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On January 18 2015 03:39 MuazizTremere wrote:
Maybe because the article, when it was posted, discussed a tournament that finished 17 months earlier and that most of the unique strategy-elements that made Alliance so succesfull in TI3 are obsolete now?
Obsolete? Ha. You pretty much don't understand Dota.
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On January 18 2015 03:41 TMG26 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 03:39 MuazizTremere wrote:
Maybe because the article, when it was posted, discussed a tournament that finished 17 months earlier and that most of the unique strategy-elements that made Alliance so succesfull in TI3 are obsolete now?
They are not obsolete. They are just used by everyone.
It's not 'meta' currently to ratdota, otherwise someone like Axe wouldn't be a top pick/ban in almost every game. The way Alliance played the game wasn't exactly new, it was just a very refined way of playing keep away and map control. Something that the article doesn't talk about is that Alliance heavily benefited from alot of things patch/meta wise that helped them play this style of play, and once they were forced to adapt or lose, that was when they pretty much fell apart.
For example, Alliance pretty much always got draft advantages because of Lone Druid/Armlet interaction for a long time, and then always got a free draft win because of Wisp against Eastern teams. Not saying that it's their fault, but they got real lucky for awhile that Lone Druid was such a strong hero for quite sometime and they just happen to have the best LD player on the planet outside of maybe Burning when he played the hero quite alot (and even Burning was a more farm oriented LD). It was a combination of fortune and skill for them to put together such an impressive string of wins together, just like many other teams (Chinese teams at TI2 for example came in with a massive meta knowledge advantage because of the expanded hero pool, while Western teams were still stuck on the AM/Natures Prophet/Night Stalker meta of early DotA 2 beta).
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the article does not focus heavily on rat dota.
the article focuses heavily on farm priority amongst the team, and how alliance were farming their supports earlygame more than other teams, which led to them having more midgame impact. havent properly read this in a long time, but did skim read just to double check myself it wasnt focusing on ratdota, so hopefully im not talking bollocks 
I also agree that the ideas discussed here are not obsolete at all, they are just often standard nowadays.
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On February 10 2015 21:19 superstartran wrote:
Alliance pretty much always got draft advantages because of Lone Druid/Armlet interaction for a long time,
The TI domination was long before armlet bear. [A] won back in the day because people got gold slower and they spread the map before anyone knew how to deal with it to make the games take even longer so that they could get Bulldog up to carry levels of farm after starting him in the offlane. Ganks were riskier because of less passive gold and less kill reward, so teams just had to try and push against them without an advantage and they lost due to defenders advantage (until teams figured out real hard push teams that can overcome defenders advantage on equal farm). The meta is completely different now, people are ganking all of the time because it gets you so much gold now with less risk. You see kill hungry carries coming into popularity like juggs, slark and storm spirit. The mentality has shifted from farm and gank on the side if possible, to gank for farm. It is really cool to see how Ice Frog is constantly making DOTA faster and more exciting!
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On February 11 2015 00:27 theaxis12 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 21:19 superstartran wrote:
Alliance pretty much always got draft advantages because of Lone Druid/Armlet interaction for a long time, The TI domination was long before armlet bear. [A] won back in the day because people got gold slower and they spread the map before anyone knew how to deal with it to make the games take even longer so that they could get Bulldog up to carry levels of farm after starting him in the offlane. Ganks were riskier because of less passive gold and less kill reward, so teams just had to try and push against them without an advantage and they lost due to defenders advantage (until teams figured out real hard push teams that can overcome defenders advantage on equal farm). The meta is completely different now, people are ganking all of the time because it gets you so much gold now with less risk. You see kill hungry carries coming into popularity like juggs, slark and storm spirit. The mentality has shifted from farm and gank on the side if possible, to gank for farm. It is really cool to see how Ice Frog is constantly making DOTA faster and more exciting!
What? Armlet Bear was being abused left and right by Alliance well before TI. It wasn't until like late May in 2013 when they nerfed the Armlet interaction on the Bear, and during the months of April/May they were absolutely unstoppable because giving up LD (during Armlet nonsense) meant Alliance would just auto win a lane, or if you banned LD you'd be giving up Wisp or Natures Prophet, heroes that Alliance had something like a ridiculous 90% win rate on IIRC.
They were extremely fortunate that they played in a meta that heavily favored their playstyle, where you only needed one player to be a play maker on the map while your supports could farm safely and deny enemy offlaners heavily. Yes, it took extreme discipline and skill to pull it off, but there were quite a few instances where it was obvious that Alliance would fall apart in any other kind of meta (which they did as soon as the new patches came into play). The article paints a picture that Alliance were tactical geniuses of some sort, when that's the farthest thing from the truth. The multi-core style Alliance was playing was played by other teams in the past (such as TEG, old old old complexity during CAL dota days, DTS, and various other old school teams).
Did they refine the style of avoiding fights and playing for objectives? Sure. I'll give them that much credit. It was extremely well executed. But it's not like they were tactical geniuses that overcame a lack of skill on their team. People tend to forget that outside of Bulldog (who by far had the least experience and weakest hero pool), the rest of the team consisted of some seriously well rounded players. Akke has been a godly support player forever (was on the old SK in 2008 that dominated the scene), S4 was a highly talented player from HoN already, and EGM was already a solid upcoming player from Druidz. And as much shit Loda gets, he's still one of the most consistent performers on the 1 position that has a gigantic effective hero pool. His flexibility lies in his ability to play so many different heroes with different playstyles, not just specializing in a certain type of hero as many of the Chinese 1 position players do.
It's silly to think that Alliance wasn't a team comprised of supremely talented players, because in truth they really were. A combination of great veteran players and talented upcoming players. By far from top to bottom they were the most talented team at TI3 outside of Na'vi and possibly LGD (who was still stuck in 4 protect 1 meta) or iG (who have toxic ass Chuan and Zhou was playing like hot garbage).
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On February 16 2015 02:59 superstartran wrote:
The article paints a picture that Alliance were tactical geniuses of some sort, when that's the farthest thing from the truth. The multi-core style Alliance was playing was played by other teams in the past (such as TEG, old old old complexity during CAL dota days, DTS, and various other old school teams).
Did they refine the style of avoiding fights and playing for objectives? Sure. I'll give them that much credit. It was extremely well executed. But it's not like they were tactical geniuses that overcame a lack of skill on their team. People tend to forget that outside of Bulldog (who by far had the least experience and weakest hero pool), the rest of the team consisted of some seriously well rounded players. Akke has been a godly support player forever (was on the old SK in 2008 that dominated the scene), S4 was a highly talented player from HoN already, and EGM was already a solid upcoming player from Druidz. And as much shit Loda gets, he's still one of the most consistent performers on the 1 position that has a gigantic effective hero pool. His flexibility lies in his ability to play so many different heroes with different playstyles, not just specializing in a certain type of hero as many of the Chinese 1 position players do.
It's silly to think that Alliance wasn't a team comprised of supremely talented players, because in truth they really were. A combination of great veteran players and talented upcoming players. By far from top to bottom they were the most talented team at TI3 outside of Na'vi and possibly LGD (who was still stuck in 4 protect 1 meta) or iG (who have toxic ass Chuan and Zhou was playing like hot garbage).
The article doesn't say they were/are tactical geniuses, it says they had ONE tactical genius insight. The strategy in itself (as refined as it was, to a point where no team had taken it before) is genius. The article limits itself to that strat.
Also, you yourself are saying they were not the most talented team (even if they were close). The point of the article is exactly that: they were not the most talented team, yet they were the team who won. And except for the grand finals, they were the team who DOMINATED, even LGD or iG who you say are possibly more talented. Na'Vi, a team you acknowledge as being more talented than [A], put up a good fight, but in the end [A]lliance still won. That's the "strategy over skill".
Also, I'm surprised that after this there are people who still think Alliance won thanks to the rat dota, or that they even invented it. They were good at it, but like the article says, they won because they could overcome it's main disadvantage, together with a couple more disadvantages.
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Huge YS logo is blocking the sentences when reading on tablets!
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EPT
