Dota 2 Discussion (~Boston Majors & Road to TI7~)

[Nryn]

Congrats to OG for being the first team to win 2 Valve events. This is the best I've seen Notail play since Frankfurt.

Liquid's Roshan decision making hurt them dearly in games 2 and 3. Liquid's somewhat stubborn drafting didn't help either, and it brought back memories of the TI4 finals where RoTK tried to brute force Newbee without changing failing strategies. Also, there's something about grand finals that makes Liquid lose consecutive games; I thought they finally got over that mental issue at Epicenter, but apparently not.

One thing I've noticed about the major is that once a team builds a decent networth advantage through early pressure, it's incredibly rare for the other team to stage a comeback. Even in the grand finals, no team managed to overcome a 5k networth disadvantage. In the entire tournament there were only around 5 or so games in which a team overcome a 10k deficit. In past majors and TI5, the less hectic playstyle allowed teams to shrug off such networth disadvantages regularly, but teams at Manila became clinical in using their early snowball to end the game early.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Congrats to OG for being the first team to win 2 Valve events. This is the best I've seen Notail play since Frankfurt.

Liquid's Roshan decision making hurt them dearly in games 2 and 3. Liquid's somewhat stubborn drafting didn't help either, and it brought back memories of the TI4 finals where RoTK tried to brute force Newbee without changing failing strategies. Also, there's something about grand finals that makes Liquid lose consecutive games; I thought they finally got over that mental issue at Epicenter, but apparently not.

One thing I've noticed about the major is that once a team builds a decent networth advantage through early pressure, it's incredibly rare for the other team to stage a comeback. Even in the grand finals, no team managed to overcome a 5k networth disadvantage. In the entire tournament there were only around 5 or so games in which a team overcome a 10k deficit. In past majors and TI5, the less hectic playstyle allowed teams to shrug off such networth disadvantages regularly, but teams at Manila became clinical in using their early snowball to end the game early.

huh but MVP made an insane comeback vs liquid, one of the biggest ever, without a super lategame carry.

 

[Saark]

GG OG, guess you can still win even if your carry wastes BKBs to try to kill necros and runs around with radiance disabled for more than 5 minutes. Drafts were just too good. Not sure why liquid kept giving OG phoenix, OG always utilized defensive heroes/healing very well, last time they were that dominant was during the dazzle/undying meta. Constantly picking 3+ str cores, or LD, into a phoenix also seems like they didn't really know what to do. Was hoping for at least one game where they decided to not ban invoker in favour of getting the phoenix out of the equation.

Congrats to OG for being the first team to win 2 Valve events.

DAC was a Valve sponsored Event with a huge compendium and everything, not sure why everyone keeps saying that this is the first time some team won 2 events. EG won DAC+TI5.

 

[Nryn]

huh but MVP made an insane comeback vs liquid, one of the biggest ever, without a super lategame carry.

Game of the tournament for me, and one of the handful of games where teams managed to claw back from a significant networth disadvantage. Some more of note were LGD vs MVP Game 2 in the group stages, LGD vs EG game 3, and a couple of games involving DC.

Looking at the rest of the games paints a picture where these sorts of comebacks were the exception to the norm. Whether this is due to teams with an advantage playing clinical Dota or due to teams on the backfoot being unable to turn the game around is too soon to say. Despite the tower armor aura buffs causing predictions that we might see slightly longer games, I wouldn't be surprised if the games at Manila were actually shorter than those at Shanghai on average.

DAC was a Valve sponsored Event with a huge compendium and everything, not sure why everyone keeps saying that this is the first time some team won 2 events. EG won DAC+TI5.

Was DAC fully sponsored by Valve as the Majors and TI are? I've come across conflicting accounts that it was only partially sponsored. Disregard my OG comment if this is not the case.

 

[you know what time it is]

Liquid got figured out, easiest 2.5k compendium points of me lyfe

 

[Great Deceiver]

Friendship is magic, guys

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Liquid had better teamfight

 

[Wulfstand]

Do Moonmeander and N0tail still stream? I remember watching Moon playing HoN a few years back, the dude was batshit crazy.

 

[Nryn]

Out of nowhere, 6.88 has released. http://store.steampowered.com/news/22385/
http://store.steampowered.com/news/22385/
Also, Universe and Zai back to EG. https://twitter.com/EvilGeniuses/status/742221978384236544

 

[Mr. Pink]

Out of nowhere, 6.88 has released. http://store.steampowered.com/news/22385/
Also, Universe and Zai back to EG. https://twitter.com/EvilGeniuses/status/742221978384236544

what the fuck icefrog

 

[you know what time it is]

Slark
* Pounce damage reduced from 50/100/150/200 to 40/80/120/160

Sniper
* Shrapnel damage increased from 15/30/45/60 to 15/35/55/75

 

[Great Deceiver]

Sometimes minute changes have unforeseen consequences, but I gotta admit, this is kinda bullshit.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Doom
* Doom cooldown increased from 140 to 145

aaaand balanced

 

[Mr. Pink]

Terrorblade
* Conjure Image manacost reduced from 80 to 70
* Conjure Image duration increased from 32 to 34

...why? TB is already good.

I can't doubt the icefrog, but it does feel like dota has been afflicted with massive power creep over the last few years.

also, I miss sand king, ogre and warlock (in comp dota)...

 

[Saark]

The thing about competitive dota is that many teams are too afraid to try out new heroes when they already found something that works. Usually those teams are stuck on 4th-8th place because they oftentimes get outdrafted by a niche-pick (as evidenced by the Medusa vs LGD this tournament) once the tournament is down to the last couple of teams. The weakest teams also often pick niche-heroes and sometimes get a surprise win out of them, but thats because they have to to even advance once. Empire pulled out a great SK game against secret to secure themself a best of 1, because PL just gets shit on by SK once he has an aghs.

DotA certainly has suffered from power-creep ever since Neichus and Icefrog took over back in '05 because generally patches include more buffs to 'shit' heroes (which is usually more than half the heroes in the pool) while only the select few "op" heroes get slight nerfs.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I much prefer the stance to buff most heroes as opposed to all-around nerfs. Part of the fun of playing Dota is that feeling powerful is great - feeling like your abilities matter is great. Playing league of legends is shit for the same reason. I'd rather have balance borne out of creativity by the playerbase - which is what happens in Dota after all - than through something contrived like Riot's restrictive approach (i.e. designing heroes with specific roles in mind, pigeonholing everything including when fights are supposed to happen).

 

[Saark]

Nerfing most of the heroes and only buffing a select few will often lead to people picking those select few heroes, thus "creating" a new meta with a patch. Doing it Icefrogs way has a lot of unforeseen consequences, noone really knows what is going to have the biggest impact or what combinations/synergies will dominate the upcoming weeks/months. I mean who would've guessed that the +5 armour on armlet would be the biggest gamechange of the last patch? It's way more fun because the first couple of weeks everyone is basically trying to rediscover the game. It's what makes it so fun to start up DotA after a big patch just came out, it almost feels like a new game.

 

[curry]

PA picked by Liquid Also a lot of TB from Alliance and OG

 

[Great Deceiver]

Medusa and TB are back this patch - seems to be a swing back into farming carries. Not sure it's going to last...

 

[Cromwell]

what changed with medusa that the hero is back?

 

[Great Deceiver]

Dusa has been buffed many patches in a row (mystic snake now steals % of total mana, which is amazing; her ult was buffed at level 1 and mana shield is better too); she is now a pretty great laner , farms reasonably fast and her mana shield makes her super tanky even early on; besides, she's a natural counter to melee STR cores that have been so prevalent in the meta lately, like Sven. She is also reasonably flexible regarding laning, can go mid, etc. She can also contribute early to teamfights with her ult so she doesn't need to afk farm for 35 minutes before she can do something like, say Morph.

She is countered hard by heroes that go manta diffusal though, and with Jug being really popular now (thanks to Miracle mostly) she isn't all that great.

edit: Mushi really needs to stop with the shitty Linkens -> Manta build.

 

[Ninjerk]

I guess production values are never going to rise above a certain threshold with these things.

"Now, for the last match of ESL Frankfuuuuuuuurt..."

. . .

"This isn't actually the last match of ESL Frankfurt; we have plenty coming for you tomorrow."

 

[Lord Romulus]

Terrorblade still seems shit, the rare instances where I see him get picked, he just gets blown up by nukes and stuns before he can even sunder. Maybe it's just that people at my mmr don't know how to build him.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Terrorblade still seems shit, the rare instances where I see him get picked, he just gets blown up by nukes and stuns before he can even sunder. Maybe it's just that people at my mmr don't know how to build him.

TB is mostly picked as a last pick in competitive if the enemy team doesn't have a massive amount of stuns. He was also buffed quite a few times over the last patches and I think Dragon Lance pushes him into pretty good territory. His major weakness is laning - his laning is shit and he has the lowest str gain in the game, dying to 2 nukes at level one. If teams can secure him early farm he's very good.

 

[Mr. Pink]

http://www.dota2.com/international/announcement

IT BEGINS

the qualifiers for this is going to be amazing. I plan on watching VG, EG and secret in the open qualifiers just to be there when they get lv 1 roshan'd in a bo1 by some no-name team.