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Drafting Blog

Blogs > aboxcar
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aboxcar
Profile Blog Joined May 2013
United States447 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 05:46:00
April 27 2015 05:42 GMT
#1
I don't play much dota anymore but I still like to talk about it. Obviously if you're going to talk about drafting, people are going to disagree with you. Bully for you

Final iG vs VG from Starladder

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1426147704
[image loading]

Any first pick hard carry (PL) should usually be counter-able. Where did iG go wrong?

Axe is fair enough: 1, it's popular and we just won; 2, axe is good enough vs PL, and since the hard carry is shown and inflexible, early picking axe won''t run into laning issues. VG may potentially pick Axe if we don't (although that could lead to exploitable weak lanes) Other possible 3 positions vs PL include DS and Tide.

Wisp is not particularly good against PL, but the pairing with Axe was used both games before this one to great effect. With a PL, the opponents likely won't pick wisp. But we do want to pick a support, and wisp can pair with lots of heroes (even non-conventional ones like gyro), in addition to the axe. If we didn't take wisp here, we could've maybe taken sand king (good vs pl), witch doctor (good vs our own axe and a strong support), or disruptor, etc.

The bans of invoker and magnus are fair. We protect our wisp and they are likely pairings with PL. iG bans 2 typical controls and then steals puck to deny it.

But Puck is the fatal pick. First of all, Puck is not a good hero. 2nd, we already had an axe and this forces us into solo core (which we do not approve of based on principle. solo core is always a drafting error in my book). Solo core means our next pick basically has to be Tiny or it will be banned before 3rd phase.

In hindsight, a better drafting approach might have been to ban offlanes. (tide, clock) We already took our 3 position, and Iceiceice is a strong player. Super is the weaker player of VG and we can counter him.

After the Tidehunter pick from VG, is the draft still salvageable? (we already consider it losing since it's solo core)
Carries that can lane against Tidehunter don't also counter PL, so if we take a laning approach (Viper, Razor, etc.) we would need Mid/supports to counter the PL. A possibility is to leave open the option to lane Axe against Tide and aggressive trilane. We can take Sven for this. (In another patch, gyro can also aggressive trilane and counter PL in late, but not this one)

In the end, iG was already committed to stealing the mid control and picking Tiny, and the rest is history.
everything that rises must converge
DucK-
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Singapore11447 Posts
April 27 2015 07:30 GMT
#2
I didn't think that they should have picked tiny either. I felt Sven was the better pick.

A little problem I think with IG draft is that the only way they can win top lane was either an aggro tri, or wisp axe lane. But wisp aggro tri isn't the strongest, and it means leaving iceiceice unchecked. A wisp axe lane means that the hero supporting your carry isn't wisp, so you don't really want to pick a tiny.

Archeon
Profile Joined May 2011
3253 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 14:14:38
April 27 2015 07:40 GMT
#3
I agree that IG did some drafting mistakes. I dont think that it was just the puck, the Rhasta pick was rather weak as well imo. I thought that Lion was clearly a better pick than Rhasta in the situation (better vs pl, slightly worse vs ta, better vs tide, better vs wd, better with axe, better with Io), puck was a quite useless pick aside from the one crucial black hole cancel and I dont see why they didnt just lane the axe against pl+wd. I guess they assumed that VG was expecting Axe to go offlane and wanted to put solo tide against it. But even if the draft is already bad with the enigma pick I dont see why you wouldnt put Puck safelane and Axe off. I guess Puck is expected to have a good lane vs PL+WD.

In general I thought the Io+tiny was okay in terms of drafting since they played Io in the lane with Axe before so VG might have suspected that it's gonna be Axe+Io in the offlane. I think IG tried to trick VG into thinking that they are going to have similar lanes.

I didnt get why they picked Io and Puck and Rhasta over ES tbh. ES is ok vs tide, good vs TA and PL and very good vs Enigma and WD. He could have been the teamfight follow up on Blink+call they looked for in Puck.Maybe they didnt want to play ES with tiny or were worried about potential dual lanes before the tide pick or an aggro tri.

If I remember right they put Axe in the jungle at first and then rotated him into the safelane. So they could have gone for another self-sufficient core like QoP (who was banned though) or Drow instead of Rhasta. Troll was also still in the pool (very good with Tiny and Io), but Chinese teams dont seem to like the troll vs pl. I think putting Axe position 4 instead of 1 and playing a core silencer would have been potentially amazing in hindsight, but I guess VG could have just gone pick a more aggressive support and go tri-lane.

I think banning super heroes here was ok, you rarely want to jump on the offlaner anyways with Io and most offlaners like clockwerk want to initiate, so if you relocate into a fight chances are that the offlaner-initiation already happened. Also the amount of offlaners that are fine vs Tiny wisp is way to big to ban them all out (Bristle, Centaur, Timber, Tide, clock, Phoenix).
low gravity, yes-yes!
xAdra
Profile Joined July 2012
Singapore1858 Posts
April 27 2015 11:49 GMT
#4
Agree that it should have been ES over Rhasta. Tiny and Rhasta give you stellar pushing powers, sure, but I can't help but feel like it was overkill and doesn't offer much more to fight PL except for hex, which has a better user in Lion in the first place.
aboxcar
Profile Blog Joined May 2013
United States447 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 16:08:21
April 27 2015 16:05 GMT
#5
I think they laned the way they did because they thought they could get more.

Laning conventionally, axe offlane, puck vs TA, tiny rhasta wisp vs tide, is certainly a (decent) option.

but they probably think that this doesn't punish enigma jungling, and puck vs TA is not that ideal.

so they lane that way to get more out of lanes, except
puck didn't do well, and we have 430 on an offlane puck...
tiny/wisp "shut down" TA but in the process shut down themselves as well
axe safelane, roaming rhasta engendered zero tempo

big "rip" as I guess we put it these days...
everything that rises must converge
Archeon
Profile Joined May 2011
3253 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 17:22:59
April 27 2015 17:18 GMT
#6
On April 28 2015 01:05 aboxcar wrote:
I think they laned the way they did because they thought they could get more.

Laning conventionally, axe offlane, puck vs TA, tiny rhasta wisp vs tide, is certainly a (decent) option.

but they probably think that this doesn't punish enigma jungling, and puck vs TA is not that ideal.

so they lane that way to get more out of lanes, except
puck didn't do well, and we have 430 on an offlane puck...
tiny/wisp "shut down" TA but in the process shut down themselves as well
axe safelane, roaming rhasta engendered zero tempo

big "rip" as I guess we put it these days...

Yeah I would have put Tiny Io mid as well, the matchup vs TA should be good and Io needs lvls, so he scales better from duals than tris.
It's more about the solo offlane Puck vs solo or dual offlane Axe. If IG went aggro dual they could have contested VG's safelane farm, so in combination with TA getting shut down as well that's a lot of pressure on Enigma and Tide, who both revolve around their big long cd ultimates and cant really carry an early midgame.
Puck on the other hand is relatively easy to shut down for WD solo early on. So even solo offlane Axe seemed to me like a better choice.
low gravity, yes-yes!
nojok
Profile Joined May 2011
France15845 Posts
April 27 2015 18:32 GMT
#7
VG ran quite a but of offlane PL, he recovers decently farmwise, going all in against PL was not that easy.

I could be very wrong but it seems to me iG lost a lot in scrims to VG and a lot of mindgames were going on.
"Back then teams that won were credited, now it's called throw. I think it's sad." - Kuroky - Flap Flap Wings!
govie
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
9334 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 19:21:58
April 27 2015 19:15 GMT
#8
My knowledge of the dota engine isnt that good, but if it is true that aghs doom denies the ability to create phantom lancer illusions and the escape to boot, then i would allways want the possibility to pick him up. Same goes for bristleback pos1 in the current meta, because aghs doom disables his back so he becomes alot easier to kill.

I think its wierd that doom isnt picked up more. Yes, its greedy but the proteams nowadays try to get an offlaner lvl6 (or blink) and rotate goldpositions with a greedy support that is more effective with the same goldfarm. In my opinion doom is an effective aghs upgrade against alot of hero's. So, if i would encounter a greedy or normal draft by our opponents with some passive overpowered abilities, i think getting doom pos4 support and a clockwerk offlane could be nice. Just switch the farmpriority after certain timings.
The two NBA teams in states with legal weed are called the Nuggets and the Blazers...
Archeon
Profile Joined May 2011
3253 Posts
April 27 2015 19:55 GMT
#9
On April 28 2015 04:15 govie wrote:
My knowledge of the dota engine isnt that good, but if it is true that aghs doom denies the ability to create phantom lancer illusions and the escape to boot, then i would allways want the possibility to pick him up. Same goes for bristleback pos1 in the current meta, because aghs doom disables his back so he becomes alot easier to kill.

I think its wierd that doom isnt picked up more. Yes, its greedy but the proteams nowadays try to get an offlaner lvl6 (or blink) and rotate goldpositions with a greedy support that is more effective with the same goldfarm. In my opinion doom is an effective aghs upgrade against alot of hero's. So, if i would encounter a greedy or normal draft by our opponents with some passive overpowered abilities, i think getting doom pos4 support and a clockwerk offlane could be nice. Just switch the farmpriority after certain timings.

I think there are 2 reasons why doom is picked up less. One is that people nowadays often play dual right-click cores with lifesteal against which doom (the spell) is less effective and Doom just doesnt bring much more to the table. A position 4 Lina f.e. does similar damage later on and does it as burst, while still having a good early game before her lvl 6.
The second one is the same reason Alch isnt picked as a #1 anymore and why people went a bit away from the position 4 jungle farmer in general more towards a roaming duo, which is rubberband.

I think Doom is mainly a good choice against lineups that is are very all in on a casting single core, which like never happens. Except maybe sometimes with Tinker.

I dont see doom ever dooming a hao PL who isnt stunned or has cd to begin with. No way he pulls that off in a teamfight.
low gravity, yes-yes!
govie
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
9334 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-27 23:40:25
April 27 2015 20:08 GMT
#10
On April 28 2015 04:55 Blackfeather wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 28 2015 04:15 govie wrote:
My knowledge of the dota engine isnt that good, but if it is true that aghs doom denies the ability to create phantom lancer illusions and the escape to boot, then i would allways want the possibility to pick him up. Same goes for bristleback pos1 in the current meta, because aghs doom disables his back so he becomes alot easier to kill.

I think its wierd that doom isnt picked up more. Yes, its greedy but the proteams nowadays try to get an offlaner lvl6 (or blink) and rotate goldpositions with a greedy support that is more effective with the same goldfarm. In my opinion doom is an effective aghs upgrade against alot of hero's. So, if i would encounter a greedy or normal draft by our opponents with some passive overpowered abilities, i think getting doom pos4 support and a clockwerk offlane could be nice. Just switch the farmpriority after certain timings.

I think there are 2 reasons why doom is picked up less. One is that people nowadays often play dual right-click cores with lifesteal against which doom (the spell) is less effective and Doom just doesnt bring much more to the table. A position 4 Lina f.e. does similar damage later on and does it as burst, while still having a good early game before her lvl 6.
The second one is the same reason Alch isnt picked as a #1 anymore and why people went a bit away from the position 4 jungle farmer in general more towards a roaming duo, which is rubberband.

I think Doom is mainly a good choice against lineups that is are very all in on a casting single core, which like never happens. Except maybe sometimes with Tinker.

I dont see doom ever dooming a hao PL who isnt stunned or has cd to begin with. No way he pulls that off in a teamfight.


doppelganger is so annoying tho

Edit: I looked it up, jutapose is disabled besides being muted and silenced. It works basically the same on bristleback or pa. The vlads/morbidmask/HotD/evasion/basher/Diffusal blade/radiance dont seem to work when the hero is doomed so PL and his passives should all be useless.
The two NBA teams in states with legal weed are called the Nuggets and the Blazers...
aboxcar
Profile Blog Joined May 2013
United States447 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-05-12 06:51:21
May 12 2015 06:45 GMT
#11
Red Bull Battle Grounds, IG vs Secret

[image loading]

Game one. This was a straight self-outdraft from iG, but we'll still look at it briefly. In Dota, I like to consider it a general rule that if hero A counters B, then B cannot counter A. (This is not strictly true. Consider the QoP DK matchup. QoP wins the lane, but DK's disable/push/tank wins the later game)

Sometimes there will be a rift between the east and west scenes, and they disagree on who counters who. For example, a while back the Europeans were picking AA to counter Dazzle, but iG was picking Dazzle to counter AA. Here is where statistics come in handy. Dotabuff usually can predict the eventual resolution, and in this case it did: the Chinese stopped picking Dazzle into AA. (But perhaps it's because they, too, draft using Dotabuff.)

Either DK is good against Drow, or Drow is good against DK. Ditto for DS and SD and Weaver. Do you see what I'm getting at? iG, please wake up.


[image loading]

Fifth and final game. This is the interesting one. After the first 3 picks, the game is more or less even, and at the same time quite set. SF v. Wisp+Tiny is playable for both sides, and in the first picks the lines are drawn.

iG bans Clockwerk and Broodmother, just like in game one, but this time S4 snatches the DS first. iG takes ES and probably already plans for him to be offlane. Secret bans another offlaner, and then iG follows suit, but then Secret picks a 2nd core, and iG reveals their "trick"-- ES is the offlane and Weaver was preparing a weak safelane for the Enigma pick.

What started out as an even game turned into a rather weak final draft. What could iG have done better? Is first pick SF just not tenable?

There are too many possible heroes to ban in the 2nd phase so maybe the fight over 3 positions is the only sensible thing, unless you are respect banning. Maybe Tide or Centaur instead of ES would've been better. Instead of Weaver, SF + Juggernaut combo is quite playable, but Dazzle + Razor (or Viper if Razor is banned) seems to prepare for that. Lifestealer is also good against Wisp Tiny DS, but again, Dazzle and Razor are insurmountable. For ranged heroes, you can't Morphling since you already have SF, Gyro was first banned. Luna might be the pick following the process of elimination...

Indeed, Secret's lineup is well-rounded. Anyone see any solutions?
everything that rises must converge
govie
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
9334 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-05-12 17:20:29
May 12 2015 11:07 GMT
#12
When they draft that io+tiny combo, you just need to stop the tiny to win most of those games in scrubpubs. I have mixed feelings about the 3rd/4th/5th pick of IG.

http://www.datdota.com/match.php?q=1464227696

3rd pick) I dont like the earthshaker offlane as 3rd pick, maybe enigma offlane 3rd pick would have been better because he can eat the ion shelled creeps or i can still play him as a support if i pick another offlaner as a 4th/5th pick. Atleast you can screw over darkseer's farm a bit, which eventually was a big problem the whole game iirc.
4th pick) Shadow demon as a pos4 support to: 1) get 2 tiny's of your own with aghs 2) to break craggy and grow on the original tiny 3) purge ion shell and buffs 4) to save hero's from relocate or counter relocate. Yes he doesnt farm efficiently as a pos4, but if AA can be pos4, shadow demon can also farm as a pos4.
5th pick) As core i really like aoe stuncombo's with the hero's i have chosen so far. I guess i would have picked centaur warrunner or slardar. Most likely centaur because he has more combo with blackhole, disruption or as a setup for witchdoctor ultimate. I think slardar would also fit this lineup, just a different approach and some differences in optimal timings.

pos 1/2
pos 5
pos 3, laning against darkseer during early game
pos 4
pos 1/2

And as for items, they didnt have a pipe. Imho pipe isin a pretty good spot now, atleast get 1 hero every draft that can & will build one pre 40 minutes. IG's draft didnt have one, or planned for a 60 minute inefficient pipe or something like that. Pipe is a really good item, you need 1 every game so you get more room to screw up and overextend without being punished for it.

Resume IG draft: ES offlane not optimal + no pipe carrier.

#scrubpubdoto4eva
The two NBA teams in states with legal weed are called the Nuggets and the Blazers...
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