Surviving 3k: Just Arriving

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

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

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

Surviving 3k: Encouraging your allies to pick around you

Every match, you should be doing certain things:

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

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

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

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

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

The Missing Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lacking reference experience

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

Not actively thinking about the game

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

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

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

The International 2015 Day 1: thoughts on LGD and Empire

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

The first series delivered.

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

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

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

Thoughts on The International 2015: Group Stages

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

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

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

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

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

Radiant

VS

Dire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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