Tbh, the whole system was so weird and vague to me that I just stopped watching any pro dotes. I miss the old major system because it made me watch pro dotes every few months.
Was there a good reason to scrap that system? I don't remember.
It was vague and arbitrary and the TI invites were completely subjective and opaque. This at least has rules that you can understand.
Despite the whining by CIS and EU region, it's hard to fault Valve for basically making sure EG, Optic, and VGJ.Storm made it to the dance, one is EG and the other two won big tournaments leading up to TI and were only denied due to finishing just short of top 8 (Optic) and a necessary roster change that made them an actual contender (VGJ added Resolution).
Notable by their absence is NaVi, which switched up the roster yet again, then got eliminated in both Open Qualifiers and maybe will finally realize that the team needs a full refresh instead of just Dendi picking 4 other guys after every few months of disappointing results
Obvious favourites to win are the top row, but I'm not counting out Optic. ppd is not a captain to be underestimated, and if anyone has a proven track record of massive lower bracket wins after learning everyone's weakness in earlier games, it'd be him. Dark horse pick is OG, who stampeded through qualifiers and are way under the radar after a bunch of roster reshuffling and poor results.
411Randle on
1) Silence 2) Books must be returned by the last date shown 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
It was great to see OG pull a winning team together after losing Fly and S4 to EG, and I especially enjoyed watching them stomp creepy, tactical pausing ritsu out of the EU qualifier.
Optic looked good too. This is shaping up to be a great TI. It is hard to imagine anyone beating Lakad Matataag VP, but we will see!
Steam: Pookie GG Now Playing: BattleTech, Divinity Original Sin 2, MechWarrior 5
I was glad they split up the qualifiers into two different rotations, so there was China/CIS/SA and then SEA/EU/NA so you at least had a chance to watch most of the regions if you wanted instead of overlapping.
The SA region was a horror show even before Thunder Predator got DQ'd, there was a ridiculous amount of DDOS attacks that each country was blaming on the other, and it took 6 days to finish the qualifiers as a result. I want the region to become competitive but the obvious corruption issues going on down there are insane. At least the right team ended up winning the spot in the end.
And yes, watching that Ritsu stack get absolutely brutalized by OG was very nice. I feel bad for the other four players on his team who are probably decent guys who just wanted a chance at TI but seriously, fuck Ritsu.
1) Silence 2) Books must be returned by the last date shown 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
And yeah SA needs ... I dunno a governing body or something cause it's apparently a shitshow down there. There haven't been DDos problems in other regions for what, four years? The games were entertaining though!
Winstrike was looking good from what I saw, and they run mid pudge competitively! I'm just hoping VP continues to be awesome, there isn't another pro team out there that would willingly give Wisp to LGD in a upper bracket round just to prove they could beat it. Which they didn't ,but it was still great to see.
I have an interesting conundrum that maybe the thread can help out with.
I've been playing Dota on and off since high school and got most of my friends into it over the years. For some of them, it's now their favorite game. We usually play a game or two together every night.
I'm about a Legend 3 or 4 player, somewhere in the high 3Ks in MMR. My friends are..not as good at the game, though I think some of them just don't put in the number of games necessary to raise their MMR higher than 2K. One of my friends is legitimately awful and is an anchor every time we play.
As someone trying to get better, what are some tips and tricks I can use to try and improve my play while also being given bad advice by my friends? I've been trying to ignore teamfights and farm more until high ground/roshan as most teamfights in our games are bad fights, it's just tough and makes my friends accuse me of "afk farming jungle." For the record, that's not what I do. I try to shove lanes in and take towers when these fights are happening, my friends just want me to join the bad fight and not accomplish anything I guess.
I usually play safe lane or offlane carry, sometimes position 4 if I wanna Pudge it up. I also legitimately believe that it is my failing alone keeping me from winning, if I was truly a better player I'd be able to win these games no matter what my friends do. Thoughts on what I can do to improve?
I don't see how losing could be your fault here, but ignoring that:
I guess my thought is basically play independent mobility/tempo heroes like storm/ember/tinker. If you're getting drawn into bad fights maybe you need to control the pace of the game more, rather than playing reactively. Those are usually mid heroes, admittedly, but they can play safe lane if you'd rather.
Mirana is also good for this -- popping your ult kind of gets everyone to pay attention and play as a team for 15 seconds. Also maybe suck it up and buy the smokes to set up the movement.
Mirana is a good call, Storm is also one of my favorite mids so I could start playing him more. I was considering changing my hero picks to include more lane domination + split pushing carries to deal with the "meta" at low MMR.
Stuff like Clinkz, Troll Warlord, Phantom Lancer, and Chaos Knight maybe. I don't want to play super late game carries because my team will lose before I come online. Split pushing carries that can take towers quickly seem to work best.
Mirana is a good call, Storm is also one of my favorite mids so I could start playing him more. I was considering changing my hero picks to include more lane domination + split pushing carries to deal with the "meta" at low MMR.
Stuff like Clinkz, Troll Warlord, Phantom Lancer, and Chaos Knight maybe. I don't want to play super late game carries because my team will lose before I come online. Split pushing carries that can take towers quickly seem to work best.
I have an interesting conundrum that maybe the thread can help out with.
I've been playing Dota on and off since high school and got most of my friends into it over the years. For some of them, it's now their favorite game. We usually play a game or two together every night.
I'm about a Legend 3 or 4 player, somewhere in the high 3Ks in MMR. My friends are..not as good at the game, though I think some of them just don't put in the number of games necessary to raise their MMR higher than 2K. One of my friends is legitimately awful and is an anchor every time we play.
As someone trying to get better, what are some tips and tricks I can use to try and improve my play while also being given bad advice by my friends? I've been trying to ignore teamfights and farm more until high ground/roshan as most teamfights in our games are bad fights, it's just tough and makes my friends accuse me of "afk farming jungle." For the record, that's not what I do. I try to shove lanes in and take towers when these fights are happening, my friends just want me to join the bad fight and not accomplish anything I guess.
I usually play safe lane or offlane carry, sometimes position 4 if I wanna Pudge it up. I also legitimately believe that it is my failing alone keeping me from winning, if I was truly a better player I'd be able to win these games no matter what my friends do. Thoughts on what I can do to improve?
The best way I found for improvement was watching strong players that explain their choices and grinding relevant heroes. I was a big Bulldog fan back when he actually played and I learned to play both NP and LD from his streams. Normally you need to build your own experience to understand item choices and decision making, but you can save a lot of time by cribbing from someone who already has that experience, then build further from there. It is easier to improve at the game while focusing on a small pool of heroes on a single position and learning them in and out than it is to play multiple positions and heroes. Support vs utility core vs carry core are all very different mindsets and it's difficult to swap between them and maintain good decision making because each of those roles have very different goals between when it's right to be farming and when it's right to be making movements with your team.
Rat heroes probably require the greatest level of decision making of any game plan. You need to constantly assess where it's safe to be on the map, what objective you need to be threatening if the enemy team commits somewhere, whether a fight is unwinnable/winnable if you come/winnable without you, and how much economy to commit to tower killing items versus escape items versus gank items versus team fight contribution items. More utility focused heroes have much more binary decision trees. Like if you're Tide/Bat/Clock/Dark Seer and your cooldowns are up you look to take fights and if they aren't you don't.
As someone trying to get better, what are some tips and tricks I can use to try and improve my play while also being given bad advice by my friends?
Vishnub called it right in that you play tempo heroes that can take over a phase of the game, or snowball on kills -often when you watch the better streamers you can see that they win pubs by doing just that. Other option is to draft early team fight and be aggressive. I think the more recent patches have been pretty unkind to that meta unfortunately, since gold is found farming lanes instead of stacking kills now. But at 2-3k rating, gold efficiency is probably low enough that early fighting has better value.
Been taking you guys' advice to heart and playing a lot of Phantom Lancer safelane. It's been going surprisingly well! Even if I die a lot (I'm still learning the hero), I usually snowball enough from these fights that we're winning. Necrophos mid has also been very effective.
Been taking you guys' advice to heart and playing a lot of Phantom Lancer safelane. It's been going surprisingly well! Even if I die a lot (I'm still learning the hero), I usually snowball enough from these fights that we're winning. Necrophos mid has also been very effective.
I absolutely cannot stand playing against PL and ban him every game I can.
Good choice though. He's a pain to play against and worse come to worse you are making the enemy team spend a ton of $$ just to counter you.
I have determined that Clinkz is hilarious and unfair as a pubstomper. Punish those carries playing too far out of position until they're afraid to leave their base.
I have determined that Clinkz is hilarious and unfair as a pubstomper. Punish those carries playing too far out of position until they're afraid to leave their base.
Yeah.
I used to run Clinkz a lot until i started playing ranked and would get stomped. Think I'm gun shy now.
I have determined that Clinkz is hilarious and unfair as a pubstomper. Punish those carries playing too far out of position until they're afraid to leave their base.
Yeah.
I used to run Clinkz a lot until i started playing ranked and would get stomped. Think I'm gun shy now.
He's gotten buffed like 5 patches in a row and he's pretty goddamn good right now. Pros don't really use him, but he's great on the ladder, hovering around 55-56% winrate according to dotabuff.
He is in a much better place now than he used to be.
I have been playing mostly turbo lately to fill out my cavern crawl and have to say it is actually helping with me playing carry. While you have a bit more flexibility, the increased tempo requires a bit more work to stay ahead then normal
He is in a much better place now than he used to be.
I have been playing mostly turbo lately to fill out my cavern crawl and have to say it is actually helping with me playing carry. While you have a bit more flexibility, the increased tempo requires a bit more work to stay ahead then normal
I like turbo a lot. Just got back into the game and it's helping me knock the rust off. Also, it's kinda a must for cavern crawl.
Got to switch modes in your brain when you back to regular though.
Posts
Is it out finally?
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
It was vague and arbitrary and the TI invites were completely subjective and opaque. This at least has rules that you can understand.
Yesterday
Yeah it's kinda buggy but really fun to screw around with for quick battle points. LC is a great pick FYI
EDIT Nevermind, I see how it works now. I even won a match fairly fast. I didn't get my emote for winning yet though.
This news makes me inexpressibly happy.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Steam/DotA name: Not the God of Hammers
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Despite the whining by CIS and EU region, it's hard to fault Valve for basically making sure EG, Optic, and VGJ.Storm made it to the dance, one is EG and the other two won big tournaments leading up to TI and were only denied due to finishing just short of top 8 (Optic) and a necessary roster change that made them an actual contender (VGJ added Resolution).
Notable by their absence is NaVi, which switched up the roster yet again, then got eliminated in both Open Qualifiers and maybe will finally realize that the team needs a full refresh instead of just Dendi picking 4 other guys after every few months of disappointing results
Obvious favourites to win are the top row, but I'm not counting out Optic. ppd is not a captain to be underestimated, and if anyone has a proven track record of massive lower bracket wins after learning everyone's weakness in earlier games, it'd be him. Dark horse pick is OG, who stampeded through qualifiers and are way under the radar after a bunch of roster reshuffling and poor results.
Not just that but actually using macros with Meepo and Armlet toggle in a qualifier game.
Optic looked good too. This is shaping up to be a great TI. It is hard to imagine anyone beating Lakad Matataag VP, but we will see!
but tomato tomato. still a macro
OG looked wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy better during the qualifier than they have recently, so maybe cautious optimism there. They haven't played anyone though.
EG looked bad, honestly, until their last day of the qualifier when they suddenly seemed to put it together.
Hub coverage was very good as usual.
The SA region was a horror show even before Thunder Predator got DQ'd, there was a ridiculous amount of DDOS attacks that each country was blaming on the other, and it took 6 days to finish the qualifiers as a result. I want the region to become competitive but the obvious corruption issues going on down there are insane. At least the right team ended up winning the spot in the end.
And yes, watching that Ritsu stack get absolutely brutalized by OG was very nice. I feel bad for the other four players on his team who are probably decent guys who just wanted a chance at TI but seriously, fuck Ritsu.
And yeah SA needs ... I dunno a governing body or something cause it's apparently a shitshow down there. There haven't been DDos problems in other regions for what, four years? The games were entertaining though!
Objections?
Profile link? Steam name search sucks.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Invited you. I rarely play, but if I end up playing and we need another, I'll throw you an invite!
friend request sent
mid or feed
I've been playing Dota on and off since high school and got most of my friends into it over the years. For some of them, it's now their favorite game. We usually play a game or two together every night.
I'm about a Legend 3 or 4 player, somewhere in the high 3Ks in MMR. My friends are..not as good at the game, though I think some of them just don't put in the number of games necessary to raise their MMR higher than 2K. One of my friends is legitimately awful and is an anchor every time we play.
As someone trying to get better, what are some tips and tricks I can use to try and improve my play while also being given bad advice by my friends? I've been trying to ignore teamfights and farm more until high ground/roshan as most teamfights in our games are bad fights, it's just tough and makes my friends accuse me of "afk farming jungle." For the record, that's not what I do. I try to shove lanes in and take towers when these fights are happening, my friends just want me to join the bad fight and not accomplish anything I guess.
I usually play safe lane or offlane carry, sometimes position 4 if I wanna Pudge it up. I also legitimately believe that it is my failing alone keeping me from winning, if I was truly a better player I'd be able to win these games no matter what my friends do. Thoughts on what I can do to improve?
I guess my thought is basically play independent mobility/tempo heroes like storm/ember/tinker. If you're getting drawn into bad fights maybe you need to control the pace of the game more, rather than playing reactively. Those are usually mid heroes, admittedly, but they can play safe lane if you'd rather.
Mirana is also good for this -- popping your ult kind of gets everyone to pay attention and play as a team for 15 seconds. Also maybe suck it up and buy the smokes to set up the movement.
Stuff like Clinkz, Troll Warlord, Phantom Lancer, and Chaos Knight maybe. I don't want to play super late game carries because my team will lose before I come online. Split pushing carries that can take towers quickly seem to work best.
NP?
The best way I found for improvement was watching strong players that explain their choices and grinding relevant heroes. I was a big Bulldog fan back when he actually played and I learned to play both NP and LD from his streams. Normally you need to build your own experience to understand item choices and decision making, but you can save a lot of time by cribbing from someone who already has that experience, then build further from there. It is easier to improve at the game while focusing on a small pool of heroes on a single position and learning them in and out than it is to play multiple positions and heroes. Support vs utility core vs carry core are all very different mindsets and it's difficult to swap between them and maintain good decision making because each of those roles have very different goals between when it's right to be farming and when it's right to be making movements with your team.
Rat heroes probably require the greatest level of decision making of any game plan. You need to constantly assess where it's safe to be on the map, what objective you need to be threatening if the enemy team commits somewhere, whether a fight is unwinnable/winnable if you come/winnable without you, and how much economy to commit to tower killing items versus escape items versus gank items versus team fight contribution items. More utility focused heroes have much more binary decision trees. Like if you're Tide/Bat/Clock/Dark Seer and your cooldowns are up you look to take fights and if they aren't you don't.
Vishnub called it right in that you play tempo heroes that can take over a phase of the game, or snowball on kills -often when you watch the better streamers you can see that they win pubs by doing just that. Other option is to draft early team fight and be aggressive. I think the more recent patches have been pretty unkind to that meta unfortunately, since gold is found farming lanes instead of stacking kills now. But at 2-3k rating, gold efficiency is probably low enough that early fighting has better value.
I absolutely cannot stand playing against PL and ban him every game I can.
Good choice though. He's a pain to play against and worse come to worse you are making the enemy team spend a ton of $$ just to counter you.
Yeah, for me, he's just about right up there with Tinker and that enjoyable late game perma-hex.
Yeah.
I used to run Clinkz a lot until i started playing ranked and would get stomped. Think I'm gun shy now.
He's gotten buffed like 5 patches in a row and he's pretty goddamn good right now. Pros don't really use him, but he's great on the ladder, hovering around 55-56% winrate according to dotabuff.
I have been playing mostly turbo lately to fill out my cavern crawl and have to say it is actually helping with me playing carry. While you have a bit more flexibility, the increased tempo requires a bit more work to stay ahead then normal
I like turbo a lot. Just got back into the game and it's helping me knock the rust off. Also, it's kinda a must for cavern crawl.
Got to switch modes in your brain when you back to regular though.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah