draftthoughts+recap+nopowerrankingscuzgofu+introspective
Another week, yet another 1–1. Honestly this one hurt too, not because I don’t think skater’s team is good but because we absolutely dominated them in lanes both games, but fell to an absolutely dumb highground that we couldn’t break and lost a 10k gold lead in G1. Our team really needs a 2–0 and a 1–1 in the next two weeks to make playoffs, otherwise I’m not positive our SOS will get us in on tiebreakers. All that said, to the draft.
So our plan going in was pretty simple. Skater_x7 is known to be a split pushing late game player, and has a really hard time fighting with his team early. This was reinforced by both my experience playing with him in SEAL last season, and Ultragunner’s strategy he used to eliminate us from playoffs last season. Basically we go in with a fast-paced lineup, fight early, win lanes, and destroy their base before he comes online and starts fighting. Important note for later: they have a standin this game, KBX, who plays mid for Truckwaffle’s team.
We open with the obvious Arc Warden ban, Skater’s best hero and he has first-phased it a few times. We’re not giving him that hero. They ban out Lycan (weirdly both games). We’ve run it a total of 1 time, and while we dominated with it, it’s still a really strange ban. I can only guess that they have nightmares about a game where they got run over by one, but even then who is picking it first phase by this patch? With the only hero I was scared of banned, I get to basically pick a player and remove their comfort heroes. Their offlaner procarbine gets the treatment. They’d run Brewmaster a bunch of times (I assume he plays EST-WED because he was playing it for 2 different teams in recent weeks). That said, he only had around a 50% winrate on it… but still seemed like a comfort pick. They take out Mirana which we’ve picked a few times. We then have the pretty standard choice (at least for us) to ban either Skywrath or Warlock. Wanting to emphasize lanes, I did choose to ban the Sky leaving the Warlock — also a bit of a mistake.
At this point, Skater had already used ALL of his time for each ban, and a bit of his reserve time. I can only assume he’s reading through a giant multichaptered draft notebook he made and finding the PERFECT PICK OR BAN FOR EACH ROUND. I really don’t think it mattered much, but since they were so slow to pick everything I wanted to go through the draft in hyperdrive giving them little time to think. They grab Warlock, I immediately take Windranger and Beastmaster, a pretty classic combo that AwfulWaffle and I have been working on the last few weeks. The harrass is pretty ridiculous with that combo, and also provides 2 tower pushers right off the bat. They counter with the tanky boi Centaur (I have a firm opinion that he’s still weak in lane, esp solo but he really ramps up later with farm).
So this round of bans is where we messed up. With Arc Warden out of the pool, I still assumed KBX would be mid. He has a relatively small hero pool (from what I understand he was kinda forced to mid by Truck team) so we ban out some comfort picks in Zeus+Sniper, again trying to use the least amount of time possible to keep Skater on his feet. They ban out DK and Invoker, both heroes we’ve run for Ultra. At this point we were going to grab our 5 hero, and had to choose between Bane and Witch Doctor. Shaz plays a really mean Bane, and I REALLY wanted to pick it, but was convinced to pick the Witch Doctor due to the fact that we needed some more AOE type abilities, and less single target (cask, maledict, aghs ult, etc). They take a CM (is she good now?). They’re pretty squishy so far (minus cent obv) and so we take a Clinkz that can eat up those supports (while also being able to push towers). They take the goddamn Tinker (another Skater hero that I would have banned if I knew he was going mid). This pick was super frustrating because I just didn’t know KBX would go safelane. They take out another counter to it in Storm Spirit, while we take out the PL (we were pretty lacking in PL answers, thinking they’d actually pick it at 18 instead of the Tinker). They grab Slark (lol, Slark+Warlock against Beast+Wind???), we take Ember Spirit knowing it would be weak in lane, but could counter Tinker’s split push later on.
Lanes went exactly how we wanted them to. Windranger and I absolutely dominated top, though it was hard to actually get a kill pre-4 due to Warlock’s heal. We still got all the farm and denies we could want, and ate Warlock for breakfast lunch and dinner. They couldn’t rotate the CM top without absolutely trashing their Centaur player and giving Fiery and even better lane
(though they lost it anyway). Mid at least drew in an unfavorable lane (yay Ultra) and the score balloons up to something like 13–2. We’re taking towers, left and right, rotating well, etc.
Then we had to go high ground against Tinker spam plus a REALLY underrated Warlock upheaval. I was just sending wave after wave of creeps in the top lane (which would have broken base if they were actually able to move) while Clinkz is bottom pushing tower, keeping the other team stuck in their base. Then I have no clue what happened. We either just gave up and went to get Rosh or Clinkz got picked off so we left or something. We just stopped and went to farm the map. There we got individually picked off by Slark or Tinker in 3 different parts of the map at basically the same time. Our lead was just completely erased, and while we were able to find a few Tinker kills we still couldn’t break base. It was a super demoralizing game, and beyond frustrating. I couldn’t actually hit a Primal Roar to safe my fucking life, and just became a non-factor later in the game. Frankly I’m just not a Beastmaster player, I can play it, can win lanes with it, can press W and send creeps to tower. But the hero just puts my brain in too many places trying to send my Hawk somewhere and my creeps somewhere else and use the creep actives while trying to find my hero to roar with. I’m not a good micro player, and while Beastmaster micro is really easy it still segments my focus just enough to force mistakes. That said I’m still going to work on the hero, and still pick it, I only learned it a few weeks ago. I still much prefer other heroes with 1 thing to control (HOTD aside).
For those that can remember, my goal this week was to actually adjust better in game 2 draft-wise. I think this was accomplished (though I wish we still won G1). So we weren’t able to finish early against the Skater team, so the other strat is to out-late-game them. We still go out to win our lanes, but want to build a team that can beat them later. They ban Mirana (ok), Lycan (still, why?) and Doom (okok). We take out Arc Warden (duh), Brew (again), and instead of banning the Skywrath we ban out the Warlock (the respect ban?). They go and grab our Windranger (we weren’t gonna go for it anyway) and we take the Skywrath Axe, a classic combo though we actually didn’t plan to lane them together. Zoompa is playing this game, so we rotate AwfulWaffle to 5 and Zoompa gets to lane with me in the offlane as 4. They 1st phase a Tinker (boooo) already into an Axe/Skywrath which is questionable, but Skater is really good on the hero so comfort usually trumps all. They take out 2 lane counters again in Storm/Invoker, we take out the Beastmaster and Centaur (still focusing on removing procarbine heroes to give fiery a decent lane).
We grab a Clockwork to pair with the Axe. We’ve run this combo a few times, and it seems a bit counterintuitive. Both want to initiate fights, both are melee and cogs kinda ruins what Axe wants to do (Cogs separates team, Axe wants them grouped). However, the lane harass between the two is really strong, and it allows Clockwork to initiate while Axe follows up or counterinitiates. If both players are on the same wavelength, I think the combo works really well. They pick up the other meta 5 in Witch Doctor. We take the DP (we’re light on tower push right now, and it was either that or DK). They take the Magnus, which I was actually considering banning earlier but choosing instead to take out the Centaur. We ban out the Juggernaut, an obvious combo with the Magnus empower and one of the few heroes that just ignores Clock in lane. They take out DK which was a bit strange since we already had our mid, and have never run it safelane.
We still have last pick this game, and it’s going to the fierysnek. They decide to take Luna (which honestly is my least favorite safelaner to lane against… her stun damage is way too high). However, once Axe gets blink/blade I can just eat Luna super easily and just farm kills on her. We decide to pick Antimage, a hero we’ve never run before… but with the right items can survive/counter Tinker’s chain abilities. So pretty obviously our goal is to make space for an Antimage to farm what he needed to win us the game.
We pretty much do that. Zoompa made plays this game. He saved Ultra’s lane, and was able to keep the Luna in check giving me some lane farm. That said, anytime he left I was just useless against Luna/WD. They’re way too strong for a solo Axe and WD heal doesn’t care about battle hunger. Safelane drew for some reason… that lane should have been dominated by the Magnus empower (which apparently he didn’t get) and a Windranger. Once laning was over and I had Blink/Blademail, I really feel I hit the calls I needed to heal. I found Luna most fights, murdered here (really she murdered herself), tanked some stuff and kept us ahead long enough for fiery to buy…. well:
Battlefury, Manta, Heart, Linkens, (Vanguard in between those), Aghs… So a farming item, and 1,2,3,3.5,4.5 defensive items (I’m counting abyssal as kinda defensive…). Watching him hit towers was hilarious, at almost 60 minutes into the game he was doing no damage. But he also just couldn’t die, even though the other team kept trying. I hit some calls, my team deals some damage, and fiery just makes long sweet tender love to a tower until it decides to die on its own (cuz he certainly wasn’t killing it).
I was actually surprised by this graph. It felt like we were ahead through most of this game, so the fact that they had a 10k lead at 40 was a little surprising. We take it back after a couple big teamfights and are able to end the game to our like 6th 1–1.
This game was probably my strongest game of the season (except maybe my Doom game against waves). I felt like I hit almost every call I wanted outside of one at our rax when a glaive hit me right before I blinked. I had some really sweet jumps on a Tinker right as he BOT’d in, and before he blinked away. Basically I did my job. There were of course things to work on. Primarily, I didn’t have the greatest lane (though I’m not sure I was supposed to when I was solo against Luna/WD) and I have been hitting this mid-game lul where I don’t farm properly. I end up getting a decent blink/blademail timing, and just go into wanderer mode trying to find kills and not farming at all. If I’m not finding kills, I’m not getting gold. This is my new focus for the week… farming. Being a bit more greedy and efficient. Its hard to know exactly how much farm I should have at each point in the game, so I’m going to do a bit of research to find ideal NW amounts for around that 20–40 minute marks, and use the DotaPlus to keep track and focus on getting there in pubs. Then hopefully those patterns can be ironed out and pushed into my “pro” games. I still love playing with this team, and Zoompa is a welcome addition as FA (new ideas being brought to the table, and a PMA player). However, I’m getting a little nervous about our ability to make playoffs, we can’t afford to 1–1 the way out, we have to 2–0 at least one of our series to make it safely. We absolutely can do that, but the last few weeks also very well could have been 2–0’s and weren’t.
Sorry, probably a more boring craptain blog since I’m not talking about any of you. Blame gofu for his Thursday match or whatever. Here’s a prediction:
gofu 1–1 sasquatch I think sasquatch’s team will eventually get knocked down a bit, but this isn’t the week for it to happen. gofu’s team is pretty strong, but also they won’t expect sasquatch’s team to be as good as they are (they’re thriving on teams underestimating them). Also 1–1 because it’s the most boring prediction ever. If you want something more exciting… 2–0 gofu.
Ripley
