A Supporter as MVP?
Usually I really hate glorifying a single player on a team, but every rule has an exception and that’s the point where Smiske comes into play. His Vengeful Spirit game against MYM at the EDC final was outstanding; there were times I thought Faceless Void (13aby) was dead for sure only for Smiske to swap him out of the fight, saving his ass for the thousandth time. Ducky made a very nice entry at his blog about the games and especially about Smiske’s performance in them and I agree with him. I recommend you to watch at least the first and fifth game and follow either Smiske or MaNia. Last mentioned played "his" hero – Sandking – which is always a pleasure to watch.
A best-of-5 final with a 3:2 ending is the best possible outcome for the community, even though it takes some time. As Playmate states after the match, it seems that MYM underestimated the team around Drayich. It’s fatal to go into a final and play for 1000€ with that attitude, even though you are said to be the favorite.
EDC in general was very well-organized and easy to cover; shoutout to the admins and congratulations to the winners.
The match everyone is waiting for
At the moment there is no match-up I'm looking forward to more than DDT vs. Nirvana.Int, ranked first and second on the GosuGamers ranking. This encounter is said to be the clash of the two currently best European teams. It’s really hard to make a prediction at the moment, since both teams utilize a different playing style. DDT and Nirvana.Int only lost a single game since their creation.
| DDT vs Nirvana.Int | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Team name: | DDT | Nirvana.Int | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Statistics: | 11-1 | 12-1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Winning percent: | 91,6% | 92,3% | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rank: | #1* | #2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Players: | Captain  DuckyRoster  Loda MiSeRy- Miracle AngeL miGGel KwoM (inactive) | Captain  PuppeyRoster  KuroKy Fear Merlini DeMoN March Amartnt | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Latest replay**: | Link (ProDota) | Link (F4F 2.4) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
**Official match with full roster
We will inform you as soon as we find out the date of this match.
To wand or not to wand
Drayich started a discussion about the need and usage of the Magic Wand, an item which supports defensive play style according to Drayich. Loda and Ducky replied to this with different words but similar thoughts. On that discussion I am on Loda's side: the stick may be more worth than it actually costs, but it helps the right heroes and does not make them play more defensive. It's a good imbalance which is created with that item. You may tweak it a bit to not get a charge for each arcane or squill spray (since it makes BB so useless), but anything else would make the item totally useless.
Not 100% correct
We had a news up about the addition of TeKniqZ to the Malaysian squad of Kingsurf, not listing papaxiong in the roster. This article caused very strong reactions, with a lot people getting confused and offended. We are very sorry about that. The problem was that we didn’t double-check our source, which was sure that TeKniqZ is a solid part of the new roster and didn’t list papaxiong.
Even we are human (in a way) and we make mistakes (rarely).
A Farewell Movie of D.N.A
The video features scenes from (to me) unknown players, but the editing and the actions are perfect. Five stars, nothing more to add.
I would’ve loved to add the Pick League highlights of division 1 made by m3w from fragster, but they do not support embedding, so you have to click on the image.
The movie contains scenes from the following encounters:
Online-Kingdom vs. against All authority
Ducky's Dream Team vs. Tribal Gaming International
MeetYourMakers vs. Local Area Network
The Retry vs. The elder Gods
