Strategy Over Skill: Alliance Ascendant - Page 4

On December 02 2014 04:00 bagels21 wrote:


IIRC you had that great post on how Alliance drafted, really helped me understand their strat when it first became clear

On December 02 2014 08:28 Veles wrote:
I started skimming a bit near the end so I may have missed something, but imo this article overlooks some of Alliance's innovation. Alliance was by far the most dominant team in TI history, and they demonstrated an unrivaled understanding of the game. The key to their victory was an understanding of the offlane, a unique dual core style with unconventional 2,3 roles, buybacks, roshan, and of course the drafting that made it all work.

I won't comment on the drafting as I lack the competitive experience.

Alliance did have greedier supports than the competition, with EGM heavily favoring halberd naga/abba, but this isn't the defining element of ti3 alliance. "Greedy" supports and careful farm distribution is really a feature of post ti3 dota, and it is one that is still developing.

Bulldog and s4 were the bigger anomalies at the time. Dual core wasn't uncommon but alliance invented the greedy offlane. For the first ~8 minutes of the game, bulldog disrupted the enemy support pulls and keep track of them to prevent surprise rotations. This is another reason alliance supports found themselves wealthier than their opponents. These 8 minutes were enough to acquire a midas, which would prompt a rotation to the jungle. I don't remember if bulldog bought the midas when he was playing LD, but that was his progression with NP.

His LD play was more interesting because it was a more precise, timing push orchestrated by the entire team. Once bulldog left the offlane, his team transitioned him to top farm priority. Despite the consistency of this strategy, everyone was caught off guard when the offlane LD reappeared with radiance at ~18 minutes and the deathpush began.

Bulldogs contribution can't be understood without remembering the old offlane, and alliance's support play needs to be considered in the context of the "old" chen/enchantress. The recent changes to pushing and kill gold/xp can make us forget that chen used to be one of the strongest heroes in the game due to his contributions between 10-25 minutes. More so than egm's greedy style, it was Akke's junglers that either bought time for Alliance's cores, or worked together with the radiance bear to create the ultimate deathball.


Buybacks and Roshan
During TI3, alliance's crushing victories were the result of their tactical understanding. Game after game, teams would over extend during midgame teamfights and fall flat after teamwiping to an s4 buyback. Watching a modern game of c9 dota, you are likely to see 2-3 heroes swiftly execute a gank and then immediately blink/tp away. TI3 was a cruder time when teams when full "CIS" and generally preferred to press the advantage rather than safely escape after securing a kill/objective. Alliance abused these tendencies to decisively win a teamfight and take control of the game. The memorable examples of this are fights where a team commits heavily to killing an s4 puck before he can use any spells, but are hopelessly out of position when he buys back and reengages.

Buybacks were also used to retain mapcontrol during late game - something that is still done but is now punished by subsequent nerfs.

Alliance's approach to roshan was innovative in two ways: they were willing to commit everything to securing roshan and winning the pit fight, and having obtained the aegis alliance would use it to starve and outfarm their opponent. As the original article said, alliance's was able to draft lineups that "peaked later". Based on recent pro interviews, outdrafts may be even more common now due to the overall rise in skill, but during TI3 alliance got away with murder and their opponents often found themselves working on a timer.



Going back to the present, Alliances struggles can be understood by considering their old strengths.
Bulldog's unique offlane prowess has been reworked
Akke's junglers are nerfed out of the game due to secondary changes
The original, offlane/safelane dual core is outdated
Alliance no longer has a tactical advantage as ti3 gave everyone, including icefrog, a crash course in buybacks and objective gaming

On December 02 2014 09:03 bagels21 wrote:


while I agree that S4 and AB were absolutely fantastic at what they did, I don't think you really read the article in detail as you ignore a lot of what Ver discusses.

To begin with, your point about Chen is something he mentions.
Secondly, you straight up reject Ver's assertion that Alliance were ahead of their time with greedy supports. - ""Greedy" supports and careful farm distribution is really a feature of post ti3 dota, and it is one that is still developing." when the farm breakdown charts clearly illustrate how Alliance definitely had supports with more farm. Ex. Kotl for Akke, WR for EGM, the old Ogre/Lina combo they ran etc.; along with all the heroes you mention
Thirdly, almost every top team in the world had a player who could play greedy NP offlane(several teams also had LD offlane players) and as you can tell from the farm distribution charts, many other teams also gave their "3" position a ton of farm. I admit that AB's probably the best NP/LD player of all time, but there's a lot of evidence in this article that demonstrates how nuanced Alliance's strategies were. Read the whole section about mek timing/blink timing as well as how they covered for AB when he rushed midas/SB or Loda rushing drums on the hard carry so he could fight earlier.

I do agree that Alliance was ahead of their time with midgame buybacks and rosh fights, as they abused the hell out of buybacks(another Icefrog alliance nerf) and knew the importance of rosh way before most western teams did

Also, Bulldog did buy midas on bear later on, but he originally didn't(pre-armlet nerf).

"In games 2-5, Na`Vi exclusively banned Chen, Naga, KotL, and Enchantress, willingly giving up Wisp or Batrider. Thus Alliance couldn’t use their farmed support strategies because Na`Vi denied all 4 heroes they relied upon to make it work. "

Also Ver's assertion on s4's shutdown blowing up this strategy is exactly how I felt about post TI3 alliance as well

On December 02 2014 09:03 bagels21 wrote:
Secondly, you straight up reject Ver's assertion that Alliance were ahead of their time with greedy supports. - ""Greedy" supports and careful farm distribution is really a feature of post ti3 dota, and it is one that is still developing." when the farm breakdown charts clearly illustrate how Alliance definitely had supports with more farm. Ex. Kotl for Akke, WR for EGM, the old Ogre/Lina combo they ran etc.; along with all the heroes you mention

On December 02 2014 09:47 Veles wrote:


I'm not trying to deny the importance of alliance's support play, I just think that their dominating style was more defined by the offlane and buybacks. Other teams would sometimes just sacrifice the offlane with bullshit like funnik wr ancient farming (which navi still managed to win with).

Alliance may have started the trend which led to the current support role, but they were the undisputed masters of other aspects of 6.78 (until DK reflected on ti3).

My only real issue with the original post is that I think buybacks deserve their own section combined with 30 second clips of teams overextending and wiping.

On December 02 2014 04:05 theqat wrote:


prepositions in titles aren't typically capitalized. the title is correct.

http://titlecapitalization.com/