Surviving 3k MMR: sometimes you just need to win the game

I am a big fan of games; Star Craft, Monopoly, Diablo, Scrabble, Candy Crush, Dominion, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Magic: the Gathering, and many others have been my jam at one point or another over the years. One way that I always try to think when I play is: how do I win the game from this point? This is a very simple but important question to ask yourself because often times there is a path to victory, you just need to find it. This gets harder in some ways and easier in others as you get better and better at a game and DOTA 2 is no exception.

I played a game recently as Huskar and even though we were over 20,000 gold behind, we still pulled out a victory. How is this possible? We just went down mid and won the game. Was it really that easy? Yes. Our opponents made some critical mistakes at the very end. This allowed us win. (You can find out more info about the match here.)

In this game, I initially thought our path to victory would be through the Sand King, Shadow Demon and me creating space for the Tiny and Lycan to farm up. With these two heroes, we had the possibility to take objectives whenever we eliminated a hero from the battlefield. This is one of the fundamentals of winning at dota: translate kills into objective (towers, Roshan, warding and barracks.) 

Sadly, our game plan didn't pan out. We were only able to convert kills into objectives once. Our opponents, however, did this to us many times and by the end, we only had a ranged barracks. What would you do in this situation? We chose to head down mid and pull out a victory. We didn't go for barracks or kills because the Antimage was destroying our base while we barreled down mid. In my mind, the only way we were going to win, given the way the game had gone so far, was to throne them and hope they made mistakes. As I'm sure many of you can attest to, in the 3k MMR bracket, mistakes are common place. So even though our opponents played stellar DOTA until that point, they made mistakes when it counted most, giving us a victory. 

Sometimes you just need to figure out how to go win the game. Share your story about find a path to victory in the comments below. Thanks for reading.

Surviving 3k MMR: Don't play a worse something else

In DOTA 2, the easiest way to gain MMR is to pick the best hero for the situation. Things like opponent team composition, your team composition, and your hero pool eliminate a lot of potential heroes trying to lure you into the trap of playing a "worse something else." In the game, there are roles and picking the best hero for the role you want to play or the role you get stuck with (sorry, position 5) will dramatically increase your teams chances of winning. I have a few pocket pick offlaners and mids so that I can play that position competently. Even though I don't know all the intricacies of each matchup, I have confidence in my ability to play my hero correctly.

Picking a "worse something else" is especially obvious in captain's mode. Commentators almost always point out what they will think is the best pick for the current situation and they are right much of the time because they can properly identify each teams composition, strengths and weaknesses of the current line up and, based on the current meta, sum up what hero would be the best. This idea of picking the best carry or mid hero is what drives a meta.

So the next time you find yourself in the enviable position of picking last for your team, just remember don't pick a "worse something else." Let me know in the comments if this tip was ever helpful for you or if it gave you that "aha!" moment.

Surviving 3k MMR: Actively Thinking About the Game

I recently wrote a post about three things to do to survive (you can find it here). I would like to expand on the second point from that post, which is: not actively thinking about what's going on in the game. Too often players tunnel vision into what's going on right in front of them, lose focus and zone out. This results in three things:

1. Zombie mode farm fest
2. missing opportunities to gain an advantage
3. missing opportunities to push an advantage

There are simple exercises you can perform during the game to snap you out of this mindset and help you become a better player. The first thing to try is checking what items the enemy players have. This will give you valuable information and help you make sure you itemize correctly. Second, check the items on your teammates, especially your supports. You can tell how well a game is going by the number of items on the supports. Third, think about where your going to be in 30 seconds, 1 minute and five minutes from now. Make some assumptions about how the game is going to go and then try to predict how the game's going to unfold after that. Finally, check the minimap and count the number of enemy heroes on the map. If there's only one enemy hero showing, try to think about where the other heroes could be; they could be wrapping around on you for a gank, doing Roshan or farming your jungle.

Hope this quick tip helps as you continue to survive 3k MMR.

DOTA 2 fixes for upcoming patch 6.85

In my final TI post, I talked about how there are some specific fixes that could be done to heroes and the game to make it more balanced and fun. My ideas come from both professional observations and pub experiences. No one will argue that Leshrac needs a small nerf, I will argue that Lina does, and, beyond that, it gets gray... Well somethings are more gray than others so let me explain to you the things which are gray. The gray scale are things that aren't inherently "broken" or op, but still warp the game in some fashion or another. The closer to broken it is, the higher on the gray scale it is.

Roshan still favors the Dire, but only slightly. Yes, the map rearrange did good things for the rosh pit, but the dire still have the easier Rosh access and this is why CDEC and other teams favored picking dire. Sure, the radiant offlane is still a little better because of the large pull camp but that pales in comparison to Rosh. Roshan decides games, yet an offlaner may or may not. Roshan does warp the game, but the advantage it gives dire is a warp that could still use a little tweak. I think increasing the width of the Radiant ramp leading down into the river by the Pit and widening those path ways a little would go a long way into fixing this issue.
Gray Scale = 6

Lina needs a nerf. This hero is out of control. She's not leshrac level, but criminy, 950 pure damage with aghs at massive range and through BKB. Give me a break. This hero breaks carries and pushes heroes with low base strength, like Phantom Assassin, out of the meta. If a hero can't survive her damage, just don't even bother with picking it. To fix it, nerf the range more and nerf the damage slightly.
Gray Scale = 7

Supports have been seeing more love recently with the advent of better support oriented items. Glimmer Cape, Solar Crest and the like have allowed position 4 and some position 5 heroes to
increase their relevance in the game. This is at the professional level. At the pub level, it has created a position 3.5 and 6.5 where 1 hero always gets sacked. This has to stop. The position 5 has to be incentivised somehow. I don't know if it's through cooler, more flashy items or more gold for assists and less for kills or allowing them to buy tp scrolls at a discount. All I know is: no one wants to support and that fact destroys pubs.
Gray Scale = 9

People want to jungle in pubs, either let them or change it so it's not viable. Professional players don't jungle because it makes your lanes weak by putting only 1 support on the active field. Pub players don't care about this. They jungle every heroes that can hack it. I've seen Necro, Troll, Dusa, Jug, Ursa, BS, KotL, AM and more. To some degree, everyone should be free to pick what they want and be punished if they lose. However, for people to rationally and reasonably use a strategy, like jungling, it needs to reach a certain success rate because someone needs to rationalize how employing strategy A will lead to victory. Jungling is on the cusp of being just good enough for an all too large percentage of DOTA 2 population to think it's viable. This means that jungling needs to be adjusted such that it's either a little better or a little worse. Making it better would allow for a greater variety in strategies and give opponents opportunities to punish or get punished by it. My vote is for making it worse. Doing this in tandem with making supporting more fun would be a boon to pub games, thus increasing the user base and proving more revenue.
Gray Scale = 2

Leshrac is the single biggest hero offender when it comes to warping games. His ability to dominate any and every lane he sits in is like putting Sniper and Troll intro 1 hero. This is because his third skill, lightning storm. It is able to jump an extreme distance with a very fast projectile speed. Leshrac also leverages Bloodstone better than any hero (except possibly storm.) He was banned or picked in almost every game of TI.
Gray Scale = 10

Bloodstone is the most unbalanced item right now. It allows heroes like Leshrac and Storm to dominate a game because they can flash farm, respawn quickly, and participate in many of a team's kills. The previous change to bloodstone made the item cheaper and made the item build up more tolerable so that heroes like Zeus and Timbersaw could purchase it with lower risk. This allowed other heroes, however, to come online faster. Heroes like Lesh.  This item renders Antimage useless against a Leshrac in a straight up fight and he's the freaking ANTI-MAGE.
Gray Scale = 8

If bloodstone is the item creating the most broken heroes, then glimmer cape nerfs the most heroes. This item renders heroes like Lion, AA, and support lina useless. It's ability to reduce magical damage and render a target invisible at the low cost of 1950 gold. The item got a nerf (increased mana cost) after it was first released because of how abusive it was. It is still strong and needs to be brought down a peg. Maybe another bump up in mana cost, adding a recipe, and adding another item (blades of attack, ring of protection, quater staff) would add some balance. I especially like the latter 2 options because it makes it into more of a blademail for supports in terms of item cost.
Gray Scale = 5

Bounty Hunter has brought back dual laning mid. Lich used to fill this roll and Io will do it situationally. Bounty hunter, however, had a 90+% win rate at TI. This should raise many flags about the ability of this hero to warp the game. While EG dealt with well until upper bracket finals against CDEC, every other team feared the BH. He has built in comeback and get ahead mechanics which professional players easily leveraged into wins. I think that slight nerfs to the duration and cooldown of track would bring this hero back in balance with the rest of the filed. Keep in mind that it was the improvement to shuriken that brought this hero back into the pro scene, so slight nerfs might bump him down into the "better than situational" tier. This hero pushes dedicated junglers and heroes that rely on invis out of the meta.
Gray Scale = 7

Outside of these observations, here's a quick list and a gray scale number for heroes that could use a nerf:

• Bloodseeker - 4
• Spiritbreaker- 1
• Brood Mother - 3

What are you hoping gets buffed or nerfed next patch? Let me know in the comment section, I would love to hear from you.

Medallion or Battlefurry Phantom Assassin?

A while ago, the Foreseer's Contract and the Nemesis Event showcased the Phantom Assassin Arcana and added the Oracle to the hero pool. Oracle doesn't see much pub play, but PA still gets picked a lot. While the event was going on, I played a lot of PA. Being the engineer that I am, I analyzed everything to death, read every guide I could get my hands on, and watch replays of highly skilled players showcasing the power of this hero.

During that phase, I ran into this gem on how to play PA. The gist of the guide is that Medallion is the first item you want to buy after Treads/Phase so that you can farm and fight earlier. Beyond that, he offers advice and item builds for different lane positions and farming priorities. Since this guide was posted, desolator has gotten even cheaper and Vlads got a buff so this guide is even more relevant. If you aren't a position 1 hero, Deso is the orb you want and Vlads will give you the lifesteal you desire. The guide was also published before the changes were made in 6.84 about kills granting more gold. More gold from kills rewards players for finding kills early instead of passively farming a lane.

The above guide is a more unconventional take on how to play PA and I can attest to its merits if you can coordinate with your team. If you're looking for something that's a little more conventional or you'd rather watch a video, Relax You're Doing Fine has a great video for that. This is the more conventional Battlefurry + HoD to stack ancients and farm to get ahead with these items. Unless you can get the Battlefurry consistently by 18 minutes, I would recommend trying the Medallion build.

When you try the Medallion build, send me a match ID and let me know how it worked out for you. I am interested to hear about other people's experience building the hero this way. If you want to check out one of my matches, just plug in the match ID 1732300064. Thanks for reading.

The Anti-Carries Series: Slardar

Recently, Purge did a video about Slardar. He played him in the offlane as a 3 position hero, building power treads and blink to help secure his teams victory. Slardar is one of the few heroes who are what I will term an "anti-carry." He requires the 2 items listed above in order to impact the game. That's it. With these two items, his skill set allows him to lock heroes down and chase super effectively. Lets look at his dotabuff.

Items

As I already touched on, power treads and blink dagger are his bread and butter. After that, BKB, armlet and deso round out the top 5. These items are midgame oriented, allowing Slarad to jump on enemies and destroy them quickly. He puts pressure on the map through sprint but also takes increased damage so the next 4 major items (ignoring, TP and shout shield) increase his survivability. Vanguard is another mid game item, but AC and HoT are late game options that keep Slardar relevant. Magic Wand provides some stats and burst heal+mana so that you can just barely escape or get that last crush in.

Best Against

These heroes suffer at the hands of Slardar; it should be no surprise that they are weak to Slardar. They are either: high mobility (AM, Lycan, Brood, NS), rely on invis (Brood, Riki, BH), or are weak to lots of physical damage (Huskar, Ursa). Slardar's strengths stem from his ability to keep pressure on heroes all over the map and chase them to the ends of the Earth. I also like Slardar against Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Juggernaut, Troll, and Bristleback.

Worst Against:

While Slardar is good against many carries, there are a few heroes who do well against him. Tidehunter is tough to play against in lane and can counter initiate your mini-ravage with a full-fledged one. I'm not really sure why Gyro is on here; it could be related to his potential to team fight early and his high magical damage. PL is an illusion based hero and slardar has very little AOE. Enigma, Zeus, Tinker, Venomancer, and OD all dish out huge amounts of magical and pure damage which makes toast of a sprinting Slardar. Zeus and Veno can also cancel blinks easily. You shouldn't pick Slardar against illusion based heroes in general, heroes that can kite you easily (Viper), or defensive supports (ES, Oracle, Dazzle and Shadow Demon.)

Some tips for playing the hero:

• dart in and out of fights - Slithereen Crush has a 5.5 second and sprint has a 7 second down time, both of which are insane and you'll be able to get multiple crushes off per fight if you play it right
• use your mana well, tread swap, and keep the Amplify Damage on the enemy
• don't deviate much from the items listed above because you usually won't have enough time to farm blink + bkb + damage item + tank item
• maxing crush and sprint first with a point in your ultimate by level 9 is generally the way to go, however getting a point in bash can be worth it if your team has lots of lockdown or you're just feeling lucky (warning: explicit)
• Vanguard is a good item on this hero. The damage mitigation and extra health really minimize the downside of sprint
• If the enemy team mainly relies on right click to do damage, consider getting a butterfly as your 1st or 2nd tank item because...
• this hero benefits from attack speed like few others because of the 25% psuedo-random Bash
• always sprint around the map but be careful using it against burst heavy lineups

The next time you find yourself with an AM or Ursa problem, just pick Slardar. Pressure them all over the map, take an early Roshan potential and get aggressive. Pick him in the right situation and reap the benefits of playing an anti-carry.

The next anti-carry: Legion Commander

The Internation 2015 Part 3: Looking to the Future

This is part three of my take on the International. Here's a link to my Internation Page where you can find parts 1 and 2 as well as my other TI posts.

The end of The Internation 5 signals the end to another great year in the DOTA 2 community. While many people will still be doing challenges on their compendium and trying to get some coins, the break between seasons will be short lived. Everyone, even the mighty Icefrog, will be getting their mind in gear for the next season of the great game created. In this blog post, you and I will be exploring what the future holds for DOTA 2. We won't be covering everything, so feel free to share what you think is important in the comments section.

The great player shuffle has already begun. Valve is driving teams toward stable rosters by offering direct invites to those teams. In professional sports, stable teams come about through trade deadlines, free agency, contracts, and other mechanisms to balance the needs of the player with the needs of the organization. Valve is incentivising teams to hold stable rosters through direct invites to major events, either to play or qualify. This year, teams like Summoners Rift had to try to make their way through the open qualifies if they wanted to make it into the closed qualifier because of roster changes that occurred after the deadline. September 1st is the next of these deadlines for the major fall tournament so teams are already shuffling around to make sure their rosters are rock solid for the event. In the short term, this seems crazy because TI just ended, yet teams are already kicking players and grabbing new ones. In the long run, well performing teams will try to keep their roster as stable as possible to try and avoid grinding through the qualifiers. This will translate into better DOTA.

For many casters, TI is a make it or break it moments. If a caster, like Maut, doesn't get invited for the biggest tournament in esports, then they have to grind for another year hoping that Valve send them the coveted message next year. For casters that do make it, this is a defining moment because their whole year of work has led up to this. It could be a confirmation of what they want to do or, in the case of Blitz, tip the scales back toward wants to be involved with DOTA on a professional level. A shuffle is also happening. Casters move up, move on, or move over depending on their TI experience or lack thereof. Notably, Zyori is leaving Beyond the Summit. This creates openings for new talent to rise to the top, as ODPixel did this year. It will be interesting to see, as Majors are added and the demand for talented and knowledgeable casters increases, if Valve will look to turn it into more of a commercial endeavor to attract more people and casters to the game.

The final thing we all have to look forward to is a new patch. Icefrog tends to fix things that are a problem in the professional scene and change things up to keep the game fresh. I expect that Leshrac, Gyro, Lina, and Bountyhunter will all get hit with the nerf stick because of their overperformance at TI. Other than those 4, most other heroes that were played seemed fairly balanced. It's the heroes that weren't played and who don't fit into a meta who need a small buff. I would chose Lonedruid, Weaver, Elder Titan, and Beastmaster as the heroes to get a small boost. At some point in the near future, I'll go more indepth with ideas for hero fixes and game balancing.

The most important thing we have to look forward to is more great DOTA. The game continues to evolve, regardless of who's casting, who's playing, and what heroes are overpowered. The Reborn Beta will soon become the client, and with it a new era of DOTA will emerge. It will harken back to it's roots as a custom game for Warcraft 3 and open up new opportunities for tournaments, events and fun.

Please tell me what you are most looking forward to in DOTA's future in the comment section and thanks for reading.

The International 5 Part 2: All Things Heroes

Lets talk heroes. There were winners and there were losers. Let's start with the biggest loser: Queen of Pain.

The biggest disappointment hero-wise for TI was the Queen of Pain. She had a paltry 25% win rate over 20 games. This poor showing demonstrates that not even professional player can avoid every trap. In a future post I'll touch on this, but the basic idea is this: QoP gives players the impression that they are having a huge impact on the game when, in greater context of the game, they are. Part of the problem for for QoP was the patch. During TI, the mid lane lacked heroes that could reliably win their lane and contribute to the late game. Teams had to chose what they wanted in a midlaner: win the lane or have a strong late game. This, of course, except when they could pick Lina, who I'll talk about next. For now, back to QoP. Heroes exert pressure on the enemy team in three forms: lane pressure, map pressure, and direct pressure. QoP is supposed to be a lane dominator and she is. She's the reason that we didn't see more melee mids picked (like ember, dk, TA and others.) The problem is that after the laning stages, she lacks the ability to sufficiently and directly pressure the map and heroes. Her spells are AOE and don't offer the direct pressure in the form of single target pick off potential that a Lina or Storm do.  Nor can she can't stand and bang with carries like an SF can. She doesn't push towers particularly fast and can't contribute much to taking Roshan, so her map pressure is negligible. I wish that more players had gone for aghs into necro book so that she could contribute more to Roshan, offer more pushing potential, and threaten to pick off supports with minimal risk to herself. Sadly, only Waga advocated this.

Lina was the biggest winner at 62.5% over 32 games (the most picked hero, I might add) for TI. Teams resorted to relying on her to burst down the golden BKB wearing cores of the opposing squad. Her attack range, stun, aoe damage, and single target burst lend her to be a flexible pick, either in the midlane or as a support. Linas popularity stems from the most stable carry for TI being the Gyrocopter. He, usually, relies on BKB to ensure he outputs maximum damage. The airship does magical and physical AOE damage, both of which take time to dish out. What better way to deal with it than to kill him before he gets a chance to flack down your whole team. The other reason why is that she stays relevant during the entire game. 

As for other midlaning heroes, Storm saw a 50% win rate and SF was at 33.33%, both over 18 games. Templar Assassin at 71.43% win rate over 7 games, puts her at the second best mid hero. 

There were many other winners and losers in terms of heroes. Here are some notables with a short explanation:

• Antimage - seen as the second most stable carry. strong against teams containing storm. Watch the IG vs Secret Game 1 or Navi vs VG best of 1 for reasons why this hero was picked. Even with only a 40% win rate, teams had to change how they played to minimize his effectiveness.
• Bounty hunter had a 92% win rate.This hero is broken. If you know how to play him, you should be spamming this hero in pubs. For pro players, he allows them to get back to parity or get very far ahead with just a few track kill.
• Shadow Fiend - while Artzeey's performance on this hero were nothing short of amazing during TI, the hero just didn't perform. He was looked at favorably for teams on the Radiant side because of his easy access to the two jungle camps, however, he just didn't perform. This is another hero that was picked because of the lack of viable mid-laners.
• Techies - I would be remiss if I didn't mention everyone's *least* favorite pub heroes. As AUI_2000 said "Techies is only fun for the person playing with him." Techies single handedly helped EG win TI because CDEC had to ban it every game; they weren't prepared to play against the suicide squad, with or without Tusk.
• If Gyro is the most stable carry and Antimage is the second most stable carry, then Phantom Lancer and Luna tie for 3rd. Luna started seeing more play toward the end of the tournament as teams sought 1 position heroes when a combination of banning and picking removed AM, Gyro, and PL from the pool. Luna is comparable to gyro. She has does burst AOE magical damage in the early stages of the game and then transitions into a machine. Her push is better because of the bouncing glaives but enemies that spread out wisely don't take as much damage compared to a flack cannon.
• The final winners I want to touch on are the supports. The tournament meta centered around getting the best midlaner and position 1 hero, both from a limited pool, and then countering the opponents picks with strong supports. Bounty Hunter, Earthshaker and Winter Wyvern are my top three supports for this tourney, but Disruptor, Visage (with 100% win rate over 5 games), Lion, Crystal Maiden, Naga (while only a 30% win rate, was banned almost every game against Secret and EG, among others), Spirit Breaker, Tusk, and Rubik all had over 50% winrates. The wide variety of support play is a hopeful sign for things to come.

What are your winners and losers for heroes this tournament? How do you think this will impact the pub meta in the long run? Let me know in the comments.

The International 5 Part 1 of 3: Thoughts on the Event

Here are my thoughts on the International 5. This is the 3rd International I've watched and, aside from Liquid doing it and Alliance's victory, was an extremely enjoyable experience. This post will start the big picture and next post I'll talk about some things I saw happening at the micro-level. Finally, I have a post related to the consequences, unexpected and otherwise, of this TI as teams once again will begin their prep for next year.

Group Stages    The group stages were done in a simple but satisfying way. The key points are:

• two groups of 8 teams - pretty self-explanatory

• round robin style matching to determining seeds

• 3 points for a 2-0 and 1 point for a 1-1 - this point system, as EE pointed out in his interview with Hotbid, could encourage collusion among the teams. The basic idea is that 3 teams could intentionally go 2-0 and 0-2 with the other two teams. This gives three 3 points and a very good shot at making it in to the winners bracket.

• Complexity and CDEC surprised everyone with their solid play and finished top 4 of their respective group.

• 3 games were usually going on at the same time. This is necessary, but a pain if you want to watch your two favorite teams. The updates provided at the bottom on draft and who won allowed you to switch to games that might prove more interesting.

The Main Event   It was nice that all the teams got to play in the main event. Some key points are:

• Some of teams that ended up doing really well started in the lower bracket. Notably were Vici Gaming and Virtus.Pro. 

• Some of the favorites to win the whole things ended up in the lower bracket after the second round of upper bracket play. Whith LGD gaming made it to the lower bracket finals, Team Secret finished more poorly than many hoped for. I was in a pool with some guys I play dota with and everyone except for two other guys and me had Secret going all the way. I had Evil Geniuses and won the whole things.

• The games weren't as exciting as TI3 but they were way better than TI4. Check out the VP vs. Secret series, VG vs. Cloud 9 game 1, Complexity vs VP, Secret vs IG games 1 and 2, EG vs CDEC game 3. 

• EG was able to figure out how to dismantle CDEC in the finals after getting crushed by them in the upper bracket. PPD did a vlog about it here.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• No spoiled heroes this TI. Unlike the Techies last year, we didn't see the Pitlord make his debute.

• Kaci hosted the event and did some interviews but she got on my nerves by the end. She needs to up her DOTA 2 knowledge and get away from yelling in a very high pitched voice. In fact, lets just get her away from yelling and encouraging other people to yell (poor March).

• The main event panel was hosted by Paul Chaloner and he kept the conversation moving but not always in the right direction. I think he will continue to get better as he becomes more familiar with the game. I don't think he should self-deprecate in front of millions of people who are the same skill level as him.

• The 3 Merlinis + Synd offered some great insight to the matches played one stream 1 for the group stages. Maybe next year this could be expanded to all streams even if it's just the announcers +1 or +2 people.

• Deamau5 playing at the end was too big of a surprise and the camera work was atrocious; constantly zooming in and out with flashing lights gave me nausea. I like Deadmau5 but the performance was very anti-climatic when compared with the games that had just been played. Maybe he could have played before or during the games and transitioned into closing the event.

• All the casters were great. There wasn't a single point in time where I felt like they missed things or made errors when it came to the game. 

• I think there need to be more Immortal Treasures related to your compendium level. This would encourage users to level it up and allow those of us who didn't get all of the "golden" treasures to feel not quite as gypped for leveling up their book.

What things did you think were done well at this years event? Were done poorly? 

Thanks for reading and stop in soon to read part 2.

Surviving 3k: Just Arriving

You've just made it to 3k MMR. Either you got your grind on and raised your MMR or this is where you, like me, were placed. The 3k MMR landscape is diverse in terms of talent, hero selection, and individual player strategy. It's not uncommon to have an ancients farming medusa go for midas and treads into rapier and carry the game. Don't fall into this trap, however. Here are some survival tips you can employ as soon as you start trying to climb the ladder to 4k.

• Don't jungle, unless it's a hero I highlighted here.
• If your team needs a support, pick it.
• If you're the hard support, I suggest getting courier, sentries, tangos, and a clarity (as per fluff)
• Always, and I mean always, play to win. Don't give up if you're behind 10 or even 20 kills. Games are swingy.
• Identify the best player on your team and ensure they have a good game.
• Don't ever farm ancients.
• Midas isn't a very good item this patch unless you get it before 6 minutes.
• When you get crushed by a single player, go back and watch how they crushed you.
• When you crush a team, go back and watch what enabled you to crush them.
• Help your supports with wards and sentries.
• Buy smokes and set up kills.
• Help zone the offlaner whether you're support or carry.

These are just a few general things to help improve your play so you can continue your progress in the 3k bracket. It's important to keep focusing on the basics of surviving 3k MMR because once you get them down, you can start focusing on playing like a 4k player. 

Surviving 3k: Encouraging your allies to pick around you

Every match, you should be doing certain things:

1. determining how your team is going to communicate
2. assessing how flexible your team is going to be in roles, picks, and lanes
3. trying to convince your team to pick strong heroes, counterpick the enemy, and pick around the hero you want to play

There are many other things, but these 3 you can determine right at the start of the game. For the purpose of this post, let's focus on the last part of point 3. If at least one other person picks a hero that synergizes with what you pick, you multiply the effectiveness of both heroes thus increasing your chance of winning.

Surviving 3k means you need to use all your skills, not just DOTA related, to get that coveted MMR. If you play a great hero x and you know you pair well with hero y, then encourage someone to pick it if they're good with the hero. A few notes about this approach:

• Try a logical argument. for example, if the enemy team has a Storm Spirit and you want to play Omni, you could try: "Antimage counters storm and will play great with my Omniknight because you won't have to get a bkb."
• If the logical argument doesn't work, then try an emotional one. Generally, people make decisions based on emotion; how a decision makes you feel impacts greatly what you decide to do. With that said, most people will respond positively if you ask nicely, but some might respond if you are more aggressive. Caution: people tend to hide behind their anonymity on the internet so being aggressive isn't usually as successful as asking nicely. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is the old adage.
• Sometimes, no one plays a hero that partners well with you, like you want to play LC but no one picks heroes with burst damage.
• When some one says no to a line of reasoning, try another; sell your idea any way you can. Always keep in mind that the goal is gaining MMR, not making friends or enemies. If you happen to make those, that's fine too, but this is solo queue not social hour.
• Don't constrain your hero pairs to one that will only be in your lane or play a certain role. Try to harness the strength of your team's abilities using snap judgments and making quick decisions. If those decisions don't work after a couple tries, move on to something different.
• Don't get emotionally involved with a hero, hero pair or strategy. Being involved with your significant other is fine but this is, again, solo queue. There is work to do and whispering sweet nothings into your microphone isn't going to get you that +25 at the end of a match. If the game calls for something outside your comfort zone, do it. 
• On the other side of that coin: if your team wants you to pick a hero you aren't good at, try to find a compromise hero, otherwise tell them to pound sand. You are responsible for your destiny. If you're going to make it to 4k or 5k or whatever your goal is, you have to do it. Picking Techies with Tusk may sound like a good idea, but if you haven't played Tusk before, you will be a burden to be carries by someone else.

How do you determine what heroes to pair with? Make sure to check your dotabuff and see what heroes you pair well with. You should be spamming between 3-5 heroes in solo queue (another post for another time) and will therefore build up stats related to those heroes. With those stats you can make more informed decisions about playing the game, include what heroes you pair well with.

The Missing Heroes

Here is the list of heroes that haven't been picked in the main event so far for TI5*:
abadon
alchemist
batrider
beastmaster
brewmaster
centaur warrunner
chaos knight
death prophet
doom
drow
elder titan
entrantress
enigma
faceless void void
huskar
invoker
kunkka
leshrac
lich
lifestealer
lone druid
medusa
meepo
mirana
morphling
necrophos
nyx assassin
ogre magi
omniknight
oracle
outworld devourer
phanrom assassin
puck
riki
shadow demon
slardar
slark
techies
terrorblade
tidehunter
tinker
tiny
teant protector
troll warlord
ursa
vengeful spirit
venomancer
visage
warlock
windranger

Of these, the ones that have a strike through were banned at some point during the main event (there may be more but these were the most significant.

Most of the rest have been hit with with the nerf stick recently, don't fit in the meta, or are just too risky to pick. Here are a few heroes that I feel could be picked, whether situationally or otherwise.

Brewmaster - this hero used to be first pick/ban material. He's fallen out of favor recently but the hero is potent in team centric and push centric line ups. You need to use split, get a kill or two, and take an objective.

Centaur Warrunner - this hero can be a monster in the offlane and was picked up in the group stages 6 times. While he didn't have a great showing, he is similar to tusk, but offers a global presence with his ultimate. He does need a blink dagger to start initiating on people, however his damage output, tankiness and an ultimate which is always useful means that he stays relevant all game.

Enigma - many teams play this hero, but he's greedy. And Rubik is running around wrecking teams. (Just watch Fy God destroy Empire singlehandedly twice and you know why enigma is super risky.

Enchantress - we might see this in the offlane for EG or jungle for Secret nut otherwise this is a risky pick. Still, capturing the early game with kills seems to be a good way to win, especially shutting down the mid. A Darktroll Summoner, Centaur, Hellbear, or Golem can secure kills. Also, a Wildwing can be super annoying or guarantee fast farm with stacks.

Lich - this hero dominates in the dual-lane meta. His abilities lend themselves to winning lanes which seem to be a key to victory.

Puck - this hero has always been good and the aghs upgrade keeps him relevant against bkb as the game progresses. Dream Coil comes online when the Undying Tombstone is at it's most powerful (level 3-4) and the silence is extremely relevant against many of the mids currently being play.

Slardar - Slardar tears through carries that need more time to come online and, with a blink dagger, can catch out many heroes with a near instant stun. This hero also naturally builds items to help push. The other two important aspects which are important to consider are granting an early Roshan and grants information through amplify damage. In an aggressive line-up, this hero excels; get kills, take objectives.

Tidehunter - We might see this on Iceiceice or Universe, but he's MIA. It's unfortunate but the offlane choices right now are not favoring the thing from the depths.

Tiny - we might see a tiny wisp before the event is out, but right now he's being completely ignorged.

Ursa - another aggressive carry that is seeing no love. He's been buffed and retooled since the last TI and now he's even stronger. Like Slardar, Ursa offers an early Roshan. While Ursa doesn't have the lock-down that Slardar offers, his burst damage tears through anyone who can't get away like SF, Clockwork, Lina, and supports who don't have a disable.

*the list is aailable at the bottom of the www.dotabuff.com/esports/events/41/heroes page

Surviving 3k: 3 things to work on to ensure you survive

In a recent interview, one of the pro players that the best teams are thinking 6 steps ahead. To think like this you have to first practice thinking one step ahead. Then two steps. Then it becomes easy because steps past step two depend on what you predicted steps 1 and 2. 

Most players get stuck on steps 1 or 2 because they:

1. Lack enough reference experience to understand the limits of the current game state
2. Not actively thinking about what's going on in the game
3. Have to focus on some of the basic skills in the game rather than some of the bigger pictures

Lacking reference experience

If you want to survive 3k MMR, you have to try to push the limits of your games in order to gain reference experience. The player who does this the best is Eternal Envy. He understands what the limits of the game and can see the end game scenarios when he's behind. He thinks about what the enemy team needs to win and then tries to deny them that. How does he know all this? He has thousands of games to compare his current situation with. If you want to understand what you can and cannot get away with in a game, try different things and watch your replays and your timings for when things worked. EE-sama also is continually actively thinking about the game.

Not actively thinking about the game

When you queue up a game, make it your focus. Put the cellphone down and stop alt-tabbing. I know it's hard but focus your attention on your game, your team mates and your enemies. Your brain is a muscle and if you can exercise it like any other muscle. The more you exercise it to alt-tab and use your cell phone, the less you are exercising it in DOTA. If you want to survive 3k MMR, you need to exercise that brain for DOTA. 

Focusing on basic DOTA skills like not using hotkeys, queuing actions, and buying items is preventing you from focusing on other important aspect of the game. Hitting creeps should become zombie mode at some point. You item builds on certain heroes should become almost automatic and others should be familiar. At the very least, you should be able to understand what items do and what you should buy to itemize against your opponents correctly.

Hopefully these three things will help you survive 3k MMR.

The International 2015 Day 1: thoughts on LGD and Empire

Here's the schedule for the main event on day 1 (you can find the complete schedule here) 

The first series delivered.

It went 3 game in what many thought would be a 2-0 LGD victory. Empire was outplayed and out-drafted in game three, but their extremely aggressive play style caught LGD off gaurd. Empire received a direct invite to TI this year and these games delivered. Yoky played next level in games 1 and 2. Unfortunately, in game 3 a tension existed between a Magnus Reverse Polarity (RP) and the team of LGD. They never gave away more position than they had to, thus curbing Empire's offlaners potential to bring Empire back into game three. Game two saw Silent ball out of control on the Antimage (AM) and take on the entire LGD team in the Radiant safe lane toward the end of the game. At one point I think he was hitting for 500+ damage with empower and battlefurry; it was impressive to say the least. Game 1 was the most back and forth. Yoky's strut his stuff on Axe and it seemed that Empire was in striking distance of a win, however Silent's and Resolut1on's aggressive blinks seemingly cost them getting a set Rax at a pivotal point in the game.

LGD played a good series. Xiao8 really baited Empire into a poor strategy in the deciding game 3. Empire picked the Phantom Lancer (PL) third pick and LGD immediately picked Ember Spirit giving them Gyro and Ember to deal with the illusion spawning  Maybe's performace in the midlane was dominant every game. One comentator compared Maybe to Sumail's performance from DAC. I don't have as much to say about LGD as Empire because they just played such solid DOTA. Their patience paid off in game 1 when they were facing down potentially lost Rax. They didn't lose their cool after a demoralizing loss to an Antimage game 2.

LDG deserved the win with their play. They will face CDEC gaming in the upper bracket for their next series. If Xiao8 can continue his restraint and brilliance, they should be able to defeat a Chinese team who plans on making a deep run from the Wildcard slot.

Thoughts on The International 2015: Group Stages

The International's group stage finished Thursday. With that, here are some of the highlights and my thoughts on the group stages.

• It came down to the wire in Group B for first place and Fourth place. EG was dependent on CDEC dropping a game against EHOME, which they did, for first place. Virtus.Pro and Empire played a best of 3 to determine who would capture the coveted 4th spot.
• Complexity surprised everyone with a third place finish in Group A. 
• Complexity and EG, among others, displayed the power of Techies. Saints preserve us in the pubs.
• I didn't get a chance to watch all the games, but from what I saw Secret and LGD are playing on a different level than the rest of their group. Granted, their group was weaker, however they still made it look easy. 
• While Evil Geniuses didn't dominate their group (and almost didn't get what everyone thought would be a gaurenteed first), they showed flashes of brilliance and dominance reminiscent of the DOTA Asian Championships (DAC) rather than The Summit 3. 
• Invictus Gaming (IG) is, as Winter put it, "lost in the woods." The team has a lot of experience (winning TI2 and all) but their kills per game is the lowest among all teams and this TI is definitely about fighting.
• Cloud9 is playing some of the riskiest DOTA of all time. The sneaky Rosh plus Divine Rapier Anti-Mage was a novel enough strategy to kept them in their game against LGD. However, they still can't finish.
• CDEC, a wildcard team, finished second in group B, besting other, seemingly stronger teams like Virtus.Pro, Empire, Vici Gaming (VG).
• VG is struggling. Maybe dropping Black wasn't such a great idea...
• Newbee showed up to play. They took games off EG, VP, and Empire which counts for a lot in a best of 2 format. However they are facing arguably the strongest SEA team in MVP Phoenix so it could go either way.
• Na'vi was the poster child for TI but they have a very tough round one match against Vici Gaming. Their KDA, GPM, and EXPM over the group stages have been lower than VG. Senniecko is going to have to play out of his mind and Dendi is going to need a few more 20 kill games.

Here are the stats from dotabuff in case you haven't seen them. 

Games resume tomorrow at 1:00 P.M. Eastern time with LGD and Empire.

Surviving 3k: Making the best of your picks by predicting lanes

Radiant

VS

Dire

I'm sure many of you have experienced a game like I experienced on Radiant a few days ago:
- some one randoms a hero first pick (Tinker in this case)
- the Windranger is set on playing mid
- everyone else picks hoping the Windranger isn't going mid.
- the Windranger refuses to switch lanes

How should you handle this situation? there are many ways to approach it, so lets run through some of the options.

1. You can try to bully the Windranger into going to another lane through having the Tinker or another hero go mid with her. There is a Tusk, so depending on how the dire lane, and specifically send middle, there might be kill potential for a roaming Tusk who spends a lot of time mid.

• Pros: shutdown enemy mid, potentially snowball (no pun intended) the Windranger into fast Aghs
• Cons: The Windranger ruins your game because she's mad, you don't get kills on the enemy heroes because they lane strongly and end up with under-farmed and -leveled heroes

2. Aggro Trilane with the Tusk, Nyx, and Ursa, send the Tinker solo safelane against, hopefully, a Darkseer, and let the WR do her thing. Snowball into Nyx stun plus Ursa damage should be a kill the majority of the time against a solo or dual lane.

• Pros: Crystal maiden is an easy support hero to snowball and kill (low movespeed) if they solo support. If the Razor safelanes and gets shut down, the carry potential of the other team is drastically reduced, especially for pushing. Happy WR. Tinker gets some farm and levels.
• Cons: fighting all the time in the enemy safelane means that your heroes will potentially be low, powering up the Bloodseeker. The risk of him snowballing out of control and taking over the game means you will probably lose. Also, Nyx and Tusk need levels (most importantly, level 6) to be effective. If your aggro tri doesn't get kills, you end up with under-leveled and under-farmed heroes who have little catch up potential.

3. Put the Ursa in the jungle and have Tusk or Nyx support the Tinker. This is the greediest option because you're allowing the offlane hero to get more level and experience than he should get. This will be especially hard for a Tusk or Nyx to zone a Darkseer because Ion Shell is so strong early in the game and those heroes are both melee.

• Pros: the enemy team has a potentially greedy lineup so trading a jungle Ursa for a potential jungle BS is a good trade (Ursa matches up well against the BS). Happy WR. Tinker gets some farm. Offlane gets levels.
• Cons: jungling against a BS takes a lot of finesse; the lower the Ursa gets, the faster the BS jungles closing the gap in advantage the Ursa has. Having either Tusk or Nyx solo support isn't ideal, especially against a DS, If Nyx does support, his impact on the game is minimal. You aren't punishing the enemy team's greed in any way.

While there are other option that aren't mentioned here, a lot of it comes down to predicting your opponents lanes. Because people are playing so greedy this patch, it seemed obvious to me that the CM would support top with a little jungle mixed in, the DS would be offlane, and that Razor would be safelane. This leave Lina and the BS to either go mid and jungle or support and mid, respectively. I predicted, correctly, that the BS would jungle and Lina would mid so I convinced my team, apart from the WR, to go with option 3 and putting Nyx in the offlane. Here's how it panned out:

This game is illustrative of how to make the most of your picks in pubs through predicting how the other team is going to lane. Even if you don't initially predict how the other team is going to lane, just switch up your lanes to give your team the best chance of winning. For example, if the enemy team had gone for a CM, Lina and Razor aggro Trilane, then the Tinker would need to move to the top lane in order to get his farm. Otherwise he risks dying to the three enemy heroes. It's also worth mentioning that a trilane isn't the only way that the enemy could have punished the random Tinker pick. But they didn't punish us so we won.

When it comes down to it, DOTA is about getting the enemy thrown. It doesn't matter how you get it as long as you do. Making the best of your picks for the laning stage is the first step in doing that. The next things to consider are making the most of your picks in mid-game and securing an end-game.

*Special thanks to www.dotabuff.com for the pictures found in this post.