Talking about Shanghai is more relevant given that it is in two weeks and the ESL event is in 2.5 months or whatever.
In general it's hard to say what to expect. Based on recent performance hard to predict them to win or something and it's hard to assess the potential for improving without knowing what's going on inside the team and how their scrims are going and whatnot. It wouldn't particularly surprise me to see them figure their draft out and play a bit better and suddenly compete for top placings, but it's also possible there are some issues in the team and they just bomb out and change players.
Hero wise I would assume Chen is a top priority for them still but I don't know if they will ever really get it. They did quite well with LD at MDL so they will probably continue to pick it and have w33 play ES/Puck or whatever. One thing that I've found a bit strange is that they haven't really picked Wisp at all this far. PLD used to play quite a bit of Wisp at a certain point in c9, I think that might be something they look to bring back.
On February 13 2016 03:14 pyrocumulus wrote: ...so with that out of the way, what are you guys expecting for Manila? (ie how will they do, what heroes they will main, what strats would they use etc etc)
Before Manila, there's Shanghai and Dota Pit 4.
I think Secret could win Shanghai, but a 4th or 5th/6th place is most likely. They could of course place lower than that also. They're one of the hardest teams to predict, really. If they do anything but win (actually, even if they do win) I think a roster change is very likely, whether before DP4 or between DP4 and ESL. W33 is probably most likely to be kicked, and after him I'd guess Misery. Possibly both. Depends on who Secret could get to replace them.
After a roster change, I don't want to speculate. I'm already trying to predict too much.
On February 13 2016 03:14 pyrocumulus wrote: ...so with that out of the way, what are you guys expecting for Manila? (ie how will they do, what heroes they will main, what strats would they use etc etc)
i was a bit bummed out and was considering to sell my ticket(or giving it to a friend but ofc the planetickets are his/her to spend) once i knew eg and secret declared not to go .. didn't help that alliance also won't be going
i'm just happy they decided to go but since it's post shangai idk there is likely gonna be a roster change unless they do super well in the next major
I was sure somebody was going to comment on just how beastly misery played today.
But it has to be me.
Yeah, Misery played amazing today, I've always considered him the weakest link in this team, but he really stepped it up, carried his team's mid game on his back on all the games I saw.
In general I feel their performance seems fine past the early game. The big question to me is just whether they can be stable enough in the draft and play the early game well enough to prevent getting run over. Comes down both to where you allocate your resources at different times in terms of supports (for example helping w33 at times) and just not screwing up (can't really predict a guy getting solo killed in a straight 1v1).
All of their wins were pretty easy I feel, and against CDEC in g1 they also did several good moves. In that game it was more that once they screwed up that one time in their push their draft just wasn't going to cut it imo. I guess g1 against EHOME was quite tricky early but they did solid when the game stabilized. Against MVP they just crumbled under the early pressure pretty hard.
But they clearly have come to Shanghai with a very different plan from what we saw previously. We've seen very strong teamfight lineups for example.
On February 26 2016 23:47 Souldivnr wrote: Can we say that Team Secret is an offlaner creator factory?
seems like it
what I'm liking is that the fact they're bringing up new stuff they clearly practiced doesnt mean they forgot their old style so they have more options in their drafts. the one dimensional drafts were their biggest weakness for me
On February 28 2016 13:32 hariooo wrote: Am I missing something Misery is basically Fly 2.0 in 3/4 of their wins just sticking him on the Tide for something stable.
Misery has already had great performances on a number of heroes, including Clockwerk, NP, Dark Seer, Beastmaster, Slardar and Doom.
On February 28 2016 13:32 hariooo wrote: Am I missing something Misery is basically Fly 2.0 in 3/4 of their wins just sticking him on the Tide for something stable.
Misery has already had great performances on a number of heroes, including Clockwerk, NP, Dark Seer, Beastmaster, Slardar and Doom.
The topic was quite clearly Misery's group stage performance.
EPT
