Search| Blogs \ The Metagame of 6.67c |
  Kjervar
@ 12th August 2010 08:10 (Read 14271 times).
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I've never done a blog before so this will be quite bad, but I am going to describe how successful lineups in the current stable version all follow a certain 'skeleton'. I like to think of this kind of a lineup as a staircase strategy where you work your way through the stages of the game trying to survive each stage till you get to the point where you have the biggest edge over the other team and then trying to finish the game. To describe this way of thinking I'm going to attempt to categorize (oh boy...) the relevant heroes into different stages of dominance (that is when is that hero most effective). Obviously this is very subjective but I'll do my best also, since some heroes can be given various levels of farm and therefore made important in different stages of the game I will list the same hero several times since it really depends on farm in what stage it dominates. Before I list the heroes I'm going to define each tier: Tier 5 Early game dominance can survive whole game with out ever getting time to farm. Never ever stops to last hit, constantly roams the map creating ganks, counter ganking or babysitting. All of these heroes can fit into other tiers as well. A few versions ago one of these was considered vital, however, I think the metagame has evolved past this and now every hero should get some time to farm mainly because the money needed to make a hero ten times more difficult to kill can be farmed in ~5 minutes. Tier 4 This tier is the lowest tier used in current meta it's basically tier 5 but only goes to gank/counter gank if there is a real need, if not, then the real focus is farming. This is a really ill defined role but I think it is necessary to separate it from tier 5. If your team wins all of its lanes then this tier is essentially tier 3 Tier 3 Most common and biggest tier, most teams pick from the same few supporters and same few carries but then its the middle part that defines the lineup. This tier gets to free farm until it has its core and maybe a little beyond that. Tier 2 This would be your 'Semi-carry' however that term is used over any hero with expensive items so I'm going to keep calling it tier 2. These heroes get all the farm they want so long as there is a free lane for the tier 1, they also get the less save lanes to farm since these heroes normally have some sort of a escape trick that hard carries just don't have. Tier 1 These are the ZSMJ heroes, these heroes get all the love and are always the ones that battle it out at the end. Now this isn't anything new, everyone thinks of heroes in some sort of early-mid-late kind of fashion but the good thing about numbering it is calculating what kind of lineup you are running and trying to make it as versatile as you can while still keeping it full of synergy and randomness :) This is the way I categorized the more relevant heroes you might do it differently it doesn't really matter the point is that after you have done that you will have a lot easier time drafting in CM. 5 Tier VS, CM, THD, WD, Lion, Veno, Dazzle, Enigma?, 4 Tier VS, CM, THD, WD, Lion, Veno, Dazzle, Enigma, Warlock, Windrunner?, Clockwerk, Puck?, Chen, Rhasta, Visage, NA, Seer, 3 Tier WD?, Lion, Veno?, Enigma, Warlock, Windrunner, Clockwerk, Puck, Chen, Rhasta, Visage, NA, Seer, Batrider, Weaver, Jugger?, Beastmaster, Kunkka?, Brewmaster, ES, Alchemist, SK, Tide, Slardar, Sven, TC?, Storm, Krobelus, Pugna, Mirana, SF, Necrolyte, 2 Tier Kunkka, Beastmaster, Sven, Alchemist, Slardar, Jugger, Doom, Morphling, Mirana, Weaver, SF, Storm, Windrunner, Necrolyte, Harbinger?, Razor, TA, 1 Tier Kunkka?, Sven, Alchemist, Doom?, Slardar, Morphling, PL, Naga Siren, Jugger?, Medusa, Drow, Razor?, TA?, Windrunner?, Storm?, Harbinger, Necrolyte?, The '?' means that putting it that high/low is pushing it a little and I didn't only listed important/unique heroes the other ones are all comparable to at least one of the heroes I listed. Again if you would do this stage differently then that's fine since the only reason to do this at all is to use for drafting I came up with this thing (no idea if it's been done before) by going over the ESWC ehome replays. They always drafted the same pattern even though the used different heroes. They made a staircase like 4-3-3-2-1 or 5-4-3-2-1 with drow or medusa at the top normally and what they did was the used their key heroes at each stage to defend the higher tiers till they found the stage where their advantage was big enough for them to press it and win the game, and if the game ran late then they had their big carry which got all the time in the world to farm while all of the other heroes where looking for fights. So this form of thinking works, the question is what causes it not to work? The answer to that is: heroes that belong to multiple tiers. Those pesky heroes like Lion make your lineup a lot more versatile, the reason asians pick all ranged heroes is they want to be able to decide the laning based on if the want their lion (or some other hero) to be a tier 3 or a tier 4. That's why great teams are able to pick a ganking sniper because they see that if they play their sniper into the game earlier instead of farming with it they can gain a bigger advantage than the farmed sniper would've given them in the late game. On to calculating your lineups strength... you want the sum of your heroes' tiers to be between 13 and 17 where lower numbers = more turtlin'. It's easier to win in late game so something higher than 17 is to risky, while under 13 will cause you to have more late game than is necessary and will most likely result in a loss due to outpick. (if your opponent picks more than a 17 you will just go for a lineup that is rather mid ranged and win him earlier...) When evaluating your opponents strength consider his laning options and try to lane your lanes so they counter his (for example SK > Sven in lane...) and also try to do it so that the farm your heroes are getting gets them their items at right times (for example ehomes lion got solo mid to get its dagger, that strategy would fail if they wanted to roam it AND rush a dagger...). To recap: 1. You want to win your lanes by counter you opponents lanes. 2. You want to keep your teams sum equal to or higher than his so that you don't lose the late game (unless you plan on a push setup or they have way to much late game power) 3. You want to try to keep as much information about your plans as possible from your enemy. Select heroes that belong to many tiers and have many uses and synergies as early picks (Windrunner is a good example). 4. You want to have at least one hero for each stage of the game so that you have no weaknesses I should add that if you have before hand decided that you want to win the late game and pick PL then ban 4 of the most powerful and popular late gamers and then pick a lot of tier 3's and 4's + your PL. That is the way I think you should be thinking while drafting and it can be seen in recent replays that the Asian teams are thinking in some system similar to this one they sometimes go with very unorthodox laning options to make sure that the farm in the laning stage goes to correct heroes. It really goes to show that picking versatile heroes and controlling the game by distributing farm correctly is more important than picking powerful heroes. (By that I mean every pick is viable given the right circumstances) In order to understand what I'm on about you have to go through the tournament replays from the past month and note what heroes are most consistently picked/banned and the context they are picked in (first or last pick? are they always laned the same way? are there any common combos that are often picked?). I was going to go into more uses for this way of analyzing the picking phase of the game and more in depth about the current meta (analyzing picks and laning choices in replays and then reason why the matches turned out the way the did). Sadly I don't have time and because this wall of text is rather hard to understand already and because the people that get what I'm trying to say had probably already figured everything out I've said here (especially since this is rather obvious stuff) then putting more effort into this enormous wall would be wasted. So thank you for reading if you had the patience and please share your views and opinions, also if you have the troll gene feel free to put a billion spoilers into one another that end in a tl;dr... |
| Comments \ Paging |
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1| tl;dr Hjörvar "kjervar" Logi got rewarded 250 points for this blog entry! // Jules |
| nice wall
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| very interesting way of showing the difference in picking certain heroes. I am thinking of headlining it :) |
| Damn Zeyall. I was thinking the same thing. lol. Really good read. |
| I might link this on the HoN forums. Some bad picking goes on in HoN competitive games pretty regularly. |
| nice work rly. |
| tl;dr but maybe I will seeing as Zeyall likes it :D |
| Super read. We need more thinks like this one GJ. |
| great read, just work a little bit over the formatting :) |
| Very nice analysis.. I think u pretty much nailed it. Although I think u usually see chinese pick 5-5-3-2-1 in your terms, just my opinion tho. |
| #5 IMO HoN should just mind their own meta-game. Isn't it enough that you copied and pasted the game already? OT: Very articulate guide. Really showed some details here and there. Hope you make a new one when 6.68 becomes stable. Was a bit long, but is worth reading. Thumbs up |
| great read indeed, I would definitely would love to see more expansions of the article. One a side note, occasionally we do see chinese games which didn't follow the staircase pattern, where sometimes they went into picking hard "zsmj" carry during their 2nd/3rd pick and complete the draft with other tiers heroes. Would be interesting to see if the most games in the recent IEM and NESO tournaments also followed these staircase pattern, in particular for the bigger teams. |
| wtf. |
| epic read.. |
| this is the best guide for the captains who wish not only to deliver good picks but to outpick the opponent.. |
| We can summarize this wall of text by saying this : - Pick early/mid/late game heroes. The more early game heroes, more pushing and less turtling. The more late game heroes, less pushing and more turtling. You should reconsider the way you defined each tiers. You seem to completely forget the heroes laning and farming power when you put them in tiers. You ignore heroes' usefulness in teamfights. Tier 4 : Visage ??? Visage is one of the best laners in this version and will rape most melee heroes you put in higher tiers. Tier 1 : Kunkka/Sven/Slardar/Naga/Jugger/Razor/TA/Windrunner, WTF ? How can you seriously put them in the same tier as Drow/Medusa/Morph/Doom/Necrolyte/PL/Alchemist ? How can you even call them ZSMJ heroes? You might say : Well yes, if they are imba farmed they can win games. But the reality is completely different, have you ever seen a Razor/TA/Jugger/Naga/Slardar win games by themselves? They have inferior farming skills/inferior laning presence and because of that, they cannot carry. How did you come up with those tiers if you were analyzing EHOME picks? How can you put Weaver in those tiers when it has been auto-banned in CM for almost a year? Also, how can you even consider Lion as a female hero lol? |
| very good written. |
| Lol. There's a formula to dissect picks. Interesting. So always pick your supports first people :D, these are the real unseen heroes. Doom/Alchemist can be said to be an exception, and could be first picked if there's no ban to them. @#18, relax... This formula can be further broken down into more details if needed. |
| #20 There has always been a formula in picking, he just put numbers on heroes. People have been first picking great supports venge/lion/cm for a long time. |
| Very nice article, well written! |
| "Tier 1 These are the ZSMJ heroes........" - LOL |
| Great work... |
| The way you separate Tier 4 and tier 5 is kinda confusing. it'd be easier if you define Tier 5 --> pure roaming |
| Awsome read |
| Too long. I'll read it later. Anyway nice post, I guess I can use it when we go play with another teams. Edit: I think Spectre can also be in tier 1? |
| I ceratiny wouldn't like to draft against you :) You don't seem like a "Captain Obvious" if you get my point... I think u rly are on something with your "wall of text" and it certainly looks like you understand the way how the Asian teams draft. The system u put out here seems kind of flawless and could rly help people who are not very confident when drafting. It seems like you watch replays and rly sit down and think: "Hmm let's see, now they picked a tier 1 hero, then they will probably pick a tier 3 hero as last pick to get their total amount of 13+". This would give a lot of Captains a good advantage over their opponents and it's definitely something that even some of the highskilled teams should read! Rly nice "post" to read and I hope everyone who reads it will appreciate it as much as the most of us probably did! Great work! |
| nice read. tiers are a bit vague tho. prolly cause of the heroes having multiple tiers thing but still, very nice. t up tl;dr |
| LOL u just outdid dota :P |
nc..  |
| this works if its 5 robots playing against each other... but, player skill, what heroes they want to play/are good at etc has a larger impact on the game/lanes... for example nv.cn with SF for yahpets, picking sf for him has much more importance than some other team picking it, because he is so good at playing SF... |
good job  |
| Nice analyses indeed. I was thinking about the same line ups when I saw Ehome playing. But the uniqueness of 6.67c is that you can pick a lot of tier 1,2,3 and 4 with no problem and mix and match here and there. The problem is not to pick too much tier 5, I ve noticed a lot of teams in China except Ehome pick even without tier 5 hero or they use a tier 4 hero as a tier 5. Good job, keep it going. |
| nice read (: |
- this articler is one of a kind  |
| Woah! Good article it is up there. Very nice and interesting read about B/P phase. Very good job |
| Oh, nice surprise this guy! |
| This is only the drafting stuff, but you mentioned "why the matches turned out the way the did", this is kinda paradox since the variable "skill" (outminding, winning a lost lane (bypicks) with gosu moves) isnt mentioned. Many games/lanes have been so "outpicked" (lets say this term exists) but still teams/players on the lane won it duo to good teamfight, good outtake, good moves etc. This should be seen only as a pattern to what heroes rly can do. |
| nice one :) |
| Wow thank you all I wasn't expecting this many replys. #14 Yes if you think your enemy is picking towards a carry you really want then you have to snatch it earlier (for example drow and ZSMJ every game a few weeks ago) #18 Yes you can summarize the way you did I just wanted to define the early mid late game a little better and that's what I did tier 4 heroes are often times heroes that get their effectiveness at lvl 5 or so when they have one spell on lvl 3 while tier 5 heroes can roam from lvl 1 if needed (some are obviously better than others at it) I don't understand you argument regarding Visage the tiers are not how good the hero is just how early I think it comes into play. Also I did say that you might disagree with how I categorize heroes but you can do it for yourself and then use this system of picking if you want to. The reason I bumped a few tier 2 heroes to tier 1 is if there is no better carry on the opposite site then this hero can be played as a tier 1, however, I failed to mention that so the fault is mine. I should maybe put a '!' after the hardcore tier 1s' like drow or PL. Lion is a witch = female, no? ... how can you consider her a male? (English is not my native language Icelandic word for witch is only used over females) #21 Yes this isn't exactly new but I don't think picking supports tells the whole story, rather picking versatile heroes as first picks even though they can be used to carry if needed (for example windrunner) #25 You might be right but when I wrote up the definition of a tier 5 I was defining a non-stop roaming hero some roamers are played as tier 4's that's why I came up with the tier thing because semi-carry and roamers were all so ill-defined... #27 Spectre is very similar to PL in that he needs the whole game to farm to be played at all you don't go ganking with him... so I didn't list any of those heroes other than PL because they are so similar. #34 I might do this for 6.68 once it comes stable yes :) #39 Very often the match is decided in picks even though it doesn't look like it, you can give the teams like a 60/40 % chance based on their P/B so while skill can compensate for the phase where the other team has the biggest advantage you can still see it happen in the replay (OK this is rather hard to understand probably, I'm trying to say that when one team is supposed to win because they have a lot better late game (for example) if it doesn't you can see that the other team was a lot more skilled (win a teamfight they shouldn't have won etc.)) |
| dota is much more complicated if you put all the possibilities on paper.you could write literally hundreds of pages about dota since 6.48b until now. |
| nice |
| People could write books about dota picks/strategies and still hardly be done saying everything. Very good read anyway, i enjoyed it. And lol at the ones who consider this is a long read, this is pretty short actually. |
| great read, i'd love to see a blog like this for 6.68 =) |
| Great Article, gave me a great idea on how to draft =) "ZSMJ Heroes" lol |
| TRUELY AWSOME JOB but i think different countries has different heros in their tires.............. for example here sf plays the role in tire 5,4 tinker in tire 3,4 akasha in tire 4 blood in tire 5 diff places diff tires but the concept is absolutely correct |
| Nice work man. I tried to make a list like that for myself but never found the time to complete it. Right or wrong, the simple fact you thought about it, wrote it down and share it with others is great and i thank you for it. |
Ahem, grml mhm great read  jk :) |
| #41 I'm just trying to say that most lineups in the chinese games look so similar and why they win is mostly determined by skill, shape, teamspirit etc, e.g. yaphets killing tinker 3 times solo (well what draft did expect that?). |
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