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Created 10th March 2012 06:12
(Updated: 11th March 2012 09:22)
My take on what I think is relevant for competitive Dota in the released patch:  - Flame Break is now a targeted AoE spell This change is quite huge. In DotA terms, Batrider is now even stronger than before. In Dota 2 terms, he's slowly but surely becoming stronger and worth to be picked.  - Power Cogs HP/Mana drain increased from 55/70/85/100 to 60/90/120/150 With the addition of the third ban, CW will get a lot of action on Dota 2 - actually, coL is already using this hero a lot. This small buff is just a reminder that we'll be seeing him a lot in the next months.  - Wall of Replica illusions take 300% damage (up from 250%) - Wall of Replica Aghanim bonus no longer creates allied illusions - Wall of Replica Aghanim bonus now increases illusion damage from 70/80/90 to 100/120/140% instead In terms of damage, I believe everything is the same. However, you have now less illusions to work with, making precise play and positioning even more important. It's harder to play Dark Seer now. But he's still very strong and the best turtler around.  - Black hole now prevents heroes being Forced out with Force Staff It's a small detail that makes Enigma even stronger. I guess it makes sense not being able to run away from a Black Hole. If light can't escape, why would you?  - Chaos Meteor damage increased from 80+Exort*30 to 80+Exort*35 - Chaos Meteor land time decreased from 1.5 to 1.3 - EMP can no longer hit Invulnerable/Tornadoed units - EMP cooldown increased from 25 to 30 seconds - Sun Strike damage type changed from Magical to Pure - Sun Strike now reveals the area it will hit before the damage impact - Tornado cooldown increased from 25 to 30 seconds - Tornado Damage decreased from 77.5+(Wex+Quas)*23 to 70+(Wex+Quas)*20 Tornado/EMP build is slightly nerfed, while Exort builds gained incentive with the buffs on Chaos Meteor and Sun Strike. But Invoker can still reach obscene movespeed, which doesn't makes sense to me.  - Heartstopper damage increased from 0.5/0.7/0.9/1.1 to 0.6/0.8/1/1.2 - Sadist level 4 mana regen increased from 48 to 60 More buffs to Necrolyte. Another hero that will get a lot of action due to the addition of the third ban.  - Added Aghanim's Scepter. Gives his other head the ability to cast a more primitive version of Fireblast. It has a constant (not modified by ultimate/level) 275 damage, 1.5 second stun, 20 cooldown, 400 manacost. It can trigger multicast. This is an independent 5th skill added to his ability card. In The International 2 finals, a dark horse will wipe the favorites by multicasting the supports to death. The Ogre Magi player will then type "LOLOLOLOLOL", and a big drama will ensue. You heard it here first. But, jokes apart, it's a nice change, but it's still very hard to get to this point with Ogre Magi. He's still difficult to lane. Time will tell.  - Ethereal Jaunt now dodges projectiles - Phase Shift autocast removed - Phase Shift manacost removed - Phase Shift level 4 duration increased from 3 to 3.25 seconds - Aghanim Upgraded Dream Coil no longer increases the manacost from the base spell Similar to Dark Seer changes. Icefrog plans to estabilish the difference between the good Puck player and the great Puck player.  - Decrepify cast range increased from 550/600/650/700 to 700 - Life Drain damage increased from 100/150/200 to 120/160/200 (with Aghanim's from 175/225/275 to 180/240/300) Pugna is already a great option to run a solo mid hero that can dominate the lane, farm a quick Mekanism and join the push. The small buffs just makes his argument a little stronger. Another hero that will find a lot of action in the near future.  - Necromastery now gives 6 souls for killing a hero (instead of 1) - Necromastery soul count increased from 8/16/24/32 to 12/20/28/36 A hero possess six souls. Oh boy, that could lead to a big metaphysical discussion. Philosophy apart, Shadow Fiend is getting even more buffs. The first buff isn't important at all, doesn't help Shadow Fiend. But the second one makes Requiem of Souls even stronger: Each soul stored create one damaging line, and each line deals 80/120/160 dmg. With 36 creeps, that leaves us with a maximum of 1440/2160/2880 damage. Now, even bad placed Requiem of Souls will hurt a lot.  - Morph passively grants 3/4/5/6 agility and strength - Wave Form now properly dodges projectiles Just like in the last patch, Morphling is receiving buffs. We might see his return in the next months. Animal Courier - Courier cost decreased from 170 to 150 More items for the support at the beginning of the game. - Added Wisp, Disruptor and Rubick to CM This is the biggest change in this version, and will change a lot of things in the competitive scene. Disruptor has a very strong case as a solo hero: He possess a strong nuke and is lethal at teamfights with Kinetic Field and Static Storm. His needs for experience makes him a solo, but he can be played as a support (just like Na'Vi did in the last MYM Nations on Dota 1). Wisp adds another hero with a global element to the game. He'll support and empower several heroes, like Ursa Warrior for example. Io will be played as a support hero. Rubick is also a solid hero to solo that benefits from having a lot of levels early in the game. His nuke is very strong, he has a decent stun, his passive grants extra magic resistance to his entire team (assuming they're close to him) and he can steal the enemy skill. All the three heroes are pick material. Io especially will bring strategies based on global presence back to the game. For someone who said that the next patch would be a small balance patch, Icefrog just changed how the competitive matches will work. And that's why I love him. | ||||||||||||||||
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Created 2nd January 2012 08:52
Found a good article that gives us a lot to think about the training process in DotA. While is not exactly about DotA, it does give us things to think about. Link: Here TL;DR: Strategies to get better: Strategy #1: Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy. “The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people ‘playing’ by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.” Strategy #2: To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder. “Strong pianists find clever ways to ‘complicate’ the difficult parts of their music. If we have problem playing something with clarity, we complicate by playing the passage with alternating accent patterns. If we have problems with speed, we confound the rhythms.” Strategy #3: Systematically Eliminate Weakness. “Strong pianists know our weaknesses and use them to create strength. I have sharp ears, but I am not as in touch with the physical component of piano playing. So, I practice on a mute keyboard.” Strategy #4: Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness. “Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task. They start, and react to their performance, fixing problems as they go along. Strong pianists, on the other hand, have an image of what a perfect performance should be like that includes all of the relevant senses. Before we sit down, we know what the piece needs to feel, sound, and even look like in excruciating detail. In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image.” | ||||||||||||||||
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Created 29th January 2011 03:35
(Updated: 1st February 2011 00:28)
Hello. This is a new entry of 'DotA as Chess'. The objective of this post is to try to analyze the GGnet x MYM match in a strategical point of view, specially the picks and the bans. In the chess world, games are analyzed instantly, be it by humans or machines. When blunders are found, they quickly find the correct play. So, well try to do the same: If we identify a blunder, we'll try to analyze possible solutions. You'll find a lot of theorycraft here. You have been warned. If you dislike it, don't waste your time reading. GGnet bans: ,  , MYM bans:  ,  , Analysis: There aren't much things to say about the first ban phase. All the heroes banned are 1) strong and 2) known to be effective in the hands of players involved in the game. So, no need to waste time here. Picks (GGnet first): ;  & ;  &  ;  .Analysis: Some picks doesn't deserve too much attention here. Morphling, Earthshaker, Visage and Vengeful Spirit are pretty strong picks and very commonly used. The two picks that deserve attention are Invoker and Broodmother. GGnet actually used Invoker as a first pick material. Invoker is becoming a very common pick in competitive games, but I think it still lack a strong case to become firstpick material. However, this is just my instinct: Ignorance keeps me from fully understand the logic on a Invoker firstpick. The Broodmother pick sets the tone of the game and the tone of the next bans. That's because Broodmother is not only a good carry, but also a great pusher. Back in the old versions, we had some heroes that were good at pushing and carrying, Terrorblade being a great example. It's a versatile, non-commiting pick that keeps your plans pretty open. GGnet bans:  ,  MYM bans: ,  Analysis: GGnet first ban is Chen. I think they understood that Chen could be a huge threat to the game. Not only Maelk plays a good Chen, it would add a lot of push power to a lineup that alredy possess Broodmother. They should've followed this instinct and banned Furion with the second ban. It's not only another hero that Maelk plays well, but it's a hero that, like Chen, can stay in woods, push like hell and threat all lanes. We can summe they felt secure against push thanks to the Chen ban, deciding then to ban Witch Doctor, to prevent a WD-Shaker-Morphling trilane. But, if that was the case, there were other support heroes (Lina, Leshrac, etc) that could be used instead of Witch Doctor. MYM bans are standart: heroes that can deal with Broodmother push. Picks (GGnet first):  ;  ;  ;  .GGnet got Medusa, a hardcarry that can deal with Broodmother push if she manages to get farm. With Lion, MYM keeps a solid lineup, adding a lot to disable and burst damage. With Furion, MYM can naturally push the lane where Broodmother is, and another lane - the one where Furion is. When we look at the full lineups, Visage kinda looks offplace. It's a strong trilane hero. However, he couldn't shine as he left the farm to Medusa. A support hero that can spam AoE nukes could fit better in the lineup. By looking at the lanes, we'll understand that the game will be double-edged: Both teams will give a lane to another one. Broodmother alone couldn't deal with GGnet trilane, and Puck can't handle Furion, Earthshaker and Morphling. So, we have a situation where teams exchange towers. The question is: Who benefit more with the exchange? I think MYM benefits most. Lion and Shaker really need Dagger to become strong, and early towers helps them getting it. By 19mins both heroes had daggers. Push power alone allowed MYM to control lanes, giving Morphling an easy time. GGnet couldn't deal with the constant push and couldn't engage MYM in favorable positions. We saw a strong semi-push strategy. Not a hard push-strat where you try to win immediatly, but a strong line-up with strong carries AND push power, that used the push to control the map and farm. So, we can ask ourselves: which is the most necessary hero for this strategy to work? If we exclude Broodmother from the pool, MYM could try using Syllabear, another hero that can push or carry. It would struggle at the beginning, but it would eventually get fat. Morphling and Earthshaker can be replaced with other carries/supporters, and Lion can be replaced with some other strong solo-mid hero (say, Batrider). The golden link of this lineup is Furion. The pushing power, the ability to farm in woods and the ability to pop up in any lane is a rare thing in DotA. MYM could try Chen or Enigma in it's place, but it won't work the same way: Furion's teleport is so strong that makes the enemy act with extreme care all the time. As chess, in DotA, sometimes the threat is stronger than the execution. Can you identify blunders or other strong points in this game? If you can, leave a comment. If the information is worthy, I'll add to this post. (many thanks to 3.14159) Added information: By sabmud
- In the first picking phase, we can see some obvious synergy. Having a ES+Morph lane can only be countered by a Visage, but then again.. Visage is needed to protect against the Brood-push. Excellent mind-game from Maelk which surely deserves some mentioning. - Invoker fp is so strong due to its multi-purpose; the same reason you want VS as fp.. you can simply just go into any strategy from that point on. - In my oppinion, the WD ban did not take into consideration of the players. With Mania on ES, Maelk was needed to be on the other 'support' hero, and could not have seen him play WD here. | ||||||||||||||||
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Created 10th July 2010 23:56
Hello. Here we go with some good and old theorycraft... Everyone has been asking why is EHOME so strong. And some people has been saying: it's because of their tri-lane strategy. But this isn't enough to explain why they dominated everyone at ESWC. You can see a lot of teams (good teams) doing tri-lanes, and they fail to emulate EHOME's game. Skill also isn't enough to explain their dominance. Of course they're very, very skilled, but a lot of teams have skilled players. So, what is that EHOME has that teams don't? This is the theme of this blog. I'll try to present that EHOME has a better understanding of the game, by showing how they use their Lion and how they kinda implemented Puppey's roaming mastery to their game. Case one: Lion. Think on MYM here. Normally we see Pusher playing Lion there. And he buys a lot of wards. So, we tend to see a Lion with boots and some bracers. Normally he never gets the chance to farm a dagger or levels. He still have a stun, a hex and a huge burst damage skill, but he doesn't have level advantage or mobility to better position his skills. Now think on old MYM, on MiGGeL's Lion or even MaNia- Lion, on the rare ocasions that MYM used Lion as a solo. Being that, he'll get levels faster than the others. If he manages to dominate the lane, he can farm his itens quickly, and get the so wanted dagger. With that, Lion becomes very active and aggressive: he can jump next to the enemy and spam everything he has. Now, he's very active, initiative, mobility, stun, hex and huge burst damage. DotA is a game where advantage is gained when you let your carry farm and keep the enemy carry from farming. Ganking is the way to keep the enemy carry from farming, but everyone knows that ganking became a lot harder: players are not innocent anymore, lots of wards everywhere, etc. That said, why has EHOME used Lion a lot of times? Possible answer: because they understand that an active Lion (solo, daggered Lion) is what they need to make effective ganks. Few heroes survives if Lion, followed by some other hero, jumps and throws everything he has. And, due to being solo, he'll naturally gank lower level heroes, with lesser HP - easy victims of the Finger of Death. Another thing to consider is the possibility of getting a solo sure-kill at lane when Lion grabs his lvl6. Teams failed to see how EHOME abuses Lion's early/mid game advantage and allowed them to pick him all the time. Case two: Roaming. We saw that EHOME used a lot of trilanes. Normally they put a big ranged carry on it (Medusa, Drow), followed closer by a support (VS, CM) and a third hero - we saw then using Sven a lot at ESWC. This third hero roams between the trilane and the solo lane. EHOME managed to grab early kills on the trilane and on the solo lane most of the times, making Lion's and carry's life a lot easier. When Lion eventually get his dagger, he swaps position with Sven, helping to dominate the lanes while giving Sven some farm. That way, Sven manages to grab his own dagger and grab some levels, as a roam hero tends to have some level disadvantage. It feels like EHOME gets all the good ideas and make a full and precise use of them. It's a proof that the team understand precisely how the game works. If we use Loda's terms, they're a smart team, not a skilled team. With that, not only their carries have loads of farm, but the enemy becomes completely dominated by their mobility and precision. So, how to counter this specific cookie-cutter? It becomes very hard to counter it if Lion and Sven manages to grab their daggers. Obviously, you must dominate some lane. If a team manages to shut Lion down and delay him from farming/leveling, you can have the advantage you need to gank their carry. Also, trying to possess even more initiative (Sand King maybe?), to not allow them to start their games, looks a good idea. But doing all this and still having strong lanes is very, very hard. EHOME's strenght lies on this: clarity of mind, complete understanding of the game, and the capacity of using every hero to their fullest. | ||||||||||||||||
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Created 20th October 2009 00:39
The 6.63 and 6.64 versions made DotA a very complex and dynamic game. In this blog, I wish to show how DotA has become something similar to chess, and analyze the current the way the game is being played. So, what is chess? To reach my objective, I'll use a simple answer: chess is a strategic, positional game where the players make their moves in order to reach a winning end-game position. By moving their pieces, the players try to build the board in a way to get into a position where they're in advantage, where they can score a win. Let's try to compare chess and DotA, in order to put a light in some aspects of the later. Like chess, a DotA game has three phases: early-game, mid-game and late-game. In chess, the 'early-game' is called 'Opening phase', where the players decides how the entire game is going to be played. For example, deciding to open the game by moving the king pawn (King Pawn's game) or moving a horse (King's Indian game) will setup the game's future. Every chess player knows a repertory of openings. In the same way, DotA teams tries to get a line-up where they feel confortable in-game. For example, we can pick up an exemplar game where the picks and the laning makes clear the path the game took: Mouz x MYM, where MYM got Luna, Pit Lord and Spectre. By getting these heroes, MYM is saying that their plan is to keep passive at the game, building both heroes in order to grab the win. At the same time, this forces Mouz to play very aggressive, as they can't afford to have the enemy have two farmed late-heroes. The picks were made with a clear plan (a clear end-game) and they managed to resist the pression and reach their objective. At chess, by looking at the opening, is possible to predict how the players will play their game. However, sometimes players decide to move the game outside the known openings, or to play a game in an opening where their opponent doesn't feel confortable. This can be seen with Vengeful Spirit and the tri-lane comeback. Let's pick the second Pick-League finals game between Fnatic and MYM. The later picked VS and Lion. At the past game, these both formed a lane that thrashed Loda's Visage. MYM also took Tinker, Spectre and Sand King. Now think: how many different, but good lanes you can make with these heroes? In chess, when we protect one important piece with a lot of pieces, we're over-protecting it. What MYM did was creating a tri-lane where VS and Lion over-protected (or, in DotA terms, over-supported) Spectre. It took a while for Fnatic to adapt to the reality of the game, but it was alredy too late, as Spectre farmed a quick Sacred Relic and proceeded with his plan. All this because of VS and Lion's versatility: they can form an agressive lane, they can roam around the map, they can support other heroes... This is the reason why VS and Lion are picked all the time, and the reason why teams ban VS... I wouldn't be surprised if both heroes starts to become top bans. Also, like in DotA, an error at the opening phase will cost the entire game for a chess player. Because the error will become a snowball and will create a huge pressure that is very hard to handle. The mid-game starts as soon as the players understand their own plans and their enemies' plans, proceeding to design a counter-plan in order to make their plans possible and to destroy their enemies' plans. In chess, players try to dominate the critical squares, to get into a position where they can win. In DotA, teams try to dominate the map, in order to allow their carry to farm and to rip apart the enemy carry. In both cases, the game is directed by the vision of a possible late-game, of a plan. You know when a team is a good team when you can grasp their plan and watch the execution. Teams that walk in a game without a plan will never win a game by their own merits, but only by their enemies' mistakes. The end-game is the most important phase in both chess and DotA, because it's the phase that coordinates the picks and the way the game is played. At chess, players move their pieces with a possible end-game in mind. At DotA, players pick their heroes and play their game seeing a possible end-game where they have the upperhand. Because it's the most important phase of the game, it's also the phase where you can blew your game and throw away your chances of victory. That's where experience joins the game. In both chess and DotA (and any other game or e-game), inexperienced players fall to the pressure and the tension, even when they have a huge and winning position. Instead of mantaining the pressure, they try to force their way into the game, risking to throw away their winning position. One example of this is Loda's report on EnRo vs Fnatic, where EnRo had a huge position and couldn't strike a win. Mantaining the tension is a huge and important concept in both chess and DotA. In one aspect, in my opinion, chess is better than DotA: players have a time limit that they must obey. This makes the game something really wild and exciting, adding much more pressure and tension to the game. I think DotA would win a lot by incorporating a time-limit. To conclude this blog, I think that DotA is better than chess in another aspect: there's no draw in DotA. | ||||||||||||||||
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sup :)
Hitomi approved your article.
sweet, can't wait :)
Great analysis dude! well done :)
Epic feature man, well done :D
i love how you take the definition of sport in the 15th century instead of the currently universally modern definition of sport. shows how dumb you have to be to get your point accross. playing scrabble with my family is sport too? ROFL
faz analysis no mym vs navi game 2 :D
Uma pena, um pais tão grande igual esse com tantos jogadores de dota e nenhuma comunidade séria e quase nenhum time também..
você participa de alguma comunidade brasileira séria que cobre o dota assim como o gg.net? se sim, qual?
Dude! You must make an analysis of LGD vs EHOME games 1 AND 2 once the replay is out.Both were epic.Hope you can do it.
