Northern Arena Days 1 and 2

The middle of a tournament is the most fun from analyst point of view when it comes to predictions - there is just enough evidence to point you in the direction of where the tournament is going while maintaining a fog of the unknown. The Northern Arena tournament is no exception to this. The tournament format, commentators, and heroes have made for a fast paced and interesting event. Because this is a major LAN before the next Valve Major which has tier 1 teams, the results are important for teams trying to measure how they're going to line up against each other.

This tournament is sending teams home on the first day. This increases the stakes for teams like NP, Complexity, and EHome who looking to put in much needed LAN time before heading to a high stakes tournament in Boston. Unfortunately, FDL was eliminated yesterday and either Complexity or the loser of the EG/Alliance will go home today (currently it's game 1 and EG is in firm control EG beat Alliance 2-0 and Alliance sent Complexity home.) The format for the Northern Arena condenses the tournament experience down by keeping it from dragging with a no frills double elimination best of 3 in the upper bracket and the always popular best of 1 in the lower bracket. The two heavyweights of the tournament - Wings and EG - on opposite sides of the bracket. My guess is so that they can meet toward the end of the event. Overall, there haven't been any major bumps or glitches and the personal player format is nice so hopefully we will see another event here.

The commentators have been great, especially Purge. He continues to step his up his game when it comes to dissecting the details of the game and he keeps the other commentators on task by blowing through some of the nonsense or keeping them on task. Capitalist has also been filling this role by keeping it professional yet lite. There are still some immature/unprofessional/crude aspects to the DOTA 2 and ESports community as a whole which need to be ground off if ESports are going to compete with the likes of other professional sports. Purge and Capitalist are facilitating this transition.

The most interesting thing to me is the hero picks and the continuation of a decentralized metagame. Warlock is the best support by consensus but every other role has no clear best hero. We see a rotation of mids, carries, and offlaners which increases the importance of the draft and allows teams to keep picking what they like until they decide to pick something else. EG and Wings gaming have benefited the most from it and have just destroyed other teams, ending the game at the draft (the best example of this so far is Wings Gaming vs. NP game 2.) Mainly, teams have also been getting baited into drafting an aggressive lineup and usually lose because of it. This is because the less aggressive team secures their advantage by being greedier, getting an item up on their opponents, and then winning a team fight.

In summary, this tournament is a great way to bridge the gap between the TI and the next major. The format, commentators and current metagame makeup testify to the healthy nature of the sport. I encourage you to watch the games and enjoy high level of skills these players exhibit and the awesome nature of this tournament.

Suriving 3k Item Spotlight: Drum Solo

Drum of Endurance used to be ubiquitous on most right click carry heroes. Generally, agility carries would go Phase Boots, Drum of Endurance, Yasha before branching into other items. It's comparable to Armlet on strength carry heroes currently. The reason for this is that drums had an easy build up, provided cheap stats - notably strength and intelligence - came with an extremely useful aura and provided an activated ability. This ability allowed you to chase, retreat and take objectives better than your opponent. Currently, pro-teams are forgoing this item except on a select few heroes like Batrider. In your games, make sure at least one person on your team gets a drum. The pushing power it provides is enough to justify the purchase.

Surviving 3k: Spectre is the the hero you should be playing

There are many heroes to chose from in Dota 2 but the hero you should be choosing is Spectre. This hero is one of the best hard carries in pubs currently with an astounding 55-59% win-rate in the safe lane (according to Dotabuff.com.) This win-rate should come as no surprise when looking at the hero: high ceiling team fight potential; the ability to globally pickoff heroes; high single target damage for separated heroes;  AOE damage; pure damage; damage mitigation; and the ability to chase a hero into the abyss. The biggest weaknesses of the hero are that your laning stage is very weak, you are dependant on your team to take good fights in the mid game, your flash farm potential is low, and you don't want to build a black king bar (BKB) for any reason. With this profile in mind, let's dive a little further into why you should be playing this hero.

As with many carries, Spectre scales well with items and levels. Unlike many carries, however, you can deal a lot of damage even if you're behind. This damage correlates directly to getting levels and some very cheap fighting items. Urn of Shadows or Ring of Aquilla (RoA) and Phase Boots are my preferred initial items because of the cost efficiency and mana regeneration. This hero needs a mana item in the early game to reliably ensure haunt + spectral dagger for team fights. Both Urn and RoA provide damage and have small trade offs; choosing which items is simply figuring out if another player on your team is going to get Urn (like Pudge) and adjusting your build accordingly. My standard rule is to always get Urn unless someone is getting it.

Your next item decision comes from how well your are farming and how many fights your team is winning. If your farm is high and you're winning team fights, saving for Radiance seals the win for your team. If you enter the mid-game at parity with your opponents or you need to to be able to solo kill heroes on the map, getting Vanguard and Diffusal Blade will help you survive, farm the jungle, and kill supports relatively easily; these advantages are on top of having easy build-ups. If the game is very close or you find yourself being focused, Blademail becomes an especially potent item on this hero, scaling with your opponent's damage output and taking advantage of her ability to mitigate damage. The final item you want to consider is manta style. While this is an expensive item, the build up puts it in mid-game item department. The stats are good and it spawns more illusions, which Spectre takes advantage of, increasing your damage and farming rate. The downside to this item is that sometimes, it just doesn't do a whole lot. 

Late game item decisions are extremely important. I cannot stress how important it is to choose the correct items for late game because you usually only get one or two top tier items (5000+ gold) before the game ends - choose wisely. Butterfly, Heart, Eye of Skadi, and Assault Cuirass (AC) are the main four items you want to go for, with a items like Monkey King Bar getting an honorable mention. Each offer different advantages: Butterfly and Skadi are the fighting items; Heart is a sieging and tanking item; AC helps you push and should be gotten if you don't have another natural AC builder; MKB is necessary against heroes that have or will get evasion (most agility carries.) Usually, I build Butterfly against opposing carries that want to man-fight you like Lifestealer, Sven, and Phantom Assassin. The evasion also makes your illusions hard to deal with - not to mention the agility and attack speed increases your damage by a lot. 

After itemizing correctly during each stage in the game, the last things left to consider are overall play style and decision making. The latter is personal to the player so I'll cover this in other posts. The former, on the other hand, depends on your itemization, team composition and game pace. In order to be the most effective hero you can be, you need to figure out, with your team, how to synthesize these elements together into a winning game plan. This is not easy. The most important decision you have to make is when to use your ultimate. If the game is about team fighting, then save it for that. Otherwise, use it whenever you have the opportunity for a pickoff. Be wary of playing too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

To wrap it up, get the right items for the right situation, analyze how the game is going, project how the game is going to play out, and then use haunt appropriately. Spectre is one of the best heroes in the pub meta and should be treated as such. Please use this guide to improve your MMR and expanded your hero pool. Thanks for reading and please leave comments below.

A Farewell to 6.86

The most recent patch to leave us will left us as the most successful patch to date. While Invoker was in almost every pub, the pro scene was constantly evolving and it wasn't until the end when the most successful strategies were figured out. With that said, 6.87 will replace 6.86 as the most successful patch. As I write this, the open qualifiers are going on for TI 6 and they are some of the most exciting ever and here are a few reasons why.

1. Supports, the most under-appreciated role in Dota, continue to get buffed. At least in the pro-scene, the number of items a support accumulates over the course of a game has increased because of the low cost for getting wards, courier, and other early game essential items. The is also a boon to pubs but most teams can now truly get away with a single support. Earth Spirit, Bounty Hunter, and Enchantress are able to dominate games from the 4 position, if given the opportunity. Ice Frog's decision to open up this avenue of playing the game continues to keep it fresh.
2. Heroes are no longer getting beat down by the nerf stick. At least for heroes available in captains mode, heroes haven't been getting major changes to their stats, skills, or anything else Ice Frog can think of. This means that the relative power level of all heroes is about equal, with small exceptions. The flair that each region and team bring to the Dota continues to be expressed in new and exciting ways. Keep in mind that buffs and nerfs are mainly targeted at professional play.
3. The new items aren't game breaking, but they continue to increase the diversity of play-style and heroes. While Wind Lace pushes everyone toward drums, Raindrops, Bloodthrorn, Blightstone, Echo Saber, and Hurricane Pike all increase the viability of different heroes, play styles and open the game up for more decisions.
4. There are a lot of general strong heroes (Doom, QoP, Io, Chen, Enchantress, WD, Juggernaut, Vengeful Spirit, ES, Bounty Hunter, Natures Prophet, among others) and a lot of situationally very strong heroes (Slark, Slardar, Axe, Spectre, DK, Wind Ranger, Faceless Void, among others). This means drafting matters a lot and the team that can out draft their opponents has a significant advantage.
5. Finally, The terrain changes continue to try to balance dire and radiant. Again, this is geared toward pro play. I won't go into all the details but the big things to note are that radiant now have a better path behind the dire offlane tier one tower and there's a warding spot in the dire jungle similar to what the radiant have. Both changes give the Radiant some map advantage to offset the Roshan being on the dire side and the fact that radiant was more easily warded.

The Manila Major qualifiers just finished and Epicenter is right around the corner so let us bid farewell to 6.86: 6.86, you paved the way for a new dawn of Dota 2 greatness!

The Road to Manila: From Dota Pit to Starladder

The first big LAN since Dota Pit has taken place and the implications for Manila abound. Some teams rose to the challenge and using this LAN to increase their chances of the coveted direct invite. Unfortunately for others, their poor to mediocre showing means the grind will be a coarse one through the qualifiers. The results from this LAN show that Patch 6.86 continues its reign as one of the most exciting and interesting patches in recent memory. The field of heroes available to pro teams is wide and open as evidence by the meta changing from event to event. But enough talk about the meta, let's discuss what's really important: the teams!

This team is the story of the tournament. They overcame obstacle after obstacle in order to secure themselves a win. Mikasa had to stand-in because of visa issues for Nono. Vici Gaming Rebord (VGR) recently formed from the ashes of Vici Gaming and Vici Gaming Potential. With poor results for the Chinese teams at the Shanghai Major, professional squads from this region tried to quickly build Frankenstein in time for the lock date for the next major and TI. VGR seems to have emerged from the shuffle with a very competitive roster topping regional rival the all-star packed LGD in the loser's bracket finals and then defeating on a resurgent Na'vi in the finals. 

Here's a team that went from being the team to beat 3 years running to obscurity before rumbling their way back to relevance once again. I discussed the CIS teams a little bit (here) during Dota Pit, touching on how the roster shuffles could favor Na'vi, Virtus.Pro or Empire the most. These teams are seasoned and, assuming IceFrog doesn't change the game through a patch too much (likely) and the patch comes out before invites come out (very likely) and Na'vi doesn't implode between those two times (very likely), Na'vi are in a great position to secure an invite to the Manilla Major.

Finally, these is Virtus.Pro. VP are looking for something. They have the experience and the players but are struggling to find consistent success against tier 1 and 1.5 teams. Na'vi beat them in dream league 3-0 and they washed out of the Starladder I-League Invitational, only beating Vega Squadron 2-1. They do take games off of some of the best teams in each tournament and they convincingly beat tier 2 and 3 teams on a regular basis which could mean one of a couple of things: their opponents are quicker to adapt to what they are doing, their drafts are too predictable/not predictable enough or their are very dependent on winning the laning phase to win the game. They aren't playing in ESL One Manila but they will be heading to LAN for Dream league because they beat Team Spirit 2-0. Maybe this team just needs some time to find their grove or maybe they are just doomed to play doomed to play second fiddle to tier 1 teams. Either way, their invite to the next major is will probably not be forth coming. And unless win the Manilla Major, they probably won't be invite to TI either.

As I finish this, another LAN takes place in Manila. Some teams that we didn't get to see at Starladder will be there looking to prove their invite worthiness. Specifically, Ehome, Mineski, Complexity and Empire are in the hunt. For all but complexity, this LAN affords these teams with very fierce regional competition to set themselves apart at an international event. As for Fnatic, Liquid and Secrete, they will all probably get invites because of their consistently strong performances in their region and at other events.

Thanks for reading and let me know who's story your following as we head into the most exciting time in Dota 2!

Surviving 3K: Doom and That All Mighty Money

I have been playing a lot of Doom this patch. This hero is naturally greedy and is picked on-and-off in the pro scene because he excels against single and dual core line ups and will always get gold out of the map. This latter reason importantly results in items to help the team, like Puppey's very notable Buckler. In a 3k MMR game, Doom plays a different role: he removes the best player from the game. His ultimate deleting a hero from a fight, allows your team to take a 5v4 against the weakest 4 players on the opposing team (goodbye and good riddance, OD.) But this isn't always the easiest thing to accomplish and begins to break down against 3 and the dreaded 3k MMR 4 core lineup. Let's give Doom one last hurrah! before the next patch.

There are 2 main roles Doom is currently played in: jungle and offlane. He spends the laning stage trying to get ahead and then the mid game staying ahead. He needs his levels and items to be effective but has the tool in the form of Devour. The question then becomes what to get with all this loot? And the answer is easy: Randiance.

Rather than getting an Aghanims, Radiance affords you the magical damage you need to become a true team fight nightmare and increases your solo pickoff potential. The nerf to Scorched Earth hindered Doom's ability to chase people down and kill them quickly but Radiance solves this. Radiance also allows you to farm quickly, provides you with some additional tankiness in the form of evasion, and increases the value you get from the attack speed bonus of power treads. Radiance also takes advantage of Doom ability to naturally acquire currency so a radiance by 20 minutes is normal. Let's dive a little deeper into the build.

I start with two rings of protection, a set of tangos, a ward and salve before heading to the offlane. Depending on the lineup you're facing, you can ward the pull camp or put it in a place to grant you vision. From here, you need to play the game by ear. Generally, it's correct to finish the Basilius so that you can continually devour creeps and pick up boots so you aren't as susceptible to ganks before weighing what item to get next. You can get Vlads to help your team, Vanguard  to front line or Midas to further increase your farm depending on the tempo of the game. Also don't be afraid to get Power Treads for the attack speed; with Scorched Earth, Treads, Radiance and AC your right-clicks become relevant. After itemizing for the midgame, you need to farm your radiance.

Upon acquiring Radiance, I usually get auras for my team and by stacking armor with Vlads, AC, and Shiva's. If you went the Vanguard route, this would be the time to get a crimson guard. If you're against a Zeus, then pipe is the item. These items help  your team fight. The patch favors early aggression to get ahead in the laning and early mid game stages and team fighting. If your team suffered because you went for a greedier build, these items will help make up for that.

The skill build is fairly straight-forward because you don't want to fight early. Maxing Devour lowers the cool-down, allowing you to farm faster. After that I max Scorched Earth then Infernal blade, getting Doom whenever possible. Scorched Earth increases your survivability and AOE damage which is preferable to the single target focused Infernal Blade. If you find yourself fighting a lot in the early game, then only get 1 point in Devour and focus on the other two skills + Doom. As always, go into each game with a plan and then tailor that plan as the game unfolds.

This build is greedy, to say the least however it's merit lies in Doom's ability to get a fast radiance. For some games, getting a fast radiance is good enough. Make sure that the team isn't going to be relying on you to get a tool of initiation and make sure you have the space to farm. The last thing you want to do is burden your team with an under-farmed and item-less Doom. Other than that, have fun burning down your opponents.

Thanks for reading!

Surviving 3k: Spamming Heroes

If your goal is to increase your MMR and aren't spamming between 3-5 heroes, then consider giving it a shot. Here are some reasons why you should consider this approach to gaining MMR:

• Gaining MMR is about consistency and skill so by spamming few heroes, you can increase both of these. 
• Most people can only stay sharp on a finite number of heroes, play styles, and habits and spamming eliminates this variability. 
• Patches create an environment where certain roles, play styles, and heroes are favored to have a higher impact in the game and spamming tries to take advantage of that. 

You don't have to pick "meta" heroes to be successful. That isn't quite the right mindset. Instead, use this approach to breakout of a plateau or build up some confidence in your game. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes. I'll share my results next week and I hope you will do the same.