Team Secret left Frankfurt in a position of renewed strength. Their second place finish, together with their two previous LAN wins, was proof that the reconstituted roster was poised to carry on the dynasty that the TI5 era squad had founded—and subsequently tarnished with TI5’s disappointing early exit. The story since they left Germany in late November, however, has thrown the team’s dominance into question. Having forgone participation in The Summit and online-only tournaments like Captain’s Draft 3.0 and the qualifiers for WePlay Season 3 has only left them with a paltry 39 games on record since the previous Major.

A small sample size with a young patch casting a backdrop on half of the events Secret has played can excuse an overall losing record of 16 wins and 23 losses, but on the days leading up to Shanghai it also does them no favors. With enough time to digest the nuances of 6.86, Secret comes to China to bring their brand of dominance to the world stage as they did in the fall. What should be a storyline of sealing the deal and getting the team over their final hurdle to greatness is, as it was at the beginning of the fall season, a drive to validate.

Gameplay

Much of the success of Secret this year has come off solid play from the team’s core position players: EternalEnvy, w33, and Misery. Winning Envy’s lane and securing him a good start is integral to Secret’s early game plan. As teams tend to favor a dedicated roaming support or a 2-1-2 layout, Puppey and pieliedie generally do not work in aggressive tandem during the laning stage, instead going for defensive heroes like Tusk and Dazzle, and signature picks like pie’s disruptive roaming Bounty Hunter and and Puppey’s early pushing Chen. Of the other cores, w33 largely holds his own with strong laners like Invoker or his own take on Earth Spirit, which he brings mid. His strong mechanical skill allows w33 to succeed in a vacuum and rarely relies on rotations as a crutch to winning his lane. In the offlane, Misery’s broad hero pallette is a smoke screen to the draft. Be it patch dandies like Faceless Void and Lone Druid, sturdy mainstays like Dark Seer and Slardar, or pocket picks like Timbersaw and Nyx Assassin, much of Misery’s success comes from his familiarities of play and execution with his veritable rogue’s gallery rather than laning success.

Team Secret is not an early game, roll over kind of team. Envy’s hero pool favors hard carries like Anti Mage and Ember Spirit over more active early game carries. As a result, the rest of the team fills the gap with space creation to ensure that Envy’s mid game blossoms. w33 typically leads the charge, with mid game teamfight initiators like Invoker, Puck, Earth Spirit, and Magnus supplemented by teamfight ultimates from either pie or Puppey, and pick off abilities like Walrus Punch, Fiend’s Grip, and Track. Misery is unfortunately often left high and dry and uses the mid game to make the best out of a bad situation by either farming the jungle or coming in after the initial initiation from w33. Once late game rolls around, Secret usually has the upper hand due to their inclination of drafting well-scaling heroes and the proficiency of their cores to perform in late game scenarios.

Players

How to beat - Team Secret

The motif of Team Secret is ramping up to relevance. Aside from their matches against Mineski and Fnatic, Secret seldom wins in under 30 minutes, so collapsing the laning stage early and showing aggression with a push oriented lineup is a great strategy if you are looking to defeat them. In lieu of getting a sensible Zerg rush lineup drafted, a mid game centric team that can effectively shut down Envy’s safe laning experience and keep him on the back foot is key in paralyzing their game plan, as Envy is 1-17 when finishing with a negative kill/death score. Heroes like Death Prophet, Chen, Gyrocopter, and Razor have historically been able to get in the face of the stalwart defense set up to deflect pushes, bolstered by healers like Dazzle and Witch Doctor. If ganking Envy is too hard, cutting the legs out from under w33 by shutting down his lane is another way to lay bare Secret’s mid game and expose it to a well executed timing push. Since w33 tends to focus on mid to late game effectiveness, causing him to miss his timing on levels or items can easily create the domino effect needed for victory.

A viable, but risky, option is to take the game past the 50 minute mark. Despite Envy’s experience with late game scenarios, Secret has struggled with closing the door on games past 50 minutes since Frankfurt, losing nearly twice as often once the game goes that late. This lies in the eventual 4-protect-1 mold that Secret’s drafts form to after w33’s heroes begin to degrade in effectiveness. Out-lategaming Secret is ONLY advisable if (and only if) your team has a player that can confidently say they can out carry EternalEnvy. This, unless you have won an International or at least placed in the top three of an international LAN in the past two months, is very unlikely, and should probably just go for an early push.