Surviving 3k MMR: Actively Thinking About the Game

I recently wrote a post about three things to do to survive (you can find it here). I would like to expand on the second point from that post, which is: not actively thinking about what's going on in the game. Too often players tunnel vision into what's going on right in front of them, lose focus and zone out. This results in three things:

1. Zombie mode farm fest
2. missing opportunities to gain an advantage
3. missing opportunities to push an advantage

There are simple exercises you can perform during the game to snap you out of this mindset and help you become a better player. The first thing to try is checking what items the enemy players have. This will give you valuable information and help you make sure you itemize correctly. Second, check the items on your teammates, especially your supports. You can tell how well a game is going by the number of items on the supports. Third, think about where your going to be in 30 seconds, 1 minute and five minutes from now. Make some assumptions about how the game is going to go and then try to predict how the game's going to unfold after that. Finally, check the minimap and count the number of enemy heroes on the map. If there's only one enemy hero showing, try to think about where the other heroes could be; they could be wrapping around on you for a gank, doing Roshan or farming your jungle.

Hope this quick tip helps as you continue to survive 3k MMR.

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.

Medallion or Battlefurry Phantom Assassin?

A while ago, the Foreseer's Contract and the Nemesis Event showcased the Phantom Assassin Arcana and added the Oracle to the hero pool. Oracle doesn't see much pub play, but PA still gets picked a lot. While the event was going on, I played a lot of PA. Being the engineer that I am, I analyzed everything to death, read every guide I could get my hands on, and watch replays of highly skilled players showcasing the power of this hero.

During that phase, I ran into this gem on how to play PA. The gist of the guide is that Medallion is the first item you want to buy after Treads/Phase so that you can farm and fight earlier. Beyond that, he offers advice and item builds for different lane positions and farming priorities. Since this guide was posted, desolator has gotten even cheaper and Vlads got a buff so this guide is even more relevant. If you aren't a position 1 hero, Deso is the orb you want and Vlads will give you the lifesteal you desire. The guide was also published before the changes were made in 6.84 about kills granting more gold. More gold from kills rewards players for finding kills early instead of passively farming a lane.

The above guide is a more unconventional take on how to play PA and I can attest to its merits if you can coordinate with your team. If you're looking for something that's a little more conventional or you'd rather watch a video, Relax You're Doing Fine has a great video for that. This is the more conventional Battlefurry + HoD to stack ancients and farm to get ahead with these items. Unless you can get the Battlefurry consistently by 18 minutes, I would recommend trying the Medallion build.

When you try the Medallion build, send me a match ID and let me know how it worked out for you. I am interested to hear about other people's experience building the hero this way. If you want to check out one of my matches, just plug in the match ID 1732300064. Thanks for reading.

The Anti-Carries Series: Slardar

Recently, Purge did a video about Slardar. He played him in the offlane as a 3 position hero, building power treads and blink to help secure his teams victory. Slardar is one of the few heroes who are what I will term an "anti-carry." He requires the 2 items listed above in order to impact the game. That's it. With these two items, his skill set allows him to lock heroes down and chase super effectively. Lets look at his dotabuff.

Items

As I already touched on, power treads and blink dagger are his bread and butter. After that, BKB, armlet and deso round out the top 5. These items are midgame oriented, allowing Slarad to jump on enemies and destroy them quickly. He puts pressure on the map through sprint but also takes increased damage so the next 4 major items (ignoring, TP and shout shield) increase his survivability. Vanguard is another mid game item, but AC and HoT are late game options that keep Slardar relevant. Magic Wand provides some stats and burst heal+mana so that you can just barely escape or get that last crush in.

Best Against

These heroes suffer at the hands of Slardar; it should be no surprise that they are weak to Slardar. They are either: high mobility (AM, Lycan, Brood, NS), rely on invis (Brood, Riki, BH), or are weak to lots of physical damage (Huskar, Ursa). Slardar's strengths stem from his ability to keep pressure on heroes all over the map and chase them to the ends of the Earth. I also like Slardar against Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Juggernaut, Troll, and Bristleback.

Worst Against:

While Slardar is good against many carries, there are a few heroes who do well against him. Tidehunter is tough to play against in lane and can counter initiate your mini-ravage with a full-fledged one. I'm not really sure why Gyro is on here; it could be related to his potential to team fight early and his high magical damage. PL is an illusion based hero and slardar has very little AOE. Enigma, Zeus, Tinker, Venomancer, and OD all dish out huge amounts of magical and pure damage which makes toast of a sprinting Slardar. Zeus and Veno can also cancel blinks easily. You shouldn't pick Slardar against illusion based heroes in general, heroes that can kite you easily (Viper), or defensive supports (ES, Oracle, Dazzle and Shadow Demon.)

Some tips for playing the hero:

• dart in and out of fights - Slithereen Crush has a 5.5 second and sprint has a 7 second down time, both of which are insane and you'll be able to get multiple crushes off per fight if you play it right
• use your mana well, tread swap, and keep the Amplify Damage on the enemy
• don't deviate much from the items listed above because you usually won't have enough time to farm blink + bkb + damage item + tank item
• maxing crush and sprint first with a point in your ultimate by level 9 is generally the way to go, however getting a point in bash can be worth it if your team has lots of lockdown or you're just feeling lucky (warning: explicit)
• Vanguard is a good item on this hero. The damage mitigation and extra health really minimize the downside of sprint
• If the enemy team mainly relies on right click to do damage, consider getting a butterfly as your 1st or 2nd tank item because...
• this hero benefits from attack speed like few others because of the 25% psuedo-random Bash
• always sprint around the map but be careful using it against burst heavy lineups

The next time you find yourself with an AM or Ursa problem, just pick Slardar. Pressure them all over the map, take an early Roshan potential and get aggressive. Pick him in the right situation and reap the benefits of playing an anti-carry.

The next anti-carry: Legion Commander

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.