Starladder Series 12

So, Starladder starts today. Anyone lucky enough to be in Bucharest know that i am jealous!

With the way the brackets have shaped up i, unfortunately, don't see my precious [A]lliance getting past IG. Though i do think we could get past a couple of teams in the lower bracket.

All in all. I think the most important game is going to be Secret vs IG. The winner of this will play Vici in the WB final and the winner of that will win the whole thing imo.

My predictions:
IG beat secret in round 2, Vici beat IG in WB final, Secret beat IG in LB final and Vici takes the final 3-2.

Though i am praying for Team Handsome to surprise everyone!

well as i thought, secret needs to step up their game. they pretty much always lose the earlygame and go for some lategame strat and most of the time get their ***es saved by S4 being insanely good.
my punished them by winning the early game in all 3 games.

imagine if the whole gold changes will get changed again, secret (and EG too btw) need to step up their game since they often just come back. ive seen plenty of games where they would have lost if it was harder to come back or easier to get ahead. and that is exactly what the current rubberband stops.

The rubberband effect doesn't actually have as much to do with it I think as people think. Nahaz has posted a lot of stuff on this, lately. How the impact isn't as big as it is thought to be.

I think Secret actively choose to take it late, because they are more individual skilled, and more experienced than most teams, and thus play better late than the other teams because they have better decision making, and better chances to make big plays.

Like I watched game 2 of the MY Secret game, even though Secret were behind, they executed better in mid-game fights, and thus got the advantage from that. Rather than getting overly lucky, and getting the entire lead back from a couple of pick-offs.

Well then they should be able to win the early game too right? Yet secret and EG have pretty much always lost the earlygame in games after DAC. Against tier 2 teams like NIP.

And dont forget that even though everyone praises the team secret hasnt even won a lan yet, and had been in 1 final.

IG and VG consistently beat teams with high agression, winning lanes and pressuring early. But since the addition of arteezy and zai they have been much less flexible with drafts, while flexibility used to be their strength before.
They got away with it in the groupstage of DAC, but against good teams with good drafters like PPD, FY, Mushi, Faith, Xiao8 they will just lose out if Puppey doesnt return to unpredictable drafts.

Wouldn't surprise me if EG and Secret were losing early game on purpose for that sweet, sweet comeback gold. Seriously, it's pretty substantial and both teams are confident enough in their skill to do this. Puppey, like him or not, has abused glitches and bugs in the past (fountain hooks?), so it wouldn't surprise me to see him abusing a legitimate part of the game.

Fear and Arteezy both talked a while back about how stupid the comeback mechanic is on Twitter, likening it to making goal posts wider for losing teams in American football.

I'm just kind of playing devil's advocate here. I don't know for sure if they're doing it, just speculating; it wouldn't surprise me one bit though.

Onto the tournament, I only got to watch bits and pieces of a couple of games. You can tell that some teams did their homework and others are coasting. MY looked really good with their drafts and play, and Secret looked pretty mediocre honestly. Secret, despite the amount of praise they get, is really going to have to step it up. It was different when they were losing to Vici and EG, but now they're losing against teams who aren't even tier 1. (kick rtz pls)

I'm sure Secret and EG could win the early game if they wish to. But it's not unheard of for teams to consistently perform poorly in a given area of the game in order to excel elsewhere if that's the time period they feel most confident in. And that's a big thing even in competitive DOTA.

And the point about tier 2 teams like NiP; I think that the difference between tier 1 and tier 2 teams is at one of the lowest points it has been in competitive DOTA history. It's not unheard off for relatively weaker teams to take games or even entire series off of the big teams at a fairly regular basis, and that simply the status of being 'tier 1' no longer means as much as it once did. Matches come down to preparation as much as anything else, as it should be. You shouldn't be able to coast wins like some teams seem to try to do.

Secret I agree need to step it up. Partially because now the scene has stablized, there's a lot more competition around them, whereas at inception they were definately the best team, because the scene was so shaken up. Partially I think it's complacency due to them being this acknowledged 'best team', and thus having a guaranteed TI5 invite in there eyes.

Given, Puppey has been on a team that's definately shown complacency about performance in the past. (Even if inside issues had a part to play in it).

After last game this is the type of sentence that would be copypasted in twitch chat with a kappa at the end. XD

Secret tier 2 team confirmed?

Puppey is just getting completely outdrafted. He really hasnt had brilliant drafts for a while. In TI4 when he was still on navi he constantly drafter heroes that they werent good with too.

I think that if they dont step it up (or kick RTZ =D) they will just consistently lose drafts against captains like ****ingmad PPD FY Xiao8.

I think the teams just kinda figured secret out. They used to be that ultra-efficient team that would outfarm their opponents and snowball from every won teamfight or skirmish. Now the other teams have run aggressive early-game strats and they just don't seem to have the answer. I just feel like they're having a serious tilt right now. They had some shaky performance before SL (or did I see only the rough games?). We'll see what the next patch does for them.

Also I don't think it's about Artour really. He has pretty much done what he has been able to. They just don't seem to be having that clear decicionmaking currently.

before DAC puppey and RTZ were together in decision making now it seems they arent cohesive anymore.

well if you look at the current roster of secret and their games, in DAC groupstage they obviously did great. they were then beaten by vici and knocked into lower bracket. then they almost lost 2-0 to C9 but C9 threw with that NO TP fail so secret made the comeback.
after that they beat biggod and were then 2-0 ed by EG.

after DAC they havent played that amazingly too, and they havent really played much big games.
http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/8954-team-secret/matches
they 1-1 ed HR, 1-1 ed empire, won against some struggling or lower teams.

had an extremely hard and close 3-2 bo5 against polar.
lost a game 2-0 against alliance, but the have won against them too. won against C9.
but not much consistent performances and only qualifiers.

and its not much RTZ's performance as his limited hero pool, in every patch he has about 5 heroes max that they pick, and 3 of those are just if the other heroes are banned.
so drafting against them is really easy and predictable.



do you mean during? because before DAC they were playing with notail and misery.