Teammatch lineup thread

Here I kindly ask you to analyse the lineup my team shall play in tonight's team match as long as our heroes don't get banned. I also would be grateful for propositions of most valuable bans for our team.


Our Picks:
Sand King
Enigma
Venomancer
Kunkka
Doom

I appreciate any help we can possibly receive. Propositions of Pick improvements also helpful.

(We are pretty much noobs when it comes to team matches)

My recommendation is to definitely ban Rubick. His spell steal and his magic resistance counters your team hard.

I don't get what your lanes are either...I'd guess:
Sand king - Suicide lane
Enigma - Jungle
Venomancer - Safe Lane
Doom - Safe Lane
Kunkka - Mid

Was that right? If so, opt out for a a different carry or support. Either one containing a stun, or a harder carry. I'd suggest Sven for the team fight theme, or Chaos Knight for a hard stun and a harder carry potential. For the support, I'd go with a Disruptor or one with a a stun.

Honestly though, you shouldn't be crafting your team before the match, you don't know what they're gonna pick, and these picks are mediocre. If you can grab more S-tier heroes, and they pass banning phase you'd want to grab it. Ei; Magnus > Kunkka for a melee mid, or Dark Seer as a better team fighter/utility and a better/more effective suicide laner. But for all you know they can grab a Storm Spirit or QoP mid and completely shut down your melee mid, or they could grab a Lich and Faceless Void and duo-lane mid. They're are just too many variables to pre-make your picks.

We have two players feeling comfortable only on specific classes: one on carries, the second on supports or semi carries (rarely). This somehow entangles us to have specific picks. Nevertheless, we can easily alter this into:

Venomancer
Enigma (him and Venom stay for sure, they are top tier heroes)
Broodmother / any other hard carry
Tidehunter / Juggernaut /
QoP / Nature

PS we don't jungle. Only when we have Lifestealer but he usually gets behind with the lvl.

Thank you for advice!

We shall test out a more tier-based pick/ban strategy. Today is actually the day I got to know about competitive heroes tier lists.

To clarify on some things, Veno isn't a top pick, and Broodmother isn't a hard carry.

If you're going into an in-house/captains mode, you need to adapt to having two solo lanes, mid and a suicide lane. This can be accomplished with either a Tri-lane, or a safe duo lane with your third member consisting of a jungler.

Tier List

Thank you.

Invoker can successfully go solo top and stay defending hard.
QoP/Templar for mid and we can try and compose a trilane from Sven, Enigma and Magnus.

We will figure it out somehow. Thank you for the trilane strategy recommendation. You are invaluably helpful.

Your welcome.

You should consider researching common tri-lanes, the one you suggested will not be very successful. As for a solo "top" Invoker, the suicide lane changes depending on what side you're on. If you're Dire then it'll be bottom, if you're Radiant then it'll be top.

Can I give you some suggestions? First, watching competitive games helps a lot in picking and counterpicking; I can list you some of the most used Heroes so that you can understand better how to compose a team:

Magnus, Dark Seer - two easy and effective suicide laners: in the laning phase Magnus only needs a Bottle and a pair of Arcane Boots, while dark seer can farm more thanks to his Ion Shell and get something like Tranquil Boots, Soul Ring and Mekansm. Skewer and Surge are perfect for escaping, as long as you have mana.

Magnus, Batrider, Io - these are common first bans for mid lanes because they have both an awesome ultimate and powerful zoning abilities. If you pick Io, you should usually go for a carry that pairs well with him like Chaos Knight, Sven, Tiny etc.

Keeper of the Light, Nyx Assassin - they're probably the most imbalanced supports at the moment: KotL can get his Mekansm without getting a single last hit from your carry by just assisting kills and teleporting behind a tower under attack counterpushing with Illuminate; Anub'Arak can play the whole game with just Arcane Boots and Observer Wards/ Sentry Wards. He doesn't need levels either, because his Mana Burn actually scales into lategame with just one point in it. They are best used in trilanes.

Lifestealer, Phantom Lancer: two hard carries that can farm their items even if they get shut down pretty hard in the early game, probably the only Heroes picked for their insane physical damage in this meta full of teamfights. Excellent trilane carries.


Other overused supports and carries: Shadow Demon (for initiating trilane ganks), Bane (for shutting down magic-immune targets such as N'aix and intiating ganks), Undying (for being a great contributor in teamfights and a useful slower/nuke spammer in trilanes), Gyrocopter (as a support because of the insane nuke damage, as a carry because of the gamebreaking ultimate and AoE damage), Luna (because of the ultimate and movement speed) and so on.



About your team, Venomancer is actually a good pick as he works well for both fighting in trilanes and counterpushing/turtling; Doom Bringer is a good carry too, though he's not used in the competitive scene. The other Heroes can be viable, but the real problem is that you have no solo laners (even though Kunkka can be played solo in the safe lane, the enemies can gank him pretty easily) and a passive dual lane that doesn't give you any advantage in the early game.

Quick tip: when I play captains mode I always do the first bans and picks like this: ban two Heroes between Batrider, Nyx Assassin, Keeper of the Light and Magnus; pick the remaining ones if there are any. Then, if you choose Heroes that you're familiar with and make good lanes you'll probably win against pub players/people with little coordination.

If you want a better team by just changing two Heroes, you could do:
Trilane with Venomancer, Doom Bringer and Nyx Assassin/ Keeper of the Light
Mid lane with Kunkka (?)
Solo lane with Magnus/ Dark Seer

Your mid game will be pretty weak, but you have a strong early game that lets your hard carry farm and a good late game with powerful teamfight ultimates and two "tanky" autoattackers.