[Strategy] Ponderings on countering defensive carry strats

Seens to be a sudden rush into asian style 3 defensive carries play - i.e. carries like razor and medusa buying early defensive items to bulk them up for teamfight survival later on - vanguard, hood, blademail, manta, linkins, etc. Makes me wonder a bit about what else we might be likely to see because of this, so heres my thoughts:

Strength Carries

With the focus going on buying survivability for carries, why not start off with carries who have natural in-built survivability already? Makes sense to me... I reckon we'll see more of these guys in the future, Davion can be a complete nightmare to take down when he's farmed up.


N'aix

Whilst granted he's also a "strength carry", he also works perfectly as a sort of anti-tank hero, performing well against heroes with increased hp. He used to be a very important pick, when strength carries were all the rage a few versions ago... might we see him reclaim a place as one of the top picks? Open wounds no longer having a mini-stun sucks a bit for him though


"Map-hack" heroes

With the trend towards defending carries and allowing them to farm up, extra map vision via hawk/revenants/rocket/eyes surely has to be a big advantage. Granted clockwerks rockets don't really give a huge amount of abusable vision, so maybe I'm just going with wishful thinking on that one (was one of my fav heroes to play a couple of versions ago), but the others are definetly worth looking at.


Armour loss strat

Finally, I think this might be a good way to counter heroes who've bulked up on survivability - take away their armour. This sort of strat has proved to be valuble time and time again this version, and I think it could really be utilised to take on the defensive heroes. Not necessarily advocating a lineup of *all* those heroes, but utilising some of them together in a lineup works wonders.

[Competitive] Farm 4 Fame 2.2 Final - MYM vs BFB

So incase people haven't heard yet, Kuroky left MYM after SMM, and around about the same time EG.dota disbanded. A mixture of these players have been brought together by Puppey along with some other players known in the scene to make an almost "all-star" like dota squad. Their lineup (called BFB for now) is as follows:

• Puppey (leader)


• Kuroky


• Fear


• Merlini


• Demon


• Pajkatt


• amartnt

So MYM, lacking a carry player seem to have managed to bring their old player h4nn1 out of retirement (sometimes known as Honey/Joker, at the moment seeminly going as "Jukz"). They also seem to have managed to get old captain Maelk to show some more activity too. MYM lineup looks like this:

• Mania-


• Angel


• Miggel


• Pusher


• Jukz/H4nn1


• Maelk

The BFB team has been given EG's old farm4fame position in the brackets, setting them up for tonights final best of 3 match up against MYM.

Onto the matches (with spoilers):

Game 1
BFB bans: Puck / Maiden / Dark Seer/ Lion
MYM bans: Beastmaster / Visage / Spectre/ Tide

BFB picks: Venge / Kunkka / Medusa / Necrolyte / Lich
MYM picks: Slardar / Razor / Sniper / Warlock / PotM
View Replay

MYM appeared to have the better start here, ganking reasonably nicely and putting pressure on BFB, they rack up a reasonable kill advantage early on. By mid-game however, BFB have massively overfarmed compared to MYM, making Kunkka, Medusa and Necro very hard to deal with, even though MYM have the kills stacked up. As the game progresses, BFB push better and their better farming pays off, eventually they overpower MYM in one final teamfight by the mid tower/rax and gg is called by MYM.

Game 2
Was remade into -ap... watched the -cm stream from the start yesterday, but cant quite remember the bans... Rexxar, dark seer, spectre, razor and venge were in there, but dont have them all, sorry, possibly maiden, visage and slardar were there too, but I cant remember.

MYM picks: Medusa / dazzle / necro / tide / phantom lancer
BFB picks: Lion / shadow fiend / storm spirit / keeper of the light / brood
View Replay

BFB picking up ezalor and lion, both with mana draining spells... presumably to try to counter Medusa's mana shield somewhat? Then MYM picking up lancer, I reckon in order to prevent BFB from running Lancer+Ezalor (that combo is as annoying as anything).
In my opinion this game was as much about the ward battle as anything else. BFB warded massively, and MYM did a much worse job of keeping map vision, resulting in MYMs carries having no safe spaces to farm. Merlini's brood did his job perfectly, pushing away lanes quickly, resulting in much better map control for BFB. There was never really a point in this game where BFB didnt look in control of the match, they were just doing everything right - their farming was much better, their choice of fights more sensible and general co-ordination was just looking nicer. Only MYM player to farm vaguely decently was Mania on Medusa, and he still lagged behind SF and Brood in creeps anyway.

Decisive victory for BFB... back to the drawing board for MYM - they'll have to come up with some better strategies :p

Think in a couple of days time i'll do a bit of analysis on where I think the scene seems to be heading...

[Competitive] SMM - everyones talking about it...

So last weekend was the much anticipated SMM tournament in Malaysia, which was supposedly going to settle the age-old debate of whether European or Asian dota was superior. In actuality, MYM was the only european team attending, though PokerIdol from US/Canada also attended and their style can be likened to that of europeans (but with more sniper action, lol). So really I don't see that a vast amount of knowledge can be gained about whether europeans or asians are technically more skilled at dota, however we can draw some information from the competition.

Asain dota truely does live up to its name as a farm-fest. My God.. some of the matches were sooooo boring, no more than 10 kills at 20mins sort of stuff, bleh. But if thats the best way for them to win games, then fair play to them, winning is winning.

MYM managed to lose 2 of their group games, against not the highest skilled of asian teams.. but if you look at their heroes, its disgraceful, they've gone completely out of their compfort zone and attempted to pick asian-style lineups. Thats ridiculous, they should have simply stuck to what they're best at playing, not a single Sandking or Storm spirit pick - thats rather depressing. They spent their time trying to out-farm asian teams, and it simply didnt work. In one game where they did pick a much more gank oriented lineup they actually completely destroyed the opponents, PMS, though these arent a top asian team, so its difficult to draw much from this either - maybe MYM would have destroyed them regardless of the lineup. Heres the lineup they used though:

Much more action to be seen there than some tide/ medusa/ necro /warlock / razor/ whatever lineup.

However maybe simply bringing the european ganking to those 3-carry, defend, farm lineups wouldn't have been enough for MYM to win even at the top of their play. PokerIdol did that brilliantly, and still it didn't pay off against the absolute best asian teams.

I'll use this replay as an example of beautiful gank play, against defensive farm play: EHOME vs PokerIdol

EHOME:
PokerIdol:

PokerIdols lineup just screams gank, also it looks just like a lvl1 roshan strat (watch the replay to see what happens there). EHOME's lineup is full of heroes that buy tanky items so that eventually they just stay alive in the clashes and are able to continue farming up. Its absolutely worth watching, and if you dont want to know much about the game, dont read the next passage.

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*SPOILER*
Basically, the early game goes brilliantly for PI, they gank gank gank, and hold onto a solid 10-kill advantage through into mid game. Then EHOMEs heroes start to build up their vanguards, hoods, bracers, strength treads, and they start to become much much harder to kill. Razor and medusa proceed to continue farming, and die much less in the team fights. Eventually, PI manage to lose a couple of teamfights, find themselves raxed, and lose. Was such a shame, defensive play beating offensive play in such a manner. You can see it by the item builds - PI have daggers on 3 of their heroes - offensive much? EHOME have multiple bracers, vanguards, treads and hoods everywhere, boring or what? The game finishes with PI still on more kills, and beastmaster still on something like 10-2 (can't quite remember), but they simply cant compete with the tankiness of ehomes heroes.
-------------------------------------------------------

I havent even bothered watching the replays of the finals between FTD and cD, apparently they're not worth watching at all... all farm and no gank, not worth the btoher IMO.

So, after me ranting on about asian dota being a boring way to play, what can I conclude? Perhaps the asian style is actually superior to the european/north american styles of play, as it manages to decisively beat it. You can still be the best at something by winning it, regardless of whether you do it in a fashion that spectators enjoy, and on that basis, asian dota can be considered better than european - their play style at the moment will probably win more games.

*HOWEVER* - dota is a game right? it should be enjoyable, and most definately a ganking style is more interesting to both play and watch than a defensive farming style which quite frankly is straight-up boring. The fact is, european teams are rarely going to play against asian teams, so it simply doesnt matter which continent is "better" at dota, and I for one would much rather play in a style thats fun... so european dota is certainly the "better" type for me to be involved with.

In terms of the top players, would the top asians be able to win with gank lineups against the european top players? we simply don't know. So by playing a different style and winning, does that mean they're better overall dota players? I think not... skill is hard to judge, and its somewhat dependant on what you're doing with it. i.e. is mania a better player than loda? (two european players) you cant actually compare the two because they play different styles, one is predominantly a gank player, the other predominantly ganks.

Europeans play dota their way, Asians play it a different way, each seem reasonably happy doing it in their respective manners, and so should be happy about that. Doesn't matter who's "better" really, because in actuality no low or mid tier teams from either continent are likely to come into contact with each other... its completely unimportant.




Well, after that big long complain about nothing important... fnatic are going to China for the 30 day tournament throughout december. Naturally this is going to bring the same euro vs asia questions straight back up. I just hope fnatic bring some proper european ganking to china, and make the games fun to watch :)

[Strategy] Analysing -cm picks - EnRo vs MYM

Someone posted on a well known dota forum that it might be nice for some analysis of competitive lineups to be done, to help people understand the -cm process. Replied with this, and thought i'd leave it here too:


I've picked out a matchup between EnRo and MYM from the DCPS, from not quite 2 weeks ago. I cant claim to have any knowledge whatsoever of what was actually going through the players minds as they were picking, but I can at least try to justify what they were doing to help you understand the process a bit more :)

Replay if you wanna see it: EnRo vs MYM

EnRo Bans:
MYM Bans:

So EnRo (with first pick) ban slardar, morphling, storm spirit and nerubian assassin. Slardar has been seen quite alot recently, and MYM had been utilising him reasonably well, so good to get him out of the way - he can be a bit of a nightmare in the laning/ganking phases if he's paired up well, and carries nicely from the mid-game with a nice bit of early farm. Morphling is a pretty nasty carry, and has the added bonus of soloing well to help him level nicely whilst farming, banned alot recently - not much to say here. The storm spirit ban seems rather tailored towards playing against MYM, as Angel has played him (and owned) alot recently, so rather than trying to counter-pick (with perhaps doom or seeker) they decide to simply ban and remove him. Nerub seems a bit of a mistake to ban here IMO, MYM aren't really known for utilising him perfectly and more often than not just leave him in the pool rather than taking him. If its a hero that EnRo don't like to play against though, then thats a fine reason to remove him from the pool (though personally I think SK would have been a much more sensible ban as MYM|Mania- is known for destroying games with him).

MYM remove dark seer, tide hunter, panda brewmaster, zeus. MYM pretty much ban seer every game - if theres a nasty hero which you dislike playing against, yet equally dont like to pick, just remove him from the pool. Seer is more than just an annoyance, it can spell disaster if he drags your whole team together in preparation for some AoE nastiness, his ulti is a pain when you're pushing, and ion shell is ridiculous for early laning and ganking attempts. Tide quite often is left unbanned and also not a definate pick when he's left in the pool either, but his initiation is rather nasty and so a ban which doesnt really need much explanation. Panda is another that goes without saying, at the moment he's pretty much the #1 desired hero in lineups, once he gets aghanims up his ultimate cooldown is crazy, and when played well can be a complete nightmare - the opponents have first pick, and MYM cant really afford to give them panda = banned. Finally, there are quite a few nice high priority picks left in the pool including rhasta, and what i like to think of as the 3 musketeers of support-gank - maiden/lion/venge, lots of teams can be built around these heroes and MYM ban zeus so that they leave some of these heroes that they love to pick in the pool.

EnRo Picks:

Rhasta is a pretty standard first pick, he is excellent when it comes to pushing, has alot of disable capabilities, can be played in a variety of roles from full on support, to a soloing pseudo-carry. All-round good, versatile choice.

MYM Picks:

Lion and Sanking, sensible picks again, heroes with ganking capacity seem to be the most saught-after picks this version, and both heroes provide this in buckets. It doesn't really give anything away about their intended lineup yet - ganking is the norm at the moment. With her recent soar in popularity I can imagine quite a few teams would have picked up venge at this stage, but leaving her out is fine too.

EnRo Picks:

Potm and Maiden, again heroes which are versitile within a team and don't force you into playing a specific lineup or anything - they are still capable of using their later picks to counter anything MYM do. With potm you get a great all-round hero, she ganks well, performs well in a dual lane but is also fine to solo, and provides you with some nice DPS late-game. Maiden is taken for her global mana aura, and will be the full on support hero of the lineup, she is a nice harasser in lane and plays the babysitting role to pretty good effect.

At this stage MYM can presume that maiden takes on a full support role, so its plausible that rhasta will be played in more of a farming role and may even take their solo lane. Though they have potm, they still lack dps, so it can be assumed that they'll pick a more full-on carry with thier last picks.

MYM Picks:

MYM pick up admiral and warlock. I dont know whether kunkka was an intended pick from the start (maybe a toss-up between him and spec for the carry role), but taking him provides the added benefit of preventing EnRo from picking him - remembering that EnRo probably want a carry for their lineup, and kunkka would synergise well with maiden. MYMs lineup is now pretty solid with lots of nice AoE and initiation as well as great ganking power. This prevents EnRo from jumping out and suprising with pushing heroes with their last picks (which could have been plausible, with rhastas ultimate and maidens aura), as it would be countered by AoE.

So from here on, EnRo can pretty much assume that MYM are laning SK and lion together, with kunkka and warlock together, and their final pick will be a solo hero that kuroky will probably play. Admittedly some teams have been using warlock as a solo recently, and kunkka could be laned with lion, leaving the sk to possibly pair with their final pick, but that seems unlike how MYM tend to play, and so somewhat unlikely. So EnRo are probably thinking that their lanes need to be strong to stand up to MYMs, they could do with more AoE power to turn the tide of the teamfights (which look significantly in MYMs favour at the moment), and they need a decent dps hero, possibly also with some AoE capacities (kunkka would have been great).

EnRo Picks:

Shaker and Davion are picked. Some greatly needed teamfight AoE is provided by shaker, who lanes perfectly with potm (always have to consider the lanes whilst picking, not just taking good heroes), he also ganks well and so can move around between lanes giving potm extra chance to level and farm alone. Davion is an interesting one, hes not a usual pick by any means, but in this situation he does fit the bill pretty well. They require a solid carry hero that will be of use in the teamfights (splash damage?), and who will be a good lane partner to maiden. There could also have been a consideration of playing a tri-lane of maiden/shaker/potm and then picking up a soloing hero to carry, but that doesnt really make any sense because MYMs dual lanes a strong can can both survive a tri-lane, and dominate a solo lane... so it doesnt really work. Davion is a fine choice, and probably better than other options of say spectre (slardar wouldhave been nice here if not for the ban).

So now EnRo are done, MYM can see that they will be soloing their rhasta, have a very strong dual lane (potm shaker), and a nice babysitting lane (maiden davion) which has some survivability against other strong lanes. They will have to watch out for ganks, because potm and shaker can be very nasty moving around when coupled with maidens mana aura. Looking at the lineups, what MYM really want is a solo hero, preferably one that can end up laned against the rhasta and beat him, and preferably one that has a bit of carry potential (all they have is kunkka so far). Things that come to mind are Tinker, Viper, Bane, SF and QoP (morph would be a good choice too if not for his ban).

MYM pick:

Perfectly fair choice, with the added capacity for even more AoE (seems its what they all want in this game). He carries nicely, solos well and with the proper support from his team, shouldnt get ganked too heavily.

To note: no venge or abaddon picks, these guys are usual up near the top tier - but as the picking progressed they didnt really fit with the lineups, so werent picked.


Anyway, hope thats somewhat of an insight into why the heroes got picked here... my attempt at being helpful.

Some things to keep in mind whilst picking heros:

1. Hows it going to lane up?
2. Which players are capable of playing which heroes?
3. Do I still have choices available to counter their lineup, or am I stuck to one route of hero choices?
4. Is it obvious to the opponents what I plan to do?

Dota is Football?

So due to other commitments I haven't posted here in ages - got a new girlfriend + my Uni term (final year) started up again, so I've had less time for dota than previously, and as such have fallen away from posting anything here. But perhaps I can make a bit more of an effort to put more posts in here, once or twice a week I reckon.

Today I'm just messing around here, drawing some parallels between dota teams and Premier league football teams (thats right, real football, none of that american football stuff) :P

MYM = Manchester United


Yeah, there are times when they miss out on winning tournaments, have the odd bad match against lower ranked sides, but overall they are pretty much the one constant within dota. MYM have been around throughout all recent dota history (if for a minor time played for Ravens) and have dominated the european scene for significant proportions of the time too, sure other teams have competed with them for the top (VP, SK, Ks.Int, fnatic) in the same way that Man Utd have faced stiff competition in recent years from Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc... but they remain strong and together and continue to win games. The team has gone through changes over time, and the loss of their captain Maelk (Roy Keane?) may hurt them, but they'll bounce back with new players to cover it i.e. Kuroky (Rooney?). Mania has been an impressive presence for years with MYM, I see him as a Ryan Giggs figure - always been brilliant, but never been considered "the best in the world" like some other players, he's been around for ages and will continue to play amazingly for as long as he can.

Both teams also have a tendancy to drill out winning results even when they're playing badly, however when they're playing well are completely unstoppable.

MYM / Man Utd are arguably the most well known teams in European Dota / English Football as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and can concievably continue that trend into the future.

Fnatic = Liverpool


Fnatic are a tricky one, they have the potential to win tournaments and on a good day can be better than anyone, but seem not to have the strength to maintain a #1 position in dota for a long time. Liverpool do the same, they can come out and win big tournaments sometimes (champions league), but are incapable of maintaining form over the whole course of a season to win the Premiership.

They have some epic top-class players (loda/Misery = Gerrard/Torres), but when these guys aren't playing at their best, the team quite frankly looks not much more than average.

They are capable of awesome play and pulling off some incredible moves when their whole team is on form together however.

Old KS.Int = Arsenal (few years ago)


There was a time a few years ago when Arsenal were completely unstoppable, and their football was beautiful to watch, they were incapable of losing a game (50 unbeaten in a row?). This mirrored how KS.Int were at the height of their game - Puppey, Miracle, Kuroky, Levent, Jolie - these guys were just awesome, their ganking strats were beautiful just like Arsenals smooth football, and seemed to work perfectly.

However after their brief spell of outclassing the best of the rest (MYM / Man Utd), they went through a period of their strategies seemingly not working anymore. Some changes of players seemed to not really improve their game-play (vigoss/dendi/H4nni-/Jolie), similar to how the loss of players like Henry, Pires and Reyes held back Arsenals form. They kept up their old style of heavily early game ganking play whilst it wasn't the most effective way to win, and so were beaten by opposing teams. Similar again to how Arsenal tried to keep going with thier "pass the ball into the net" fancy play, which simply didnt pay off against pysically stronger teams.

The comparison vaguely continues as KS.Int became AEON and then decided to disband as a team, and then AEON picked up a different team - the russians (AEON.ru) who very recently showed their prowess by beating top teams to win the Dota Club Pro Series. Whilst at the same time, Arsenal have been showing great form again recently, and looking like title contenders and also possible candidates to win the champions league, fittingly the russian player Arshavin has been at the heart of their great performances.

DCPS replays: Gosugamers

TeG = Everton


The Immortal Gods, aka I Got Game (IGG) feel like an Everton sort of team to me. For quite a while they were reasonably good, but then their performances improved giving them a great finish in the Farm4Fame competition, for a while appearing to be amongst the best 4 or so teams in Europe, however recently their performances have dropped and other teams have come to show themselves as being in better form - I'd still probably consider them top 10 in europe, but not top 5 anymore. In the same respect, Everton were a mid-table team for a while, but then recently got things together and had a great run last season, however this season other teams have caught up again and once against Everton sink slightly lower - still top half, but not pushing for Champions League qualification.

DTS = Aston Villa


DTS have been one of the top teams in European dota for quite a while, but sometimes fail to properly deliver and win tournaments where they perhaps should. They have some truely great players, but recently have slightly fallen from their position as one of the best, whilst other european teams look to overtake them (dmz, xfz.int, nfinity, AEON.ru..). This is similar to Aston Villa, they've been great for a few seasons, pushing for top 4 and champions league qualification, but though their side is strong they've been somewhat caught-up by other teams around them again... its difficult for them to compete with the likes of Arsenal, Tottenham, Man City, Liverpool, etc, though they are still producing some good results.

Time will tell whether or not they retain their position as one of the best, or drop away slightly in the same was as TeG/Everton appear to have.

dmZ = Tottenham Hotspur


dmZ, they've clearly had the talent for a long time, but have never quite been good enough to compete with the teams right at the top - the MYM's and fnatics of the scene. Recently they performed well in the DCPS, but time will tell whether this was just a passing phase, or whether they can maintain a strong position and challenge the other top european teams in being "the best". Spurs are the same, obviously had quality players, but have been somewhat unable to actually show their great potential, perhaps due to inexperience in the squad or whatever. They look good this season, personally I reckon they are the team to steal the #4 spot from Liverpool, and equally the dota team are capable of grinding out good results against the top teams in europe when they put their minds to it.



So there we go, just a bit of fun really. If you don't know anything about English Football, then this probably didn't make any sense whatever to you (or else you just stopped reading so this is pointless for me to say). But hopefully you enjoyed some of that light-hearted comparison between dota teams and the premier league.

I was considering a Man City - xfz.int comparison, but I don't really think it fits... dunno. Also can't really put any team alongside Chelsea - no-one in european dota at the moment truely looks like toppling MYM from their throne (though we'll have to see what AEON.ru are really capable of). Also what on earth can I say about OS|One? (and perhaps more importantly, should they be included? As Khazakstan clearly isnt in Europe :P [though their football team is in the european qualification groups for the World Cup....]).

Anyway, hope you liked that.. will try to continue with some more relevent stuff in the near future.