Shanghai Major: Understanding Metagame Forces

The discussing a metagame can be a very contentious subject and yet it's a term that is always tossed about at each and every event because, for some reason, one always shakes out in some form or another. The Shanghai Major is no exception to this idea. I'm sure I'll need to write an indepth tournament metagame primer at some point, but today isn't that day because we have excellent DOTA going on in China. Instead I'll offer up metagame forces (MGF) as a small substitute.

These forces, much like market forces, drive hero picks at each event. These forces are: current patch, previous strategies, and wins. Initially, captains and coaches spend copious time theorycrafting how games are going to go, taking the current patch and teams at the event (previous strategies) into consideration. As the theories are put to the test, the third force driving the meta takes over: wins. This is the point we find ourselves at for the Shanghai Major.

Alliance, MVP.Phoenix, OG, and EG all won their group and they all did it handedly. Alliance and MVP didn't drop a game and EG and OG only lost once. MVP Phoenix has an insane 8.6 KDA and mostly sub-30 minute game times. This is a testament to their aggressive play style and drafting heroes that can constantly fight. They abused Nature's Prophet's ability to apply map pressure and teleport into any part of the map (drafting it 3 of 4 games only because it was banned for a game) and used fighting carries that aren't cool-down dependant like PL, Slark, and Ember.

Alliance is back and everyone know that this is their patch to lose. Admiral Bulldog is such a force that team Spirit and Fnatic both respect banned both Lone Druid and Nature's Prophet. These two heroes typify the Alliance play style: exert tons of map pressure to maximally leverage opponents mistakes and minimize their own. They chose global heroes in 3 out of 4 games and a pushing line up in the 4th to secure their 4-0 record.

OG is the previous major winner, using their unwieldy picks to keep teams off balance. They grabbed Doom(!) twice against LGD, using it to great effect (although Cr!t gave away way too many dooms in game two, which probably cost them the win).  In their five games they grabbed the Bat Ridder 5 times, relying on it to create space for their generally fighting cores. Beware the fish and Moon's ability to play some of the most disruptive heroes in the game currently.

EG also showed diversity in their drafting and creating in all but one game a solid team from start to finish. They prioritized the Lion and Nature's Prophet but gave Arteezy and Fear different heroes all but once and Sumail a different hero every game. Game 1 against Complexity was a bit of an outdraft by Swindle however the following 4 games looked polished and demonstrated the team's commitment to the strategy of their captain, PPD.

There are a few lessons we can tease out from these team's wins:

1. NP is the real deal in this patch because his flexibility lines up with all of the (winning) strategies being used (all in rush, deathball, and AOE team fight)
2. Lion is the best support. Finger provides the right amount of burst damage because when it's paired with another spell, like Lasso, is the best disable because it's permanent.
3. Fighting and farming carries are still battling it out for who's the top dog, but the fighting carries seem to be winning because of Miracle's performances on the Slark and team's inability to effectively deal with the PL.
4. The offlane position is where games are being won and lost. Nature's Prophet, Lone Druid, and Tidehunter are almost winning teams games single handedly because if the support(s) has (have) to protect their position 1 hero, they fall very far behind. Lion has had so much success because he can run around the map and make plays happen.
5. AOE team fight beats death ball which beats all in rush which beats AOE team fight... etc. 
6. Greed is the name of the game. The team that can get away with the greediest lineup win because they just out economy their opponent...
7. Unless the opponent just starts fighting from minute 1 and the game digresses into a feeding frenzy.
8. If you safe lane tri-lane or 4 protect 1, like Virtus.Pro tried to do against EG with their Sven, you're going to lose because the other team will just of farm you like EG did that very game. 
9. Passive supports are out of style for the reasons listed above and as evidence by the success of Lion and, to a lesser extent, Venge. 
10. Enchantress is great right now, despite being risky. She comes online before all the other greedy junglers, allowing teams to put the pressure on right away. 
11. Look for more Shadow Shaman and Crystal Maiden pick-ups as teams look to solidify strategies and try to pull out picks which an opponent may not be expecting. 

There are a few liberties we need to take into consideration. First is that the sample size is small which means that the metagame is still volatile. It will be interesting to see what happens when Alliance bumps into MVP. While OG and EG have some history, their styles are more similar than Alliance and MVP. Hopefully this will mean more fireworks and fun games for us the viewers. Regardless of how the bracket pans out, everyone is going to keep their eyes on who's winning and either jump on the band wagon or try to adapt their strategy to it.