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.

Surviving 3k: just counterpick them already

The pub meta is driven by the most popular heroes. While win rates generally correlate to popularity, Pudge is super popular but his win rate is about 50% so there isn't necessarily a general causation there; some people just have favorite heroes they like to play alot. Surviving 3k MMR has a lot to do with using picks to compensate for the wide range in skill. A lot of people resist the idea of picking hero flavors of the month and counterpicking those flavors because, again, some people just have favorite heroes they like to play alot. Well that needs to change. Stop picking your favorite heroes and counterpick your opponent already.

If your goal is to get better at DOTA and improve your MMR, then counterpicking offers a direct path to do this. Counterpicking nudges who has the advantage in your favor. Even though Wraithking may not be your jam, he gives Bloodseeker the third lowest win rating so picking a WK into BS is going to give your team a few percentage points in your favor. This is crucial. Games are generally close and the higher you get in MMR, the closer they become. The closer games become, the more important your hero decision becomes because it offers a way to gain an advantage.

How do you counterpick properly? I usually just go to dotabuff heroes section, find the hero I keep losing too, and see which heroes are recommended against them and which heroes give them a lower win rate. It's that easy. It's also useful to know how they generally itemize. Items like black king bar or butterfly can swing in their favor if you aren't prepared.

Personally, I have been having trouble with Bloodseeker. He's everywhere and has a really high win percentage. Having explored different strategies, Ursa has worked well for me because of damage mitigation and the burst damage Ursa offers. Plus he's aggressive around the same time that Bloodseeker is. You don't play Ursa in the jungle against the BS.

What heroes are you having trouble with? How are you trying to deal with them? Let me know in the comments.