DotA2 - Original Thread

These games are turning out not how I would have expected.

Picks? Results?
Picks were a bit off for me, expected more magnus.
Results were more or less what i had expected, wasn't sure if AL would flop or if rox.kis would show their A-game, A-game rox.kis pretty much takes games off the best in the west while they have days where you could barely call them a B-tier team so i predicted 2-1 to either of them.
And DD is the team i'm predicting to cause upsets, decent roster and decent experience all around.

To write more predictions for group B:
I expect EG to beat qpad. I expect mouz to beat iccup. I expect qpad to beat iccup. I expect EG to beat qpad. And after that i honestly wont call mouz vs qpad, i really have no idea because of their players. Both teams have a tendency to throw and sing is fairly experience vs synderen's turtle doto. I'm predicting 2-1 to either team. Basically i'm expecting EG to come out on top of the group and mouz/qpad to come out after that.
Unless of course EG goes full throwdoto, but from their results lately they should honestly do just fine vs any of the qualifier teams.

Picks? Results?
Picks were a bit off for me, expected more magnus.
Results were more or less what i had expected, wasn't sure if AL would flop or if rox.kis would show their A-game, A-game rox.kis pretty much takes games off the best in the west while they have days where you could barely call them a B-tier team so i predicted 2-1 to either of them.
And DD is the team i'm predicting to cause upsets, decent roster and decent experience all around.

To write more predictions for group B:
I expect EG to beat qpad. I expect mouz to beat iccup. I expect qpad to beat iccup. I expect EG to beat qpad. And after that i honestly wont call mouz vs qpad, i really have no idea because of their players. Both teams have a tendency to throw and sing is fairly experience vs synderen's turtle doto. I'm predicting 2-1 to either team. Basically i'm expecting EG to come out on top of the group and mouz/qpad to come out after that.
Unless of course EG goes full throwdoto, but from their results lately they should honestly do just fine vs any of the qualifier teams.

Uh, the picks aren't that odd. I mean,

 This is an actual spoiler that is meant to hide spoilers.

I f'ucking love the Slark pickups and he's amazing against Batrider in particular, the Lycan pick isn't that odd, and the Omniknight pick is... okay, that's a bit odd. The Ursa pick was a strange one but it wasn't the best pick anyhow.
It's more how badly Empire disappointed and how well aL played, especially after that game one.
But oh boy, OD and Treant. I feel like Icefrog must be so happy whenever dd.Dota play. I'm amused at Slark being a first stage ban from dd against aL though.

dd.Dota shows pretty well what advantages the Western scene has over the Eastern scene: their ability to innovate and surprise. I'm super glad that 6.78 is coming before TI3; it gives Western teams a much better chance if they can simply innovate better than Eastern teams. Without a lot of innovation, I don't think Western teams can compete with Eastern teams' awareness, cohesion, and mechanical skill.

See, i feel that's quite the misunderstand, it's not that eastern teams don't innovate and try out new strats. Wisp CK is literally the most popular pub-duo in high level chinese dota 1 pubs and slark is probably the most popular hero for solo Q over there(High level chinese dota1 pubs is basically the same as B-tier scrims in the west). You could see that LGD was caught by surprise by wisp CK, why? Not because they don't know about it and haven't tried it themselves, but because they didn't expect it. It's the same reason they pre-emptively banned dendi pudge at TI2, it's not that they don't know about pudge and don't know how he works, it's just that their practice and strats haven't been tested against pudge. And pudge by his very mechanics is the bane of chinese play and always has been. He starts fights, and if you don't fight you lose a team member with each hook, and if that team member is a 2nd or 1st position, it's a big loss, and if you do fight it's on pudge's terms. It goes very heavily against the chinese picking and choosing their fights.

An example to this is bounty hunter as well, he was a top pick for a month straight even in the eastern scene, suddenly he's a semi-rare pick-up. And it's not because of the armor reduction being removed, people just learned that, hey this hero actually is pretty pineappleing bad in the early-game laning phase.

The chinese know this and are very aware of it, LGD.int also won a lot of their early scrims when they arrived simply because the chinese weren't used to said strats, the second they were used to them, LGD.int had to resort to new methods and adapt.

I do however agree that the westerns have an edge in the department of being ready to deal with a wider roster of heroes simply due to the large amount of teams just around the same skill-level, but i don't agree that the western teams are more innovative(They're however clearly more ready to try out heroes IN tournament matches, but if that is due to the fact that a lot of tournaments in the western scene are small 5k USD tournaments where most eastern tournaments are big ones with LAN finals, i can't tell you). I also enjoy slark pick-ups, but it's also not hard to see why the hero isn't a top pick everywhere, slark falls off in teamfights unless he gets to rack up a lot of agility, in which case you should've won the fight anyway.

The main reason the picks were off to me though, was simply magnus. Seeing him ignored in a game for an omni was simply weird, because omni doesn't give your team more teamfight, early game, push or anything compared to a magnus.

That's kinda what I meant. Western teams are more willing and likely to try out something risky in a game purely for the element of surprise. Eastern teams treat other teams like they're thinking on the same level as they are-- why would they be going for X+Y+Z combo when we could so easily counter it with W hero and our supports doing V action? No, they must be going for something else. But once they know it could be coming, they beat it or ban it. That's what I meant by innovation-- surprising picks. Consistently surprising picks and strats that a team can't see coming until it's far too late. The Play from TI2 exhibits perfectly what I'm talking about, but iG's response in the rest of the tournament exhibits that too-- they never let Na'Vi get Enigma and Rubick again. Western teams have to beat iG especially in the draft.

That's kinda what I meant. Western teams are more willing and likely to try out something risky in a game purely for the element of surprise. Eastern teams treat other teams like they're thinking on the same level as they are-- why would they be going for X+Y+Z combo when we could so easily counter it with W hero and our supports doing V action? No, they must be going for something else. But once they know it could be coming, they beat it or ban it. That's what I meant by innovation-- surprising picks. Consistently surprising picks and strats that a team can't see coming until it's far too late. The Play from TI2 exhibits perfectly what I'm talking about, but iG's response in the rest of the tournament exhibits that too-- they never let Na'Vi get Enigma and Rubick again. Western teams have to beat iG especially in the draft.

That still doesnt give aL a good reason to pick ck gyro and lifestealer over lifestealer nyx and mag just to avoid ck/gyro with wisp on the other team.

The Play from TI2 exhibits perfectly what I'm talking about, but iG's response in the rest of the tournament exhibits that too-- they never let Na'Vi get Enigma and Rubick again. Western teams have to beat iG especially in the draft.

The play had everything to do with iG pineappleing up by walking into enigma with naga It had little to do with the picks(Well obviously picks dictate what can happen in a game, but yea.)
Also at 1:1 parity with dota1 they would've won that fight easily, tide ult can be cast before naga sleep ends -> enigma would never get off BKB.

Not trying to take anything away form Na'vi though, that was iG pineappleing up(More specifically zhou) and Na'vi played it perfectly. But that victory wasn't due to daring picks, both enigma and rubick were incredibly stable picks and multiple teams had them combined previously.

And, this tournament so far hasn't really been daring picks but more just, low-tier teams vs low-tier teams. And as i said, the western teams being more daring can easily be atributed to the fact that there
a: Is far more tournament and as thus we see far more games
and b: The tournaments we do see from teams like iG is tournaments with far more worth and prestige than random 5k tournament #53442

and western teams are REALLY REALLY fast at labeling a hero as the best of the best and banning and first picking it for a month before they realize where the problem lies(Sven and phantom lancer for example)
PL was never the problem, kotl and tranquils were, for example.
Chinese are also good at picking new stuff up and proving it to be good, or just picking something new and winning with it due to enemy being surprised.
DK vs panda in the ACE league last year comes to mind, burning sniper in mid was funny and won quite hard vs a CK.

http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/new-stretch-goals/

TECHIES

for approximately 5 million dollars

What's the point of making a new account and play low level games if you already know a whole lot about the game?
I just played a game, other team had 3 people with 1-3wins, our team had 2 people who told us it was their first game, which makes me think matchmaking is weird but I have no problem with. However, at least 2 of those who had 1-3wins knew exactly what they were doing and countered us in every way. I was playing Life Stealer since they had a lot of targeted stuns, 2 or 3 of them bought ghost scepter and blinks... Why make accounts to play with people that are clearly not at their level?

What's the point of making a new account and play low level games if you already know a whole lot about the game?
I just played a game, other team had 3 people with 1-3wins, our team had 2 people who told us it was their first game, which makes me think matchmaking is weird but I have no problem with. However, at least 2 of those who had 1-3wins knew exactly what they were doing and countered us in every way. I was playing Life Stealer since they had a lot of targeted stuns, 2 or 3 of them bought ghost scepter and blinks... Why make accounts to play with people that are clearly not at their level?

Sometimes people just wanna pubstomp. I can imagine it can be cathartic at times. I know I sometimes get that feeling when I play video games like Doom and destroy an entire demon army by myself.

I don't like smurfs much at all, if i wanted to stomp people with no idea of how to play, i'd just start up a bot game.
Dota is hard enough already without tossing people against experienced players.

Qualifier games are started up again, Mouz vs. ICCup on right now.
yay moar syndrunner

As long as there wont be much stat tracking (please remain this way aswell) people wont be making new accounts just to get better stats. Obviously there is dota buff but theres already too many people in HoN (where stat tracking is probably at its max potential) who think about nothing but their stat. If people like that gets the ability to track your stat, then they will use it against you if they dont find it good enough. Then the player experience will become pomegranatety for new players and they will quit the game. Personally I wouldnt mind having DotA 2 one of the only INVITES ONLY games seeing how people just make new accounts for stat/smurfing anyway.

TI3 will have the largest prizepool for a single tournament in esports. (above 1.97 million.)

ooh yay we broke 1.97! 2m tonight hopefully. The progress on this is surprisingly not slowing down that much. It's still pretty easily going $100,000 a day at this point.

also I'm worried about what this EG vs. Mouz game is going to look like. Hopefully Mouz can show some good play instead of how they played against ICCup...
edit: f'uck
edit: f'uck

Urge to buy compendium, rising...

Who here already has their own?

Urge to buy compendium, rising...

Who here already has their own?

I have one.
And i believe that
[MENTION=8396]Raul[/MENTION]; [MENTION=5959]Even[/MENTION]; and [MENTION=1130]Dusk[/MENTION]; have one.
Although a bit unsure in regards to wether Dusk has one, can't remember.

I have one.
And i believe that
@Raul; @Even; and @Dusk; have one.
Although a bit unsure in regards to wether Dusk has one, can't remember.

He does.
I do want one but I cancelled my credit card a month or two ago... since I wasn't buying anything :'(

Today i'll get to see if my predictions for group b will hold true. (Mouz>Iccup, Eg>QPAD, EG>Mouz QPAD>Iccup and then Mouz vs QPAD can go either way and finally EG>Mouz/QPAD.)

Also, 2 million dollars have been breached for the prizepool:


That's 160k compendiums.

Urge to buy compendium, rising...

Who here already has their own?

Join us, for Techies/Amun-Ra!

He does.
I do want one but I cancelled my credit card a month or two ago... since I wasn't buying anything :'(

You could probably trade some rares for it on dota2lounge. People are selling them.

FIGHTINGUUUUU