OG Discussion - Page 29

On November 18 2016 23:41 nanaoei wrote:


i have to say that notail plays pretty inefficiently (pretty much since forever) but that lends itself to other things like turning around small skirmishes or punishing dive attempts. there's also being a magnet or the whole feeling of "this guy is crazy/doesn't play very normally" so teams will play slightly more safe knowing that they'll eventually get more economy.

i would say it's much too early to say whether it was the notail difference or whether it's a combination of other things like liquid unable to mesh. on the other side of the coin, credit is owed to ana for being a pretty good pubstar, though admittedly i haven't seen his pubs to see his individual play on certain heroes lately. it's very nice that he's able to fit in and play well with the entire OG team.

i like how OG is playing, but right now the dota atmosphere has a lot to do with how laning goes and we all know how volatile that can get even at the pro level.

i think their smokes and movements have been relatively top notch recently and we'll see once they play vp/wings if that's enough.

again, once everything stabilizes a bit and perhaps liquid comes out of its slump/starts performing, we'll really know what difference it all makes, keeping in mind that players are still improving on their own day by day.

i can confidently say that miracle doesn't deserve the flak as he is and will continue to be one of the very best in w/e lane he chooses to play. i view it as having less exposure because the game they're playing aren't in the spotlight anymore (underperforming) and he's not getting to be as flashy and dominant and as greedy as before--which again, comes down to many factors including what you mentioned with notail's selflessness.

On November 21 2016 09:31 LemOn wrote:
Jesus they looked so tired in the finals
partying much last night?

On November 21 2016 06:11 nanaoei wrote:
because riding the surge of good results, people forget some of notail's relatively bad individual performances and the process it took to get from the 1 & 2 [laning] distinction to what was a 1/2 roleswap style they were using towards the end.
in other words, bandwagoning and coming up with narratives to support the results.
you could argue they were going through some lazier phases before they buckled down (shanghai) but it's still, at the end of the day, coming down to how well the players tend to perform.
this entire paragraph could be mirrored on the other side to the bias that notail is always the weakest link preventing a good team from being great, asking the question, "why do they keep him?". obviously i don't think that's right either.

and, because you were comparing ana/miracle plus notail 1 to 1 and using the notail + anyone dynamic rather than to compare the teams that they're a part of. evidently teams evolve, players change, game is different if only through the different picks being used.

in other words, notail is not to blame when they lose, and (not directly correlated) he doesn't receive full credit when the team wins.

if you read earlier in this very thread or if you didn't know, i'm a huge notail supporter and hope for him to succeed in every which way.
currently laning is extremely important.
his macro-execution is amazing, but i still think his efficiency and farming decisions are borderline game-losing sometimes. i mean that in the nicest way because he's entirely capable of playing tip-top greedy. there are a lot of things that cannonball a losing game into a lost game, but one of the things you can exert control over (the most) is farm and it starts as early as rotating out too quickly or deciding to give up safelane to allow a dual off-lane or more help for mid.
i think it's one of the many things that keeps him from being the top carry but at the same time doesn't stem directly from him.

but really, what does that all mean, right?
if you're winning and it's working it's all gravy. until you stop winning that is.

now this is overreaching even more, but i think they'll go back to 1/2 roleswapping if they start losing again.
but as they're winning with ana mid, etc. there's no real reason to break the formula.
ana will progressively play mids that are or were previously easier to gank/kill. some of which current top mids have seemingly no problems on.
i think you might even get to see a notail antimage getting played at some point if this stays the way it is.
he can play all the carries in the game, don't underestimate the pool, and the team is improving the way it's looking.

On November 21 2016 18:29 Racket wrote:

One could also say that farming priorities could be decided as a team and n0tail never got priority either on his own or as a general opinion, and what you see as inefficient farming may be in fact a different approach, he farms what he can as long as he doesn't get in the way of the one who has a higher prio because they all see it that way, which if not executed properly can result in a loss.
I don't know the dynamic inside the team, only they know it. But aside from n0tail hard fans I never see him get praise, he either gets flamed or ignored. I do not wait to praise him, I believe he is a great enabler, just like Fear was for Sumail. The only difference between the two is that Fear won TI doing it and n0tail failed.

On November 21 2016 20:20 bluzi wrote:

Failed is a big word , he did fail to win TI sure , but he won 2 majors with a team he created , he is well above most players in regards to achievements on the back of those 2 majors , they also won other tournaments , i agree with the farm distribution , when he gets priority if its by baby sitting supports or a EZ lane he delivers more often then not , he really gets too much hate and i thought after Miracle showed the Dota fans that he isn't a god and its a team game and even in a winning team with great talent you can still play bad and lose tons of games (Liquid) , #GIVENOTAILCREDIT!!!!

On November 21 2016 09:42 GumBa wrote:
Got stomped a bit hard but 2nd place is still good and let's em learn from it for the major.

On December 05 2016 08:28 nanaoei wrote:
i only care about this because i care about the distinction.
i could draft up a bunch of videos of it from old footage, but the farm inefficiency (for notail) was the decision making stuff, and i only know about it because it used to stick out like a sore thumb whether through the pubs we played (very seldom) or watching OG's pro-games as a major fan when miracle/crit/moon were part of the team one patch back.
during that patch i really studied how OG played and especially how notail played his heroes to try and figure out how they paced because let's be real, trying to emulate what miracle does in most of his games isn't realistic anyway.

the guy plays casually much better than i would on my best day, best circumstances. his decision-making is out of this world sometimes.


granted that we're saying you can't have two heavily farming cores lest it be too greedy, which again is something being abused these days in pro-dota:

regardless of playing level, farming priority is affected by your general playstyle which helps decide your preferred heroes, which translates to which strategies your team will tend to prefer. we can see with many other teams that this can be at the individual level (skill) with what support heroes can be played at tip top level.

for notail he was not playing farming heavy heroes until recently where say for example, they're giving ana something difficult to kill mid. (i'm not going to say he was out of practice on the heroes because i know he can play them.)
i attribute most of this change to how before, miracle was better on those heroes (as in farming and overall) and there is a lot of proof for that.

fair enough though, miracle's play directly and instantly costed them games at TI where it mattered the most, and that opinion has been smattered and used everywhere by many different people.

anway let's hope they have a lot in store for brackets. really rooting for them here. 3 major wins, what what?

On December 05 2016 11:29 DucK- wrote:


I read this post twice. I don't really understand what point you are making :S

On December 10 2016 05:39 Laertes wrote:
It's really sad that alchemist is such a broken hero...guess its the only way that OG win.