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TL:DR DH Winter thumbs down, DL Finals thumbs up. Dota 2 thumbs up, Sc2 thumbs down.
I am an avid starcraft player, I love playing the game and I spend 95% of my time playing sc2 and 5% playing dota2. I consider sc2 the better game than dota2 as well (not saying dota 2 isn't awesome though).
Today was an interesting day because there was a major dota2 finals between fnatic and navi, and later during the day a major sc2 finals between Life and Taeja. If I was to pick which finals was better, I would say that the dota 2 finals blew the sc2 one out of the water.
I'll start with the dota 2 finals first. With the new 6.79 patch appearently changing how the metagame is played, I feel like these games were exciting to watch even though it was a 3-0 sweep. Firstly, that crystal maiden carry play by puppey (I think it was puppey on maiden) was priceless. In the first game, I was laughing out loud at how farmed the crystal maiden was and how OP that made her look.
The 3rd game was also enjoyable too because of what fnatic tried to do to change up their gameplay. Even though it was a complete fail and Navi was unfazed by fnatics tricksy tactics, the 5 man gank in the beginning of the game was quite an eye opener for a casual player like me, who will most likely never do that in a pub game. ever. It really showed the amazing possibilities that a team game such as dota 2 could bring to the table strategically.
And, at the end of it all after getting sweeped 0-3, fnatic and navi shook hands and hugged it out like it was no big deal. True sportsmanship right there.
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Just breezing through some sc2 points that I was disappointed with, the newest patch supposedly nerfed widow mines so that they wouldn't be used 100% in tvz anymore. HOWEVER, Liquid'Taeja has astoundingly won 2 tvz finals in major tournaments with, guess what, widow mines. The lack of versatility in the tvz play was very disappointing to me and it went from being my favorite matchup earlier in the year to watch to being....very blande and boring to watch now.
And then there was the casters + hosts of Dreamhack and some production aspects that I was very turned off by. I have watched almost every major sc2 tournament live this year, including the last 3 dreamhack's. The first dreamhack, I was super pumped up by because Smix was in charge of doing interviews with korean players and I thought it would be cool to get a little insight into their psych during a tournament. And Nathanias had just reached the spotlight as one of the main casters at dreamhack. Being relatively new to the scene he was essentially a wildcard and I had high hopes for him. I remember facing him on ladder before he got big and he seemed like a nice guy, had a respectable mid-high masters rank on ladder, and that made me really pumped to see what he would be able to deliver this year.
Fast forward to this last dreamhack of the year, not much has changed. The interviews Smix does with the koreans, I don't even bother watching anymore. If I didn't know any better, I could make a SAFE assumption that these interviews were carbon copies of each other because the SAME questions get asked, the SAME answers get received. Then a round of applause.
And Nathanias....oh Nathanias....if wild cards could be anything in between a 2 and an king, he would be closer to a 2 in my book. My expectations had him closer to a king, so my disappointment was paramount. I am just going to be blunt here as there is not really any other way to sugercoat it, but his casting is just bland. It's like a salad without dressing, without any eggs, cheese, meat, or any other toppings you would put in it. It is just green leafy salad. I don't want to say more negative things about him though because I think what he is doing is admirable so I will leave it at that.
Lastly, the fricken GD music. I was pumped to hear these electronic dance music songs in the beginning of the year, when they were still fresh and not overplayed. I though hell, it's about time this tournament gets some good music. Fast forward to now, the same fricken GD songs are played every single time, after every victory at dreamhack I feel like it's always a swedish house mafia song, Allesso's "If I lose myself" has been played at EVERY single dreamhack tournament this year. I am convinced that they are using the same exact playlist for winning ceremonies, commercial breaks, and whatever else they use music for. Hell, Darude's sandstorm....it's almost 15 years old, I appreciate a blast to the past when it is played once, or even twice. But when it's played 5+ times in the same year, it just gets old. and boring
 
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your Country52797 Posts
That's nice.
I found the finals amazing to watch (at least, what I managed to catch) so I think you are really a dota 2 player that pretends to like starcraft.
Also I love how you talk about the amazing games in the dota tournament and not the amazing games in the sc2 tournament
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whaaaaaat?
Did you even watch the sc2 portion of dreamhack?
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On December 01 2013 09:51 The_Templar wrote:
That's nice.
I found the finals amazing to watch (at least, what I managed to catch) so I think you are really a dota 2 player that pretends to like starcraft.
Also I love how you talk about the amazing games in the dota tournament and not the amazing games in the sc2 tournament
well ive only played about 150 games of dota 2 and only 6k of sc2, so ya I think my opinion is a bit biased towards dota 2.
ANd that's my point, I just didn't think the games in the sc2 tournament (the ones i saw, and the tvz games) were that amazing compared to the dota 2 games
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haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
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i only watched a few games sc2, so i dont know a lot about the overall tournament. But boy, do i disagree with what you say.
I dont have as much games played in sc2. I never even played dota 2.
But this tournament was a good tournament. Compared to what i was used to before i stepped a bit away from sc2, this was totally great. Casters improved compared to a year ago. Overall level seemed to have risen.
Aside from that, i don't know how you'd want to compare the 2 games in terms of 'amazingness' objectively. That just seems total nonsense to me. Except of course if you're comparing the effect games had on you personally. In that case, point taken and i wish you best of luck in dota 2.
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The current MMMM meta is still way more entertaining than the meta at the height of the Broodlord+Investor era of last year, even if it lacks some diversity.
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today was the first time i heard nathanias a lot and i think him and apollo were great.
the shitting on casters just never ends
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Personally I don't think casters are nearly as important in Dota 2 as they are in SC2. There aren't any that I think are great and I wouldn't turn a match on or off because of the caster (unless Purge starts casting), whereas I might do that for SC2.
I'm also not really sure why you wrote it like this. At first glance it looks like you are comparing the two parts of the event but your whole discussion of Dota 2 is about the games and not the production while most of your complaints about SC2 were about the production.
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You have no idea how badly I wanted Life to do a 5H timing.
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Guess he likes dota2 more so the games got him hooked, while the sc2 games were meh for him so he focused on other aspects instead. Which is perfectly fine opinion I guess, but it's kinda weird that he compared 2 different things using completely different parameters.
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I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ.
On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time...
There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me?
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On December 01 2013 10:33 PineapplePizza wrote:I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ. Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals. Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time... There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me?
http://www.twitch.tv/dreamhackql/b/483915210
The final day had barely no breaks so great watch. Especially the finals (skip to 10:05 for them). I dunno about crowd and how big the auditorium is but it seemed pretty packed at the finals, and the stream view was about 13k. Pretty high for quakelive.
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Yes you are right in some points here.
Smix was really annoying, not only asking the same questions over and over again, but also using the same words and expressions. Really bad host imo.
I don't like Nathanias as a caster but I guess it's personal preference.
Darude's first appearence was like a funny/troll thing but I guess people didn't get it and thought it was serious... hence poor guy got zero love from the crowd. His show at the main stage later seems to be decent tho.
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On December 01 2013 10:20 Yorbon wrote:
i only watched a few games sc2, so i dont know a lot about the overall tournament. But boy, do i disagree with what you say.
I dont have as much games played in sc2. I never even played dota 2.
But this tournament was a good tournament. Compared to what i was used to before i stepped a bit away from sc2, this was totally great. Casters improved compared to a year ago. Overall level seemed to have risen.
Aside from that, i don't know how you'd want to compare the 2 games in terms of 'amazingness' objectively. That just seems total nonsense to me. Except of course if you're comparing the effect games had on you personally. In that case, point taken and i wish you best of luck in dota 2.
Well I am glad that other people found the tournament enjoyable to watch. I was comparing the effect the games had on me personally, that is a great way to put it. It's pretty impossible to compare dota 2 and sc2 otherwise
On December 01 2013 10:23 Jerubaal wrote:
Personally I don't think casters are nearly as important in Dota 2 as they are in SC2. There aren't any that I think are great and I wouldn't turn a match on or off because of the caster (unless Purge starts casting), whereas I might do that for SC2.
I'm also not really sure why you wrote it like this. At first glance it looks like you are comparing the two parts of the event but your whole discussion of Dota 2 is about the games and not the production while most of your complaints about SC2 were about the production.
I just wrote this to express my own opinion, not to proove something or argue that one game is better than the other. Just to voice certain things that I found distasteful. I usually mute the sc2 casters whenever I watch the games because of the amount of information I find them to say that, although isn't incorrect, doesn't point out the actual insight of what the decision was behind the action which is where the true gem of sc2 lies. They just voice over a lot of actions at the surface.
I don't mute dota 2 casters simply because although they do a similar job compared to sc2 casters in terms of content, there are 10 heroes out on the map that is hard to keep track of (item progression, farm, what they are doing) and I actually find them helpful because they try their best to cycle through what all the heroes are building towards which helps me understand the team's game plan
On December 01 2013 10:36 silvana wrote:
Yes you are right in some points here.
Smix was really annoying, not only asking the same questions over and over again, but also using the same words and expressions. Really bad host imo.
I don't like Nathanias as a caster but I guess it's personal preference.
Darude's first appearence was like a funny/troll thing but I guess people didn't get it and thought it was serious... hence poor guy got zero love from the crowd. His show at the main stage later seems to be decent tho.
ahhhhh they shoulda made Darude's role more apparent. I thought they were being 100% serious about it
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
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I missed the Dota2 finals but yesterday's games were exciting. From what I read on the LR thread the finals were kind of a let down though. I did catch the SC2 finals though, and those were some exciting games I definitely enjoyed. Maybe I enjoyed them more because I haven't been watching much sc2 and am therefore not tired of seeing the same thing all the time but regardless it was enjoyable.
On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
There was quake? I missed it? Noooo
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On December 01 2013 12:15 Plexa wrote:
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
I am by no way dissing the quality of games played at the finals, I just felt for the first time in a long time where it didn't feel very satisfying to watch the dreamhack tournament games. I mean, I guess i shouldn't be dissing on the unit compositions. Really, it's the small variations that make or break the metagame that I thought would happen with the widow mine nerf that simply isn't there.
It brings a lot of stability to the matchup, but it leaves for little room in between for anything other then 3OC builds currently with the occasional 2 base pressure play. For me personally, it is getting a bit boring to watch and really hard to stay motivated to watch tvz games when I know exactly what's going to happen in every game before it even happens
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On December 01 2013 12:15 Plexa wrote:
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
From what I saw, the sc2 games were absolutely fantastic, and I agree with this assessment. Judging simply by breadth of strategy choice is a bit unfair. That also eliminates creative uses of the compositions, which is something I saw and really enjoyed from this dreamhack. Overall the games from dreamhack were great to watch and the change of sc2 over 3 years is incredible.
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I am not sure about the finals because I missed them but I felt Life's play before the Finals were really refreshing to watch, especially the games against Patience. I love how once he takes an edge, he fights to the teeth trying to keep that edge by constantly attacking and being aggressive. Much more fun than the passive SH play or passive roach hydra viper death ball play that we see other zergs use. Maybe watch those series? That's why I am a huge Life fan :D
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I sometimes wonder how much modern SC2 fans would enjoy games/tournaments from ~2 years ago.
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On December 01 2013 13:54 sns3rsam wrote:
I am not sure about the finals because I missed them but I felt Life's play before the Finals were really refreshing to watch, especially the games against Patience. I love how once he takes an edge, he fights to the teeth trying to keep that edge by constantly attacking and being aggressive. Much more fun than the passive SH play or passive roach hydra viper death ball play that we see other zergs use. Maybe watch those series? That's why I am a huge Life fan :D
I do enjoy watching pvz games 10fold more than tvz games by far, I just didn't have any patience after i saw innovation vs patience and then a half hour or so wait till the next series
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On December 01 2013 10:33 PineapplePizza wrote:I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ. Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals. Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time... There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me?
I was at DHW, I never found Quake Live, didn't even know they still ran it (if somebody knows where it was please tell me). I found Dota 2, SC2, BF4, HoN, CS GO(great games), street fighter and Fifa. I know where LoL was but never went there.
I also saw that there was some minor competitions in the company booth areas for hardware prices. Various new games, especially Ubisofts games were used for this.
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if you ever played/watched Broodwar you will realize that people have been fucking using the same composition for like 10 years ..and tvz today is so much better than broodlord infestor .. at least today's tvz the player with better multitasking and micro wins ..
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On December 01 2013 15:48 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 10:33 PineapplePizza wrote:I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ. On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals. Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time... There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me? I was at DHW, I never found Quake Live, didn't even know they still ran it (if somebody knows where it was please tell me). I found Dota 2, SC2, BF4, HoN, CS GO(great games), street fighter and Fifa. I know where LoL was but never went there. I also saw that there was some minor competitions in the company booth areas for hardware prices. Various new games, especially Ubisofts games were used for this.
I've never been to DH, but the casters said they were next to the LoL area
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Dota on a whole was awful, 3-0 3-0 3-0 3-0, from all those games perhaps 2 are worth watching, I don't know how you can say that dota was better OP. All dota games were terribly one sided and more or less boring. The event itself was enjoyable, but dota games were bad, but that's due to Dreamleague format (invite 6 teams for an online "qualifier" then have 4 teams on lan).
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On December 01 2013 18:30 goody153 wrote:
if you ever played/watched Broodwar you will realize that people have been fucking using the same composition for like 10 years ..and tvz today is so much better than broodlord infestor .. at least today's tvz the player with better multitasking and micro wins ..
It was great until broodlords+infestors came out. And now widow mines is alot more boring than bl-inf.
Generally all HotS-Units are incedibly boring.
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I lost interest because of the players. A lot of my favorite players simply don't make the finals of tournaments or even get to go to big tournaments. So it sucks.
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On December 01 2013 14:58 Smurfett3 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 13:54 sns3rsam wrote:
I am not sure about the finals because I missed them but I felt Life's play before the Finals were really refreshing to watch, especially the games against Patience. I love how once he takes an edge, he fights to the teeth trying to keep that edge by constantly attacking and being aggressive. Much more fun than the passive SH play or passive roach hydra viper death ball play that we see other zergs use. Maybe watch those series? That's why I am a huge Life fan :D I do enjoy watching pvz games 10fold more than tvz games by far, I just didn't have any patience after i saw innovation vs patience and then a half hour or so wait till the next series
I have to agree. PvZ now are more exciting as the strategies are more varied. TvZ is almost always the same (except for game 2 where Life and Taeja both tried to cheese) with 4M vs Muta+lings+banelings. It always comes down to who micros slightly better and come out on top of a game. Also, it's boring watching every game where Terran builds 2 Engineering Bays, get to 2 - 2 then 3-3 quickly and pumps out marines after marines after marines.
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This reads like you had way to much sc2 smurfett in the last couple month. Enjoy your newly found passion for a different game!^^
To smix, I think people underestimate how incredible hard it is to do translating and interviewing live at the same time, that is defnitly something that shows, and should be solved by better production value.
I hope nathanias still evolves into a better caster, he tries to get a little bit of the husky-hype going from time to time, but I agree on his overall blandness.
Other than that, those were some of the best tournament finals sc2 had in a long time. The decision of taeja to move all his widowmines into his fourth, and life`s instant reaction to sacrifice 2 mutas of his flock to detonate all the scvs that backfired hard was amazing to watch, also the "good game" in chat at the end and the perfect shot of their faces in the moment they bonded as rivals.
The perfect positioning and patience of taeja with his hellions on frost, how he adapted theough out the series to life with thors in his composition, how he exposed what Life actually was abusing all year long to make zerg seem imbah, to me it was sc2 on a new level. 
I did not tune into the dota 2 finals though, and thats because I do not enjoy mobas, even the original dota in wc3 was more of a snore fest to me. :d Maybe you stopped enjoying sc2 along the road somewhere, maybe you don`t find the subtle moves enjoyable and are a person that rather thrives on the more unstable and wild metagame-shifts you find in newly released games.
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It sounds like this was the first DotA tournament you watched in a long while, so that's where all your hype came from. 6.79 came out a while ago, and there was nothing new at Dreamhack. Compared to last week's MLG Columbus tournament, these finals were...bad. Games were terribly lopsided, the downtime between each game was excruciatingly long (I think like half an hour between a game), and somehow they dragged it over 3 days...
Not to mention that there were more casters than teams...and someone thought it was a brilliant idea to have them all casting at the same time.
If you were comparing SC2 Dreamhack to MLG Columbus (or even the Nexon tournament, with the novelty factor) you might have an argument. But the Dreamleague final was such a dud...
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On December 02 2013 10:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:
It sounds like this was the first DotA tournament you watched in a long while, so that's where all your hype came from. 6.79 came out a while ago, and there was nothing new at Dreamhack. Compared to last week's MLG Columbus tournament, these finals were...bad. Games were terribly lopsided, the downtime between each game was excruciatingly long (I think like half an hour between a game), and somehow they dragged it over 3 days...
Not to mention that there were more casters than teams...and someone thought it was a brilliant idea to have them all casting at the same time.
If you were comparing SC2 Dreamhack to MLG Columbus (or even the Nexon tournament, with the novelty factor) you might have an argument. But the Dreamleague final was such a dud...
ye it's been a while, I think i only watched like 1-2 games during MLG columbus while I was eating as well. I am a very casual dota 2 player/spectator though, the majority of my time is devoted to sc2
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Well the new widow mines are great. Because you can micro against them and life did it a lot of time. Also Nathanias was awesome nearly loosing his voice in the final. I was disapointed because i'm a life fan but Dreamhack was great.
About Smix, i think she will get feedback and improve because i agree that she ends all her senteces by : "i'm curious if" but she is not that bad. She is a great host in my opinion.
Maybe i didn't watch enough dreamhacks to see what you feel though.
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I've got to the point now where if navi is playing at the same time as one of my favorite sc2 players I'll watch the navi game first every time. It's not that Sc2 is bad just that dota 2 has a lot more variety (although I still find big team fights as confusing as hell sometimes). I didn't feel like tobi's rampant enthusiasm meshed very well with gd studio guys' dry humor in terms of the casting and the series were pretty all one-sided this dreamhack though.
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EPT
