DOTA2

[Fordel]

EG needs to prove to me this version isn't full of the old EG throw.

[Ingmar]

Even I watch this shit and all I know how to do is feed mid with Kunkka. 

[K9]

Based on the limited stuff I've seen and read EG seem to be pretty solid, and the DOTA2 wonks seem to rank them top three or four.

I'm also excited for the tournament, my hunch is that this year is China's year, but as others have said, TI is where lots of wacky shit gets shown, and whether they can adapt to that remains to be seen. Either way, we should get some great games.

[Fordel]

The Chinese teams feel like they have something to prove, they feel that Dota is to China what Starcraft is to Korea. In TI2 they proved their point, in TI3 they walked in thinking they had everything figured out and ended up being embarrassed by their performance.

[Rasix]

Even I watch this shit and all I know how to do is feed mid with Kunkka.  

I've seen your Kunkka.  

The Korean teams (are there any Korean teams  ) are lesser known versions of the Chinese teams, minus the years and years of Dota1 experience.

Korea are the LoL overlords.  I doubt they'll stray too far from their comfort zone, even with that prize pool.

[Fordel]

They've at least gotten to the point where they aren't being farmed by shitty NA teams looking to cash in. Mostly. 

[Johny Cee]

Team Liquid won the wild card spot over MVP yesterday.

For people unfamiliar with Dota, Valve is running "New to Dota" streams.  Basically, concentrating on explaining things and giving folks an introduction to Dota rather than shoutcasting and hyping.  The two teams doing this are Purge and Sunsfan,  and a combination of Blitz/Pyrionflax/Shane.  From what I've read, people are really happy with Purge/Sunsfan...  the other team with Pflax/Shane is more jokey entertainment.

If you watch in the Dota client, you actually get the choice of 3 or 4 casting pairs....  so you can pick and choose based on personal preferences.

[Ingmar]

If you watch the MVP/Liquid match and try to listen to the Purge stream, it doesn't kick in until halfway through the draft - nothing's broken in your client.

[Rasix]

The noob stream is pretty awesome.  The twitch chat isn't filled with kappas, dendi-faces, and ascii penises.

[Malakili]

The noob stream is pretty awesome.  The twitch chat isn't filled with kappas, dendi-faces, and ascii penises.

What is the noob stream?

[Rasix]

It's the stream for people new to dota2 mentioned above by Johny Cee.  

www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_noob

[Fordel]

There's still lots of games to play before you need to picnic. 

[K9]

The noob stream is pretty awesome.  The twitch chat isn't filled with kappas, dendi-faces, and ascii penises.

Plus, added Purge. Even though I'm familiar with most of the stuff they're talking about I'd just prefer to listen to his voice over a bunch of the more 'srs' casters.

My only gripe is that the native Valve streams seem to skip around and stutter a lot, and seem to need to constantly rebuffer, while the twitch streams are far more steady. There's also a dissapointing lack of VODs for now. Last year I swear Valve had all the VODs on youtube in nice discrete videos. Having to hunt through a 9hr twitch stream to find the start and end points for videos is an arse.

[Rasix]

Is there an official Valve site with the results (that would have the game IDs) and group standings?  Only place I've seen is on team liquid.

I'd recommend watching the DK v. Team Liquid game.  That had some shit in it. 

[Falconeer]

Yes, it's here. And it's very well done.

There's a few buttons you might have to push to unspoiler results, but it's all there and updated in real time.

[K9]

I think the key takeaway from yesterday is that it's not good to have a red logo.

[Thrawn]

Yes, I know it was announced a while ago, but I just realized yesterday that the grand finals are being played on a MONDAY.

WTF Valve. 

[Johny Cee]

Jesus Christ, what is it with these 3 and 4 carry line-ups?  And WINNING with those?  

Pubs are going to be even worse for a while.  

Edit:

Watching C9 v. DK.  You know why people hate Chinese Dota?  That's why.  C9 has a massive gold disadvantage and three down, DK pulls out of the base after taking top rax.  Doesn't finish off the mid ranged rax, doesn't go bot.  Pulls out and goes farming.

Edit 2:

Is offlane Void a thing now??

[Fordel]

Sure, he's a slippery bastard.

[Johny Cee]

Sure, he's a slippery bastard.

Time Walk has an awful range at low levels, is mana expensive, and he has a bad mana pool.  I guess if the enemy safe lane is more concerned with pushing rather than controlling the wave/pulling?

I just flashed to my pub games where it's going to be assholes picking off-lane void and feeding relentlessly. 

[Malakili]

Sure, he's a slippery bastard.

Time Walk has an awful range at low levels, is mana expensive, and he has a bad mana pool.  I guess if the enemy safe lane is more concerned with pushing rather than controlling the wave/pulling?

I just flashed to my pub games where it's going to be assholes picking off-lane void and feeding relentlessly. 

This is why I stopped playing DOTA and only watch now 

[Megrim]

Sure, he's a slippery bastard.

Time Walk has an awful range at low levels, is mana expensive, and he has a bad mana pool.  I guess if the enemy safe lane is more concerned with pushing rather than controlling the wave/pulling?

I just flashed to my pub games where it's going to be assholes picking off-lane void and feeding relentlessly. 

He doesn't use mana for anything else, and with two levels in jump and one in backtrack he can offlane ok. The danger there is that if you leave him because "oh its offlane, we'll just focus on the mid and tri" then you have a scary lategamer farming with no problems, because there aren't many 1v1s that can drive him out of the lane. And if you focus on his lane, he can back off and soak xp via backtrack/jump.

[Johny Cee]

He doesn't use mana for anything else, and with two levels in jump and one in backtrack he can offlane ok. The danger there is that if you leave him because "oh its offlane, we'll just focus on the mid and tri" then you have a scary lategamer farming with no problems, because there aren't many 1v1s that can drive him out of the lane. And if you focus on his lane, he can back off and soak xp via backtrack/jump.

Meh?

1.  He has awful Int, so any mana he spends isn't coming back without a clarity or a Basilius.  He will only have a very limited amount of get out of jail frees. 
2.  He really, really needs farm to be effective.  Not like Slark, who can make an impact on the board with just boots because of his high magic damage (leveled Pounce, 2 in Dark Pact) plus essence shift.  Even under Chrono he will have difficulty killing anyone without at least boots plus an item or two.
3.  In most ordinary situations, where the safe lane has at least one support, that support should at least zone him back to tower really easily starting at minute zero.  Many other off-laners can at least threaten a solo support that tries to harass or zone.  A Void shouldn't make level 3 before the safe lane farmer who should also have a decent farm advantage.

Really, soaking xp doesn't matter that much since he doesn't have any snowball abilities.  Most other off-laners only need some levels to get skills online to make a board impact.  Mirana can really wreck with just a good arrow into a Starstorm, Centaur can ruin a day with Stomp/Double-edge, Slark combo of Pounce/Dark Pact/Essence Shift and ulti means he can kill many heroes solo at level 6 even without many items.


That doesn't mean that there aren't situations where it is effective.  One game I watched had a dual mid lane, forcing the safe lane support to abandon the safe lane farmer to going solo against Void.  It seemed like a few teams ran carry heavy teams, or the supports didn't run duals/a tri but instead roamed the map.  Or against Chinese teams known for passive game styles, run a greedy line-up and count on out-carrying late because you have more heroes that scale better late game (see also the number of greedy support picks, like support Mirana, Sven, WK).  The prevalence of Skywrath also factored into it, probably....  lock them in Chrono, count on Sky ult for the damage.


As a general rule, off-lane Void should have a really bad time.  I play alot of support, and I would be drooling if the opposing team sent an offlane void down.  The first 3 minutes of the game (unless my carry is an autoattacking idiot) would see my carry farming, me standing just out of their tower range, and the void sitting just behind his tower out of xp range.  After that, level/farm disadvantage means I can wander to other lanes to gank and my carry can look after himself.

[Johny Cee]

Again, why people don't like Chinese passive Dota:  DK vs. Narvi - DK had a 40k gold lead before they could finally finish the game at 53 minutes. Fun!

Level 1 Rosh attempt by Alliance leads to team wipe!

Edit:

The multi-stream is pretty awesome.

[Bann]

Regarding offlane void - he has a ton of base agi/armor. Once you get a poor man's shield on him, I believe he has 7 armor + the GDR. Unless you run a defensive trilane and focus on zoning him out, he's gonna be able to win trades and get his farm - and if you commit your 2 supports to shutting down the enemy offlane, you are giving a bunch away elsewhere. Even if you starve out a Void, his ult (in the hands of a pro) still has game changing utility.

[Johny Cee]

Regarding offlane void - he has a ton of base agi/armor. Once you get a poor man's shield on him, I believe he has 7 armor + the GDR. Unless you run a defensive trilane and focus on zoning him out, he's gonna be able to win trades and get his farm - and if you commit your 2 supports to shutting down the enemy offlane, you are giving a bunch away elsewhere. Even if you starve out a Void, his ult (in the hands of a pro) still has game changing utility.

On Void:

He does have good base armor, and decent base damage.  A solo ranged support can still shit on him.  I've shit on safe-lane Voids as a solo off-lane WR in pubs (granted only 3.7K MMR, so not really good players), when their support is bad and just pulls instead of securing the carry's farm as first priority.  Also, after level 6 things turn really bad for you as a WR without Windrun (due to Chrono) and Windrunner is one of the few heroes Void can reliably kill without many items.

His ult IS game changing in the hands of someone who can use it well, but mostly in the context of having other heroes on your team that can take advantage.  Void plus Skywrath or a good ranged damage dealer means at least one enemy is dying hard while another is hurting.  Reddit/dota pointed this out (ie in best of ones team-fight abilities are at a premium) and I'm fully on board with that reasoning.  The prevalence of roamers and Skywrath is probably what has tipped the scales of Void being playable in those positions.

And like I said, in certain strategies a Void offlane can be really effective if you are doing non-standard stuff like dual mid, or one/two roamers looking for kills, or against a really passive line-up. 

In a traditional "hard carry + support" safe-lane, where the support isn't dumb and concentrates on securing the carry's farm?  I don't see how that is a good time for the Void. 

If you are talking weird situations where a carry plays off-lane, give me PA any day.  Can farm with dagger, escape or harass with blink strike, and blur + stout gives you great survivability.  At 6, you have the real potential to threaten kills solo.  But again, doesn't do this as well as Slark or Centaur.  Bat and NP have both been played as off-lane but that is as much their ability to retreat into the jungle and farm no problem if things aren't great in lane.


More weird is the prevalence of support Wraith King.  I really like WK as a safe-lane carry (also had a recent game where I had an awesome tri that crapped on the off-lane dual then roamed;  had treads/armlet by 10 or 11 minutes, bkb at 20, basher at 26, then wrecked the other team... six slotted at like 35 minutes) but he has been picked a huuuuuuuggggeeeee amount at multiple positions including hard support.

[Hoax]

He makes much more sense as a hard support. You want him to die with that retarded slow aoe and if he's a carry you don't want him to die because he has all your gold/damage.

Overall though I'm quite impressed how new the TI meta looks to me after only skipping on a month or so of competitive dota.

[Fordel]

I am surprised by the performances of Alliance, Liquid and Navi'US. I expected Alliance to do way better then this and I expected Liquid and Navi'US positions to be reversed. EG seems to have settled down as well, good for them, hope they keep it up.


Everything else looks pretty much how I imagined.

[Fordel]

EG vs Alliance July 12th, that's a fun game.

[Fordel]

Ahh there's the Liquid I know. 

[Rasix]

DK is such an exciting team to watch.  

Nice finish to that game, however.

[Thrawn]

EG vs Alliance July 12th, that's a fun game.

That game was interesting and painful to watch at the same time.  Alliance didn't deserve to win game almost entirely on the horrible plays Loda kept making.  "What, Wisp saved me at 200HP?  I better turn around and go back into this fight 1v3!" springs to mind.

[Malakili]

The International is being broadcast on ESPN 3 and WatchESPN.com.  That's pretty interesting.  I think I will watch on one of those just to tell ESPN people care.

[Rasix]

14 minute GG... fuck.

[Fordel]

They're like, fuck this Chinese Dota bullshit!