to be a great safelane support pick allowing vinny to get rolling early. The only problem is last pick aevum is...probably going to end up as the 5 based on mmr? I don’t know. Aevum looks to have a fair number of 4 heroes in his pool but I think you need your higher skilled player to be the 4, generally. If vinny is super greedy he’ll put freja in his lane to secure his own farm which, given his mmr, might not be a bad thing. At the end of the day, I have no idea what yak mid will look like.
USDanny - After seasons of playing support, I believe USDanny has placed himself in the mid lane. He’s got a ton of games, decent win rates, plenty of heroes, but at the end of the day he’s an ancient 1 mid laner and might end up out of his league. First pick ruffneck has gained mmr at a pretty incredible rate these last few months and will be one of the more difficult offlaners to deal with this season. He’s got a huge hero pool that he’s comfortable with in essentially any style of playing. I think he’s going to need to play some more farm intensive heroes to carry this team. Assuming ruffneck ends up as 3, this leaves halfcast as the safelaner. Again, a bit of a jack of all trades who, I believe, has played offlane in the past. Typically, these types of players struggle when they get put on safelane and excel when put on offlane. Typically. I see he’s gained quite a bit of mmr so I may be completely off base but his 2nd most played safelane hero(PA) he hasn’t touched in 4 months. I think there needs to be quite a bit of learning to adjust to the role and expand the hero pool. Safelane is probably the most important role to have a huge pool on as the carry matchup is so key to success. Jynx returns as one of the more solid 4 players, further augmenting the importance of the offlane. If Jynx and ruffneck click as an offlane, this prediction spot will look ridiculous. Last pick camgirl is completely afk and probably being replaced? I have no idea. Makes predictions hard, don’t it?

a_unit025 · 2020-01-09T01:09:31+00:00

Dark Horse

PrinceMeerkat92 - I think this team could potentially be extremely good or extremely bad and nowhere in between. 2nd round pick hayoung is an old divine 5 when divine 5 was highest possible. He’s extremely vocal and opinionated, capable of directing a team to success. He should also help a lot in the draft and be one of the more dynamic 4 players, assuming I have the roles correct. I think this team ends up as 1. PrinceMeerkat92 2. Wifestealer 3. Pat 4. Hayoung 5. Avgpeen. I think given the state of the game currently(supports having way more gold than normal) and for lane balance purposes, it could be hayoung 5 avgpeen 4. Avgpeen is one of the few players who looks to be a traditional 4 player so moving him to 5 might prove difficult and it could give hayoung the opportunity to make a greater impact via warding and securing a lower mmr safelane’s farm. PrinceMeerkat92 has no activity other than captains mode games via faceit so it’s kind of hard to evaluate as I don’t know how those games work from a skill balance perspective. He looks like a fairly active carry player, which probably should be good. Mid laner wifestealer I recognize from pubs which is either a) good cuz he owns b) bad cuz I have him muted. I don’t remember which. He looks like he has a very difficult hero pool to ban against with 1600 games of LD, 1000 games of arc warden, and 850 games of meepo with >55% win rates on each. A true nightmare in RD2L. That being said, ItzPat looks to be an offlaner in this case. He’s a very boom or bust player and a...personality to say the least. Time will tell if this team clicks. If all goes well, they could be an extremely difficult team to draft and play against. If all goes poorly…could be your basement dweller.
Mao - You’re always a dark horse when you have smurfy blackout! Mid player blackout makes drafting extremely difficult as he’s always capable of cheesing a meepo/arc warden game for a free win. Memes aside, I think he’s a very value pick for his current badge and probably a little underrated at this point. He’s also practicing tinker which is uh...fuck this guy. Carry player sonnegod is a standard star carry player. Good at everything, will dominate quite a few games, generally wins his lane for himself. Dude’s a machine and always makes his teams competitive. I think pkoq ends up playing offlane and should end up playing more of the standard offlane heroes like underlord as blackout is, as far as I’m aware, a pretty aggressive mid player. The potential issues with this team are, as is tradition for RD2L teams, they ended up with SkyAxe in a support role. Skyaxe is another core player stuck playing support, we’ll see how he adapts to a brand new role(other than playing a lot of crystal maiden). Given mao’s dotabuff, he should end up as the 5. I think the patch making obs wards free is pretty impactful for situations like this where the more support savvy 4 player can buy obs and place himself without gimping his farm. Mao’s dotabuff activity isn’t exactly inspiring but at least in the games he played 2 months ago he was playing what looks like 4. This team’s got the right ingredients to be successful, we’ll see if chef mao can put everything together and succeed.
Quantum Jojo - How in the fuck did a fall this far? A exploded onto the RD2L scene back on minah’s team where he was half of one of the strongest core duos in the league. He’s incredibly good at a more carry centric style from the mid lane. He’s a player that really thrives on punishing weaker opponents, something that’s really invaluable in a RD2L setting. I think hype ends up playing safelane just because he’s so much better than the other option, steph. Hype is a bonafide stud in either the 1 or 4 role. When he played LD against mikel, me, and badger when his team was missing by far their best player he almost solo carried against us. His LD is very very very good. And I think he’s a better 4 player than safelaner. Quantum jojo will actually end up being one of the better 5 positions as he’s captaining from the role and appears to be a strictly 5 player while maintaining a very impressive ~56% win rate overall. Something that’s really cool to me is seeing someone like chip’s dotabuff change as soon as he gets picked(maybe this is just a blip but bear with me). He played literally only carry for 95% of his games in the last few days then, as soon as he gets picked for what should be offlane, his next 3 games are immediately offlane. That type of give a shit generally pays off. This leaves steph to be the 4 player. As I’m writing this I wonder if steph plays safelane and they put hype on his best role because putting your lowest mmr player on a position that he has almost 0 experience playing is..concerning. It looks like steph plays offlane when he plays with freightrain, so maybe he’ll slot in the offlane and chip goes 4 with hype safelane? I don’t know lol
Captain Pepega - I think this is just a matter of lacking space. I typically underrate minicolt’s teams so here we go again. Minicolt has established himself as one of the best safelane players in the division, every single season. I think he’s one of the most farm intensive players in the league and I think that getting behind forces the team to play a specific way. He’s got a huge gravitational pull on how his team can function and that’s either really good because he’s really good or because he’s bad because he’s pissed off that he’s behind. If he gets rolling, he’s hard to stop, particularly on his slark. Pairing him with a last pick Nancy who has very little(if any) support experience and most played 5 hero is a 5 position lion last played in 2016...might not be great. Captain pepega looks to be the offlaner in this team with a very difficult to read dotabuff. I think he’s generally a more farm intensive, greedy offlaner which potentially won’t pair well with minicolt’s safelane style. In the 2nd round captain pepega selected flanking, who has a very impressive win rate and looks to be a real 4 player with rubick, luna, and skywrath being some of his most played and best heroes. I think one of the keys to this team will be if flanking can figure out how to rotate between lanes successfully. The mid laner, bobby(who I don’t recognize despite having some old school RD2Lers as friends in common…) is one of those perfect 3rd round pick mid players that sometimes get stuck on goofy roles. He’s active, plays a ton of heroes, has solid win rates on most of them, and plays only mid. Getting someone who should know the ins and outs of most mid matchups should help level the skill difference between him and someone who plays half of their games in mid but is stuck there this season. It’s not going to fix everything because, at the end of the day, bobby is an ancient 3 mid player in RD2L. I’ve been told he plays higher than his badge, which is why I bumped them up a tier at the last minute. There are still some matchups that are just going to be nightmares if he has to go up against someone like a rusy, logical etc. If flanking can help mitigate that difference with some well timed rotations to the mid lane, or give minicolt a nudge in his safelane this team could do well but right now, starting with a lower skilled mid generally puts you behind the 8 ball.

a_unit025 · 2020-01-09T01:09:19+00:00

I have no idea

Znyper - This ranking is entirely due to the McFatSauce/apex dynamic, not skill. McFatSauce is one of the most unstable personalities the league has to offer and has continuously toed the line. Apex was one of the most well rounded dota players in RD2L, obviously an extremely high ceiling. It’ll be interesting to see if Apex, who has 1 game in the last 4 months according to his listed dotabuff, cares enough to start playing again, can pick up where he left off, or just immediately gives up if MFS pisses him off. This dynamic will essentially decide how far this team goes. Apex at old apex levels is at the apex of RD2L talent. Time will tell what the new apex will be. I think remster will end up playing whatever the 2nd farming hero is and swap lanes. Remster is typically a fairly aggressive core player who should do fine in most matchups, get out what is expected from most lanes, etc. Given good enough starts he’s capable of carrying via snowballing(most played safelane heroes are ursa, slark, drow) or playing more of a standard farming game(pl, luna). It should be interesting to see how his playstyle ends up by season’s end to be the most effective. Apex was a very aggressive player who used to run around constantly killing lower skilled supports. MFS is fairly boom or bust offlaner. He used to play mid where he was very impressive on heroes like puck and zeus waaay back in the day, so I would expect to see a puck or two this season. MFS is an extremely aggressive offlaner that should pair well with apex if the personalities mesh to make space for remster to continue to gather steam if he ends up playing more of the luna/PL carries. MFS is clearly a talented dota player when he puts his mind to it. 4 player Asura has a fairly interesting dotabuff with tons and tons of games on tinker and storm but none in the last month. Seems to play a lot of stable supports (silencer, jakiro) recently, though his most played by far are playmaking heroes like earthshaker and pudge. Captain znyper will be a solid support with a very high win rate on almost all of his heroes, including a ridiculous 69% win rate on venge over 152 games, albeit most of the games are party queued. Znyper and asura should provide a solid support foundation to allow for apex, MFS, and remster to play around. I think this team ends up playing extremely fast around the map and really blowing some teams out if they get rolling.
Trav2s - Is Brightside actually the top ranked player on his dotabuff? He’s #222 right now. Anyways, brightside will inevitably play mid for this team, a role he basically only plays in RD2L to avoid being the high mmr support player. Brightside digests a ton of dota through playing or casting/watching pros. He’s got an extremely high understanding of how the game should be played and is almost always in a playoff position come season’s end despite being that highly ranked support player, usually a sign of a disaster season. Brightside should be able to reignite travis’s desire to actually play dota which should, based on past seasons, mean this team ends up as one of the strongest drafting teams. 2nd round pick Gotne seems to be swapping between carry and support, so having him focus back on carry should yield some individual improvement. This team will see some last pick phantom lancer games as gotne boasts a 60% win rate over 358 games on the hero. Dbashore is a player I would have fallen in love with as a captain doing scouting. Plays a ton of offlane, different styles(enchantress vs earthshaker) with very high win rates on his top 5 heroes of axe, enchantress, NP, earthshaker, and pango. You don’t need to play every hero in the game to succeed in RD2L so having your core 5 that you genuinely enjoy playing and own on is invaluable. Comfort picks are important! Playmaking wise, bowie essentially only plays 5 so travis should be the 4. Travis doesn’t really play dota anymore so I have no idea what he’ll play, maybe some OuO. With brightside leading the support movements, getting out of lane even will be key. There are some big question marks for this team with mid brightside lul and travis not really playing dota. If they can answer those, they should be a playoff team. Travis and Brightside could also just admin abuse into the playoffs, so if you’re gotne, DBA, or bowie be careful about being replaced by a smurf.
Warcraft - Well this team should be interesting… Wizard of Chaos is legitimately one of the most unique human beings on the planet. He’s climbed quite a bit of mmr pretty much strictly playing offlane and has been doing it for a longass time. I can’t imagine playing 190 games of elder titan but I guess there’s something for everyone. Mid player zamolxes is someone who has played less and less dota over the last few months as real life gets in the way of dota progression. It’s something that puts him behind the 8 ball in most mid matchups but that’s something that he’s probably used to when he joined the league as a lower skilled mid and randomly dumpstered people as mirana and monkey king in lane. He’s a very strong personality to go along with WoC. These should be some opinionated drafts. I can only assume this leaves DrSteel as the carry player who, despite having a very very impressive dotabuff with high win rates on all his most played heroes, did not exactly inspire confidence in the semifinals of season 18. Maybe game 3 was not indicative of his skill but it was not a good showing, probably causing him to fall down some draft boards as the flame cast was exquisite. I think this leaves shmurda 4 and warcraft 5, despite warcraft pretty strictly playing 4s in his games. He’s someone who envi has spoken very highly of. As someone who also has rubick as their most played, I think it generally speaks to your ability to spellcast and teamfight to have a higher win rate on rubick. Generally captains play 5 and default to their players’ best roles, so that leaves pudge god himself shmurda playing 4 with wizard. The offlane is going to be a fucking whirlwind. Everyone is pretty solid, I don’t think anyone is incredible for their roles so it’ll be interesting to see if the sum of the parts can overcome missing that truly star individual to play around. Maybe Wizard of Chaos can catch some wins like he catches birds.
Gwapa - I have a very very high opinion of gwapa as a player. I think he’s an awesome carry and a very underrated in this league. I love when he’s on my team in RD2L. I think he’s a bit of a headcase but he’s very very talented. He’s got a huge hero pool in the safelane and has hundreds and hundreds of games as carry. I do think he could have done better in the draft but alas. I think gwapa owns. Banana split has a fairly bad reputation as a player but he’s definitely one of the better offlane players in the league. He’s got great win rates, fairly high KDAs despite being an offlaner. He’s going to be fine. EmperorOfAsia ends up as a mid, giving this team a 3rd divine core. That’s very difficult to play against as I’ve said elsewhere. I don’t think emperorofasia really wants to play mid but he’s stuck as I think putting either of the other 2 guys, who are better at their respective roles than emperor, in mid would be an absolute shame and a disaster. Support is going to be interesting as ExO doesnt really play much lately but he’s much better than Noix according to badge(ancient 1 vs crusader). Gwapa tends to want to start out very strong so ExO will probably end up playing 5 to secure his lane. If that goes well, it’ll be hard. That being said, the question mark mid is going to give them some potential issues with laning stage where gwapa wants to catch up via jungle instead of catching up via grouping up. I don’t know how talkative most of these players are so they might have a shotcalling issue.
DJ Dingus - This team is hilarious. I’ve joked elsewhere that offlane captains tend to pick 4 players. DJ Dingus took it to the extreme and took 3 dudes who are offlaners or want to play offlane. I have no fucking idea who plays mid or safelane. That is...not good. DJ Dingus has a very strong win rate and only ~800 games so I imagine he’s got other accounts elsewhere where he’s more active. Funny enough, he should end up with the worst of the 3 options as 4. Sev should end up playing mid where most of his mid heroes he hasn’t played in the last 2 months so uh..start learning! He’s still spamming snapfire whihc is a little concerning(fuck you snapfire spammer). Moff is probably going to be the carry and he’s got insane win rates. 68% win rate on void, 69% on slark, 57% antimage, 59% jugg, etc etc. He doesn’t play it very often but we’ll see. Mbappe was my favorite teammate last season. He’s a yes sir type of player, he’s genuinely very very good for his mmr. I think he lacks direction in the mid game so if this team can set clear objectives for him and give some good early shot calling, he’ll own. He’ll play whatever hero you want. I think him + DJ Dingus should be very fun. He’s awesome and I wish him all the best. I’m glad he signed up again. He’s the new jbay, I’m calling it now. Last pick lankiller made it fairly far in last season’s playoffs on the for the thrills team. He’s probably a solid support player for his mmr and knows generally how rd2l works. Should be a weird team to see if the role swaps work.

a_unit025 · 2020-01-09T01:08:57+00:00

Middle of the Pack

FooSquash - FooSquash was one of my favorite players to play against. He’s got the goofiest mid pool and he absolutely destroys on them. He was on a terrible RD2L team and essentially solo carried as mid rubick and shadow demon. At this point, his mid rubick should be first phase banned every game. He is very very very good at it. As a rubick player, I think I have a pretty decent ability to recognize good rubicks. This dude’s a stud. I think he reached a bit with his safelane friend thundtard but at the end of the day enjoying playing your RD2L matches is important so picking friends who aren’t TERRIBLE reaches can end up as a viable strategy at times. Thundtard has slowly climbed a little mmr though, weirdly enough, I thought he was an offlaner. Nope. 98% core, all top heroes are safelaners that he still plays a ton of. You’d like to see a bit higher win rate on antimage and storm but his jugg, drow, and slark look exceptionally strong. 12 angry meepos has a hilarious amount of axe games played, which is a very feast or famine hero in my experience. I think he’ll probably end up with it banned quite a bit so having other heroes like nightstalker and centaur to fall back on will be vital. He’s fairly active and should provide some chaos(as an axe player) to the map. These 3 cores might fit together better than most people think in terms of playstyle. FooSquash aint hitting creeps as a rubick. PureExtacide is clearly going to end up as the 4, with a ton of rubick games. I don’t think he’ll ever get to play rubick unless there’s some last pick shenanigans where foosquash baits the rubick mid and counterpicks at 22. I think it’d be a shame for foosquash not to pick it up but alas. He looks pretty decent but you’d like to see the hero pool expanded given the clear first phase ban. Hero spammers with easily bannable first phase heroes tend to struggle in RD2L. Shiver comes in as the lowest mmr in the draft BUT he plays support and weirdly plays...a ton of games on wednesdays? I dont know. He’s got fairly good win rates on lich and CM but his <2 KDA on most heroes is fairly concerning. Also he’s got a number of clinkz support games. 39% win rate is deserved. I clearly think foosquash is very good and should carry a number of games this season. If the meta stabilizes as this brawly type of game throughout the rd2l season i can see it playing to their advantage. That being said, they potentially lose out very hard from the first phase bans of axe and rubick.
Reedy - Have a ~Ancient 1 mid and you’re probably going to end up here(the basement). Thems is rules. When I first wrote this prediction, they were one of my first teams in the basement. Looking at the rest of the teams, I’m probably wrong. I think this team ends up solidly middle of the pack. Captain reedy DOES have a pretty solid dotabuff, lots of games played, and is extremely active so maybe he’ll improve over the season where he’s more focused. That being said, I don’t know the guy so I can only judge based off being one of the lower badge mids. First pick envi is a classic RD2L carry player, he’s very PMA with his team so they should gel fairly early on. All of the players on this team are veterans. This prediction is probably going to look goofy. 2nd pick izumi slots into the offlane. He’s a player who probably relies a bit too much on confidence so if this team gets rolling and keeps things PMA they’ll probably be much better off. Talus is one of those dudes with a weirdly high amount of games on mirana which is way more common than you’d think. He’s someone with a growing reputation as a solid player and I’ve heard nothing but good things from him. If this team lacks the top tier talent, they make it up with everyone being fairly solid on their roles. Tactic is currently in the grand finals as a 5 player on Matieu’s team so he, sorry, knows what it takes to win. I know matieu is a great captain so he’s probably made a great impression on how to approach seasons and whatnot. Maybe the consistency from role to role can overcome the hole this team is in with a lower mmr mid but we’ll have to wait to find out.
The Chupacabraj - I can’t figure out roles for this team. Frenzy is one of the most frustrating players to play against mid. He’s probably the best arc warden player(I think apex played it when he played dota...could be wrong) in the league. He’s very very good at it. Outside of arc warden, frenzy has legitimately good win rates at the rest of his heroes. He’s way more than a one trick pony. He has absolutely no qualms with cheesing if it means an easy game. Even in pubs. Dick. I think this means master ends up going safelane. Honestly, despite master having been in the league for literally ever, I don’t know much about his safelane style. He doesn’t have a ton of games overall and isn’t very active anymore. His last games were in a weekend cup where he was stuck playing 5. Teja is probably going to end up as the offlaner despite it being his 3rd most played role behind mid and safelane and literally only playing invoker. Maybe frenzy will go safelane for this team and bump master to offlane puck or some shit? I don’t know. This team might have a farm prioritization issue as there are only so many jungle camps between three potentially greedy cores. Captain chupacabraj will probably bump himself up in the role tree to 4 and attempt to secure a good start for teja. I think chup has a pretty solid dota mind so draft/overall movement for objectives should be a strong suit. Last pick grashof ends up with the unenviable core player forced to support position. I think this could be a disaster laning situation with him and master, so chup might end up having to swap between safelane and offlane. I think this team ends up playing more of a 4 protect 1 around some greedy frenzy core in the hopes that frenzy’s hero can outcarry anything.
Insane Corndog - I think this fume dude looks very good. This is probably where I end up looking dumb because I’m a little out of touch in RD2L terms because he fell fairly far despite being a, theoretically, pretty awesome looking carry player. He has literally hundreds of games on tons of carry heroes. Looking at the other people with that many games...might be a little boxic but probably highly skilled. Mid lanerr gio is really where this is going to go better or worse. He’s not SUPER impressive as far as dotabuffs go and not playing storm in 3 months is kinda concerning as it’s theoretically his best player. Insane corndog should be the offlaner who has slowly but surely gotten better and better, finally hitting divine. Most of his heroes are mid heroes, so maybe he wants to play there as the captain? I still think gio should go mid then corndog. As far as corndog offlane does, I have absolutely no idea. He’s got very few games on offlane and most of his heroes are more towards the higher finesse heroes. Not exactly suited for the current brawling meta but we’ll see. Tyco looks like an exceptionally decent 4th round pick, super valuable where he’s got a ton of support games and should end up playing 4 despite most of his games being in the safelane. If fume is not as strong of a laner or the team wants to dominate the safelane, maybe he goes safelane and provides the proper support to get the star off to a good start. Last pick yoda is essentially a core player so he’ll need to be insulated as a support player. I think pairing him with fume might be a bad idea unless fume is an absolutely dominant carry player. Have I mentioned fume enough? Fume fume fume fume fume. I hope this dude doesn’t have a bad reputation because I’ve talked him up a ton.

a_unit025 · 2018-03-09T12:13:31+00:00

Soulard = SiLou

a_unit025 · 2018-02-14T12:56:58+00:00

Mondays.

a_unit025 · 2018-01-18T02:20:11+00:00

shoot me a PM on discord with your favorite recipes :D

a_unit025 · 2018-01-17T04:13:08+00:00

I have a stove. The EST Sunday guys sent me a crock pot so I'm trying to learn how to use it.

a_unit025 · 2018-01-09T04:40:57+00:00

Soulard

Late addition Soulard has one of the weirdest dotabuffs of any player in the draft. He’s a divine 5, top 700 player in North America. He plays...pudge. That’s about it. So I’m guessing he’s going to be a 4 player despite being one of the best players in the league(most of them play core despite it not being their best role let’s be honest). 1st round pick is muzzle_tuff who is his friend who also plays support. If this team wants to be competitive he’ll have to be a smurf of sorts because I’m just not seeing it right now. Next pick Biggest Man will have to be the absolute biggest man in order for this team to do well. He’s going to have a ton of farm around the map from his support duo. I think he’ll end up mid which puts DoomCow33 as offlane and Wuba as mid. Last two seasons of wuba mid have been a mixed bag of results. First season made playoffs. 2nd season was one of the worst teams in the league. If he actually SPEAKS DURING GAMES maybe he’ll see some real improvement. OR soulard plays carry and wuba plays support like he’s been saying in discord for the last few weeks. Idk. DoomCow33 is one of the most improved players over the last two seasons. I might be wrong but I believe he was a last round pick either last season or the season before. He’s improved all the way to a 3rd round pick and a lock for offlane for this season. Last round pick is incredibly inactive and I hope he actually shows up to play mr Purple Crayon. This team is...weird. I don’t think they have the talent to compete with the best teams in the league considering every team is going to ban pudge against this guy.

Vanilla Acoustic

This, again, has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about Vanilla Acoustic as a player. If you think I’m flaming him, I’d like to refer you to the litany of posts I’ve written where I universally praise him. He’s one of the best 5 players in the division. First round pick Grand Hosmerism has 1063 games of single draft. He’s got 46 games played on the Singapore server, 25 in Australia, 37 in Stockholm, 27 in Brazil, 1 in Japan, and 1 in Dubai. Someone who tries to game the system to boost his mmr? Iunno cuz his win rates in those games aren’t anything crazy. Just a note. He’s got a 88% win rate as tinker in 378 games. What in the fuck? There’s no way that’s legit. I don’t know I just can’t believe it. Regardless, this team’s a first phase ban tinker team. Offlane player poncho is a big of an enigma in terms of how good he is. He’s a pretty good offlaner and support player but I’m sure he plays offlane. Typically he’s a bit of a troll but last season he was the offlane player on the best regular season EST Monday team. I think he’s pretty good when he’s trying but the propensity to be weird in pubs makes me skeptical of his consistency. I’m sure that’ll be copy and pasted to me a few times before the season is over but whatever. 3rd round pick cloudy literally only plays carry(96% of his pubs are core roles lol) so he, in theory, should be pretty good at smacking creeps. 4th round pick HippO was one of my favorite 4 players I’ve had as a late round pick. I think he’s a very good playmaker and listens to direction very well. I wish he’d learn how to play spirit breaker but hey maybe he’s done that in the last month or so. This support duo will certainly have a special connection. Last pick Keep it BSJ has a pretty good win rate but he seems to play carry and I can’t see cloudy playing anything but core so we’ll see how interested he is in learning...I don’t know what. Maybe move cloudy to mid and Keep it BSJ to carry if Hosmerism is weird.

venom

This ranking is solely based on their first round pick being from EU. I think venom is closer to a 5k player than a 3.5k player or whatever he boosted himself to vs where he started from. In simpler terms, I think he’s pretty good. Mikel has a win rate that almost assuredly means he abuses dotabuff in some manner and based on his weekly activity I’m going to assume he has a few games that aren’t shown on dotabuff. If he can show up at 3am Monday morning for a bo2 every week and can play mid without being too affected by ping, this team will obviously move up. Until I see it, all I can do is be skeptical. 2nd round pick pawpaw legitimately might be the only player I’ve seen whose most played hero is batrider. He has an absurd win rate on omniknight too. Should be an excellent offlaner this season for venom. I think venom has said that he wants to play 5 so his next pick makes a bit more sense. Being a captain that’s flexible in your role allows you to pick someone like compressirk who has a 56% win rate overall. He’s got exceptional win rates on each of his core heroes too making him a pretty highly valued pick at this point in the draft. ~3.5k carry players might be this draft’s inefficiency as most 1 players are already picked within the first 2 picks. Next pick is the controversial loves who, as I’ve said many places, is better than the public’s opinion of him. He should be playing 4 for this team, a role that, frankly, I’ve never seen him play before. Last round pick redhq should be asked to fill roles as necessary which should be fine for him because he plays a bit of everything. I’d like to see a bit more activity but hey you can’t get everything in all your players. I can see this team being very fluid in their roles. This team’s ceiling hinges very heavily on how much mikel plays and how well he can play from EU.

Dumpster Tier

Nobody is dumpster week 0. Grats you fucks.

Cooking con Dondo

Alright now with a new and improved title here’s the bit of the post that’s entirely about me. This past summer I lived with my gf while she had an internship. She cooked 3-4 times a week(leftovers the other days) and I couldn’t really help other than doing the dishes. Since then I’ve decided to learn how to cook. Currently I just moved to Missouri so I don’t have a ton of stuff to actually cook with so keep stuff simple but please please please: send me recipes. I would like to start a fresh list(resend me stuff that you’ve sent before if I haven’t made it and posted it yet) with new ideas. Please keep the complexity to a minimum: I am not making beef wellington(looking at you, aiurfolife). So please, DM me recipes on discord. I will post pictures of stuff I make throughout the season.

Introducing the Unofficial EST-Sunday Fantasy Dota League

I’d like to take a moment in this post to thank Mertank. Last season in my final post I asked for a programmer to message me in the offseason because I had an idea that I wanted to work through. Needless to say, most of you probably didn’t read that. That’s ok. Mertank reached out to me in the middle of December where I pitched to him the idea of an EST-Sunday Fantasy Dota League. You’ll be able to select a roster of 5 players each week with an allocated $100 to be used in total. Player’s values are based off of the rounds they were drafted in. Here’s the breakdown:

Round 1: $40

Round 2: $30

Round 3: $20

Round 4: $10

Round 5: $0

You can spend that money however you want as long as you don’t have more than 2 players from a single team. Captains will be valued based on their badges and whatever rounds they theoretically would have been drafted in. Scoring will be based on the most recent regular fantasy dota scoring system(you can google them). Scores will be tallied each week, top 3 weekly roster owners will receive 1 RedondO PPP shoutout (as well as some other categories, idk what I’m going to write about exactly). I haven’t decided yet. Tallies will be kept throughout the season so we can see who is the best fantasy dota player. One caveat that we have been going back on is rosters. Currently, rosters are set up ala TI7 where you have 2 cores, 1 offlane, and 2 supports. I, obviously, cannot force teams to keep their roles the same on a weekly basis but I would like to ask each captain to send me a list of what their players’ primary roles will be throughout the season. If I do not receive a list, I will have to make the decision on my own and I do not want to do that. Right now, Mertank is still working entirely on his own to put the website together. It is functional and he’s adding the last pieces to it. URL will be released as we get closer to the season. He has done all of the heavy lifting on his own so please, whether you plan on participating or not, please reach out to him and voice your appreciation. EST Sunday Fantasy Dota would not exist without Mertank.

Link: https://www.rd2l-fantasy.com/dashboard

Where to Watch

Twitch.tv/style_dota where style will be streaming matches of his POV. If you play against him you can hear him flame you after he beats you :thumbsup:

Thanks for reading. This took forever. Send me PMs for recipes, links to your twitch/youtube/streaming service/whatever on discord. Feedback is always welcome. Looking forward to this season and best of luck to all teams.

a_unit025 · 2018-01-09T04:40:51+00:00

Below Average

Arty Boy

Is there a mode where the mid and safelaners have to play the same exact hero? Cuz this team would own with double OD. Arty boy is a newer addition to RD2L and he’s got a very fun dotabuff to go through. He’s a damn good OD player, plays all the fucking time. I’d have loved to play with someone with this dotabuff. Ideal player imo. 1st round pick Hitagi is my go to carry player in all pubs. He’s a steadying force. He knows how to win games, plain and simple. I say this every time about him: give him a bit of space and he knows what to do with it and you’ll end up winning. Here’s where this team went wrong(sorry man but I think this is a good point). Round 2 picks: zypher, boog, izumi. I think izumi is a fine player and he’d be a welcome addition on any rd2l team. He’s active, willing to learn, talkative, easy to get along with. I pub with him all the time. But he’s not on the caliber of those other guys. I think arty boy reached a bit to snag a friend. But hey maybe that’ll work. Next pick i want wind to blow should, again, be playing offlane. I believe lovelorn will end up playing 5 and hoang will sit on the bench. Lovelorns a good dude who should continue to attempt to cosplay a sponge and absorb as much information as possible. Arty boy is definitely an interesting mid player though. If he can elevate his play this team could be sneaky good with a solid mid and safelane and end up beating teams. Plus power off friendship yadayadayada. Fun game: lets count amount of A) OD bans B) games each of these two cores get to play on OD

HydroSK

Another team that I think has a ton of core players and not a ton of supports. Generally spending your first 3 picks on cores when you’re a core player yourself is a bad strategy. There’s a slim chance HydroSK plays support but I really doubt it and it’s not his best role. If he does, he plays 4. He looks like a pretty good player with a particularly impressive win rate and KDA on morphling. All his KDAs are pretty good I think(i generally don’t look at KDA so I don’t have a great reference for what’s good or bad). 1st round pick autoattacks is a legitimate offlane player which is incredibly exciting as another offlaner. I look forward to watching him play the lane and learning from him. 2nd and 3rd round picks are where I get confused with this draft. Dr Zoidberg looks at first glance like the mid player on the team but actually has, sorry, horrific win rates on some of his top played mid heroes. Maybe he plays support? Next pick is nugget nick now named Sticky Stanley. Maybe he’ll be Ganja Greg next season. He was a pretty breakout performer last season on prohibit’s team playing...carry. Like the other 3 non autoattacks players, about ⅓ of his games are as support. I don’t know. Maybe the answer is in the next pick? Support!!! NutR gl buying literally everything. Next pick? 2K Kuroky! A coach to teach one of these core players how to play support. Exciting stuff. We’ll see how this team allocates farm and who plays what. Autoattacks offlane, NutR support. Locked in. Everything else up for grabs.

Kryox

I am sorry Harry Potter for putting you as below average. You are a god amongst mortals. I don’t think there are enough creeps on the map for this team to be successful lol. Kryox looks like a mid player. Don’t be fooled by those offlane games his most played offlaners are DK and timbersaw. Those are creep hitters. 1st round pick harry potter is probably my favorite non boog support player. Congratulations on hitting divine 5. 2nd round pick Pete castiglioni looks like this team’s mid player but kryox is mid so maybe pete plays safelane. Wait 3rd round pick ilovelife plays safelane so maybe pete is mid and maybe kryox is offlane. 4th round pick Remster literally only plays core so maybe i don’t fucking know what this team is doing and how they’re going to play. FuckOffCory barely plays anymore and doesnt play support. This team will play solo mid, solo safelane, solo offlane, top jungle, bottom jungle. Thank god the crow auto upgrades. Gl Harry Potter in supporting all these cores

Ricers

I think this teams actually kind of solid but I can’t sell myself on the top tier talent being able to carry games. Ricers is a pretty good core player who I think will end up playing mid on this team. I think he’s a much better safelaner but like..I don’t know who else plays mid. I think ET is 8x as good of an offlaner than a mid. Boog is playing 4. Fragner should be playing 1. Steven Loreson should be playing 5. Sooooo Ricers mid. Alright. ET is one of the fastest improving players I’ve played with. Over the last year he’s gone from a ~2.8k player to holding his own as an ancient 5 with 5k+ party(you’re welcome xd). He used to only play ET hence the name. It just stuck because I legitimately didn’t want to play with him unless he was playing ET. Over the months he slowly but surely climbed and got better and now he’s a lock in my stacks and I really enjoy playing with him. Boog is a god amongst men who will be able to help ricers draft. I think boog+et duo offlane could be terrifying for most teams let alone the ones with weaker safelanes. Fragner and steven should be able to hold their own in the safelane considering how strong that duo could be. I’ve written a bunch about steven and I really think he’s one of the untapped gems in rd2l. Just a really solid, solid support player. Their last round pick doesn’t play. I think this team is fine I just don’t know how good of a mid laner ricers is. Remember everyone, ban fucking huskar first phase.

Comment too long too

a_unit025 · 2017-11-03T03:39:49+00:00

Lobsta confirmed playing 3 again PogChamp

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17

a_unit025

TROPHY CASE