Team Ranked Game.

Hey guys so the team is starting to come together nicely with our new addition playing Pos #1 "1444" so after about a month or 2 or training we decided to have our first Team Ranked game... yeaa fun times... here is the draft that we did and all of the other stuff...

anyway heres the drafts...

heres the dotabuff at the end...

and here the farm pr0gression and xp

anyway thoughts?

i was offlane es btw.

*My goal is not to sound like a ***** :D
Not a very impressive amount of cs on am's side at 10 mins, but as an offlaner you got quite a good amount. If I was AM I would've gone for bkb instead of that heart, they got so much magic, so much disables etc.

Your supports died a lot, but it's to be expected against a techies. Not too sold out about the linken rubick at all. No glimmer cape either considering their amount of stuff. Mid dominatied last hit wise so that's good. I like the butterfly pickup as it forced the ck to grab mkb, and the evasion on BB was probably useful too.

I like the am (**** storm and techies) and es pick (**** ck) on your side, not too sure why you got ruru, though. I guess the razor was to deal with the BB, and you guys definetely needed a way to deal with him, otherwise he would've gone way more massive, so I guess I can understand that pick. I don't like the dazzle pick, I would've gone for shaman instead, since you guys didn't have much push power either, just a bit. Shackle + chicken is super strong on storm, and even ck if you catch him out before his ult. Dazzle's not super strong against bb and storm, and I'm guessing "alright" with ck. Highground breaking must've been hard against these guys too (shaman comes into this).

I wouldn't take daz first, es is much safer and can do 2 positions (even 3 if you consider mid).

I like to analize now, but fun fact is that it took me a good 10 mins to think of all this, and in fact I would've panicked and pick much ****tier heroes :D

The draft has no obvious synergy, and looks like something thought up on the spot. Not saying that it isn't good, it is in fact a decent draft if you actually thought up of this draft only after you started drafting.

However, i think would have done better if you had a game plan before you start, and adapt your draft based on your game plan.

sorry i should mention that it was a dual lane techies bristle for 5 mins then the lion rotated out of my lane to top lane and it was an aggro tri that am was up against till around 10ish mins in.

i was solo against ck for around 10 mins.

we picked dazzle frst going for a strong defensive trilane with storm mid but they picked storm so we were like sweet grab AM.

techies deaths were just miss play on supports side they hadnt changed there mindset to take into account techies so were rotating through jungle without vision... no smart.

i think we could have swapped out rubick for a ss but ss is very greedy so im not 100% convinced on that pick. maybe a WW would have been better against a ck but they picked it 15th after the rubick so :/ couldnt really change it in anyway. i do agree the extra control would have been nice though...hmmm will think more ty



we actually did lol. we wanted dazzle am storm but they picked storm so we adjusted. and no plan survives contact with the enemy. the best way to draft is to think of a strong strat with three "core" heroes that you want to run then this allows you 2 picks to ***it in countering the enemy while strengthening your draft. thankfully we got 2 outa the 3 haha

Just for my own curiosity's sake, how does dazzle, am and storm work together? I am trying to think up different team drafts at the moment and i could use as much help as i can.

well its a long route but ill try and explain...heroes have peaks and troughs and they require set things before they can hit their peak. for example Tide blink 6 is the start of his peak, or when he is the strongest/starts to become a threat.

Antimage is similar in that he needs a bf before a set time and then he needs space and a safe jungle for a set time then he comes out with bf and manta and vlads and he is now "peaking" at say 20-30 mins. dazzle provides a very very strong defensive trilane core. shallow grave lets AM survive through chain stuns and heal keeps him topped up in lane. so you place AM and dazzle together with a strong control support like say lion and now you have a trilane that the enemy will have a tough time running an aggro trilane into those three heroes. which when facing an antimage... you kinda want to do... why? because you push that bf futher and futher back until AM's peak is way later then normal. this allows your cores to hit their peak earlier and quicker. leading to an imbalance between the teams you have 2-3 core hitting there windows while they can only have 2 so your naturally forcing them to fight 4v5 or 5v5 but with a weaker hero.

thats why Dazzle is a good with AM imo because it allows his peak to come earlier or when it should.

btw i will upload your video now sorry for the wait.

now you add storm.

storm is the quintessential space creator. you can solo farm when there is a storm with an orchid can u? thus storm is a strong core but he is weak pre 6 so with dazzle you can rotate into mid to save storm from any ganks and also lets him play a little bit more aggressive in the mid game. once he has orchid/bloodstone he hits his "peak" this is around the 15 min mark. now you can take fights 4v5 with a very strong hero and if you drafted well they wont have an answer to him since he is peaking before there cores are. for those 10-15 minutes storm and the rest of your team are creating a lot of space drawing aggro from AM who is now jungle farming or splitpushing... then when storm starts to trough (usually when the enemy get items to deal with him "bkb, abyssal, diff, sheep) then AM comes out and takes over.

thats why imo AM dazzle storm are a strong tri core.

Seems like a solid Draft on your side. To be honest though, I think they threw the 1st Pick Phase completely. Insta-Picking Storm Spirit with Bloodseeker Banned is a disaster in itself, but to add to that, they cut their options down with that Techies Pick.

Looking at the Tiny Ban, there are so many Heroes that would have been better to Ban at that stage, like Undying, Io, etc. but with that Techies Pick...they Banned those Heroes themselves...

Well, you out-drafted them I'll say that, but it wasn't a perfect draft on your side anyway. Like you didn't need to ban Tiny when you did;

The logic of it was that you didn't want to have Toss -> suicide right? Well, you could've played it better than you did by just straight banning it. If anything, it would've been good to let them have the Tiny;

At that point in the draft, Winter Wyvern was still in the pool, and as you know she can basically hard counter these Techies combo's with Cold Embrace, and you already had Dazzle to soft counter them. If you don't ban Tiny immediately, you can try and force out the WW instead of something they are actually worried about. Because for all you know, they might not want to combo the Techies, in which case you'd be wasting a ban on it. And if they pick the Tiny; Well you've just forced either a support Tiny or an offlane one. Neither of which are hugely strong, and it's actually really hard for them to get a successful combo off because of Dazzle, or if you got her Winter Wyvern. And if those heroes didn't get the combo's off, it's hard for them to maintain game relevance.

....That explanation was more convoluted than it was meant to be, but do you see where I'm coming from? That you could've potentially forced them into a poor situation with that Tiny?

Your itemisations look pretty decent. The only thing I think is that even with them having a CK, you should've built a Sheep over Ag's. Probably AC over Eye of Skadi on your Razor because if there was every a line-up to stack armour against, it's probably there team. Like sure, you had Weave and Vlad's for that already ect ect, but... AC synergises so well with Razor's skill set that it's a little hard to justify skadi over it in my mind. Because they didn't have that much magical burst, and you did have Rubick's aura to mitigate it a tad. And if everyone on your team is struting round with 20+ armour each, how does there line-up really kill any of you?

Really interesting. So far i've only been looking at how the heroes can work together. i'll start looking at what they do best and how they can support each other through that, after hearing your draft plan.

btw, ty for the video. i did ask pretty late anyway

First things first: The opponent outdrafted themselves big time. With a pos 5 Lion (assuming that they'll try to pressure AM since they had no real lockdown aside from it), there's no hope for a decently timed Blink Dagger. Combine this with a Chaos Knight pos 1 who is one of the worst farmers in the game when talking about carries and a pos 3 Bristleback, there's no catch and no threat in the ENTIRE TEAM for the first 25-30 mins. Add in a mobile carry and Bristleback can only hope about getting one hit on him. What this does is that it leaves all the pressure to Storm Spirit to do the heavy lifting. Even this is virtually impossible as there's already been a Dazzle picked and the way Storm's ganking works is that he jumps on an enemy, blowing all his mana to do the damage, only to be put down by a simple Shallow Grave leaving him with little to no mana and in a bad position. This basically forces him to jump Dazzle, but this is also troublesome as there are other heroes with lockdown to counterinitiate ( Rubick is nice because it leaves no margin for Storm to juke the stun).

Also the fact that you have AM makes the game hard for Storm, as after AM gets manta at about 22-27 depending of whether he goes vlad's or not and how pressured he's been, he can no longer pick AM off solo and just feeds if he tries to, leaving AM free to split-push and -farm, something you really don't want to happen as storm.

Your draft also has the advantage of comeback farming. If you get behind, you have Anti-Mage who after bfury will farm exceptionally fast and an Earthshaker who is useful regardless of having farm and Razor who has a good nuke, but also is a very independent laner and can fight really early with relatively little equipment, whereas the opposing team has to get farm on all three cores (+supports), of whom only BB and Storm have reliable ways of farming.

What I think I would've done differently on your draft is pick another mid. I personally don't see the point for Razor. I understand that you picked it to counter Bristleback, but I don't think BB is going to do anything regardless of that. You have heavy lockdown and mobile pos 1 so he is pretty much controlled already. Also, BB will never goo Razor and instead go for ES, Rubick or Dazzle, so the purge isn't that great. I'd have preferred something bursty like Lina (as you really don't have very much damage before AM gets farmed) to complement the heavy CC you already posses.