Alliance Discussion - Page 41

On April 03 2015 01:04 sang wrote:

I agree, see my previous post on this page. In addition to the two games versus Secret, look at the two games vs Cloud 9 in The Summit. In game 1 they had Loda on his PA and Pajkatt on QoP and they got dominated 8 and 10 deaths respectively. Loda didn't even have a Battlefury by the end of the game and Pajkatt was forced to go BKB + Euls. Now some of that was due to Chen getting zoned by BH, but you see the theme. Game 2 was better, but Alliance put the initiators on Niqua and 7Mad while leaving Loda to play a relatively fragile Silencer and Pajkatt to play Troll Warlord.

Ultimately as you said, I think they need to figure out how to better play their dual core with Loda taking the hard carry and Pajkatt playing the initiating carry similar to how Loda plays Slardar. This means more QoP, Storm, etc for Pajkatt.

On April 07 2015 06:58 Yurie wrote:
http://www.tv6.se/esport/akke/springtime

Another blog from Akke, nothing special in it.

On April 09 2015 23:21 sang wrote:
Alliance's play in the games vs HR wasn't the best, but I didn't really like their drafts/bans/strategy. Warning, walls of text incoming:

Game One: I don't know why they draft Wisp + Tiny in the first two picks. Sure you grab your Wisp first and Alliance is good with the combo, but Loda has a huge hero pool to pair with the Wisp, they could have easily drafted Loda a different carry later in the draft when they saw how HR's draft was developing. Related to this first point, Alliance needs to understand that it is going to be very unlikely Sniper, Storm, or QoP will be available for Pajkatt by the second pick phase, he's just too damn good with those heroes. If they didn't draft Tiny in the first phase, they could have easily drafted something for Pajkatt. If not that, they could have easily drafted Wisp + Batrider in the first phase, which Alliance also plays very well. Instead, what actually ended up happening was HR banned out Batrider and then picked QoP themselves to double as a deny pick. By the time Alliance's last pick came around they really didn't have a lot of good options for Pajkatt based on HR's draft. When I saw the Invoker, it was obvious what they were trying to do, but it was highly skeptical in my opinion because the hero just doesn't scale well in the current meta.

Ultimately when they got into the game, they left Niqua on the offlane, which one might argue was a mistake because it didn't pressure Spectre at all. Meanwhile, despite the good start Pajkatt and Mad got bottom lane, they were barely able to make any ganks work with Pajkatt's Ghostwalk + Orchid and relocate. The end result of all this was also a team-fight dynamic that just didn't work. Akke got blown up by Zeus and QoP everywhere he went, which left Loda alone to die. Meanwhile Niqua's hook+cogs just got him blown up most of the time and quite frankly actually got in the way of Loda right clicking heroes. Picking Clock works best when you have a range caster who benefits from AoE such as Skywrath, Enigma, etc or a range right-clicker to take full advantage of the hero. Outside of Lion, who doesn't really need cogs to use finger, they had neither. All the while, Pajkatt had minimal right click damage and was left standing at range trying to cast spells that quite frankly don't offer a whole lot when you are burst down quickly. There was one fight in particular where Pajkatt landed a good Tornado on SB as he was charging in, it looked like Pajkatt had counter-initiated well, but ultimately what ended up happening was after the Tornado dropped, HR just ran them over.

Game Two: When Alliance opened Batrider + Skywrath I was thinking 'ok, they experimented a bit in game one, now they'll pick stuff that's more standard for them.' Then they didn't ban out Veng after first picking Batrider and seeing HR already has Slark and Zeus two heroes that do well against Bat...quite honestly this made no sense to me. Alliance finished up by picking Lycan and Windranger in the second phase. There is a reason Lycan isn't really played often - he just doesn't offer a lot in the current meta. What they were trying to do was get synergy between Lycan howl + WR focus fire similar to how they play Slardar + WR. The idea was to push towers, kill rosh and gain and early advantage with Lycan. There are a number of problems with this kind of strategy. First, howl =/= amplify damage. Amp damage is way stronger and scales better in the late game. Second, the meta just doesn't support super aggressive pushing strats. Between the decreased gold and added tower glyphs, pushing towers isn't as effective as it once was. Third, and perhaps most important, was that Slardar was actually available in the draft!

Alliance could have easily drafted Slardar + WR in the second phase and still finished with Ogre for a very strong draft. Instead, they picked Lycan. The end result was a draft that just couldn't fight into HR. Niqua's Bat would jump in and between Slark, Veng, ES and an eventual manta on SF, HR had plenty of ways to cancel his lasso. Once that happened Alliance was basically screwed. They had no way of continuing to initiate after Bat went in or a way to counter-initiate. Loda spent most fights just trying to find a target that he could right-click for more than three attacks and Pajkatt just couldn't deal enough damage by himself with everyone running around. Alliance could have gotten so much more out of Loda's Slardar who not only offers a better buff for WR in amp damage, but also more stuns, initiation, and quite frankly just benefits more from Ogre's bloodlust than Lycan due to natural bash chance.

Outside of these draft quandaries, Alliance's play was just strange at times. Occasionally, they tried to play this CIS-esque meta where they just kept running at HR - meanwhile their drafts didn't really support that kind of play well. For a set of games that determined important seeding, I was shocked to see Alliance deviate from what has been working for them, especially in game two when one of their best drafts was clearly available. I've said it time and time again: Alliance works when their dual core of Loda + Pajkatt works. To make that work best, they need to put a carry who can initiate via blink or just straight running into the fight on either Loda and Pajkatt.

I still think Alliance is a strong team and I will continue to support them...I guess I just expected better in a game that actually meant something.

On April 10 2015 03:45 lookfirewood wrote:


I think they wanted to try out some stuff they've been skrimming but not really tried out fully yet. We saw some new heroes like lycan and invoker. You say you feel this game actually meant something, but compared to ESL, Summit and SL, this game probably had the lowest prio, hence, most likely the game that would have risky stuff in it.

On April 10 2015 04:51 sang wrote:


Yes, the overall tournament is not as big as ESL, Summit or Starladder, but the difference between winning at least one of those games vs HR and losing both is now they have to win five bo3's to potentially win. If they would have won and gotten the UB seed, they would only have to play three bo3s to potentially win. Sure those three bo3s are against better competition, but it is undoubtedly the easier path to possibly win.