Practice Draft

Today, a friend and I decided to have a practise Draft on the Dota 2 Draft Website. Dire side got 1st Ban, the result http://dota2draft.the-cluster.org/show?op=r&fp=d&pick=q2Zl1x1t1d0j0ZM2ZX1ZO2p2&ban=MNZTZCgZSEPZbza :-




The Juggernaut pick was a panic pick, what would you have picked instead?

Also, both Teams decided to try an Aggressive Tri-lane with our Picks, how would you lane them (based off of any changes you would have made to the lineup as well)

i believe that the opponent's team was a mana dependent one so an anti-mage would have been better. and replacing nyx with lich/lion

It's a little tricky to say, both teams got some decent heroes (I'd say Dire got better individual heroes, bar maybe Jugg in this lineup), radiant is a bit squishy but has better team fight and ranged advantage. Dire's big problem is they really have to run a trilane as they can't effectively harass, only kill. This leaves two melee heroes for the solos, potentially trouble when the other team has a Venomancer, even though this would shunt Mirana into a support/roamer role. I'd say replace the Jugg pick with a ranged semi-carry option, preferably one who can play both mid and offlane.

Do you mean that Radiant was Mana Dependant, so Dire should have picked Anti-Mage? and either way, how do you believe the Team would have created space for Anti-Mage to farm?

Ok lets anylise this ****! Im assuming normal competetive play, teams equally skilled. No signature heroes. So no SingSing mirana, no mushi/xiao8/singsing kunnka. No iceiceice/YYF bristleback. No Xboct/loda jugger.


First, midlane: kunnka VS alchemist i assume. A lane with a lot of harrass going on but no one should die. Both should get farm and bottle crow a bit. But radiant has a better roaming support duo so slight radiant advantage.

Trilanes: both go agressive so they avoid eachother.

Both lanes are scary to go up against. with veno+stun+luna you have a lot of control, decent magic damage and a lot of phisical with 2 aura's and minus armor. Killing the solo is certainly possible even with the bristleback passive if he gets gale'ed. Luna should be okay when her supports are ganking, becouse she hurts and the supports might just be not that far away as you thought.

Mirana is less likely to get zoned out becouse the lane is double melee, but she is not getting much farm becouse she has to back off everytime her long cooldown leap has been used, and becouse her damage is so low. Becouse if she gets grave chill'ed or impaled she is probably dead. She will get some levels but no farm.

In conclusion the solo safelaners will have a hell of a job before them.

Radiant is better at early support rotations.

Radiant's late game is probably better with luna and kunnka combined with auras, while mirana maybe can throw in some right clicks too. Dire does have a pretty strong tri core, where alc will probably get 3th farm priority since he can gank the best out of 3 cores. The problem i see is that radiant will gradually get better becouse luna and kunnka farm faster, and luna get stronger with levels becouse she is agi and their ults boat and eclipse. Mirana has this less becouse she has less damage.

Jugger has the same problem as mirana, he just doesnt do much damage untill you get something like deso+butterfly. So he NEEDS a scepter, but he also needs more early stats so he will need something like a drums. He is kind of a wonky pick since there is little use for healing ward here. Bristle will do fine but i think radiant has the damage to deal with him and kite a bit with gale, and punish overextentions with eclipse.

Initiation: radiant can use moonlight shadow to initiate with a simple stun or even blow someone op with eclipse or boat. They can burst the alcemist if he doesnt have BKB. They have pickoff potential with arrow, swap, and kunnka.
Dire has alc stun but he probably needs something to properly initiate like shadow blade or blink, which will delay BKB. But nyx will centainly help with vendetta.
Radiant has a good defensive support in venge though, i really like the pick. I feel dire could really use a shadow demon instead of a nyx. They have very little defensive potential since none of their heroes tend to pick up force staff.

Teamfight: dire doesnt have much aoe, has a lot of burst, but my problem with it is that so much is delayed, concoction has to charge, impale is slow, even soul assumption needs someone else to do damage first they will need to use ommnislash for this. If the venge plays well i think dire will struggle bursting a hero in a fight. And once they commit it gets hard fighting into an eclipse, boat damage reduction, and poison nova. That is one of the main problems with this draft, very little instant spells so very little defensive potential, as i said shadow demon could be great or even a rubick, replace nyx, since he doesnt seem great this game.

Dire has a really good rosh lineup with healing ward, acid spray, and goo. Plus the dire advantage.

Going high ground. Alc will be great if dire can go highground. He can chop the tower in ulti form and ignore the wall of plague wards, while an eventual blink nyx will be waiting for any overextentions. Radiant lack long range counterpush but alc has to watch for torrents, if followed up with swap, he could get bursted before BKB, and with half HP he cant survive those hard rightclicks.

Radiant has luna for breaking the base and she is great it with bouncing glaives. Dire has the tools to stall with acid, impale, and sending bristleback in with quills, but not really the tools to punish overextentions and come back. Their cores are pretty realiant on getting in front.


Conclusion= radiant advantage. Dire need to replace nyx, and jugger doesnt have a place in this draft either. Get a defensive support. Gyrocopter was also still in the pool to take up the 1 role.

@Timminatorr: ty, this is the analysis I was looking for. It's also good to see someone vote Radiant too <}3

Yeah, after the draft, my friend did say he thought a Gyrocopter would have been better.

I would favor the Dire team because of the Radiant bad lanes, aggressive trilaning with Luna is stupid.

Also, the Dire team has two factors I really like: big emphasis on physycal damage ( Bristleback and Alchemist reduce a lot of armor; Juggernaut has a physical DPS ultimate and so does Visage who also picks a Medallion of Courage in the majority of games!) and a more versatile team. The Radiant team has the "ranged" advantage, but Jug is pretty fast himself and their only counterpush abilities are Plague Wards (which shouldn't be a problem with a Healing Ward) and Starstorm. The Dire team can also push very quickly and early on. But still, Mirana + Luna has a very positive W/L ratio, and adding another damage aura to the duo is really scary; I just don't think solo lane Mirana is that effective, so they would have to run Luna solo bot which would make her more vulnerable to ganks.

From the Dire perspective, I personally would put Juggernaut mid versus Kunkka (he's slow and the killing potential even with one rotating support is high, plus Jug evades enemy ganks) and a safe lane Alchemist with Visage and Nyx Assassin as supports. If the enemy decied to go for a safe trilane, you could've also laned it aggressively to minimize the amount of farm of Luna; in this case I would've tried to trilane with the Bristleback though it's pretty uncommon. Aggressive trilaning with Alchemist is still good as his stun brings more to the table, but I think being able to let him outfarm Luna is a key factor for this game. Especially because he will need a BKB.

Summarizing: Dire team better at pushing/counterpushing and more physical DPS; Radiant team way better teamfight and so-so counterpush. If the Dire team doesn't force teamfights but just get early pickoffs and safe tower pushes, their snowballing will go out of control even though it's pretty unlikely versus competent enemies.


PS: I find it really stupid that the Radiant team picked another AGI support just because of Nyx (and I'm pretty sure about that); I can list at least 4-5 supports better than VS for their lineup.

tough one :S

im not really good at drafting, but allow me to give my opinion none the less ^.^

Afaik drafting is all about building a team, which has somewhat good presence in all 3 game -stages (early, mid, late) - unless there is a specific game strategy of course (4 protect 1; pushing or whatever). I cant really see any specific strategy in either team, so i will just go stick with the "all round" aspect.

the dires laning seems a bit weak tbh. Also (as Timminatorr already said) nyx and jugger dont quite seem to fit into the team, forming a rather mediocre trilane. Replacing nyx with bane and making a alchi-bane-visage trilane would have been the better option imo. Especially since this combination is so lethal even in a tri- vs trilane setup, if the enemy has no escape / only 1 stun. Bane also seems to be quite good vs the radiant setup anyway. Jugger could have been replaced with a heavy Nuker, who would take mid, maintaining the teams original midgame power.

I also dont like the bristleback offlane pickup. Bristleback is a hero, which NEEDS to do well in the laning stage in order to have ANY impact later into the game and therefor is a risky offlane-pickup ...especially if laning against a trilane.

since my "drafting-skills" arent that good i cant really find any weakness with the radiant setup though :S. Mirana is a good offlaner, who can take more of initiator role (which the radiant team needs anyway) and therefor doesnt need to farm that much. The trilane seems decent. The 2 support can also take more of a roaming role, providing a strong early-mid game. Kunkka and Luna are pretty decent midgame (as they can deal enormous amounts of damage with their spells) while becoming very scary auto-attackers in the late game.

Overall: Advantage for radiant team.

Nyx Assassin had nothing to do with the Vengeful Spirit pick, it was mainly for Aura Stacking. What made you think that had anything to do with it?

Common sense. I've encountered many players changing Hero picks because of Heroes they thought they would be too strong versus them: no Nature's Prophet pick/ban after the enemy gets a Timbersaw, sudden Silencers versus a dedicated teamfight lineup (split pushing or any Hero that can pick a Necronomicon are overall better unless you already have them), Ancient Apparition instapicks versus Alchemist. Okay, they weren't super experienced players as I was playing team matchmaking with some low-skilled friends (I usually rotate between 7-8 friends for my team, as I don't really want to make it too much of a tryhard thing), but it's something that - after the teamfight-heavy lineup - is really common in the EU mid-low team matchmaking. Nyx Assassin "countering" INT supports is one of them: they are both squishy and with a free damage amplification for Mana Burn.
Dunno if it's only me though, I hope I'm not saying stupid things.

About the substitutions, I think Heroes like Rubick, Jakiro or even Dazzle (just to mention 3 of them) could've given more to their team. A stun and a BKB-piercing swap don't do much versus a two-core - or even three-core if you want - lineup.