DOTA2

[Fordel]

With the way Secret is playing and drafting, it's their tourney to lose.

[Chimpy]

With the way Secret is playing and drafting, it's their tourney to lose.

That support Tiny was epic.

[Fordel]

I think one of the most interesting things about this tourney, is how many teams play Windranger wrong. She's very strong in a very specific niche and mediocre otherwise, yet teams still draft her then try to shove her into a role or build that will not work. She has like what, a 30% win rate this tourney now? 

Go mid, farm your aghs and crit, win game. Do anything else and you will have a bad time people.

[Azuredream]

Anyone watching EG v Secret? Game 1 was insane, game 2 is about to start.

[Chimpy]

Anyone watching EG v Secret? Game 1 was insane, game 2 is about to start.

The end of that match (last 20 minutes or so) was just amazing.

OG has pulled out some great matches too.

[Fordel]

EG vs. Secret was the highest quality Dota to date probably. Only rivaled by the TI3 finals.

[Margalis]

I watched it live (I mean in my house, not from the event), was crazy.

Before that fight EE popped BKB in his own well, tried to Boot's of Travel to a creep that died (he had upgraded boots, so could have TP'd to a hero), then just stood in well for like 30 seconds acting confused. Then a few minutes later he's making an insane, micro-instensive hero play.

There were a couple points in the game where an enemy hero just insta-died so fast I could barely tell what happened.

His team mates really deserve a lot of credit for keeping him alive and healthy with all sorts of defensive spells and abilities. Which requires them to be in the right position, do the right thing, and also not be dead. Which is pretty hard when you're a support with less than 5k net worth when the carries have 20 or so.

[Chimpy]

Hells yes, monkey business in da house.

[Chimpy]

Hells yes, monkey business in da house.

My god Miracle was just ridiculous in every match today.

[Margalis]

Great event overall. Easily the best in recent memory. Alchemist blinking onto AM to kill him 2 or 3 times in a row in the jungle was amazing. So smart.

I think this is proving that Valve-sponsored majors is a good idea. I can't bear to watch things like StarLadder anymore, where the casting consists of Xyori saying "uh hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me? I can't connect to the game. Maybe I need to turn on my VPN? I'll try restarting with the VPN. Uh, hello? Still can't connect. Oh...I still forgot to turn the VPN on..." (Edit: Maybe I mean Xyclopz here)

The non-Valve events have fallen so far behind other eSports, in terms of everything from scheduling to casting to production. This is really the kick in the ass the scene needed.

Of course it helps that the games were great. Not many 15 minute GGs or 3 hour bore fests.

[Fordel]

I'll always tune in to watch anything the GD studio shits out 

[Margalis]

Also I have a man crush on Synderen. Good looking, knowledgeable, has a cool accent.

[Johny Cee]

Thought I posted this the other day, but the forum ate my post?

So I've been playing more Dota after a longish break due to real life things...  had a game that started oddly but seemed solid.  Our SF is disconnect first 2 minutes, but my support Ogre with AM in safe lane against Tusk/SB dual.  We get first blood, and just stomp all over them.  AM has b-fury and treads minute 13.  And then the enemy TA happens.

Just murdering us all over the map.  We get bottled up in base, mount a couple minor comebacks wiping them when they try for rax, but the game is lost.

I check out the TAs profile?  Fucking 6.5k solo MMR, 5.5k group.  He has higher fucking MMR then some pro players.  I don't play ranked pretty much ever, but I'm probably low 4k.  What is that dude doing stomping my pub game?  And why at least couldn't it be someone internet famous? 

[Johny Cee]

the Shanghai Major is March 2nd-6th, and the direct invites are out:

OG
Secret
EG
EHOME
VG
CDEC
VP
Alliance

Basically top 3 or 4 at Frankfurt guaranteed invite to Shanghai, filled out by results in other tourneys.

There will be a round of Qualfiers for the last 8 spots, and even an open invite Open Qualifer for a couple spots in your region's Qualifier.  I look forward to cheering on Blitz or Merlini pub stack as they make it to the quarters.

There was also a very major patch a few weeks ago, so the meta should be massively different from Frankfurt. 

[Margalis]

Just played a game, started off doing great. Then whole team started to play stupid then overextend, though we were still way ahead.

Then our DK rage quit and we lost. He rage quit for literally no reason.

After the match I checked his MMR - was 500! The fuck? I'm 2kish, which is not good, but why am I matched with someone who is 500? lol

[Johny Cee]

Just played a game, started off doing great. Then whole team started to play stupid then overextend, though we were still way ahead.

Then our DK rage quit and we lost. He rage quit for literally no reason.

After the match I checked his MMR - was 500! The fuck? I'm 2kish, which is not good, but why am I matched with someone who is 500? lol

Was anyone playing together?  When you get people with wildly different MMRs in a group, the matchmaking grabs a guy that makes the average come out to be even. 

[Margalis]

I don't think they were in a party. Maybe the other team had a 500 MMR player as well.

I just played a game where I got the most XPM in the game. As support Jakiro. We had one teamfight where I got out with about 100hp, found a DD rune, then came back and got 2 or 3 kills and gained 3-4 levels out of it. Good times. I had 3 deaths and the next lowest in the game had 7, so I guess that's why I was so far ahead in XP. Still weird though.

[Johny Cee]

I don't think they were in a party. Maybe the other team had a 500 MMR player as well.

I don't think there are many 500 mmrs....  could just be that the matchmaking has to plunk them in the more average distribution so that someone with terrible mmr can find a game in a reasonable amount of time.

[Johny Cee]

I just played a game where I got the most XPM in the game. As support Jakiro. We had one teamfight where I got out with about 100hp, found a DD rune, then came back and got 2 or 3 kills and gained 3-4 levels out of it. Good times. I had 3 deaths and the next lowest in the game had 7, so I guess that's why I was so far ahead in XP. Still weird though.

Tanky heroes in general are very strong right now.  I see alot of Pudges (lane or mid), SBs, Ogres, etc. and alot of heroes with good burst like Invoker, Lina, Zeus.  Squishy supports get blown up pretty hard.  A good sidelane Pudge, or a good SB, makes support life miserable.

Tide game last night: 2053235847

Was offlane Tide against Jugg/Tiny, we had a doofy trilane (Sniper/SS/Vis) and Pudge mid.  Sniper even went full glass cannon.  Enemy Nyx, Zeus, Tiny blew our squishies up all game.

Pudge and I did some fucking work late game.  I had the second highest gpm (enemy Jugg edged me out), highest xpm of any player.

[Margalis]

I play a lot of Ogre, it feels almost unfair against squishy, non-healing supports. I played one game with an opposing KOTL where I killed him 2 or 3 times. Once I got a level or 2 ahead my ignite did like 50% damage to him just by itself, then I just run in land some right clicks and a stun and he's dead from 100% hp.

It does feel to me that right now brawly champions are good, and ranged auto-attackers are weak. Not sure if that's due to item changes, individual nerfs / buffs or what, but more often than not any ranged DPS guys I have on my team really struggle. I suppose at my MMR people don't really know how to position so that hurts, but when I was playing a lot previously (like a year + ago) sniper and drow were both pretty common and tended to do well, now they are rarely picked and often get rocked when they do.

[Chimpy]

So Merlini, Purge, Capitalist, and Maelk are on a team going through the open qualifiers now and they are streaming their matches with their voice chat open so it is kinda cool to hear their communication while things are going on.

[Fordel]

Oh is that why Merlini had like 15k viewers earlier?

[Chimpy]

Oh is that why Merlini had like 15k viewers earlier?

Yeah.

They lost 2-1 to the Peruvians, but it was fun watching them and listening to the banter. It seemed like a lot of people really appreciated it, I think Merlini got like $3k in donations pop up on his little donation tracker thing during the time I was watching.

[Megrim]

I haven't played doto for a while, so I'm just catching up on watching the Frankfurt stuff now - that is some quality doto.

[Chimpy]

I haven't played doto for a while, so I'm just catching up on watching the Frankfurt stuff now - that is some quality doto.

Quality 131 minute game Dota!

(Archon vs Complexity game 1)

[Fordel]

I think it was GrantGrant that started to hypecast all the creep kills in lane after the first hour. Maut just lost his mind after awhile. 

[Margalis]

I haven't played doto for a while, so I'm just catching up on watching the Frankfurt stuff now - that is some quality doto.

Frankfurt was the best event I can remember in a long time - maybe since TI3.

[Hoax]

TI3 was far from my favorite TI but I agree that Frankfurt was Dota almost on a whole new level, but I honestly think that's because the previous patch had been around for forever and then they decided to not do a huge patch right before so teams had really high understanding of everything going on so the event-meta was really deep and well crafted.

[Rasix]

Link to any VODs worth watching in particular?  I had a busy weekend, so I didn't get a lot of downtime to watch.

[Margalis]

There was a thread in the reddit dota2 about best things of the year, including best matches, a few of those nominees were from that. In particular I think Eternal Envy's Ember Spirit game, and an epic Alliance game might also have been from that event as well. (I can't remember)

If you're just looking for good matches that's a good place to look.

[Chimpy]

I think he was talking about the stuff this last weekend.

The best quality play this weekend might have been Spirit vs Liquid in the upper bracket EU final (I don't have links sorry).

And yeah, Frankfurt was good quality overall. Having 3 major tournaments on the patch before it happened really helped as the invited teams actually had some time played on the patch. There is really only StarLadder before the Shanghai major so I think it will be a little bit lower quality than Frankfurt. But the roster lock is making pretty much all teams better since they actually have a benefit to playing as a team for more then three months before reforming for the pre-TI race.

I wonder when they are going to fit in the next major though, I thought they were going to have 4 of them + TI but I guess it is 3+ TI?

[Chimpy]

And probably right after I posted that, Valve announced the final major, early June in Manilla.

[Johny Cee]

Shanghai Major starts next Thursday!

[Fordel]

This starts tonight, hopefully. 

[Chimpy]

First match should be one of the good ones, Secret vs CDEC.

Kinda bummed that I will be skiing next week so won't be able to watch many of the matches past the early group stages.