TC is the best solo mid player in DotA2...

...at least until we see him matched up with Dendi and the question of the 1-2 order can be settled temporarily.

Since Fire/coL haven't matched up with Na'Vi, it's not possible to point the actual game results between these two players. However, during Fire's run (as of today, they're 22-1 in official matches, by far the best winning percentage in DotA2) TC has consistently won the mid lane and played a huge part in Fire's subsequent dominance of the game. As GrandGrant pointed out, his awareness in team fights is almost supernatural--he always seems to be hexing and shackling the right heroes at the right time.

I was already on the TC bandwagon a little bit but now I'm totally sold. A history of team sports/competition suggests that the successful teams consist of 1-2 phenomenal talents surrounded with the perfect suite of complementary role players. Fire seems to have put this formula to great success in DotA2. Let's see if it continues to hold up.

Fire fighting!

LEGT Round 3 pairings and results

Water (2-0) vs Bathroom Buddies (2-0)
HiiB (1-1) vs Dusa is a retard (1-1)
WWCD (1-1) vs Skill Difference (1-1)
Stratyk (1-1) vs Naya Taya (1-1)
Razzle Dazzle (0-2) vs BYE*


And the results: 


Congratulations to Water for going 3-0 and winning the first ever tournament organized by yours truly. Thanks to everyone who participated and who helped organize this tournament. Special thank you's to asrmatt, Live, Draskyl, and Markdrav for streaming and casting. It was good to experiment with the Swiss pairings format for a DotA tournament. If/when I do this again, things will run a lot more smoothly.

1. Water (3-0)
2. Dusa is a retard (2-1)
3. Bathroom Buddies (2-1)
4. Naya Taya (2-1)
5. Skill Difference (2-1)
6. WWCD (1-2)
7. HiiB (1-2)
8. Stratyk (1-2)
9. Singularity (0-2 drop)
10. Razzle Dazzle (0-2 drop)

SECS/LEGT Round 2 pairings and stream links

The number in front of a team's name is its standing in the tournament as of the end of round 1. The cross pairing (the 1-0 vs 0-1 match) was determined using a random number generator.

1. Bathroom Buddies (1-0) vs 3. HiiB (1-0) -- Cast by asrmatt twitch.tv/asrmatt
2. Water (1-0) vs 4. Dusa is a retard (1-0) -- Cast by Draskyll twitch.tv/draskyll
5. Stratyk (1-0) vs 7. WWCD (0-1)
6. Razzle Dazzle (0-1) vs 9. Naya taya (0-1)
8. Skill Difference (0-1) vs. 10. Singularity (0-1)

(the rest of the pairings are pending the results of Stratyk vs Razzle Dazzle)

Legato's Epically Ghetto Tournament

Hey everyone! SECS was canceled for this week so I'm running a Dota2 tournament for the would-be SECS participants. I'm going to keep everything updated in this thread with new posts after every round, so feel free to follow the action here and on the TWO casts we'll have (links in the pairings).

ROUND 1 STARTS IN 10 MINUTES AND RUNS UNTIL 6:20 EST. ROUNDS ARE BO1.

This tournament is not single elimination. Every team will play every round until the end or they choose to drop from the tournament. If you choose to drop, PLEASE let me know here or on IRC (LegatoForReal in both #SECS and #nadota) after you finish your game for the round.

The format of the tournament is Swiss pairings. This takes the same amount of time as a normal single elimination tournament but gives every team a chance to play in every round.

IF YOUR GAME IS BEING STREAMED (it will say so in the pairings) PLEASE GIVE THE CASTERS TIME TO GET INTO THE GAME BEFORE YOU START. If for whatever reason you can't get in touch with your caster, PM me on IRC and I'll coordinate for you.

ROUND ONE PAIRINGS

HiiB vs Skill Difference

Singularity vs Bathroom Buddies

WWCD vs Dusa is a retard -- CAST BY ASRMATT@ www.twitch.tv/asrmatt

Naya taya vs Water -- CAST BY DRASKYL@ www.twitch.tv/Draskyll

Stratyk vs Razzle Dazzle 

How broken is Track? and Fun Facts from 2 years ago

The changes to Bounty Hunter's track in 6.73/"the parity version" make that spell ridiculous on paper (and others have said as much). I thought it might be fun to see just how broken this is.

I set a personal record for kills in a game a few years ago by getting into the mid-sixties with Bounty Hunter, back when towers had regeneration and it was not unheard of for games to stretch past the two hour mark. While it would be nearly impossible to break this mark now (games just end too quickly and DotaCash players give up too easily), Bounty Hunter does hold a special place in my heart. So I joined a DotaCash and set to work.

Just to be clear, I did not know or even bother to coordinate with any of my teammates. I was simply tracking and killing heroes all over the map and hoping they followed up. Even with absolutely no team coordination, Track generated over 13000 gold in just over 30 minutes (thanks, -stats command!). That's, essentially, 13000 gold of free money on top of whatever my team was able to farm. A "natural" 13000 gold difference in 30 minutes usually means the game is going to be over soon. So, yeah, Track is that broken.

That being said, it is hard to work Bounty Hunter into a lineup, especially in the current DotA2 meta. We've seen him used in the .7x cycle by Chinese teams as a side lane/"throwaway" solo, but this tactic has fallen out of favor with the Western teams. Hopefully some enterprising youngsters break Bounty Hunter, if for no other reason than it would freshen up the current competitive environment.

From time to time when there's no streams up I like to go back to either my personal replay archives or the GosuGamers search tab to review some old games and see if I can't port old strategies into the current meta. Today I decided to sample a DTS vs Nirvana.int game from two years ago, somewhat spurred by comments that DTS/Na'Vi didn't have the same players for very long despite people giving them credit for being a longstanding team. Well, first off, DTS ran out Dendi, Artstyle, LightofHeaven, NS, and Dread in this game. So there's 3/5 of the Na'Vi roster that won the International. So much for not staying together very long. The most interesting thing about this game was that it lasted over an hour and the two teams combined for almost 90 kills. Nirvana.int ran a cute team fight strategy with Necrolyte, Enigma, Pit Lord (old version), Earthshaker, and Dirge (cut to Maelk sobbing uncontrollably). Could something like this work in the current environment? I think so. In fact, I've said as much in the past---that the way to beat Dark Seer is to play such a strategy. I haven't given much thought to how to port it exactly into the current DotA2 hero pool; that's a post for another time.

Dear NADotA, you are not a carry player...

I made this post over at NADotA and figured I should re-post it here:

Dear NADotA,

You are not a "carry player." You are not a "support player." Nor are you a "ganker," "utility player," "initiator," or any of the myriad other labels that the DotA community has come up with to classify its members over the years. This is because none of these things is real. There is no such thing as a "carry player," a "support player," or a "ganker." All of these words are synonyms for the same thing: an incomplete, unskilled player.

The skills that go into playing DotA at a high level are the same no matter what role you take on in games. When you're playing at a lower level, a lack of certain skills is easier to mask by only playing certain kinds of heroes and roles. This is the genesis of the carry/support/ganker/initiator/etc. polychotomy: bad players realizing that their lack of map awareness/inability to last hit creeps would cripple them immeasurably when playing a support/carry hero (respectively) but could be hidden by the fact that their opponents were just as incompetent.

So, NADotA, please, for the love of all things that are good in the world, stop using this awful fucking terminology to make excuses for your shortcomings as players. Accept the fact that you are flawed. OWN IT. Dedicate yourself to shoring up your weaknesses and lack of skills in areas of the game that you are not comfortable in.

Then, and only then, will you be able to play this game at a high level.

Thank you.

<3

Dark Seer Revisited

A few weeks ago I posted about the Germans' upset win over Na'Vi using a Dark Seer/Enigma/Death Prophet combo. While I stand by what I said with regards to Dark Seer in the context of that game, I definitely did not fully understand the scope of that hero (and how he would break out into first pick/first ban status).

The big deal with Dark Seer is that his ultimate, Wall of Replica, scales in power with the enemy team. Then, when you get Scepter, it scales in power with both teams. Especially when you consider the fact that auras on illusions seem to work differently than in original DotA (in the Warcraft III engine, illusions' "auras" don't actually have an effect. In DotA2, apparently they do), Dark Seer's Wall is probably the "best" ultimate in the current meta-game.

As Bulba tried to point out, the 90% illusion damage means any fights around the Wall are 'basically' 9v5 (or 11.5v5 with Scepter; allied hero images deal only 50% damage). It lasts 15/30/45 (what) seconds, with 100 second cool-down at all levels. 45 against 100 is ridiculous for an ultimate that is effectively an ongoing effect (consider: if an image dies, walking through the wall will re-create it; with Scepter, a team gets 45 seconds of 50% damage suicide-pushing at literally no risk). Because the Wall is so position-dependent, the obvious way to counter it is to bait out the Wall and wait for it to go down, but with only a 55 second window to exploit between Walls this isn't a very strong proposition.

This doesn't even take into consideration the sheer utility of his other spells. Dark Seer, especially in the 'parity' version with improved Ion Shell, completely shuts down a Broodmother lane. He is a strong jungle hero, giving his team an 'extra lane' of gold and experience advantage.

I wrote in the thread Bulba posted:

"I think it's effective because it's new/innovative. The meta-game wasn't/isn't prepared to handle DS and DS was able to take advantage of this. As you pointed out though, you can exploit DS early because of his weak laning. There are (probably) other strategies that can be used to beat DS; we just have to figure out what they are.

Right now DS is the next level of the meta-game so to beat a DS you just have to find the next level beyond that."

Without getting into a "Chapinic" discussion of what 'next level' really means, anyone can see that my assertion is a purely theoretical one. However, I do believe that there is a next level.

Dark Seer scales with the enemy team's levels, +stats, and (apparently) aura items. His illusions don't benefit, however, from improved spells, "usable" items (e.g. Scythe of Vyse, Necronomicon), or +damage. Dark Seer's Wall punishes a team for having a farmed carry hero. What if you simply don't get a carry hero? "5-int push" has been a viable strategy in the past. Mek + Pipe + multiple Necronomicons might be the key to beating Dark Seer. This kind of all-in early game strategy is pretty much anathema to the modern styles of play in DotA, but if you're looking to beat a Dark Seer that's probably the way to do it. The easiest way to deal with Dark Seer, though, is probably to ban him. At least, as Maelk put it, "until IceFrog nerfs him into oblivion."