US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A] US[A]
Dota2 is growing Good News!!
I am also big fan of allaince want dem to win ti3 bec i guess dey r d best team right nw bt i think EGM is underated he is so good wid watever support heroes he plays especially windrunner.
Shoutout for Allaince :):):)
^^very true, but the problem still is...what do you ban?
The last game [A]lliance beat LGD with a Wisp-PA...I don't think anyone, including [A]lliance had ever run that before. Its got some of the strength of wisp-ck, like wisp-riki. The blink makes tether stun instant.
LGD was already losing a bit in the laning phase. But what really beat LGD and IG and DK too was the chaotic team fights. Eastern style is so cautious they just have not developed the skills to deal with chaos and confusion because they never face it...at least never from players as talented or more than they are. Orange is considered an aggressive team there, but compared to western teams they are defensive. EGM was in part just being deferential in his post-game interview when he said that the Chinese were not used to their playstyle, were caught by surprise, and would do better if they played regularly. However, in part it was just honest. If the Chinese regularly faced chaos they would play better against it. I think, however that a fair amount of the Chinese dominance in TI2 was due to the inexperience of the western teams. This time around that extra year of pro-dota really has changed things. I think any of the western teams have a real chance to do well at TI3 and expect a much more balanced showing from east and west than last time.
I also think IG will recover from G-1, but they have lost the advantage of seeming invincible. Teams will not be afraid to play against them anymore. It really makes a big difference. Liquid sounded so intimidated going into G-1. They have more talented players than the Chinese teams, maybe by TI3 they will have a bit more confidence.
Alliance didn't do squat in either game, LGD.cn gave Alliance both matches. One look at the drafts and that much is clear. Nevermind the lets tower dive a full HP wisp who we clearly cannot burst down and who can clearly escape.
Was probably the most disappointing finals in a long, long time. Alliance were not required to do anything at all, just sit back, watch LGD.cn draft like morons and then quite simply, play passively while LGD.cn gave them both games.
I don't know what happened in between the LGD. vs Orange BO3 and the LGD vs Alliance BO3, but it must have involved a lot of Vodka.
If you came to a different conclusion and want me to write more about the drafts, let me know.
Alliance played really well in G-1, but did they play so well that they would dominate top Eastern teams had they played to the standard we expect? Probably not.
The drafts, decisions, plays have been unusually bad.
At the very least we normally expect good individual execution but there were too many missed skills in a row (hooks or chain stuns), being in bad positions (squishy in the frontline), way over aggressive with dives that we don't normally see.
The decisions to team fight, defend, chase, rosh etc were below the level many had expected too.
The drafts in my opinion were strange, I didn't see this kind of drafting in the G league before or the current super league.
Alliance vs LGD game 1, the casters were talking about LD + naix being a major concern just before alliance picked it up. The players should definitely have considered it as well, if they were going to leave it in they needed a plan... The plan was to use a Jug + brood early pushing strat? Alliance got Kotl who's a boss at anti-push. What is the point of picking up rubick as a second pick there, it would have been better to pick up the kotl at least as a blocking pick. Rubick didn't have anything worth stealing anyway, surely he wasn't just picked for a lift and bolt. Against LD + naix as alliance's core the passive magic resist is pointless as well. They picked up a bane, it's great aginst naix and LD, enfeeble + grip is good. However it seems they fell into the trap of counter picking and not fully committing to their own strategy and lanes. It doesn't have good synergies with rubick like a lina/leshrac, it's maybe not the best to help them push and surely they aren't looking to go late against LD/naix just because they have a bane. Sylar on the brood for the most part was just trading farm with the LD, it was about 83 last hits on brood against 80 on LD 15minutes in. I didn't see LGD try to make a move, brood was just farming away. They didn't really force a push at all 20minutes in and just gives up a free rosh. In a very slow game alliance have a 8k gold lead about 30minutes into the game with the score sitting at 4-6. So much of it was tower gold but you'd be worried if you are LGD even if you had an 8k gold lead and some tower lead, but it was the opposite. A couple of minutes later a bad fight at rosh and LGD just calls the gg.
What was their plan? They didn't try to make anything happen, just farmed and waited for a slow and sure death. At the end just before the gg calling fight at rosh, brood had a few last hits more than LD, jug had a few last hits more than naix, and it really was a few, less than 10 cs more from each. They had less networth even though they had more last hits because of the rosh/towers/neutral creeps. The plan surely can't be farm almost an equal networth against alliance's core, then hope for a good RP and man fight the LD + naix with brood + jug??
I'd love to hear LGD's discussions during the picking phase.
It wasn't just this game, a lot of other games were strange as well. Game 2 LGD vs Orange was like a pub strat, orange just picks a greedy line up. Turtle with kotl + PL + gyro, forget what else happens just get 300/400 last hits on our PL and gyro and it's auto GG. That was the plan? They didn't make anything happen, just got ganked and pushed constantly. Sure enough they managed to get 400+ CS on the PL and have about 500GPM in a 45+minute game, but it wasn't nearly enough.
Maybe my understanding of the game is too low to appreciate their master plan?
I had high hopes for this event but was extremely disappointed. The wait, the anticipation, the event even delayed TI qualifiers. The recent super league had some great games too which increased my expectations even higher.
Entertainment value of G-1 league was a 2/10 for me at best. I had more fun watching Mineski vs MiTH or VG vs RS in the TI qualifiers.
IG really did under perform. They were seriously off their game... but DK, LGD, and Orange fell apart in the face of Alliance because they are used to playing and playing against a very small pool of heroes.
Alliance picked and expertly played 23 different heroes. The reason the drafts were strange is because the east was facing a flood of heroes they had no practice against, laning possibilities they had never even thought about...they did not know how to react, they knew after they saw the first few games of Alliance their standard plays would fail. So they tried to pick counters but didn't really know how to do it right and had not practiced such strats and this was the first opportunity to try things out against the west.
The stadium was almost silent when Liquid was spanking IG with Wisp-CK and slark. The chinese audience was in shock. LD said "every chinese man, woman, and child was butthurt". Similarly the players were also shocked. They really did not think the western teams could compete with them, did not think western strats would succeed...and here the Alliance is apparently able to beat them with any heroes they choose. So they panic and try to adjust.
Some of it is just the truly superior skill of Alliance players on their signature heroes. Lone druid really cannot beat broodmother 1 v 1 normally. But Sylar had never faced a lone druid as good as Admiral Bulldog before. Yes, I know he is a very experienced pro player...still he had never faced that level of Lone Druid play...someone who can switch items back and forth between the bear and the hero while still lasthitting and harassing you...someone who can transform dodge your nukes pretty much every time. Anyone else playing druid in that lane against Sylar would had died and lost the tower, or hid way back and got crap for cs.
Sylars brood should have just focused on sending spiders to farm the jungle, but he expected to be able to kill lone druid and take the tower...because against any other lone druid in the world he would do just that.
Whenever you see players flustered and off their game, in pro games and in competitive pubs, remember that it is usually because the team playing against them is just outplaying them. People have limited abilities. When you are forced to devote more mental resources to deal with situations you did not expect or speed beyond what you can handle your decision making and performance decrease significantly.
The scary thing is Alliance did not use everything they know in this tournament. There are plenty of other heroes Alliance does play very well that never had to be used to secure the G-1 championship. On the other hand Tongfu may actually be the best eastern team right now and they were not even in the tournament because they screwed up and lost to Neo.Thailand way back in March when they had just made a roster change. Similarly Navi had a bad day and lost 4 games straight preventing them from being at the G-1 LAN finals. The field is just a lot flatter now. Many teams are at a very similar level.
The worst final ever. I don't know what LGD was thinking about when they picked that shit. Broodmother vs sylla and naix? I was so fucking upset with this finals, give me back 2 hours of my life.
What outplay? Alliance were not required to do anything in the final BO3. LGD.cn just decided hey, you know what, instead of drafting properly, instead of playing properly, lets allow Alliance to cruise to victory by simply sitting back and doing nothing.
Game 1: Hmm, let's allow Alliance to get both Naix and LD, who can now very easily win both sidelanes already, and are extremely flexibile, and are a stupidly good combination who are insanely hard to shut down when they both hit so hard, push so hard and are so fucking tanky. But whatever. Let's also not pick Bat Rider, because even though he is an incredible hero against both Na'ix and LD, even more so with SD out of the picture, we will pick Rubick(??) and Juggernaut? Did they not realise Alliance can't pick Juggernaut, or at least not use him effectively? A mid juggernaut is not going to work, they clearly want a big mid-game ganker with mobility (QoP/Storm/Puck). This Juggernaut is clearly going to have NO impact in the game, bad, bad choice. The game is over already here after the first picking phase. Outpicked? Not really, no pressure from Alliance and LGD.cn are just making bad choices one after another. Let's skip the Brood pick. WHY. He isn't a hero that is going to rape his lane, he isn't a hero that is going to be a big pushing threat against a KOTL, he doesn't have the damage output to deal with a Na'ix and LD, don't even think about what happens when they both pick up bashers..Stupid choice, easy win for Alliance, they may as well have called GG before the game began. Alliance had a team that had a stronger laning/early game, stronger mid game, stronger late game, better pushing, better counter pushing, better ganking, better mobility, better team fight, much higher damage output. What did LGD.cn have? lol? Slightly better lockdown, but that means fucking nothing when you can't kill anyone.
Game 2:
Congrats LGD, you finally decided to ban Na'ix. But once again, Bat Rider is in the fucking pool, SD isn't and Alliance have picked Lone Druid. Why the FUCK are they not picking Bat!??? Derp they pick KOTL and Magnus as though its February and get raped because of it. So then what, who do you pick in response to a team that has so much mobility and slows? A slow ass melee support and an incredibly kitable carry? How were they planning to do anything in this game?
Shit picks and shit plays, no idea what LGD.cn were doing in the final, and I don't think they knew what they were doing either.
To the original question the OP posted regarding how do you ban against a team with a "huge" hero pool. 23 heroes between the 5 players is only 4.6 heroes each, that's not exactly showing ground breaking versatility. I agree it's a nice amount of variety shown in 7 games of a Lan final but it can be dealt with.
If truely you can't ban all their signature heroes, just don't ban like that. Have your own game plan, ban the heroes that counter your strat and not just ban the opponents signature heroes. If you want to dominate mid game team fight, pick your heroes and ban other team fight heroes, if you want to play a late game strat then ban the other team's early push, if you want to push then ban their kotl/tinker/etc turtle heroes.
To be more specific about their drafts and plays we could be here all day theory crafting, it's not worth it. The important thing is I don't think it was the element of surprise that made the Eastern teams lose, there's more to that. Every other smurf stack runs wisp ck or wisp slark, it's not a top secret dazzle + omni + uber class cannon rapier rush crazy strat. It's quite common and they must have seen it before.
Game 1 LGD vs Alliance, LD + naix followed by a kotl pick is about as mainstream as it can possibly get. You can't reliably shut them both down and in fights you have a hard time deciding what to focus, you could pick up a gyro and flak them both. They weren't really trying to solo kill that LD, admiralbull dog plays a great LD but if it was burning or zhou or mushi on an LD would sylar really be able to solo kill the LD with a brood? I really don't think so. If they were serious about killing the LD they needed to roam more supports there from time to time and that didn't happen. They were just trading farm, if you are going to do that why not PL instead of brood. Since LD and naix are both melee and a void could face up to it well in late game as well. There are a lot of options, LD + naix isn't an auto win, but brood is a very weird answer to that line up. Jug, rubick, brood are all bad picks, ban and mag isn't so bad.
Game 2 isn't really an unfamiliar line up either. LD again, bat which is a top pick anyway. They know alliance play a good chen and first banned it in game 1, of course enchantress is very different to chen but it still offers "some" similar utilities. In any case enchantress isn't really a big surprise pick either. Wisp, no need to say anything here. So the only possible surprise is PA wisp, blink strike for an instant tether stun and get a few quick right clicks in isn't a big game breaking combo. Earthshaker + sven??
Disappointing tournament finals, bad picks bad plays.
The thing with Alliance is that they have the players that play their role BEST in the whole scene. Now let's be honest s4 is actually MUCH better than Dendi and AdmiralBulldog is probably the best hardlaner in the pro scene atm. And Loda has been there since the beginning of Dota.
They also have a perfect coordination. They are like they knew each other from birth. Like they played Dota together their whole life. They complete each other.
You are correct Safe Base that all the eastern teams have seen the wisp+carry combo before. But they have never faced a world class team with plenty of top level pro-game experience playing it. When you play wisp+ck, for instance, to its full potential it will win early to mid game no matter what. And a world class team that has won early has won the game period. That is why in the west where this was well understood...if you knew the other team has a good wisp you just never let it past the first ban.
The same is true for Batrider. S4 is almost miraculously good at batrider, so against [A]lliance you just have to ban batrider. Because a world class batrider will destroy you no matter what you do. He will get his items quickly. He will be able to pick off your carry or main aoe disabler in every fight so that winning is impossible.
When you play against Kuroky or Vanskort you must ban Rubic if you want to pick Magnus because they will steal and return RP almost every fight the entire game.
Alliance poses sever problems for drafting because the list of heroes you absolutely must ban or you lose is too long.
If Zhou was on that Lone Druid, he would have farmed a little but lost the lane badly. Zhou is very accustomed to having help. He is pretty good at Lone Druid, but he would not have been able to dodge spider blocks while still blocking with the bear and harrssing back under his tower....Slyars dives on him were perfectly timed...anything less then miraculous would have lost to the spiders. Mushi would have overextened and died, lost the tower in his greed to get more farm. LGD is not stupid, they were not drunk. They picked that lane because they were expecting a Zhou or Mushi level of play. They expected to win the lane outright.
Watch the replay from Sylars perspective. He was expecting to be able to solo kill Druid from the start. He even dove behind the tower trying to do it. He could have been farming the jungle, but he devoted all of his considerable micro talent to killing LD so he could take the tower early. That was what he thought would happen, that is what LGD thought would happen when they picked brood.
Even if they dominated that lane LD will still get his basic items and Naix + Storm is going to molest the entire LGD.cn uber no damage lineup
Loda, not impressive, ordinary carry
Admiral, only his LD and NP r gd
Akke, gd player, #1 chen in the world
s4, one of the best solo mid players, Dendi falling a lot, ferrari too
EGM, not too much to say about him, but he is definitely a gd player
How to win?
I think they fall apart late game, unless s4 is on magnus, like if u watched west qualifiers, [A] were ahead as shit over Na`Vi, but in late game they started losing some fights, but the very huge gold lead, and thanks to xbox, they still lost the game, but I think they improved a lot since the qualifiers..
NOW, GO MY WALL MAKERS, GOOOO !!
@vaikiss
Yeah and I meant that. He is considered VERY VERY good in China.
Agree wid mapzor [A] r winning bec of der mid solo s4 dominating mid lane everytime!!right nw he may be #1 mid solo as for loda he successful bec of his Support akke[kotl nd chen too good to handle] EGM also good on nyx nd windrunner ,U shudnt giv admiral bulldog his LD
It's isnt that hard to win vs alliance with a pro team!
JUst send a dual mid (sd kka for example), leave offlane and just let loda farm becasue seriously he more than often sucks! and rly cant amount to much with mid-game farm vs enemies that HAVE farm and then just secure the safelanewith a dual or tri! That way you win 2 of 3 lanes, s4 becomes useless, Bulldog useless too and the you have Loda that even With items is uselesss! freewin!
I think the chinese teams were mostly experimenting in these lan finals.
But idk what happened to iG, they got stomped by LGD 3-40 or something.
They must be having a team issue or lack of boot camp.
Hope they give us a better show as defending champions @ TI3.
IG got stomped by Liquid too! But from liquid at least they learned what wisp-ck is, and wtf is slark.
@Relentless
I agree with most of the things you are saying, [A]'s current form is good and their signature heroes are top tier, however it doesn't mask the fact that many of the Eastern teams played unusually poorly. Warlock jumping into the middle of a team fight thinking he is tidehunter and then dies without getting the ult off is not something we would normally see. To many unforced errors that wasn't the result of good play from the opposition.
Let's not go into JD forum mode if someone wins a tournament it's "omg [A] is invincible" if someone lose a few games in a row it's "delete dota, disband pls, kappa".
@Intentional feeder
They definitely need to train harder and if there are team issues resolve it asap. Otherwise TI3 might be anti-climatic.
The chinese teams maybe experimenting a tiny bit, but with a $53k prize pool they are still playing seriously and want to win it. It's not a scrim.
^Exactly, now all these thick headed western morons are going crazy and think that Alliance was actually pressuring these other teams to do what they did, when that clearly was not the case.
And its not like there are just a few examples either, most of the Eastern teams played ridiculously bad in some games, and then perfect the next, as opposed to the G1-League prelims or whatever they are called where they all played incredibly well.
Why is Chuan using Omnilash into a wave full of creeps? Why is 430 blinking into 4 enemy heroes? Why are LGD tower diving (and going BEHIND THE TOWER even) a full HP Wisp who they can't burst down and who can easily escape, ES could probably even see PA sitting there, and they decide to do all this instead of free farming the lane.
Had any of the Eastern teams played like they did during the previous G1 matches, or anything that was close to that, they would have cruised through these finals without a problem. What we saw back then was the highest level DotA I've seen in a long, long time.
Oops. I think casual accidentally correctly understood what I was saying!
"Alliance was actually pressuring these other teams to do what they did"
You are right Safe Base. The eastern teams did play below their normal stats AND below their normal level of standards for things like metal mistakes, misclicks, coordination, even overall strategy...they clearly were not following anything like their normal decision making process for the drafts.
Just because each individual mistake cannot be attributed to a particular action by Alliance you say these were "unforced errors". I see why you think about it that way, but that's not a complete understanding of what happened in the tournament. The eastern teams were off their game because they had to think about a lot of things they normally spend no effort thinking about. This is what happens anytime you try to do something and it doesn't work. Or in the words of Mike Tyson "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face".
The drafts were odd because they were uncertain of the right counter strategy or even what Alliance strategy was. They go out to lane and find that their lane actually loses when they expected it to win...now what? The group stage game against Orange for instance => [A] ran PA and WR dual bot on Radient and NP solo top with Chen roaming offensive jungle with Mag mid. Orange ran Lone druid safelane solo, QoP mid, and Sandking SD and Gyro aggressive tri-lane bot.
Orange expected Chen to be defensive jungle and spent all their wards blocking...which did nothing but waste wards. Result Chen ganked top very early, NP killed lone druid for FB and totally dominated the lane. Chen was always a threat about to attack for all they knew, so he was able to farm and LD got almost no cs. Meanwhile, because they stopped PA from farming (except dagger farm), but could not stop PA and WR from getting levels. QoP should win mid...but S4 was too good. When QoP rotated bot, Mag did too and Alliance won a teamfight cementing an advantage everywhere on the map.
Now Orange is behind levels, behind farm, and moreover they are confused and frustrated. So they have no high percentage options and make even more mistakes.
Indeed, all asian teams played more aggressive then they were used to against [A].
IG by example invested allot in stopping LD from getting farm / levels. And were successful. For the first 10 min, because meanwhile they lost the other 2 lanes. Then they started to make mistake after mistake.
no team stays at top, talking about iG
And there was some rumors that Ferrari was hanging out with LGD.cn's players, and not with his iG mates, completely a rumor !!
They just played bad
@Relentless
I don't disagree with your point about being pressured into errors. When I said "too many unforced errors" I don't mean all errors were unforced errors. There were good plays from [A] that put pressure on the enemy to force them into errors.
I'm also referring to the tournament as a whole, and not [A] vs team X.
LGD vs IG, 43-3... If IG play at the level we've seen since TI2 and we see a lot of good play from LGD and force IG into errors, it would be a good game to watch and maybe LGD will proceed to win 42-25 or something. This was a "misclicks galore" tournament, way below expectations. Doesn't have anything to do with [A] in particular. Even if LGD beat [A] and won, they didn't play godly dota to stomp IG/DK.
LGD vs DK 33-4 was again substandard play from DK . Burning is normally quite consistent, CK + wisp + leshrac trilane, what was happening there? The tower dive on visage against a visage/earth shaker/jakiro aggressive trilane. Ok ES and jakiro was out of sight but they were just in the river and likely to be close by. Jakiro didn't really even get into the fight by the time burning had died. Gave up 2 kills there. No tether stun, didn't get off the leshrac follow up stun, no burst damage from wisp spirits. Walked straight into LGD's tower after a CK stun, leshrac didn't get his stun/edict off until ES had fissured them at the tower.
DK safe lane gave up 5 kills before the 10 minute mark and burning ends the game 0/9/2. Dk loved running their 4 protect 1 strats, even when 4 protect 1 is somewhat outdated. LGD players did what they were supposed to do, and with the right execution got the kills. However they didn't play so spectacularly that a normal DK would be stomped so badly.
I'm not focused on [A] vs X, the tournament as a whole was bad. [A] and other teams showed in patches some good plays that forced errors from the enemy but too often there were unforced errors, regardless of [A] being in the game or not.
Burning has not been consistent for months. He has been trying all kinds of new lane set ups to get his team some kind of edge over the other tier 1 eastern teams...which are simply better teams. When IG was losing like they were doomed, they still beat DK.
DK is trying adjust to western dota in the LGD vs DK game...they try to run ck-wisp, but of course they don't really know how to do it right and have not practiced it enough besides. [A] is getting in their head even when they are not playing against them.
IG ran ck-wisp in their last game, I think clearly just so [A]lliance would give them an example of how to beat it.
The Asian teams did not come drunk, they all played badly and drafted unusually because they are trying to adjust to western dota and its just not something you can do in a day or a week. They will be better prepared for TI3 but they won't really get another chance to practice head to head against the best western teams before then. I imagine the group stage could still show some weakness. Hopefully by the playoffs they will have worked out at least how to draft.
Western strats lost so much at TI2 because they were not executed well enough. Eastern teams simply took advantage of the many errors. But if you only make a handful of mistakes, an aggressive ganking strat is going to beat a defensive farming strat 9 games out of ten. Its just a lot easier to get an advantage big enough to take major objectives that way.
Although [A}lliance won their defensive PL-KotL game also by a large margin.
Burning has not been consistent for months? Other than their first matchup against Zenith in the G1 where they got their ass handed to them (but Burning still played well) because of poor drafting/strats, they played very well after that and were right up there with LGD.cn and Zenith.
Again you keep pretending this has something to do with underpreparation and shit, something else was clearly up, they played in a completely different style, from awesome to shit for no apparent reason. Alliance didn't even need any strategy, anyone who watched the finals could see LGD.cn just giving the game to Alliance.
I actually did a big write up of exactly how totally unprepared they were for what [A]lliance did but it was just too obvious...no need to rehash how unprepared they were. Everyone already knows.
/conspiracy theory/
Maybe the Eastern teams were given money to play shit & lose, so that when the TI3 comes, it will be a massive upset, & "good, surprising Dota" to watch.
Everyone is now expecting Western domination, but how cool would it be to see the underdogs come through & win?
Bitte melde dich an um Kommentare zu posten.
Every game was a win. Every top Chinese team not only defeated but totally annihilated.
Not only this but they used a huge range of heroes to do it. How do you ban against this team?
Beastmaster, Ogre Magi, Ursa, Leshrac, Lone Druid, Batrider, Chen, Antimage, Shadow Demon, Natures Profit, Magnus, Phantom Assassin, Windrunner, Keeper of the Light, Phantom Lancer, Rubic, Clockwek, Enchantress, Alchemist, Storm Spirit, Shadow Shaman, Lifestealer, Wisp
23 heroes used in 7 straight wins.
Over 200,000 viewers of the grand finals...that's nearly 4X the numbers who watched TI2 live. Dota 2 is growing massively.