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!

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. 

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.

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: 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: Finding the Niche

The most common question among pub players is: how do you raise MMR? Some people say to spam this hero or that. Some say to jungle for 10 minutes and come out with the intention of of snowballing your team to a victory. My advice and what has worked for me is to find a niche and fill it.

Lets use some abstraction to understand this.The pub scene trends toward certain picks, strategies, and styles of play. Because the pub scene favors certain heroes, strategies, and styles of play over others, this creates a deficit somewhere. Sometimes this deficit is well founded and sometimes it isn't. Right now, when it comes to support, it isn't. The pub scene at 3k is lacking the support duo currently (Fluff gives a good talk about this here). Rather than having a hard 5 and greedier 4, there's an awkward 3.5 and 6.5 position hero. This is bad.

Most importantly is that no one wants to play the 6.5 position because they are getting sacked so hard. Buy all the wards and the courier and share your tangos. Forget about getting brown boots until minute 12, buy all the smokes and it's your fault for not putting up enough wards when some one on the team gets ganked. Moral of this story is help your supports through buying wards, sharing tangos, upgrading courier, buying smokes and not flaming them.

The second most important point is that having a 3.5 is a liability, most of the time. There are small exceptions. However, the majority of the time picking a greedier support will help your team out way more than having a 3.5 because they will be active on the map and help buy support items during the beginning of the game. The goal of the first 10-20 minutes in a game is to win the laning stage and transition into the mid-game with a lead. The best way to do this is to have a dynamic support duo who matches up well against the enemy team.

Now I know a lot of you out there are going to still play a 3.5 hero, so here's my recommendations:

Enigma - fastest farming jungler there is. Can push early, gets an early mech, and has great team fight ulti.
Chen - maybe the second fastest farming jungler there is. Pushes early, gets mech, and has a great team fight ulti.
Ursa - everyone knows your going for Rosh by 7 minutes. After Rosh, it's time to get aggresive
Bloodseeker - Global ability that powers you up and gives vision when people are low seems like a good deal.
Crystal Maiden - getting a quick level two and ganking the mid lane is how I like to play her. Just make sure to get quick boots because you are slow. Your aura helps your team win the laning phase.

these heroes get active before the 8 minute mark and create pressure on the map naturally during the laning phase. They all have things in common: they pressure the enemy team in ways traditional heroes can't because they don't show on the map until it's too late.As a 3.5 position, you need to help your other support. Like it or not, you need to compensate for your lack of direct laning presence by empowering your other support.

In current pubs, there's a place for a 4 position support or a super active 3.5 position hero. Trying to pick a sub-par jungler like Legion Commander is a waste of time and a pending loss. Fill the niche your teams needs and be rewarded with MMR.

It's almost time for that new patch smell

Many people have hopes and dreams for the next patch and rounds of balances. The big ones that come to mind are:
- Reworking buybacks interaction with reliable gold, experience, and the comeback mechanics and
- Balancing some of pub stars: Troll, Juggernaut, Lion, Sniper, and Axe come quickly to mind.
Outside of those two things glaring straight at The International, DOTA2 is in a good place. The support hero pool is large and diverse. www.DOTABuff.com just ran a three part series highlighting 10 of the most viable supports you can pick (you can find part 3 here: http://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2015-04-02-introducing-top-tier-supports--part-3). To that list I would add the Ogre Magi, Treant Protector, and Sand King. There are only a few heroes considered unplayable (Sorry Kunkka). The mid lane is seeing a Rock- Paper-Scissors-Hammer-Blade-Scream… between Shadow Fiend, Sniper, Storm Spirit, your magic nuker of choice (usually Lina or Queen of Pain) and the maverick picks ( Ember Spirit, Brewmaster, Magnus, Viper, and even Artzeey on the Razor). With that said, there are still somethings that need fixing so here’s my wish list.
There are a few abilities that need to receive minor nerfs. Sniper’s shrapnel is crazy good at 50 mana and a 40 second recharge rate. Either the mana cost needs to increase enough to where you actually have to consider the cost of casting it, the recharge rate should be increased, or a combination of the 2. I don’t think it’s that far off from being viable but not overpowered. The other ability that stands out is Lion’s Impale. This spell is targeted so as long as you reach the cast point, the stun will land unless they are super far away. This leads to some stuns that are a bit on the questionable side. The solution here is to either have it remain targeted but once you cast it, it goes a fixed distance in the direction of the target or make it a skill shot but increase its range a little. The trend has been to make things more skill intensive; think Fissure for the Earth Shaker or Impale for Nyx.
A few heroes would really benefit from a bump because they are narrowly situational, they are a worse something else, or they are just unplayable. Visage best fits the narrowly situational pick because you almost never see him without a Drow or another pushing hero. Chen has pushed out almost every other pushing hero except for the Enigma. The buff to his abilities is a welcome change, however now the situation exists where Enchantress is a worse something else. Maybe she needs a rework to compete like buffing the damage her creeps have or increasing her healing effectiveness. Finally, the unplayable heroes: Kunka, Alchemist, Leshrac, Chaos Knight and Lifestealer just cannot be picked because they are situationally worse than everything else. A buff to these heroes would be welcome, especially Leshrac. He puts out a ton of damage, but has to compete with QoP, Lina, and Storm for the position of mid int. hero and he can’t. He’s also not a good support because he damage is reliant on being alive for the duration of a fight. A buff in either direction would be most welcome and I think it starts with Lightning Storm.
Hopefully the next patch freshens up the current meta, bringing new heroes to prominence and pushing down some of the current stars. What are your picks for heroes that need nerfs? Buffs? Let me know in the Comments.

More Efficiency

I go to school for electrical engineering and am on course to graduate this May. A topic often covered and talked about in engineering is efficiency. The efficiency of your engine, dispersing heat and processors are all important to understand for their applications. For example, your general - and I mean general, not just internal combustion - engine can only be about 20% efficient because of the inefficiency built into the system from things like friction. Don't be dissuaded from using an engine, however, because we are transferring one form of unusable energy into another, more usable one. In DOTA, efficiency is also extremely important; allocating damage, farming, purchasing items, movement, et al contribute to the efficiency of a player.

The more efficient a player is, the more impact he will have on the game. This is because he is optimizing his outcomes from each decision. The easiest way for me to visualize this is to think about using town portal scrolls (TPs). When used correctly, TPs allow a player to move about the map more efficiently because it takes about 3 seconds to port from top lane to bottom lane instead spending a long time walking and risking being caught out of position. Still, TPs are only so efficient like the engine because they cost gold to use. Thus a player converts gold into less travel time and a lower risk movement.

The contrapositive is also true: the less impact a player has on a game, the less efficient that player is. The carry or 1 position players for each team illustrate this the best. Generally, the carry which is more efficient and able to accrue a bigger advantage over the other carry will take their team to victory. Another way to think about this is to visualize two Anti-Mages: one with level 4 blink and the other without blink. The AM with level 4 blink will be more efficient at all aspects of the game - except, perhaps, mana usage - than the AM without because of the advantage blink offers.

Often players get hung up on efficiency, causing them to become inefficient. Don't let this be you. When considering the cost of a decision, it is often the case that there is an asymmetry of information; it is literally impossible to know all possible differences between and outcomes of two courses of action. Don't let this hinder you. Many players will get hung up on item choices, missing stacks, missing pulls, taking unnecessary creep damage, not spending their gold before they die and the list goes on. All these contribute to small game inefficiencies but psyching yourself out will contribute to large ones because not all inefficiencies make meaningful impacts on games. There is a caveat: the higher the skill game, the more those matter and can snowball into a game loss because players are better at leveraging small advantages created by these inefficiencies. With that said, psyching yourself  out is not allocating your brains processing power efficiently and can lead to tilting: the definition of poor and inefficient decision making.

The next time you find yourself looking for an aspect of your game to improve, consider efficiency. Look for ways to minimize wasted gold and movement then move on to things like allocating damage in team fights or stacking stuns on an elusive target. By improving your efficiency, you will help your team and, hopefully, translate more games into wins.

Death Ball so hard

The past international saw Newbee dominate with the 5 man death ball. Get a pushing hero to 6, group up, take towers, get ahead, push more, get further ahead, and win. This is the death ball way. It became so prevalent that it pushed other strategies out of the meta and wrapped how people played the game leading to a structural change for the tower glyph and gold and hero balancing (sorry, DP.) Re-balancing the game in this way reduced the incentive to employ this strategy, but it's still powerful.

The poster heroes for taking towers are Pugna, Death Prophet (DP), Shadow Shaman (SS), Nature's Prophet (NP) and the big bad wolf (Lycan). Since the nerf stick hit the DP and Lycan directly, they haven't been first pick/first ban in pro games like they were during The International 2014 but are making appearances in the hands of capable teams and players, like EG's Arteezy and Cloud 9's Eternal Envy. Pugna and the SS have fallen out of favor as a direct result of the meta shift even though they are still viable picks although more niche. The NP is a bit of an oddity here because he's picked to globally gank and fight early, evident by the popularity of the Null Talisman and Blademail build.

The strategy was too oppressive, limiting the number of viable strategies and heroes. Teams with a death ball could take two towers in quick succession by winning a team fight at a tower, executing a successful gank, or slow sieging a tower with a counter initiation edge (think Dark Seer) giving them a huge lead. This lead gave more map control the the death ball leading to Roshan, more towers, securing the enemy jungle, et al. While the lead wasn't always insurmountable, it gave significant percentage points to teams who could reliably leverage it into a win.

Why doesn't the death ball bring all the boys to the yard like it used to? Mostly it's the nerf stick, let's say 50% can be attributed to direct nerfing; Lycan, DP, and NP see play, but NP has evolved so he only counts as half leading to 2.5 out of my 5 poster children.. What about the remaining 50%? I have a few theories, and they go as such:

1. Team theory - certain teams do better at certain strategies because of their competent hero pool (who they pick and can play at a professional level) and decision making processes (why they pick certain heroes and how they use them). For tier 1 teams, on an average day, they are all within a few percentage points of each other and a few more percentage points above tier 1.5 and more yet over tier 2 teams. As the meta shifts, these percentages also shift in favor of the team which can leverage those shifts into wins. The examples of this are Alliance and Navi who were so dominant up to the last International, but derailed and haven't found much success since. Thus, because there are narrow margins separating pro teams, shifts in the meta create an environment for teams to capitalize on them based on who they are, dooming teams who relied on strategies which have been pushed out. 
2. Power Curve theory - with each update and introduction of new heroes, it shifts the aggregate power of all heroes and re-balances the relative power level of all heroes. All you have to do is watch the Beyond the Summit 2 game between Team Tinker and C9 where Lifestealer went up against Terrorblase and it was ugly. TB raised the power curve, pushing comparable heroes out - sorry, naix -  and raising the stock of counter picks. A similar phenomena happens with an update, but the aggregate power level may not grow or might even shrink. Since the international, the updates and introduction of more heroes lowered the stock of most death balling heroes or pushed them out of the meta completely; Pugna, Dragon Knight, SS, Enchatress, Chen, Clockwerk, and Lone Druid see basically no play as attributed to the Powe Curve. As one commentator put it, Chen creeps run toward TB and die before they get there.

Whatever the case may be, the death ball is gone for now. Teams have turned toward line ups oriented toward team fighting or brute forcing their way to victory. They no longer pressure the map in terms of towers but take an active approach toward securing an advantage through directly pressuring key heroes. This is where the current meta sits.

Foreseer's Contract Update and Nemesis Assassin Event Thoughts

The Foreseer's Contract has been issued. After a cool digital comic which offered a peak at the newest hero to sign their name in blood for ancient's struggle, the Oracle was made live. I'll highlight some of the additions, positive and negative.

• The new Phantom Assassin arcana looks awesome, but disappointing that it's only a weapon. The model change, alternate animations, and in-game icon are well done. My disappoint with it only being a weapon stems from wanting to use a whole set, not just 4 of the 5 piece or whatever the case may be. Maybe Valve should add an "augment hero" equip slot for occations such as this.
• The Oracle as a hero seems underwhelming in power level, but I don't mind. At least for the moment, the Oracle isn't breaking pubs the way some previous heroes have (Terrorblade I'm looking at you.) I would much rather have the Oracle start a little under-powered and get tuned once it's better understood how he interacts with heroes than the alternative.
• Buying the prediction item every time seems a little greedy for Valve. If it were me, buying the PA arcana would give you one everyday for the duration of the event (as long as you used it up the previous day.)
• Playing with the in game contract idea with reward is super fun. It introduces an objective that doesn't create an advantage for either team. Creation of such an objective with a sought after reward (an awesome set)  adds dimensions of freshness and fun to the game.

Drafting the PA because of the event and Oracle because of new hero infatuation at higher rates is warping the pub metagame. Some pub analysis: Level 1 is the Oracle and PA. They are bad against level 2 heroes and sharing the Razor and Sand King. Level 3 heroes, then, are those good against both the Razor and SK, which are the Bloodseeker and Sniper. However, the Sniper is not a true level 3 hero because of his inherent weakness to PA. This leaves only the Bloodseeker seeing an increase in popularity. It should also be noted that SK is strong against Razor making him the most likely to see more play and an increase in win percentage. It will be interesting to see what tomorrows number from DOTABuff bring.

Level 1	PA:	Oracle
Level 2	Razor	Razor
	Omniknight	Earth Spirit
	Sand King	Phantom Assassin
	Centaur Warrunner	Magnus
	Ogre Magi	Sand King
	Lion	Leshrac
	Axe	Pugna
	Crystal Maiden	Undying
Level 2	Razor:	Sand King:
	Drow Ranger	Zeus
	Sniper	Techies
	Techies	Spectre
	Viper	Bloodseeker
	Meepo	Juggernaut
	Bloodseek	Phoenix
	Sand King	Sniper
	Ember Spirit	Elder Titan