The International 5

Really amazing games from VP, G is just so insanely good, he is probably the best mid currently. all teams just just became way better and secret became a bit worse.
S4 played amazing games but also had some really bad ones which we havent seen in a very long time.

Amazing series of games. The crowd was just screaming and yelling non-stop throughout the entire thing. Amazing experience. Props to VP and Secret for the amazing plays and great games.

-BK

I actually think it's just them having shown so much in prior tourneys, and then not adapting here. Like, Secret used to be the team that simply farmed best out of any team in DOTA; They'd never commit to ganks with more heroes than was nessicary to pull them off, they'd stack more frequently than any other team in DOTA. And it showed; not only would RTZ have these crazy item timings, like 14 minute Blink Eul's on an SF, but everyone would get more gold than there respective opponents, even Puppey and Kuro. That's in the absence of kills, because Secret used to play DOTA like the old Chinese teams, low kill scores on both ends (And that happened because they could read map movements better than anyone else). And because Secret were more efficient at getting gold from the map, it worked for them.

But now? Now you generally only see RTZ being ahead because of the focus they applied on him, and that's not because Secret changed there play-style, it's because other teams adapted to it. In the EHOME games, Secret were actually getting out-farmed, not because of kills, but out-farmed on the map.

Like it really feels to me as a case of people having figured them out. They are still a pretty fantastic team, and should be credited for defining how this TI has panned out, because so much is reminiscent of early Secret plays. Like, you don't win 3 LAN's in a row without being a fantastic team, and they have forced DOTA to improve hugely because they raised the bar so high.

Admittedly I think that s4 didn't play as well as he could have, and it was a shame.

There's a couple of Liquidpedia articles that sum it up better than I could, given I am paraphrasing them here;
http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/ti5/491585-team-secret-kings-of-ti-strategy
http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/ti5/491856-the-ti5-meta-secret-plans-and-underdogs

I think they just kinda reverted to their old playstyle with just outfarming opponents and less crazy drafts. It took very long or secret to win a lan, they were very strong but one dimentional, then after getting crushed at starladder they started shaking things up with very different picks. Their drafts were very one dimentional and not very special again, but its working for CDEC. So i guess its kind of a combination.

The Allstar match has been hilarious and it's not even started. Some of it a bit cringey, but still hilarious.

Also 10v10 game mode confirmed.

Man, that Allstar Match was wayyyy too fun. A bit disappointed that no Piltlord though.

Btw, what in the living hell was the item that Omniknight picked ? Some sort of weird-*** sword / ethereal blade ? Any clue ? Am I missing something ?

It looked a lot like an orange version of the DotA 1 abyssal blade.. which made me think.. Abyssal Underlord, which is Pit Lord..

A little bummed that it wasn't the case..

So i actually watched it. Its almost 6 in the morning now and i can see the sun coming up...

You know the drill, play dota!

I think that's going a bit far.
Maybe was insane every single game (even the ones LGD lost) and so was shiki.
G is amazing, but I wouldn't say the best.