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No matter the industry, there are bound to be periods of domination. In traditional sports we have recently witnessed: The Jordan Era Chicago Bulls, the late 90's - early 21st Century Yankees, the U-Conn women's Basketball program, - cough - Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds - cough - etc. Even in film there are actors and filmmakers who are able to find their stride with a chain of excellent work: Tarantino (for life!), Leo DiCaprio, Edgar Wright, John Lasseter, etc. In both worlds, pop-culture and sports, there will be disagreements on who belongs to a ‘dominating’ group and who belongs to the ‘lucky streak’ group.
Currently in the world of competitive DOTA 2, there are a clear tier of teams that are performing much better than the rest.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sYSNiKB.jpg)
Data from datDota.com, patch 6.80
Who you include in this upper echelon can be debated based on where you live (as we are all some degree of homers) and what you watch/value. Based on the amount of tournaments invited to/qualified for and recent results a few of these teams include: NaVi, Empire, The Alliance, Cloud Nine, and Evil Genuises for the “Western” teams (“Eastern” teams will be addressed in a future piece, as there are more intricacies in that scene). Over the next week I will investigate how these teams have found their way to this precipice of competitive play. In particular, I will look at what heroes are drafted and when they are drafted. I expect that these top-tier teams draft based on past performance and how comfortable they feel on certain heroes, instead of purely ‘following the meta’.
Alliance draft heroes like Batrider and Lone Druid frequently due to their comfort and experience on the heroes. Similarly Puppey on Navi drafts himself an Enigma, not because the hero is a top-tier pick, but because he is confident in his Enigma play which may throw their opponents into an unfavorable matchup. These pocket-picks are analogous to an NBA team like the Miami Heat running a ‘small-lineup’, whereby the Heat run Chris Bosh as a center with LeBron James as a power forward, surrounded by 3 ‘smaller’ perimeter shooters.
The Heat are successful at playing this lineup more-often than not because the team is: A) Familiar and comfortable in the line-up, racking up a good amount of minutes in different permutations. B) It forces the other team into awkward, or unknown match-ups. C) They have some of the best players (LeBron) in in the league. Between all the different teams and hero combinations I will go-over, it is important to recognize ‘C’ as a viable reason to a team’s success. These top-teams are filled with most of DOTA's Top-Talent (in pubs as well), and can perform under (nearly) any circumstance.
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Thank you for reading, and please feel free to comment here or leave me a message.
Next post should be coming by tomorrow centering on The Alliance (I love how it is THE Alliance, similar to how students/alumni of OSU say THE Ohio State University)
