There's been a lot of DotA related stuff to write about in recent times, but the conclusion of Starladder's reignited some foregone desires to share my perception of truth and insight. For anyone who is familiar with this monkey business, expect no difference, I do not know what being concise means. Welcome to Break the Metagame.
The topics will be as follows:
- Secret vs EG Grand Finals games 2,3,5 (Secret g1 advantage, missed game 4 due to side work)
- State of the Metagame - 6.82x
- What to expect
- On Cloud 9
- Afterthoughts
Preface to Secret vs. EG It was bound to happen at some point.
Probably the most anticipated western battle in the times to come, both teams are overflowing with talent and strategy. Drafts, playstyle, ability to adapt, these qualities are all quite specific and akin to these two teams like no other right now, and as the game changes over the course of the next few months, they will continue to prove themselves at the top. It's a shame Newbee and Vici weren't competing, regardless of reasons.
Secret vs EG Game 2 To start, the drafters on both these teams are S-tier
Though Puppey would out-muscle anyone when it comes to experience in competitive captaining and drafting, ppd has more than proven his worth through numerous victories. It's arguably harder to always play the favorites, and even through International, many people felt EG were the true strongest team. Rightfully so, this team is stacked. Mason or Fear. Stacked.When it came to the first draft of this grand final series, the standout-picks would be tidehunter, sven, and storm spirit. All other heroes, despite impact or potential, fit under the "regulars" or at least "seen before" categories. Though we've seen s4 Sven in recent times as well, the reason it stands as a key pick is due to how it was played - teamplay blink iniation into carry. Secret had already drafted Ogre Magi, arguably one of the strongest supports in this patch, but decide to use him as a 3 position hero. Simply put, it's bad. The hero offers zero potential for objectives.
As exemplified by numerous Icefrog patches, DotA heroes that tip the verge of "imbalance" are usually a result of enhancing previously known capabilities - in this case, Ogre Magi as a hero is a nuke/stunning machine with ridiculous early game durability. His walking around the map is hard to punish due to armor/str growth/hp regen, offers a very fast stun, DoT slow to disable blinks and bottle, and all of this multiples through multicast. Bloodlust isn't too shabby of an ability either, even at level 1 the movement boost is quite convenient. But for a hero who heavily relies on his single target damage potential and setup as the game progresses, placing him in the offlane where there needs to be the most vision for your team, this hero doesn't qualify.
The design of the offlane right now is slightly different from the traditional, which is not so much due to offlane changes, but an inadvertent one risen by the metagame. There are more cores being picked than ever, and though games don't all go into mid-late game, the timer certainly clocks at a later time. The reason why Ogre doesn't scale as a core is because he lacks the most basic function a core needs to provide in this current patch - provide Vision.
For offlane heroes to provide vision/intel on enemy movements, they must be able to do some of the following, in no order of importance - apply strong kill pressure, push out creepwaves, farm jungle effectively, contain heavy aoe/teamfight, disrupt enemy pull, scout out smokes, contest runes, disrupt carry farm, and most importantly, die without falling far behind. But how do you die without falling behind? Well, this is where the concept of "outdraft" applies. The most basic definition of an outdraft, despite all circumstances, always reverts to a very simple question - after 30 minutes of AFK, who has a better lineup? Of course, it's hard to determine all factors, but this is the most primal way of figuring out whether an "outdraft" exists or not. I will now supply what may seem like a completely irrelevant example, Bounty Hunter.
As former King of the offlane, Bounty forced supports to purchase sentries out of their gold-starved beginnings, disrupted pulls, contested runes, and applied kill pressure with burst from an early game kit - he had it all. His fall from grace began when track no longer removed armor - a nerf, but inconsequential when it came to the shift in the metagame - STR / tanky cores, the era of undying warriors. Ultimately, when put against robust, tanky heroes requiring the attention of more than two heroes to be dealt with, farming levels to guarentee a midas, jungle farm, or extra kill potential, suddenly this rascal of a hero had no presence in the enemy safelane. Everyone beat him, and losing to him in lane simply meant a delayed victory.
Fast forward to today. Tidehunters and Brewmasters tank and deal damage exponentially to counterparts, cheaper teleport scrolls, objectives being the game, creepwaves being pushed out harder than ever, all the while the most overall gold distribution in the history of DotA 2 competitive. Supports such as Ogre Magi man fighting anyone at any given place on the map barring under tower, asserting dominance with minimal regard for consequences, deaths are rare and valid. But he cannot play offlane. Locking this hero into a lane means that he not only does not provide vision, but removes his presence entirely on the map. This hero is incredible at applying pressure just by moving around, and as offlane, your every move is watched. Mix that with an ultimate which doesn't bring a fight decider as much as extra burst potential and nuisance, inability to push out creepwaves early, tank without guaranteed survival, and lack jungle/rotational options upon death without directly forfeiting the lane, and you have yourself a senile old bounty hunter, a hero who excels at what it does, but plummet otherwise. Ogre Magi will never be viable as a 3 position hero by design, and this match was a fine example. Fly had no choice but to submit until Secret's team play began, during which due to the lack of individual presence and efficient wave push, Secret lost map control. Even if Fly had miraculously beat Tidehunter in lane, the game was out of reach by draft. He doesn't scale for this metagame as a 3 due to lack of options and followup after dishing out his spell kit. Fun fact: Cloud 9 had tried 2 position Ogre Magi pre-TI4. Didn't work. On to Sven.
Sven is quite a unique hero
By design, he seems to have everything you want on your DotA hero, comprised of all the good qualities you want on a strong Core. But as soon as you perceive the hero this way, you have already been marked for death.Sven brings plenty to the table - he's ridiculously tanky early on, very high base damage buffed by high STR gains, aoe burst stun, AC + Drums buff, in addition to cleave and damage Power-UP - all contributing towards his solid presence in the overall game. However, this thought beguiles the player to ironcally draw out the hero's greatest weakness; as a jack of all trades but seldom master of none, Sven has two major drawbacks. One, he's melee, and two, building a Sven is like leveling a Chief Bandit in vanilla Maplestory - one way or another, you lose.
DotA, arguably the greatest strategy MOBA (aside from league of legends, smite, and the thing HoN creators are making), is a game of experience. There are still many people who laugh when I make comparisons of DotA to Chess or Basketball, but strategy in DotA is extremely intricate and convoluted. In terms of raw difficulty at the summit of play, DotA is probably among some of the most mentally taxing things in life. 95% of players get by with experience and just playing, but to breach into S-tier you must learn to calculate every detail, every last hit, even the very angle of which you approach a rune or a smoke gank. Most players simply have it down via habit, but at one point, it must dawn on you as a form of calculation or experience. The worst thing to happen for a DotA player in their game is lack of direction and initiative - this creates hesitation, and in the blink of an eye, the game is lost. Players like Arteezy, Bulldog, Aui2k, fy, s4, Chuan, Hao are all good examples among others. Of course, the teams of these respective players have monsters at the same level or higher, but the main point is that the amount of thought these guys put into the game won't be achieved overnight. And referring back to Sven, players are often misguided to making commitments which the hero simply cannot magically overcome. This mainly stems from his skill build.
The current rendition of Sven often builds 4/0/2/1 by 7, maximizing the effective burst on the Storm Hammer early. In many cases, Sven will find a way to kill an enemy hero with just hammer and A-walking (attack + move, like orbwalking with no orb). 2 second burst stun, MS boost and some serious right click damage, it's not really a secret. Worst case scenario, you have a partner assist, it's very easy. However, the issue of Sven's drawbacks hindering current Sven play style is peculiar to heroes like Tinker and Sven in this patch, which is how they play from an advantage. Again, I will again make a comparison with another hero, which I examine the similarities more than the differences for, in the Tinker. It involves EXP HELL.
Before Fnatic pulled Excalibur out of their arses, Tinker was strong
Since the early days of DotA 2 beta when Bulba would spoof Chinese names to ring for other teams just to abuse an absolutely broken March of the Machines (used to spawn in greater numbers, move faster, kill couriers, and of course ignore spell immunity), the old laser/missile Tinker has begun to fall out of favor. Even though march build forced teammates to strain themselves harder to give Tinker space, whether it was by stacking or carrying tps to save Tinker in lane, even though Tinker himself lost some winnable lanes by omitting double nuke burst, Tinker with March back then was unbeatable. This was without Eblade+Dagon.Now, pass the obvious differences, the strategic similarities of Tinker and Sven are that if they win their lanes by committing to certain spells(laser/missile vs. hammer/warcry), they draw so much attention to themselves from both the enemy as well as their own, that they end up losing their follow-up game play. The old Laser/Missile Tinker with kills could finish BoTs early as 8-9 minutes with level 8-9 as well, carrying a devastating ~500 burst with semi-global teleport. This was a problem, since when Tinkers became active at Night time (day/night cycle was 6 minutes, first night 6-12), teammates would camp where Tinker would teleport to set up ganks, and enemies dodged the Tinker like the plague. This commonly led to a mid-game crisis, where by Day 2 from minutes 12-18, finding experience was extremely stressful for both teams, but the result was always the same. During Night 2, Tinker gets picked off hunting, and subsequently lose the game. What occurred with this build is that the hero which was drafted to bail out the team in the late game, needed a bailout from his Tinker-reliant team in the early-mid game. The most important factor which influenced this was not Tinker however, but a game mechanic - the sporadic progression of levels through EXP, in particular between levels ~8-14.
DotA EXP gain is non-linear.
Through levels 8-12, there are huge jumps to required EXP per level that even some competitive players pay no heed to. If DotA had a linear progression through these levels, death timers weren't just over half a minute when you snowball, and cores didn't push creepwaves fast at this point, then perhaps it wouldn't be so hard to push an advantage with a 500 range double nuke. But in this game, where the slope steepens at that critical moment when you desperately need map vision or need to rely upon the resources on your side of the map as opposed to stealing the enemy's by killing them or taking their space, a Tinker top of the level charts with max double nuke was like Christmas with a dyslexic Santa - much bags, such presentsce. Biggest hero on the map, unable to push for his life, early ports out due to fear of turnover, level 1-2 March leaving creeps barely alive and most importantly, not gaining experience credit for his scant cs, the hero was a fattened calf awaiting its slay. At one point in time, when everyone focuses you, you're going to die; especially when you teleport in and spend 10 seconds in vision halfway between two towers, trying to right click creeps at level 9 because your spell kit offers no ability to push and eliminate vision from the enemy. You might as well sit and play laning stage for another 5 minutes, perhaps double nuke can apply some pressure then instead of being a double-edge sword. For Tinker back then, EXP HELL was real.In a similar way, Sven as a core often draws an incredible amount of attention from all sides.
Due to his melee nature, his wave push isn't efficient, and resorting to his Storm Hammer isn't effective, as you lose the means to fight after its use. Thus, he's always fighting against vision. Warcry is another spell which offers plenty of presence, but doesn't utilize his greatest asset, his Cleave. Frankly, Sven doesn't even demand stacks - with his jack of all trades kit, he can still fight with a few points into his cleave and put out more than his worth, you just can't yolo everytime. Sadly, his tanky nature, burst stun, and his 7-second AC/Drums from warcry entraps teams to 5-man the hero, which works in some situations, but not against such a presence-heavy lineup of EG. For a 6-0 early game situation, Secret nurtured a dying Sven, unable to farm faster than enemy cores, one who tries to create space for himself and consequently ended up in EXP HELL, slowly doomed with the 3 Ogre Magi. With this skill build, leveling Sven through EXP HELL is like Assassins camping Balrog in Maplestory; you need big kills, big kills won't happen. Because for Sven, to take his early lead all the way, he must contest the enemy under their tower, and without BKB, this hero will get kited to oblivion. Sven will never farm a BKB effectively without cleave; on the other hand, Sven can never skill cleave efficiently as he loses some purpose in the early game. And sadly, Sven cannot ever push into a Lycan, Tidehunter, and Batrider without waveclear. Like marchless Tinker, he will most likely win his lane through strong early spells, apply minimal pressure with his initial 2000 gold, be unable to play vs the fog of war, show himself in the lane catch up, and eventually become a liability of a core.My personal choice of optimal Sven build branches from 2-2-1, onward based on the game circumstances.
i have become tired and will continue later. 2607 words
Source: by cvx10210 - Reddit
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