DOTA2

[Johny Cee]

$17 million!

Also, prize distribution is out and it is flatter than last year.  Everyone goes home with money this year!  (for last couple slots, it is over 50k)  Wildcard starts in less than a week!

Link:  http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/news/31831-prize-distribution-format-and-schedule-of-ti5-released

[Fordel]

MVP vs Archon, that game 2 

[Chimpy]

MVP vs Archon, that game 2 

That was the best thing so far today.

[Fordel]

It was SO weird. I don't think I've ever seen teams call each others 'bluffs' so hard before.

[Johny Cee]

Noob stream doesn't look like it was up for the wildcards, but here it is:  http://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_newcomer/

Sounds like it is only Purge + a new guy casting one match a day?  That's bullshit.  As someone with a low 4K pub MMR (ie, definitely not a noob), I greatly enjoyed the noob steam last year.  More entertainment value, less serious business.  Blitz is in a regular casting group, not sure what Pyrion/Shane are up to.

[Chimpy]

MVP vs Vega game 2 and 3 were quite nuts.

[Johny Cee]

Best of the wild card games, with links to where you can watch it: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/3erjvk/the_best_3_games_of_day_0_wild_cards_spoilerfree/

MVP vs Vega game 2
MVP vs Archon game 2
CDEC vs Vega game 1


Also, the Dota client is very good for watching replays and include your choice of commentary...  though sometimes you might get spoiled a bit by how the matches are listed (in play order, so the final matches will obviously spoil you on who gets that far).

[K9]

Noob stream doesn't look like it was up for the wildcards, but here it is:  http://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_newcomer/

Sounds like it is only Purge + a new guy casting one match a day?  That's bullshit. 

Yeah, I wish there was more, but to be fair Purge is casting with ODPixel who's pretty great. They're also the pair that had to cast the 3hour C9 vs SKFZ game a while back, which is almost worht watching just to see how the two of them manage to sustain casting for so long in a game that spends the best part of 100 minutes going NOWHERE 

[Megrim]

IG vs fnatic game 2

What's that you say? A TA with two rapiers?

[Johny Cee]

Navi vs. MVP game 1:  So I heard you like team fights?

[Johny Cee]

Navi vs C9 game 1:  4 kills before the start of the game

[Trippy]

That game was epic.

[Johny Cee]

That game was epic.

Just started watching it before the wife gets home.  At 7 kills by 2 minutes, dual mids, C9 already roamed the other support for a gank, this is just fucking off the wall.

[Fordel]

I'm kind of amazed at how many games have been just total non-stop aggression. We aren't even at elimination games yet! 

[Hoax]

Yeah even if you don't play DOTA2 this TI is for sure worth watching, quite quite enjoyable video games.

[Fordel]

The second game of VG vs EG was uhh... less competitive then the tournament standard. 

[Rasix]

Some of the in meta heroes are a bit annoying, but at least there's no Death Prophet death-balls and the lack of Alchemist and Weaver has been welcome.

Games have been fun to watch as always, and it's pretty interesting that Valve lured over Chobra for this.  The twitch chat for this is literally the worst I've ever seen.  Holy moley.

I like watching Secret play.  Their execution is something to behold.  Still seems like the Chinese out draft everyone.   I wish I knew something about the meta, as not watching for a year has me wondering where the hell some champs went and why all of the sudden Leshrac is S tier.

[Johny Cee]

MVP.Hot Six v EG game 1: Ridiculous.  Wombo combos, immortal Leshracs, ahgs on Naga and Tinker.

[Chimpy]

So I don't play dota and only really watched TI last year before this tournament but I take it faceless void got a mega nerf since last year?

[Johny Cee]

So I don't play dota and only really watched TI last year before this tournament but I take it faceless void got a mega nerf since last year?

Not really.  The major nerf was that his ult (Black Hole, the big dark globe that everyone gets stuck in) no longer disables passives.  That is, heroes caught in it still have the benefit of auras and evasion and what not.  Dota has alot more variety in heroes and hero abilities, so small tweaks and meta shifts are more likely to leave a hero out in the cold.

I'm assuming alot of teams are sitting on their A strategies.  No reason to show those until after group stages.  Group stages last year were full of crazy shit too.

[Johny Cee]

MVP vs IG game 1:  I heard you like rapier?

Edit:

There were THREE fucking rapiers.  I saw a crit for 2200 damage.

[Chimpy]

Febby's Io is just ridiculous. MVP Phoenix is definitely the most fun to watch overall for me so far.

[Chimpy]

OMG a match where Queen of Pain was not picked or banned!

[Johny Cee]

Febby's Io is just ridiculous. MVP Phoenix is definitely the most fun to watch overall for me so far.

FYI about Febby:

He was the guy that talked Blitz into going to Korea, to join Febby's team and give pro Dota a shot.  Blitz was delayed with visa issues or something, ended up getting there right before NSL (big Korean tourney).  Their team got knocked out, Febby decided that there was no future in that team, grabbed a slot with another team.  The original team disbands, and Blitz was stuck in Korea with no team...  which is when Purge organized/funded the guys to go to Korea and form Zephyr.  

Febby and Blitz have since made peace, but it has already been alluded to in Blitz casts.  It's also the source of the Purge/Blitz internet memes ("Power of friendship" etc)

[Johny Cee]

EG vs VG game 1: Wooooow, nail-biter.

[Rasix]

Secret just got dumpstered by Koreans.   

[Chimpy]

I wish I had watched that whole game instead of watching LGD/fnatic for 25 minutes. But I had not gotten a chance to see LGD yet.

[Rasix]

You just know what you're getting with LGD.  They're solid, and will likely end up being in the finals.  I don't find them very compelling to watch.

[Kail]

Dota has alot more variety in heroes and hero abilities, so small tweaks and meta shifts are more likely to leave a hero out in the cold.

Yeah, just finished watching the July open for Heroes of the Storm and the difference between the two is crazy.  It was getting depressing towards the end, watching the commentators repeat "Team B is going to pick Jaina, team A goes with the Kael, team B picks up Johanna, team A with the Muradin, now we pick two of the three viable healers and fill the other four slots with Zagara, Azmodan, Butcher, Falstad, Kerrigan, Tassadar or Tyrande depending on who's not banned aside from Zeratul who definitely is."  In a game where there are only thirty heroes and ten are picked in each game, the number of heroes who saw less than two games is depressing.

It does always throw me off, though, coming back to this game for like a month every year and seeing "nope, now Puck is never picked and suddenly it's all about the Bloodseeker, man"  Wish there was some way of keeping up with this other than spending the whole year reading patch notes for a game I'm not playing or spending the first half of the International going "why is nobody picking Naga anymore?"

[Fordel]

Naga is totally being picked!


The main thing is the 'meta' seems to play such a huge effect on what teams pick. Things are useless and broken until someone picks them and wins by a landslide then everyone remembers that 'oh right Puck isn't shit!'. A lot of times there's no logical reason a hero isn't picked other then teams aren't picking them.

[Johny Cee]

Naga is totally being picked!


The main thing is the 'meta' seems to play such a huge effect on what teams pick. Things are useless and broken until someone picks them and wins by a landslide then everyone remembers that 'oh right Puck isn't shit!'. A lot of times there's no logical reason a hero isn't picked other then teams aren't picking them.

There is that effect, sure...  Mostly its that a tiny change in thing A makes thing B work better, which means that Hero C is viable and then Hero D combos with C, and all of a sudden Hero E which was popular is countered by Hero D, so.......... etc etc etc

So:

No one buys Euls.  Keeps getting tiny buffs, still no one buys.  Then, Euls tornado does damage so an enemy can't queue up Blink Dagger so Eul's becomes good for heroes with delayed stuns/nukes (SF, Lesh, Lina).  Lesh & Lina are now being picked as cores going mid, which pushes out the previous standard mid picks.  Different mid picks mean that you need to cover your support/initiator/ganking roles differently, so new heroes show up as off-laners, supports and carries.

QoP becomes better, since her escape isn't dependent on taking damage so she can escape Eul's into stun/SF ulti, etc.

[Johny Cee]

Secret v. MVP game 1:  Who was favored to win TI again?

[Rasix]

Nice that they dug up a Brent Spinner/Professor Oak impersonator for the analyst desk.  Why not just stick with DOA and the previous analysts?  They did fine.  I guess it's nice that it's not Sheever?

[Chimpy]

Second time today all streams have just died instantly at the same moment. 

[Ceryse]

You'd think this wouldn't be an issue in this day and age. Still, the stomp in game one of CDEC vs. C9 was fun to watch.