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On July 06 2017 07:23 Minishield wrote:
I watched MDL games just now (pretty hard for Europeans to follow this tournament). Why we keep forcing Arc Warden, it never worked and it still doesn't. Also i feel like NoTail is really underperforming (and saving strats for TI is not really an excuse)
AW does work in the right hands, and with the right playstyle. Problem is that NoTail just isn't selfish enough to play the hero the right way, so instead of the farming monster that will safely rat and 1v2 a lane, he's a squishy hard-carry that keeps feeding 180 gold.
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Relax, they are doing much better now. They won their last 4 games. Maybe they did just try shit out, or were tired, see Liquid at epicenter at the first day;)
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anyone see their games without invoker?
i wonder if it's a hero they're relying on now, or if it's simply because it's such a good hero like what liquid does for miracle.
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I havent seen many games of them. But when you as a team are so good with a hero that everyone must ban it, thats a huge plus, gives you more Flexibility with drafting. Especially for og, since all their bans from before, like alchemist or naga, just became shit. Its definitely a Step in the right direction. But i dont know if they have a big enough hero pool for TI.
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Hahahaha
Stylin' on EG with mid Visage :D
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To be fair both teams haven't really been serious when it comes to the drafts this tournament. Boggles my mind how some people fail to see that this MDL is nothing than a fun tryout/scrim with a little allowance money for the winner. Suggesting that apparently is "making excuses".
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we got ourselves a millionaire here. You do realize that people respond that way cause literally no dota 2 pro ever say/share something remotely similar to your opinion above
some teams tried new stuff true, but they are all trying to win and in no way playing 'not seriously'
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Not sure what about OG's drafts hasn't seemed serious. Their lineups aren't all that unusual for them apart from trying out core Visage. But they already liked Visage on support before.
EG seemed to be trying out some new heroes at times, but it's a bit hard to judge at times how good the team actually thinks a hero is even if they pick it. Some new pick can mean that they truly think it could be good or that they are just picking it for the fun of it. It would be a bit weird not to try out some things anyway given that there have been new patches after Epicenter.
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Damn, looks like they still haven't found their comfort zone in this patch and TI is near 
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On July 08 2017 22:46 uthgard wrote:
we got ourselves a millionaire here. You do realize that people respond that way cause literally no dota 2 pro ever say/share something remotely similar to your opinion above
some teams tried new stuff true, but they are all trying to win and in no way playing 'not seriously'
I'm not going to dig through half a dozen years of footage to prove you wrong but just in this tournament EG players were quoted with something along the lines of "it's time to stop fucking around and start winning" after the weird/shaky/clowny group stage. In the last summit VP said the very same thing after winning game 5 of the grand final: "we decided to stop with the one hero challenge and just win the game". If you think it takes a "millionaire" mastermind to realize that a minor tournament before TI is the place to try out (of the box) stuff and that it would be stupid to reveal your strongest strats then fine let's just agree that you and I have very different perspectives. Fact is in the past pros have confirmed trying stuff/ non serious drafts a million times.
Obviously teams will still pick stuff they think can win but I maintain that performance at MDL is a very poor indicator of current team strength.
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On July 08 2017 20:25 nothingmuch wrote:
To be fair both teams haven't really been serious when it comes to the drafts this tournament. Boggles my mind how some people fail to see that this MDL is nothing than a fun tryout/scrim with a little allowance money for the winner. Suggesting that apparently is "making excuses".
The Problem with your Post is this sentence. It is still a pretty stacked tournament, and all the teams try to win. This saving strats for TI argument is pretty dumb as well, as said by many pro Players before. Of course this tournament is not overly important, but its also not a funny scrim show, how you call it. Teams still travel to china for this, if you want to scrim and try new stuff, you can bootcamp or just stay at home.
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On July 09 2017 01:48 nothingmuch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2017 22:46 uthgard wrote:
we got ourselves a millionaire here. You do realize that people respond that way cause literally no dota 2 pro ever say/share something remotely similar to your opinion above
some teams tried new stuff true, but they are all trying to win and in no way playing 'not seriously' I'm not going to dig through half a dozen years of footage to prove you wrong but just in this tournament EG players were quoted with something along the lines of "it's time to stop fucking around and start winning" after the weird/shaky/clowny group stage. In the last summit VP said the very same thing after winning game 5 of the grand final: "we decided to stop with the one hero challenge and just win the game". If you think it takes a "millionaire" mastermind to realize that a minor tournament before TI is the place to try out (of the box) stuff and that it would be stupid to reveal your strongest strats then fine let's just agree that you and I have very different perspectives. Fact is in the past pros have confirmed trying stuff/ non serious drafts a million times. Obviously teams will still pick stuff they think can win but I maintain that performance at MDL is a very poor indicator of current team strength.
VP's case was unique and shouldn't be applied here
new patch just came out so obviously teams tried new stuff (no one's disputing this), but new patch also means teams most probably won't have 'secret strongest draft/strats' in their pocket coming into the tournament. what works in strims and such won't necessarily work in real games so they tested it out here.
well anyway main difference is you seem to believe that teams always magically have secret strats (even when the patch is fresh) and they hide them cause TI, I disagree 100% but can't really disprove it either cause we're obviously not dota pros
ps. I read recent twitter from EG's since I was curious about your statement, but nothing seems to indicate they're playing around/not taking the tournament seriously
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again they rely invoker, again they lose with the same glaring core weaknesses.
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Lots of players over the years have talked about different levels of taking tournaments seriously. No team is going to stress themselves over a tournament just before TI, especially when favourites have almost always (excluding Alliance) been clearly picked apart by multiple teams due to the target on their back.
Teams may be 100%, but very likely not, and therefore there's not much to take from the event.
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They topped their group and beat EG. That's actually not horrible.
I think realistically, there's bound to be tight competition at TI. Even if OG were the solid favorite to win, their odds of winning still wouldn't be great. It's 16 teams (18 this time) of the best teams in the world fighting for one spot. I don't think anyone has more than a 50% chance of winning in that situation. That's just the harsh reality of it.
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On July 09 2017 02:50 hunter_x wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2017 20:25 nothingmuch wrote:
To be fair both teams haven't really been serious when it comes to the drafts this tournament. Boggles my mind how some people fail to see that this MDL is nothing than a fun tryout/scrim with a little allowance money for the winner. Suggesting that apparently is "making excuses". The Problem with your Post is this sentence. It is still a pretty stacked tournament, and all the teams try to win. This saving strats for TI argument is pretty dumb as well, as said by many pro Players before. Of course this tournament is not overly important, but its also not a funny scrim show, how you call it. Teams still travel to china for this, if you want to scrim and try new stuff, you can bootcamp or just stay at home.
MDLs first place price is about 1% of TIs first place price.
One
per
cent.
TI is in three weeks.
Three
weeks.
I'll just let people draw their own conclusions I guess.
"Try to win" isn't exactly the same as playing your best. If you want to try out (weird) stuff you need quality opponents who are at least "trying to win" to be able to gain any kind of insight on whether what you're doing might work or not. If you start fucking around in scrims, chances are your opponents will all build dagons and you've gained no information at all. Playing on a LAN is always different than playing a scrim from home plus you get the chance to see and face a variety of playstyles. Who knows, some opponents might even be tryharding. Being a fun/scrim opportunity doesn't make MDL worthless for the teams by any means. It's good practice, you might gain some information and TI is far away enough to make travel stress a non issue.
Still doesn't mean shit when it comes to evaluating team strength.
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On July 09 2017 14:56 nothingmuch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2017 02:50 hunter_x wrote:On July 08 2017 20:25 nothingmuch wrote:
To be fair both teams haven't really been serious when it comes to the drafts this tournament. Boggles my mind how some people fail to see that this MDL is nothing than a fun tryout/scrim with a little allowance money for the winner. Suggesting that apparently is "making excuses". The Problem with your Post is this sentence. It is still a pretty stacked tournament, and all the teams try to win. This saving strats for TI argument is pretty dumb as well, as said by many pro Players before. Of course this tournament is not overly important, but its also not a funny scrim show, how you call it. Teams still travel to china for this, if you want to scrim and try new stuff, you can bootcamp or just stay at home. MDLs first place price is about 1% of TIs first place price. One per cent. TI is in three weeks. Three weeks. I'll just let people draw their own conclusions I guess. "Try to win" isn't exactly the same as playing your best. If you want to try out (weird) stuff you need quality opponents who are at least "trying to win" to be able to gain any kind of insight on whether what you're doing might work or not. If you start fucking around in scrims, chances are your opponents will all build dagons and you've gained no information at all. Playing on a LAN is always different than playing a scrim from home plus you get the chance to see and face a variety of playstyles. Who knows, some opponents might even be tryharding. Being a fun/scrim opportunity doesn't make MDL worthless for the teams by any means. It's good practice, you might gain some information and TI is far away enough to make travel stress a non issue. Still doesn't mean shit when it comes to evaluating team strength.
I never said MDL should be used to evaluate the teams strength. But most Pros dont like to travel huge distances, so you dont just travel to china for a fun scrim. Thats not how this works. Also all these players are veterans, when it comes to playing on lan, so i dont think they need this "experience".
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Where do you get better opportunities to practise for an international tournament than an international tournament?
If you think every team isn't almost solely thinking about how to do best at TI right now you're being silly.
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They are definitely trying to win. Saying otherwise is silly. Maybe they did not sit around and learned every opponents drafts carefully, but they still tried to win with a draft they believe in and playing to their potential. I see how its more of a low pressure scenario since there isn't much relatively on the line, but they still need to be able to stay confident in their draft and play. They are testing what they feel are good drafts and if doesn't work they can adjust later. You learn a lot more playing something with serious intentions than otherwise.
Bottom line is it doesn't make sense to not play 100% even though the preparation might not be 100%. They learned
a lot about their core visage idea that even Newbee denied them the pick twice. They also learn that their Invoker can still be countered easily.
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Of course every team is looking at TI as their big goal but the way some people phrase things gets a bit too silly. There's a pretty big difference between saying that a team goes to an event to play proper games and perhaps try out some strategies and saying that a team is hiding their best strategies on purpose. Teams will bootcamp, their understanding of what works will evolve, and they will be even more prepared for TI. Due to the stakes most are also less likely to try out weird things at TI. Though we may see plenty of things that seem weird, just that they've tried them or something similar in scrims.
Also I'm not really buying the argument that because TI is so close, it influences how seriously teams are taking it. From what I understood OG for example went to China to bootcamp before this event. Their goal is TI but at least they didn't come straight from vacation like they did to Manila Masters. In general just the invite status teams are rarely as prepared for these sorts of events as they are for majors, and the pressure isn't at all the same as it will be for TI.
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EPT
