EPTDire pick first.
Dire
Phantom Assassin (Pub standard) --- Gyrocopter (me, frustrated by recent losses on supports)
Templar Assassin (strong mid) --- Death Prophet (mid who doesn't need to win lane)
Sniper --- Legion Commander
Crystal Maiden --- Drow Ranger (for our two ranged cores)
Chaos Knight --- Treant Protector (because we really need a support)
I start on a 14-0 stomp, before losing steam to finish 17-3-12. Clearly a result of my superior play, right? Nope. The other team's draft was terrible; I happened to counter their team with my first pick, which my team drafted around pretty well. Consider:
Templar Assassin - Relies on Refraction for tank; squishes to Rocket Barrage
Chaos Knight - Neutered in teamfights by Flak and Calldown
Sniper - Went for Mask of Madness glass cannon build, and no Shadow Blade, so he squishes if I get in on him. Therefore, loses to Eul's Scepter.
Crystal Maiden - Solo support with no inherent tank, so she squishes easily all game. Loses to Eul's Scepter because I can just run her down even through her disables, and also does nothing to BKB.
Phantom Assassin - Squishes early to magic damage, and vulnerable to MKB later, against one of the few heroes with both early magic burst and a core MKB. Also, she never completed her BKB, so she remained vulnerable to Eul's as a counter to blink strike.
The obvious problem here is that I need to get Eul's early and still farm BKB-MKB while also phys-tanking up so I can stay in their faces without dying myself. But this is where the rest of the draft comes to my aid:
Drow Ranger - Aura meant Eul's didn't need to compete with a farm-accelerating item; also, Flak does significant damage earlier than it usually would. So the Drow pick helped my itemization problems.
Treant Protector - Living Armor reduced the need to tank up early on. Without the armor, I'd have died at least twice, and lost at least two kills.
After all that, why didn't I manage a perfect game? I had the tools to solo kill any of them, but meld strike into multiple crits could still bring me down, which Chaos Knight managed with Phantasms during a high ground disengage because of TA Traps. Also, I took way too long to finish my BKB, which would have turned off the gap closers on their crit heroes. The remaining death, I'm fine with, because I got off enough damage on the way down that they traded 1-for-4 and lost barracks.
In summary, I think the early game stomp was mainly the result of my decision to buy Eul's, the other team's failure to deliberately counter me, and the stacked draft, rather than my performance, which was merely good enough to take advantage.
I would appriciate it if you adress how everything was laned because that makes alot of difference imo.![[image loading]](https://dotametrics.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/1v1matchupchart.png)
