General Discussion - Page 397

Probably. When you're fighting on your last set of rax though chances like that have to be taken to win. (and Fnatic have come back from that scenario in hon before on more than one occasion with fairly similar lineups, albeit they managed to turtle for about 15 minutes longer to get a refresher on their enigma and weren't against VS/BM ults). And by that scenario I mean only 1 set of rax vs full sets.

Fnatic has also always had issues with mid QoPs. Don't ask why or how, I can't explain it. they've lost to dagon 5 QoP before. (The port of her in hon I mean, they lost like 2-19 with QoP being 15-0-0). This was in a bo3 where the game before they lost to the exact same player getting a necrobook 3 on QoP and having similar albeit not as bad results, then didn't ban her the next game and got dagon 5'd.

Still, why they put h4nni mid when he's played the least dota 2 of any of them is beyond me (though certainly he has played the most dota of them all). Especially his Puck, which kept going in at bizarre times and died solo mid to Mantis twice before level 10 AND already made a laughingstock of him months ago the last time he played dota. N0tail playing puck mid and h4nni playing ds top would likely have resulted in a more even midgame stage than they encountered, as h4nni would probably be more familiar with DS than n0tail is while n0tail's puck play would be less likely to die to Mantis mid solo (and n0tail has probably played more puck more recently than h4nni has, as h4nni never played the port in hon for a single competitive game while n0tail played it for 20 competitive games straight before moving onto s2 imba heroes). H4nni missing his silence so often was a little... weird. H4nni on ds or enigma would've made more sense to me.

I missed the drafting stage, but Next.kz managed to pick up one of fnatic nova's favorite heroes in VS which was also a very strong counter to enigma and likely a better complement to Riki than Veno was.

I found it funny that the people being criticized the most heavily were playing the roles they should have been most comfortable with (or were originally competitive dota players). Fly is fnatic's enigma player and the only change in hon was that his ult has a longer cooldown ( 3 minutes at all levels, this may help explain to people why he was so hesitant to use it)and h4nni should know how to play Puck against QoP mid. While Nova_/N0tail/Era were all playing heroes they've probably only ever played since they switched to dota 2 a few weeks ago.

Not they they did perferctly - n0tail farmed extremely well on DS but never had enough mana to wall and vacuum during the early critical team fights and later on the opposing team had bkbs up for his wall, and it felt like his farm wasn't used effectively after that. (Force staff? An item with hp might have helped prevent him from getting picked off later on as he died before being able to pipe every occasion. Vanguard, Sange, etc. all the same price as he bought it full and still had at least 1k gold left over. He could've gotten a reaver instead and gone for a heart). The early pipe was nice but he got focused to death before popping it in teamfights or popped it after everyone else was dead or all magic ults were used. His walls also seemed to be desparation walls, never in quite the right places or at quite the right times - but he died after throwing them pretty much immediately in most team fights.

Nova's veno ulted bkb'd heroes more than once, and it should be noted that nova never played veno before switching to dota 2 and usually was in the hard support role (in the sense of CM/VS/WD who never really are able to farm when used as supports while his role as veno put him into a position of picking up farm just from counter ward pushing, which he probably used for wards and then upon realizing he had 2k bought a force staff from habit).

Era was effectively shut down by counter wards being placed during pushes on more than one occasion, to which he should've caught onto their use after the first time. This and he his lack of bkb are likely why he seemed to make small difference in later teamfights.

I look forward to their future performances but they definitely haven't adapted quite yet to their switch. For only having played the game for a few weeks / a few days (in h4nni's case) their performance was probably what should have been expected. Their unfamiliarity with smoke showed when Fly died needlessly at mid after they lost mid melee rax - he didn't need to come out that far to farm with Enigma. Their unfamiliarity with dota's altered buyback system showed as well, only one of their players bought back at all despite it clearly being a turtle team vs pushing team scenario during the midgame. (VS aura/BM aura, necrobook3, etc vs Enigma's skillset/Veno wards/DS ult) and dota buyback's being cheaper than hon buybacks with fewer penalties.

As team Fnatic seemed a little uncertain at times about item choices - Fly had 2200 gold at one point early game and was clearly trying to decide whether to get a mek or blink, then finally settled on mek when blink seems like it would've been better as fnatic was in desparate need of initiation or counter initiation to the ES and QoP - even though this only really became apparent a few minutes after he got the mek and they were wiped even with the mek (and can also be blamed partially on h4nni who bought a blink dagger then used it pretty much only to escape and missed every silence). Then Fly got a bkb, then finally a blink. H4nni got a 5 man dream coil off before Enigma had a blink dagger to take advantage of it, and this was after they had lost their melee rax.

Puppey seemed to be pointing the item uncertainty out in that even though they weren't very far behind gold wise (about 3k) or xp-wise (5k) their item choices put them at a needless disadvantage, as at least 6k of their gold was spent on BKB for Enigma (against 2 low CD superior magic ults) and a force staff for DS. Right after he pointed this out they lost their melee rax. Veno might have had a force staff as well, he said it but Tobi didn't click on veno for the last 20-30 minutes of the game or show inventory. Fnatic really likes force staff as an item but it seems odd that they got 1, let alone 2 that game (force staff is considerably better in hon as it gives +strength is the only logic I can find). It's only use seemed to be pushing people away from necro book minions or over fissures. Also era going diffusal - ogre axe - diffusal - bkb was a little weird as he desperately needed survivability vs the magic damage of next.kz AND he wasn't even out of diffusal charges.