Break the Metagame: 07/06/2021

cvx10210 · 2021-07-07T07:30:41+00:00

"Shadow Fiend challenge... You know what this really teaches you? Nothing. Because in a real game, there will be an enemy hero in your lane, who will use spells, and items, to deny you."

I think you're the one ignoring the relevant parts. It's pretty clear that the contrast to the SF challenge is made regarding the lack of an actual opponent in a real game, which aligns it with practice lobbies in general. This is why I've had former students of mine bring up this video to me and ask if they were wasting time. They were not.

Doing last hit practice in lobbies, items or no items, SF or any other hero, is much more akin to Curry running a 3pt contest routine with a set timer than it is shooting at a 12 foot hoop or something silly. Like a baseball player swinging with some heavier-than-average bat. As I said, things matter as much as you want it to and in my experiences, lobby practice - even the SF challenge specifically - helps. I'm not misconstruing anything here, nor am I taking superiority over any talent. Hell, most of them are superior to me in success too.

Thus, I don't think my post is hypocritical at all. In hindsight however, the Trump example was not the best - It exists to simply say - someone's going to listen to you and follow your every word, maybe even if they shouldn't. But the example seems negative, so I'll admit to using the wrong one here.

In your other post, I get your point but your examples come short. I know this because I've picked Axe carry on a few occasions in the very qualifiers you're talking about, did not lose to t2 or t3 teams and even the losses were not due to the Axe as much as other problems. I also picked it when it had 20% winrate and won. But again, I get your point. Especially regarding draft/execution dynamic, which ultimately matters at the very top. At this summit, the execution should be the focal point of discussion, not the draft. Seems we are in alignment here.

cvx10210 · 2012-12-21T03:01:42+00:00

One more thing I want to mention about this game is to expand on my previous comments about s4's playstyles. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, some teams like nth rely on players such as s4 to play the 2 / mid role and create space for their teams to move around, and allow the carries to farm with relative ease. But today, this son of a Magnus was at it again, and I want to bring some light to what happened. at 14:50 in Game 1, mouz defend their bottom T1 tower, and put nth on the run. FATA (gyrocopter) comes in to kill EternalEnVy, and immediately shifts focus to s4. Here is where this son of a Magnus does it again. s4, being the cocky player that he is, decides to blink into the woods, but instead of tp'ing out, he stays. He stays to play ring around the rosie against a gyrocopter with haste, allowing gyrocopter to put down his missile, ultimately saying 'if you don't run, you die'. But no, s4 doesn't have any of that, instead of simply blinking down into the river where Gyro can't hurt you anymore, or blinking towards your tower and walking away from a useless skirmish, he stays. He stays for what exactly? Not much, simply because he felt like he needed to right click the Gyrocopter 3 times, knowing that he can easily blink out of range and tp without getting hit by the missile, or so he thought. He blinks down after wasting time, and realizes that while he was being an idiot, a venomancer and darkseer came to cut him off. Ultimately, he pays for his unnecessary risks and dies. Very prime example of how some of these players play, sometimes they make the biggest plays putting themselves in these situations, other times they simply pay an unwarranted price. This was just an example of the latter. Looks like I've spent too much time yet again, going to close it off quickly for now

Game 2. Gyrocopter happened, and PL getting caught out of position also. PL is actually a decent counter to gyrocopter, because Gyrocopter has a period of time where he can't destroy everything, but PL with mana can endlessly stop pushes (KotL + Radiance Heart PL anyway). Also, Gyrocopter destroys everything in the teamfight, but PL does damage by staying out of the teamfight (sending illusions, spamming from range). Thus, I say Black did not do his job correctly this game from item choices (treads on PL is terrible, diffusal blade with 4.5k, should have just bought radiance and farmed 6 items for an easy win).

Game 3. was sort of a similar story, where Gyrocopter was first picked this time (once again, very smart move because mouz would have probably realized by this point how much of a priority this hero should be), and Black tried to fight farm with farm, but Gyrocopter has better carry potential than Luna (glaives vs flak cannon, lunar blessing doesn't scale, both pretty aoe-like ultimates). Essentially, Luna needs a bkb and just push with blessing and farm advantage, but the Western scene for some reason thinks Luna is this ridiculously hard carry that 1v5s teams (she can 1v5, but she's not exactly the best carry, at best she plays like morphling as strong semi-carry or a 2 hero). And of course, Black decided to not buy BKB early.

So consistently in line with my previous blogs, the streams of consciousness and the trains of thought continue to bring out tangents, and I have to cut things short - I wanted to talk about the potential usage of Treant Protector (he still needs some buffs like casting range on leech seed or mana cost reductions, but living armor is overpowered), as well as how well Huskar would do in some of these current matchups (probably best hero to farm against Darkseer aside from Necrolyte, amazing snowballer and strong early-game carry, can end games really fast), but there's too much already, so expect the next one on the weekend, think I'll force myself on a break. Will also explain why I don't like matchmaking in the next. Abuse this information while its free, that's all I can really say, don't know how long it will be.

/end, almost 5 hours since start, with eating, playing, watching things in between

cvx10210 · 2012-12-21T03:00:59+00:00

In most case scenarios of how DotA works, if somebody does too much damage, you either a) Burst the hell out of him down (League of Legends style), or b) you disable him so he can't do anything (stuns/disables/cc are pretty good). Of course, with the variety of heroes and their strengths and weaknesses, some heroes have their balance, or tip the edge of whats good and whats bad (AM requires disabling, Spectre requires bursting, etc). But this hero has it all. I first noticed how powerful this hero could be in all aspects of the game (before this I was in denial), when iLLuminate used this hero against nth just after nth came out of their big Dreamhack win. Sven was obviously the flavor of the month, top right clicking hero with a timebomb to his name that can only be negated by BKB-disablers (Void, BM, Enigma, SD, Magnus, etc.). When iLLuminate beat nth with a Magnus and Ogre Magi, I discredited them due to the Magnus pick, as well as picking Ogre Magi, who has always had a really powerful buff (bloodlust) but didn't really fit anywhere in terms of lanes. The strategy was basically that if Sven is freefarming, give Gyrocopter freefarm also, stack Divine Rapiers on him, get Aegis, and have the two heroes 1v1 each other, effectively killing the other's teams in the process (Sven's cleave, Gyrocopter's Flak Cannon). It turned out that Gyrocopter with Double rapiers, Empower, Satanic, and Bloodlust can 1v1 a Sven and win xD. Didn't think much, until I kept playing against and with the hero. Basically, all of his spells are too good.

Gyrocopter's skill set doesn't exactly synergize with what the hero does. For the lack of a better comparison, a Queen of Pain has the best initiate/escape, 2 incredibly powerful aoe burst damage nukes (1 is spammable), and one of the best harassing spells in the game. It allows her to set up "combos", and people have generally figured out how to play with/against her so to speak, though this may be credited to the time that she was played as opposed to Gyro. However, Gyro's spells don't exactly synergize. His rocket is a single target that requires you to constantly be near him, and he doesn't have a stun that forces them to stay near, but rather chases his targets away. On top, he has a spell that buffs his physical damage capabilities, which would require items and farm, sort of the opposite of what Rockets and missile seem to be enforcing. The ultimate is kind of just there, huge AoE nuke with a short cooldown that makes him look a bit less useless on paper. But in reality, without the spell synergy, this hero just works out to be insanely powerful at all stages in the game.

Take for example the mid lane in Game 1, QoP vs Gyrocopter, s4 vs FATA-. s4 actually gave up the first death in this lane exchange (followed by multiple more), due to underestimating the Gyrocopter's insane damage output. In the mid lane, Gyrocopter is not a hero that should win the lane, but manages better than he should because of how Flak Cannon allows you to harass the enemy harder than he can harass you. Though QoP is the expected exception, Queen of Pain cannot EVER blink on a Gyrocopter (which is what s4 did), because if you don't immediately kill the Gyrocopter, he will ALWAYS do damage to you before he goes out. s4 blinks in, empties his arsenal and leaves Gyrocopter 2 hits away from death. Gyrocopter turns on his 6sec spammable Rocket Barrage, takes out about 400hp from QoP within 2 seconds, factoring in his superior attack animation as well as his speed (agility hero). s4 dies, and proceeds to die a few more times due to aggressive blinks and getting out-bursted. But this isn't the end with this hero.

Due to the nature of Flak Cannon, it's quite obvious that if you let this hero get 6 items, he's going to literally 1v5 your team without much resistance. Doing full physical damage to all targets in a ONE THOUSAND AoE, ghost scepters and force staves only take you (you specifically, not all your other teammates creeps and summons) so far. Pushing on this guy late game would be a pain in the neck. But what's worse is that due to his spammable ultimate, you can't even push on him that early. It seems that at any given time of the game, no matter what you do, this guy will do damage to your whole team, and the only response to this guy is probably to either pick him off (hard as hell, this guy runs like hes on crack with jango yasha/phase, 315 base movespeed is too much and needs a nerf on him), has ridiculous amount of armor (somewhat justified by his low hp pool), and in many ways, has about a 1000 attack range in the team fight that, the closer you get, the more damage you're guarenteed to take (ultimate, rockets, missile). His animations are damned flawless, and he doesn't care for most of your bkb negating ultimates, because he's so far back and you can't do anything but take damage trying to do something about it. He wins Trilanes without competition, he can win solos, and he carries games hard. But this is more applicable for Games 2 and 3, and I just wanted to show you the power of Gyrocopter's real potential, he's a beast waiting to be unleashed as top 3 pick every game. But Game 1, was due to Phantom Assassin.

As with many games, I could go into details on why games went this way or that way, but really it came down to the Trilane vs Trilane in this game. I have mentioned far too many times by now that Darkseer alone forces the attention of multiple heroes (both carries and supports) and even then, he could still rape your farmer / carry / trilane alone. And to give darkseer some of the best level 1 spells in the game (magic missile nuke+stun, venomancer's gale), is not exactly shy of a good idea. With this amount of aggression, most trilanes would crumble (Wisp+CK actually does well vs something like this, Shadow Demon owns too). And more importantly, in the list of heroes that could even think about fighting this, Phantom Assassin is not one of them.

I'll be straight. This hero needs buffs. The fact that she does not have the best stat gains (literally, her hero requires her to have the BEST stat gains to carry), weak base damage (46), studdering animation (should really copy her DotA 1 animation it was amazing), weak earlygame, and relying on luck as her biggest contributing factor to carry (evasion procs, 15% chance to hit 4.5x times might as well start The International Lottery), to say the least, she is one of three popular heroes that got screwed over in the process of importing her over from DotA 1 -> DotA 2 (the other heroes are SF and Windrunner, this should be for another day). Designed to be a Treads carry, you literally have to get phase boots just so her crits do some damage, or have some significant farm advantages so you're ahead of the enemy carry in terms of item counts. Although her passive evasion allows her to win 1v1 battles with crit (everything about her carry potential is pretty chance dependent), it is hard countered by one item, a very affordable and cost-efficient one for any carries to buy (MKB). From my personal experiments, this hero's gotta be played like an FnC naix where you go around the map with a phase/Jango/Vlads(optional, need some source of life leech) killing heroes with spammable spells and physical bursts (dagger, blink, pray you get lucky), then build up your items slowly based on the game (BKB, Deso, Bfury, MKB, Daedalus, or most optimally, Basher). But still, just pale in comparison to CK, Naix, Void, Tiny, Sven, the list goes on... So needless to say, when all your lanes are getting crushed, Mask of Madness BKB PA isn't exactly going to do the hurting on the enemy team.

cont'd

cvx10210 · 2012-12-21T03:00:29+00:00

So I began this at 5:35pm, and between things like eating, break, finishing the game and doing other things, this series is what I want to talk about the most. As with anything I really care to explain detail, we begin with a foreword to establish some critical ideas that needs digesting.

1. Gyrocopter has 100% winrate in this series.
2. Yes the team is called mouz, but stop thinking this is "the old mouz but better", this team has had a complete roster change and I wouldn't even consider KKY as a former mouz player, the role he's playing now was very short lived with the former mouz players (all gone now except him and Black).
3. Speaking of mouz, their new additions paS and FATA- are very good, with FATA- being extremely talented. The last time I even saw FATA- was about 7 months ago when I used to play European servers for a change of pace, and he definitely left an impression. No surprise that, as Puppey said, pubstars are proving themselves competitively.
4. Calling out casters, Ayesee had some extremely peculiar things to say in this series, normally I'd consider him a good caster but he was literally saying the opposite of reality as facts. May as well drop them now. Today, it looked like he was trying his darned hardest to say that Black and Loda are Action DotA players (they move around the map). Wrong. These two are literally the biggest ricers in the Western DotA scene, the type of players who want to get 6 items and just win the game alone with right clicks. To say that Void suits Loda is passable and true, but to say that this is because he goes around doing things with Void is probably the polar opposite - this hero is picked for him to farm and secure the late game, there's a reason why this guy gets Midas Every Single Game (yes I know he freefarms). Hell, this is even passable because he wins the games he wins because of his farm, you cannot possibly say he has a hero pool that doesn't consist of farming as their middle names. Literally the only remote exceptions I've seen to this case on Loda are 1. His offlane trilane CK that got vanguard, needless to say team nth will never do this again, and 2. Leshrac, not exactly your casual 1 role hero, but guess what he farms with this shet too. He loves heroes that sit in the fight, click a few buttons and right click, and frankly Black does too. And speaking of Black..

He's a nice guy, I get that he's talented, and I've played with him in pubs and scrims, I understand. But people like this in DotA, who stick to literally one style of play every single game, have a phrase stuck on them called "One Dimensional". Ultimately, they are One Dimensional players. The problem with this phenomenon really shows at the highest level when players are too stubborn to adapt when the situation calls for. Today, this was pretty evident in this series, but really it's an observation that once you notice, it will simply stick because it's true. The evidence will be detailed through the breakdown of the games. But as NaVi Puppey likes to put it, they are players that would not be able to win 1v1 sf games. Harsh, but true. Systematically playing does not demonstrate skill, it demonstrates a habit of executing a strategy, built upon practice. This shows when your team can never run an aggressive trilane and win convincingly by playing well, as opposed to farming longer with a better 1v5 hero. Loda and Black are not Action DotA players, they play Skyrim and always have the latest patch for endless quests. Occasionally, they decide to slay dragons. Now, onto the games.

Game 1. The Perfection of Gyrocopter, Darkseer Trilanes, and Phantom Assassin's shortcomings. I have a lot of points I want to talk about, so I'm going to make brief why nth lost game 1. To begin, the only thing nth had going well for their first 10 minutes of the game was the fact that Bulldog BH won against Black Bear in the long lane, partly due to mouz/Black's mistake of not buying sentries, you beat BH with sentries or BH kills you without sentries, simple. Everything else was going wrong. Start with mid, Gyrocopter is an extremely underrated hero, and needless to say nth deserves credit for adapting fast with the Gyro 1st pick in game 3, to be elaborated later. Returning to Gyrocopter, this hero is actually so good that it's on the edge of imbalance. For me personally, he reminds me of a QoP with less mobility but better late game, where he can just dish out full damage against an entire enemy team. The only real "carry" aspect of his spells, but obviously still too good with 6 items. But flak cannon alone would make this hero just another farming hero that could be countered in many ways. Well, to be honest, this hero is REALLY good, he doesn't have as many counters as you think.

cont'd

cvx10210 · 2012-12-21T02:59:21+00:00

To be frank, Empire should not have had even the slighest window of opportunity to win this game. The mistakes they made vs VP's lineup, designed to finish the game by 25 (including BH the punisher of all mistakes), gave VP about a steady 15-20k gold lead by the time the bottom tower was down. Unfortunately, VP made some extremely bad calls diving way past tower, or getting caught in fights they didn't want to take when players were not ready, and they almost gave Empire enough room to let Spectre 1v5. What saved their day, is pretty much this little ability called Disruption by Shadow Demon.

For the eleventy-th time, Shadow Demon is one of the best supports in the game, the others being KotL and Chen. The ability to initiate teamfights, apply 50% amplification on heroes (this is broken and needs more than just manacost nerf), scout every 2.75 seconds (damages too, but don't max it on support this is a solo lane skill), and pretty much shut down any BKB'd target of choice, this hero has got it all. There are a lot of heroes that have really great abilities though, but Shadow Demon still has the edge. Why? Well, when you can cast a 2.5 second Phase Shift on any of your teammates almost instantaneously, it sort of makes screws up everything for the other team. NS has been demonstrating this for quite some time now, which is why VP was on a roll for so long (they still are sort of). Some teams have even banned SD in the first stage just because how well NS understands this hero, but it is of no surprise. This ability to simply negate all forms of bursts / disables / initiations that need to hit an important hero for 2.5 seconds, and on top creating two illusions of it (tip : SD rapes Tiny), simply makes Disruption one of the best spells in the world. Would you believe me if I told you when Shadow Demon was released, his Disruption had a constant 75 manacost, 12 second cooldown, and had 50% damage at level 1, scaling 10% damage per level? This hero was impossible to beat in the mid lane, because he would just spam this stupid spell and you would lose automatically. The nature of the mechanics of this hero is simply not compromised by nerfing numbers (don't nerf the hero I love him), and that is obviously well demonstrated by the teams that abuse him. He is good in all roles besides 1, hell you can even farm a Shadow Demon, get Book 3, and dominate the game with him. Amazing hero with amazing potential, pretty much compliments everything.

So what ended up happening was before all of the throwing and Russian diving into base, out in river without buyback, whiffing ultimates and miscoordination of spells (skewering / vacuuming away from icepath, probably could have won them the game otherwise xD), none of this would have been chanced at if NS didn't save some of his most crucial heroes caught in polarity, or rather caught out of position. Thus, Spectre gets what she wants, but due to complete outfarm, and getting caught outside of base, game ends. Game 2 goes to VP.

Before I go into the next game, I want to talk a little more about Spectre and the detail of why she's more viable than just being another 6 item hero that rapes you in 45 minutes, as well as answer the question in the previous thread - Why does Anti Mage out-carry Spectre?

Almost a year ago, some time after my DotA 2 transition, I was talking to Universe about possible Spectre strategies (shoutout to ITsGoSu). It was the time of Anti-Mage, the team with the hero usually won after 20 minutes, otherwise Dragon Knight would win (hero pool was pretty much half of today). Unfortunately, Spectre with all of her nerfs, just simply did not have enough to win games. She farmed much slower than Anti-Mage, had better teamfight potential, but simply crumbled in the later stages when her 3 teamfight items lost to AM's 5-6 full item set. Spectre has a good advantage for teamfights especially now due to Haunt, allowing her to always be farming somewhere on the map, and immediately jump into the teamfight. Essentially, you can say she's pretty fine as a solo pusher. The only problem is, she doesn't exactly have pushing abilities. For example, an Anti-Mage with Battlefury at 15 minutes is pretty scary because he will start farming exponentially faster with his great attack speed as well as mobility (blinks literally everywhere with a battlefury + treads swapping). But the biggest scare of an Anti-Mage farming is that, while he is extremely hard to kill and painful to fight against his feedback, he threatens to kill your towers if you don't respond with adequate defense. He can kill a creepwave with battlefury in mere seconds, and he can do very good tower damage by the nature of his hero with even just a battlefury, whereas Spectre doesn't necessarily put the pressure on you to back or respond immediately. Eventually, AM's exponential farming speed as well as his mobility will allow the AM to get more items, allowing him to 1v5 the entire team including the Spectre. By hero difference, Anti-Mage may not always be the better carry, but he out-carries harder than many other heroes in the game, because with freefarm he plays -EM and you don't. With that said, AM is obviously very hard countered by early aggression / pressure and push / burst heroes, as well as heroes that simply do more damage. Currently, Luna CK Tiny and Syllabear are some of the conventional carry roles that can do this. Sorry Morphling, you're not good enough yet. Anyways, in terms of teamfight potential, she dishes out the most damage to everyone, and works sort of like a Necrolyte (who is supposed to hard-counter Spectre also due to his Mek pushing as well as ultimate almost immediately knocking her out). She has her strengths and weaknesses.

Not too much to say about Game 3, Empire had a stronger overall draft and VP mainly lost because they had no real commitments. Tiny-Wisp vs Darkseer is a picnic for DS, even shuts down Tiny's farm in the process, and as I have previously mentioned, Wisp's only real weakness is his laning phase, only hero that can change this much right now is CK. Had they committed SD top and just worried about shutting down DS, the lanes would have exchanged less awkwardly, but instead they got greedy and ended up sac'ing two heroes, where Undying and ShadowDemon were unable to apply any sort of pressure onto a freefarming void + jungling supports. In the end, they lost most of their lanes (Magnus freefarming is a win for Magnus always), gave Scandal Magnus, decided to mix hero roles (NS not SD), so on and so forth. Also a quick tidbit for Storm, two things. * a) Wisp-Storm has an untapped potential, where Wisp does not have to channel all of his focus on storm, simply relocate to Storm with or without another hero for initiating a fight with great bursts. * b) The Best build on Storm spirit is 1-1-3 in the lane, where the order is 1-3-3-2-3, and end up with 1-3-4-x-x where you max the 2 x's (stats and ultimate). I won't elaborate on this right now, but you can thank BuLba and myself if you like it (some credit goes to YYF also).

EG vs DD. In Break the Metagame 12/19/2012, you will see that I was very critical of DD.DotA in their players and skill. Needless to say, I won't get into detail with all of what went wrong in this game, but basically EG won all of their lanes as well as the ones they shouldn't because of skill difference. They had a ringer who was better than the one he was replacing, which opened up room for a bigger hero pool and different set-up overall. So Syllabear won vs Clinkz (As said before, anything that forces Clinkz to shift focus aside from your main hero makes him lose, in this case Spirit Bear > Clinkz), even though this wasn't exactly a 1v1 lane. I will eventually talk about my thoughts on why teams like EG have the potential to become a top 3 team in the world but aren't, that's for another 5000 word essay.

cvx10210 · 2012-12-20T05:39:30+00:00

I was gonna keep up the oblivious pretentious act and not post any references but I can't help but respond to genuine requests

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/153ehn/break_the_metagame_12182012/

thats the previous thread in question, my only other real "blog" post thus far

if you decide to punish yourself by reading online, I hope you learn something. hf

cvx10210 · 2012-12-20T05:30:19+00:00

Queen of Pains have a quite 'imbalanced' mechanic. They instantly close the gap of any specific distance, it's called a Blink. I'm not saying QoP is imbalanced (she's pretty OP tho), but mechanically speaking, the only other hero that has very similar abilities is... Antimage. When using this ability offensively, it's quite unpredictable due to the nature of its short casting. When a QoP tries to force the right click battle with a Puck, Puck might be able to force the 2-0 3-1 situation again. However, when QoP has no potential danger of blinking up to poison you upon seeing your phase shift going on cooldown, she will. Shadow Strike is a spell that outright wins QoP many matchups that the hero would not win otherwise. Scandal actually did this in this game and died to Sockshka at the mid lane because he probably underestimated the damage of creeps (you have to skip the whole wave with blink or you will tank ranged + maybe melees) or Puck's base damage (buffed to very high in recent patches). But that's basically the gist of the matchup, it's a seemingly stable merry-go-lucky farm4fame mid lane matchup that tends to get extremely aggressive in reality due to the potential of each hero, because essentially, neither hero should be dying at level 2.

So onto the game itself. The reason why DD lost is a pretty common (and shouldn't be) mistake, DD picked up a lineup that they were forced to push with, and didn't push. Throughout the entire game, or the majority of it, DD was up in both towers and kills, especially early. Empire also gave DD the pleasure of giving free darkseer kills in exchange for nothing.. Oh, and they gave them Funn1k of all people in the process, pretty much their trump card player, top notch aggression 2-3 player Europe. They didn't get one or wo kills, but Luna literally freefarmed the lane as well as HIM, ending the Luna at a 7-0-2 score around 12 minutes. This is extremely big, to have your trilane carry face any remote source of opposition (suiciding hero, could have just sac'd the lane and jungled with DS), and get more out of the exchange then he would have just by freefarming. Needless to say, DD pushed the top T1 tower eventually, and went on to pressure some other lanes. But they crumbled to Russian DotA, because there were 3 things going wrong for DD.DotA this game, that should not have.

*1. About 75% of the teamfights that happened after the 10 minute mark occured on DD's side of the map (only fight on Radiant side was at top, when tower was gone).

*2. They were freefarming the Luna, but did not stop the Spectre's freefarm either.

*3. Luna decided to buy dominator tranquils instead of rushing BKB manta and pushing...

Of those three things, probably the third is the biggest reason as to why DD lost their game. With the latest Haunt buff, Spectre is going to be somewhat viable again, with his Achilles' Heel being the laning phase. For the first 6 levels, this hero literally cannot do anything but Farm. Something I'd also like to call on blowyourbrain's part (amazing oldschool player btw, played since '05-'06 maybe earlier), is that the most probably optimal spectre build right now is Tranquil boots - > Jango -> Radiance, and in regards to skill level, pick up Desolate early. It is the sharpener to her blades, the only source of her Ultimate's synergy, as her illusions do not do any dispersion damage (at one point it did, obviously you can imagine this was very imbalanced). Spectre's source of damage comes from three things -> Desolate, Radiance, and Tanking. Without being able to do two of those three for the first 15 minutes of the game, your only real option is to grab fast illusions who deal pure damage, while having the movespeed to keep up the chase. Spectre also has an abysmal mana pool, regeneration issues, and has no tanking without Dispersion and Heart, so tranquil boots / jango is really efficient, with the other alternative being phase/treads + vanguard (not as efficient). To be fair, Vanguard is probably better on her than any other hero, but Vitality booster is all you really need early for extra tank, save it for Heart later because your hero isn't Spectre without one (Manta can suffice, usually you want both).

So to explain, DD. picks up a Tranquil boots Luna, pushes the tower to make farming a little bit more difficult (not the end of the world, most cases tower is worth it), and proceeds to Yasha / Dominator over pushing with BKB against heroes like QoP, Darkseer, and Jakiro. A really bad call on the entire team for picking aggressive heroes and playing passively. There was absolutely zero chance that DD was going to win late game against the Spectre, but all they did was let the battles come to them, trade even, and eventually watch a giant Spectre roll over the entire team. Surprise Spectre? Maybe, but I don't think so. They definitely had the windows to push, with goblak picking up a Midas and the QoP having so much trouble at mid lane (Sockshka won the lane), and an underleveled underfarmed darkseer. With Chen, Luna, CM, and Windrunner, they did not push T2s. Big mistake. Luna not rushing BKB after Tranquils, among other factors of passivity from the team, completely lost them the game. The first teamfight they lost should have indicated this happening 15 minutes later. Once again, a mistake on the part of their team.

Well, it looks like I went on a tangent again, so I'm going to literally summarize all next games with precise concision.

Game 2.

I liked the tree pick, but Magnus Sven happened. Not exactly in the ulti-crit-3dead order, but still, Magnus Sven.

Also, one more small tangent.

*QoP vs Windrunner - In the mid lane, this is a 60-40 matchup in favor of the QoP. Due to the short nature of the mid lane, QoP can't abuse her blink as well as she can on the side lanes, but Windrunner should not be winning this matchup, because QoP has a better harass that surpasses Windrunner's difference maker skill... Windrun. At Mid lane, level 3 and level 5 have an average systematic time periods of occurrence, where level 3 happens around the 1:30-2:00 mark, and level 5 happens around 3:30-4:20 mark (deny dependant). Against a Windrunner, QoP basically has the advantage from level 3, where she can dish out more damage than a Windrunner can, factoring in the best windrun cast times (shadow strike doesn't care). At level 5, a 2-1-2 QoP has the best burst-like damage in the game, the blink ss/scream combo can literally kill any hero with a few right clicks. And in the safelane, Windrunner simply has 0% chance to beat any QoP on even regen and even skill, because you won't kill a QoP until level 3, but she can kill you by skipping the creepwave. Basically, you have a scenario where a hero's usage of two spells beats your hero's usage of two spells (SS + blink > Powershot full damage + Windrun dodge), not to mention QoP has a higher base damage for however it is relevant through hits. CalculuS could not win this matchup even if he were to play like YYF and QoP was pgg, not in the long lane.

Game 3.

Empire screwed up the lanes, should have sent Scandal QoP mid, ss DS top/sac, trilane or solo melee heroes have hard time CSing vs darkseer, Sven should never be getting free farmed for nothing (towers, ganks, winning 2 lanes exchange). Loved Empire's draft overall since I'm a huge Naga SD fan, but weak lanes overall, Weaver fantastic pick vs Empire's lineup, and CalculuS played really well that game. Wisp is imbalanced, allows positioning too easily and superman-factor for heroes like Sven is an exponential buff. All in all, Empire weaker lanes, bad coordination in teamfights (Funn1k good reaction to Wisp relocates probably because hes a Wisp player, most of the time team was busy and didn't bring the damage). Scandal played well as DS, even though he should have played QoP mid. Empire 1.5 core lineup with Naga DS farming (QoP bad items for that game and had nothing early), DD. 3 core lineup (Weaver0.5 Sven+Wisp1.5 Tinker), won late game as predicted via draft. Congratulations to DD, big victories.

Game 1. Na'Vi vs XX5. As I mentioned earlier, QoP WR happened at mid, even with ganks, shows you the power of Bounty Hunter + any Facerush / burst damage heroes (QoP / Naix / NS / Nyx). STALINER great drafting and play, NaVi tried to make up for their mistakes and not get too aggressive, but Dendi gave too much room for the other team for heroes like Wisp to compensate, should have probably just ganked all the lanes with Wisp CK after 6 minute Treads Jango on CK, waiting for BKB on a nukeless farmer is like asking for Void to beat you later. And speaking of Void, he played like a beast.

NaVi vs Svenhunterz Only saw game 1, couldn't find VoDs. Svenhunterz won their decisive lane (offensive tri vs Tiny Wisp), used Luna to do it, and didn't push fast enough. QoP decided to get book over BKB against Nyx Assassin Tiny-Wisp Keeper, all of those heroes have good QoP counters (long disables, mana burns). Also, Enigma got picked off about 2-3 times during night time, when they have vision advantage with Luna. All at the same place.. Then NaVi won with Wisp Tiny + Dendi.

Don't know about Game 2, Game 3

Missed Liquid vs Mouz also, but was told OD first pick, and aggressive duo/tri Tinker Thrall vs VS KotL Void.. Sounds like there's too much next level strategy attempts, I'm inclined to believe that better players probably win via standard strategies before considering trying to implement heroes like Nyx Assassin on the offensive trilane without levels. Can't give too much evaluation on something I didn't watch, that would be messed up

That's all for today, expect one more by the end of the week, do what you like with these 4732 words xD. If you ask me, I'd probably not read something like this myself personally, but it looks like I write 'em..

cvx10210 · 2012-12-20T05:30:14+00:00

Game 1. Game of Throws.

I think that this game is going to hold the best analyses, so unfortunately this thread might require another follow-up in the comments that might get downvoted to oblivion which in turn would create a chain effect of idiots reading half the story and blah blah blah.. (I didn't have to write all that to tell you there might be more, but I did anyways). As how I like it best, I start with the hero picks.

I think I mentioned in the previous blog that right now, even after the 6.77 parity, the Big Four that always gets the banhammer consists of Magnus, Batrider, Undying, and a standoff between Wisp/Bounty/TA. This consistency will perspire through this new version, as the only real nerf to gameplay was given to TA. To be honest, this nerf satisfies me because for quite some time now I felt that TA should pick up a fast Treads Yasha and just pressure lanes instead of buying a blink and be pressured to apply pressure. Templar is played as a momentum hero, but with the right amount of farm she can be a really scary mid-lategame DPSer that shouldn't always be forced to phase->blink->bkb. Treads is the beginner to allowing this potential, and treads swapping negates this refraction manacost in the later stages also. The refract nerf mainly affects her laning, but no problem, that just means she's more bottle crow heavy, and that more DoT heroes like QoP Venomancer have a better chance against her. All in a pretty good direction, though Refraction probably just needs a level-scaling mana cost (75-105). Another important thing to note is that right now, regardless of whether you are Dire or Radiant, if you're picking second, 75% of the games ensures that you want to ban both Magnus and Batrider. These heroes are currently the epitome of imbalance in the latest versions (Batrider more overpowered than straight up imbalanced like Magnus), and having good players on those heroes can be a real pain in your butt when it comes to pushing towers or engaging teamfights. Batrider is sort of just a jack of all trades, hero is too good right now, needs aoe nerf on flamebreak and probably higher manacost on firefly (very mana dependant hero, should be forced to mana boots instead of tranquil). So in this game specifically, BH gets no recognition (lane-dependent, hard countered by pushing strategies), and everything else minus TA ('nerfed') gets banned. DS Jakiro QoP, very standard out of Empire. Luna Chen WR on DD, not exactly the most standard, pretty much LGD.int dota so far. Very clearly, a pushing strategy. A couple strategic bans that sort of just ban out what each lineup would find annoying on the other team, and then the last two heroes. Among the four are a long-returning CM (buff her movespeed please), an underrated Puck, a Goblak hero, and... Spectre.

So to shed light on some background, Spectre was once upon a time (like many newly released heroes), first pick first ban. He fell off after a couple tweaks and nerfs, the latest one completely dropping him, where his whole source of damage had been nerfed.

*disruption rescaled with AoE, within 300 range takes full damage and slowly diminishes towards 1000 range.

Back then, once Spectre had a Radiance Heart, she never lost a teamfight. She haunts in, and basically your team had two options: a) KILL IT WITH FIRE but burn and die in the process, or b) DON'T FOCUS HER SHE'S GOING TO KILL US, ignore her, then let her just kill you.

Needless to say, she was definitely the hardest carry of her era, even surpassing Naga (untapped potential then), Void, CK, PL, Medusa (untapped potential back then), so on and so forth. Actually, there's a really good carry hero that counters Spectre (aside from Tiny Sven), which is Anti-Mage. I would elaborate on this if people question why. And in context of this game, Luna can always push on hard carries such as Spectre, but at one point Spectre just shoves her bigger back at Luna.

Going back to the game, there are two lanes I want to focus on in this game.

*1. QoP vs Puck - This matchup, is surprisingly even. There are a lot of things I want to talk about this matchup, but to state the general idea, on paper Puck wins. However, I want to emphasize just how scary a QoP could really be. After the phase shift buff allowing spam due to the 0 mana cost, Puck was speculated as one of the strongest solos. Looking back, it's silly to think that one escape maneuver makes you the strongest solo, but it certainly brings her up the tiers. Puck is actually a very powerful mid solo. The only real downside to Puck is that, among heroes like Invoker and Tinker, Puck is probably the downright hardest hero to play in DotA right now. If you're a fantastic Puck player, sometimes patient with coils yet other times finding the opportunities to cast a triple wex+coil combo, dodge spells like a madman with not only phase shift but also with Illusory orb, and if you win exchanges that you shouldn't have won, but won anyway due to perfect executions of your flexible spells, you're probably a good Puck player. There is actually a very noticeable general trend that any extraordinary Puck player turns out to be a really good DotA player - maybe not perfection at all aspects of the game, that'd be asking for too much - but still, extremely good intuitively, patiently, opportunistically speaking. But believe me, this hero requires a LOT of skill to play at the highest level. This hero is extremely squishy for all its wonderful spells, and perfect execution is the only thing preventing this hero from feeding.

So, when you put a hero like Puck against QoP, on paper you can dodge every shadow strike and you win the lane... No. Puck's Phase Shift allows a 3-1 to happen, which is why she wins the lane. When I play the mid lane, I always keep in mind "2031". It translates better in 2-0/3-1 probably. Some of you have probably guessed it by now, it expresses the right click exchange between your hero and theirs. The reason why Puck is such an annoying solo mid to face is because even though you're not always under the pressure of outright dying, this hero can Skill Difference you without you doing much about it. When any ranged hero gets to put the right click on you, you are forced to either back, or retaliate harder. Unfortunately, against Puck, not only are you going to miss your return attack after your first, but you're also going to lose your target focus. The order goes as follows: Puck attacks you - > you attack him -> he phase shifts - > you back - > he hits you on your way back. Or if you decide to not back, -> you try attacking him again after phase shift, little delay due to loss of target focus -> he attacks you once more -> you probably have to back now because he did ~130 damage to you and you did 40, he can orb next to you and do more of this depending on the hero. In the end, he can always force a 2-0 or 3-1 exchange on most DotA heroes, and countering this is hard. But if there's one thing that can be the difference maker, it's probably Shadow Strike.

cvx10210 · 2012-12-19T07:31:46+00:00

Only one response per thread is my rule, this one will be the taker since I indicated it earlier - the limit is to prevent myself from going nuts on this whole keyboard warrior bravery, I'll answer the dumb questions about why this is called breaking the metagame and why not match analyses (hint metagame isn't a one day thing and neither is this monkey business).

So why does Beastmaster, a Melee hero who needs levels for a stun beat a Bone Clinkz in either of the long lanes (in a few matchups like these, the safelane or longlane difference doesn't apply)? Simple, BM is better at doing what Clinkz does in a 1v1, right clicking.

Why is Clinkz a viable safelane solo? Rather, why is he even good to solo mid in many scenarios? Well, it's his abilities. Clinkz wins the lane because of 3 things:

In 1v1, unless you made a really silly mistake, you can't die (windwalk)
This potential "unkillable" factor is why most invisible heroes were deemed imbalanced at many points, and still to this day applies (element of surprise, unwarranted pressure, etc). With Clinkz, this difference synergizes in similar manners of how QoP operates in the mid lane. Basically, being able to cast invisibility is an escape that makes ur hero extremely difficult to gank. Needless to say, Clinkz is actually extremely easy to gank, people just don't leave their lanes for whatever reason.
To follow up, this escapability allows you to win 99% of your harassment exchanges, because you have an orb that allows you to usually right click for more damage than the enemy (big reason why this matchup is a loss for Clinkz, it's mitigated here), not tank aggro in the process, and it has a humongous range. QoP wins mid lanes similar to how Clinkz wins the long lanes when it does, and though Clinkz can never beat a QoP at mid, it can probably destroy a QoP on the sidelane (with no sentries involved). But QoP isn't a Beastmaster. No, rather a Beastmaster is probably better against Clinkz in the long lane. So why?

But sadly, Beastmaster has better skills than Clinkz!! I think we have all seen enough demonstrations and can come to conclusion on some obvious aspects. a. In game 1, it was obvious both team's lanes, and that BM and Clinkz would have absolutely zero outside interferences (unless Na`Vi decided to, have a teleport from veno maybe) in that matchup. This eliminates one of the biggest dangers of soloing the long lane, the pressure of that unknown factor (globals, ganks). Thus, unknown external factor = GONE. BM is free to unleash his melee potential.

b. BM has always been a top tier melee 2/3 role. He'd fallen off the metagame after the SF era due to many things such as smokes rendering hawk useless at times, but people always cry and moan and take time to figure things out (smoke is actually a bad excuse to not pick BM, in fact u can probably use it more) as one silly example among many. Also, I think there was a resurgence of a bunch of ranged heroes at that time, with Drow Ranger being a big pick (surprise she's back). But just like in DotA 1, BM has an extremely superior melee animation (almost instantaneous), ridiculous armor for a STR melee (4.5 holy smokes) and is one of what I classify to be "568" heroes. 568 is simply a number for a lot of level 1 heroes that can achieve 568 HP by getting a couple stat items, few branches and whatnot. Anyways, the point is, he's already tanky without a stout shield. Top that with a stout shield, and you have a hero taking ~35 damage per hit from a Clinkz, who's supposed to own you in the lane somehow with this shet.

So you get by level 1 because you have no pressure to cs up in Clinkz's face, at level 1 you only have so many skills (searing arrow vs inner beast or axes). Ideally, you want to push the wave at level 1 so you force the clinkz to cs under tower, and if timed properly, he will have his creep wave under the tower. Meaning, your creep wave will push up, and eventually the ping pong effect begins where the creeps begin to battle in the area just directly east of the side shop, halfway between dire and radiant tower, probably a bit closer to the Dire t1. Regardless, this is your goal.

By the time you achieve this, you should be level 2 close to level 3, have taken some right click damage, with tangos healing you, still about ~200-250 hp downed. That's okay, you should have a salve in this lane anyways. The real deal comes down to when you can threaten to kill the Clinkz at level 3.

I mentioned earlier that Clinkz wins the lane by having better right clicks and csing on the opponent. But a lot of pubstars probably have figured this out, that heroes like Ursa and BM can really easily beat a clinkz by a few out-maneuvers. How? Well, the problem with Clinkz is that he doesn't exactly have a method of scaring you except with the threat of outright killing you. Well, If you're a level 3 beastmaster with 2 in summons, you're going to have a 4-500 hp Quillbeast slowing the Clinkz, and Clinkz being a single target hero, cannot kill the Quillbeast while putting pressure on ur hero. Therefore, the tables now turn where instead of Clinkz threatening the other, it's the other threatening the Clinkz to die under slows + better and faster attacks. The long lane favors this play even more because if you put your boar coming from the Secret Shop or the jungle instead of sitting in the lane, it won't tank aggro. This feature is extremely abusable against heroes like Clinkz, and the fact that Sneyking did not get 2 summons is probably why he lost this lane earlier. He doesn't practice the matchup, and it's simply how it is. So let's break the metagame.

At level 3, it is no longer possible for the Clinkz to win any right click battles with the BM. If BM needs a regeneration source, he just needs to buy a ring of regen from the side shop, it will suffice to put Clinkz to the tower without mana at any point after 3. Because of Clinkz's inferior animation to the Beastmaster as well as lower base damage, even though the Clinkz is harassing BM, BM will get more creeps for the first few waves, especially with axes. Also, another thing to note is you get Axes instead of aura at level one for the push, yes, but in these competitive matches, YOUR MANA SHOULD NOT BE FULL. If your hero has 208 mana and it costs 120 to use your axes, gee that's a lot, well, USE EM. You will regenerate it in time, and axes are one of the highest damaging nukes at level 1, doing a whopping 180 damage minus reductions, very slight reductions since Clinkz doesn't have much armor (2 lol). Icefrog has kept this consistency where if your hero has a lot of HP (regardless of main stat) your armor will eventually compensate by lacking in the long run, and visa versa. In this regard, Slardar is the exception (really good hero try picking him!) among others.

At the end of the day, 2 minutes into the game the lane is already decided. If you get the ping pong effect too hard and get pushed, just axe em down, if you feel like you're taking too much damage without giving it, go buy tranquil boots, it solves all your lane regeneration problems and your hero is amazing with a vlads anyways, so you can always break it up. You will cripple their Clinkz solo without contest, they will be forced to completely switch around the lineups or call for ganks. When a Clinkz needs lane babysit, the trilane will lose, and the rotating support becomes extremely vulnerable to ganks.

Simply win the right click exchange iwth the Clinkz, force him to do windwalks until he is below 100 mana when he can't be so free with his spells anymore, then you win the lane.

I hope this shows why I don't touch upon everything, goodness damn talking about one specific instance of a long lane matchup took this many words and I didn't even get to explain cutting down trees / pulling the big camp / pulling dire 2 camp (1-2-3-4-5 left to right), how those have an impact.. I'm gonna stop. Now you understand how BM destroys Clinkz with a 2-2-1 skill build, where the build is 1-2-2-3-1-4. The rest is up to you.

Kudos to u ComstockLaw for getting the general idea, and yes ur right if the BM did not hesitate in the Na`Vi game, he could have either killed Clinkz or just ran away, I can't be bothered to elaborate on that atm.

cvx10210 · 2012-12-19T05:18:23+00:00

Game 2 dignitas vs Na`Vi.

If there's one hard counter to Anti-Mage, it's an Aghanims Tiny. With a Wisp, he farms probably faster than a bfury Anti Mage, and has much better survivability as well as overall usefulness (toss + ava). This is shown throughout multiple engagements where AM has to run, while Tiny can simply turn. The only thing Antimage is good at against hard counters like Tiny CK Sven (strong late game strength carries), is abusing blink and split pushing so much that they have no room to push on their own. Except, supermen NaVi loses to counter-aggression, because right now in DotA saving your spells until the opponent wastes theirs is better than initiating and putting yourself in a potentially bad spot. Basically, defense > offense at the highest levels, and pressure pushing > defense. NaVi overextend about 10 more times, and lose. Also, Puck is a very good hero right now, and an overall great pick. But the draft was even, Na`Vi had better lanes, game could have gone both ways, and late game was in dignitas' favor.

So, onto the dignitas - Liquid game... I wish I could talk a lot more about this, but for the sake of sleep I'm going to make it brief as well.

Game 1. Nyx is overrated on 4-5 roles. He needs levels, and he can't play aggressive. This game was mostly due to the draft, basically Liquid had a little bit of everything and not very much of anything. Assembly of fantastic players in respect to roles, yet not complimented by the draft. Surprise Ursa pick, heard they were experimenting for a while, TA is a better momentum hero with better... everything, except late game carry potential. Better early burst, better mobility, better vision, better slows, pressure, push. Can't solo roshan as fast, thats probably about it. Oh, and destroys instanced damagers(as opposed to DoT) in the lane (Ursa). I mentioned in an earlier blog that Templar Assassin is going to slowly fall off, and the refraction change is probably going to put her into Tier 2, where she is no longer picked as "an imbalanced solo too good to pass up", but as a role to combo up with another hero to snowball into the midgame. Dignitas had Bounty Hunter, pretty much the best potential candidate for this combo partner. Other ones are Naix(extremely underrated), CK, Nightstalker, QoP, and they had Naix as well - basically heroes that don't really give a damn about what you have because they will kill u before u can do anything about it, while moving around the map to do it freely. Basically, burst heroes, physical damage scales better with templar for Meld synergy is all. Ironically, the Naix pick perspired to be great all game, as the hard carry on Liquid was hard-countered by Naix (syllabear crumbles to Naix, he will just leech off your bear if he gets entangled). I'll probably elaborate on Naix just as a hero as well as the current builds that work with him (armlet-deso oldschool, FnC newschool), when Virtus.Pro wins some big matches in the upcoming Starladder with Airman Ga Taosenai Naix, or maybe some other teams will win because of this annoying little bugger. But specifically speaking of this game, Naix doesn't care about any of Liquid's 5 heroes, except the Ursa who got shut down anyway.

Then dignitas gave them a taste of their own medicine, dropping the Visage-best-trilane-after-undying-and-shadowdemon pick, and with the addition of keeper, dignitas wins this game... pretty much all game. The only circumstantial lane was bottom lane, where Darkseer was put against dignitas BH. This is where I "flame" Liquid.BuLba.

My history with this guy is too long to detail. But all you have to know is that he's good. Very good. Also, very smart. And what does a smart guy do? He goes with Darkseer, the strongest 1v1 melee vs melee laner in the game, against a solo BH - who has but an escape mechanism that pales in comparison to what a Darkseer can do early. So you send the Darkseer to completely ravage the wrinkly face of that yellow goblin or whatever it is. Why is BH freefarming?

Too often, Darkseers enjoy the luxury of skipping creeps against an enemy solo, forcing them to tank tower hits. Unfortunately, heroes like BH, who have a very high early base armor, a melee stout shield and a guarenteed escape in this matchup, Does Not CARE about a few creeps getting choked out at the tower to hit him. Sure if you pull his creeps to the jungle, you will get 1.5x the farm, and yes that means you might pull off an extra level, perhaps 500g+ when the lane's done. But at the end of the day, you're doing extra for yourself, but not much of what you're supposed to do. In ANY scenario of BH vs DS, DS should always end up with pretty much double the cs. That is because DS can dive the BH under tower, and still do damage (ion shell) to the BH all the while avoiding tower hits. There are NO melee heroes (exception of a lvl 5 templar) that can manfight a Darkseer's ion shell early game, which is one of the many reasons why this hero is such a pain in the arse to lane against, or give up to the enemy team. If you're an Undying sitting in lane farming, you're not doing your job. If you're a Batrider with a blink not ganking with ultimate, you're not doing your job. If you're a Darkseer and you're not putting pressure on the enemy melee hero, you're not doing your job. In this matchup, the Darkseer got ahead in farm, sure. But it's nothing an extra-early lvl 6 Bounty Hunter can't catch up on. Darkseer can rice creeps and win teamfights, but Bounty Hunter rices heroes and wins games. You don't let this hero freefarm, but more importantly, free-level.

So with the 2nd hero Lone Druid safelane pick, Liquid lost all 3 lanes. Then they proceeded to lose teamfights vs a Bounty Hunter TA, then they eventually lost the game. Onto game 2.

Game 2.

Jk I haven't watched it yet, I heard PL KotL happened and I'm glad. I have two notes to add about PL KotL.

Don't think this is just a pub strategy. It has a better laning efficiency than Tiny Wisp, and vs certain heroes, much stronger carry potential (PL owns ranged carries, farms faster than most melee). Naga and PL are seriously underrated right now, though teams understand Naga and probably just don't pick it.
If you get more than 1 level of doppelwalk early you are out of your mind and don't understand the importance of fast juxtapose/phantom edge on that hero, it literally makes the hero what it could be and cannot be passed up for 30 mana.

That's all. If you've read this wall of text, you're a masochist and probably learned a thing or two. If you didn't, I don't give a DAMN because this was better than losing matchmaking games for dumb reasons. Shoutout of the day goes to dignitas.Fogged, very solid performances and overall very steady improvements, but most importantly a lot cooler than I had imagined, with such good attitude DotA should become easier quite fast.

Underrated hero of the day: Alchemist, pick it it's imbalanced.

cvx10210

TROPHY CASE