DotaPit S5 Fallout: 10 Impressions
Feat. Burning’s resurgence, The luxury of Cr1t, Witty ODPixel, Pulling madness, Shrines 2: Electric Boogaloo and more.
The fallout series is (shamelessly) inspired by Zach Lowe’s weekly column “10 Things I like and don’t like” where he picks out short topics to discuss from around the NBA.
Okay, let’s go.
1. Melt the Mental Block
Coming into Croatia, Evil Geniuses had lost four straight versus Cr1t’s former team. The Boys in Blue would often stand out as the best team at events and then fizzle out against Fly’s broad shoulders. The idea of a kryptonite was becoming undeniable (after all, OG’s logo is green and Superman wears blue).
“OG is the team we respect the most, cause obviously they’ve beat us a lot of times. [But] every time we lose to them, we learn more from them, then they learn from us.”
“There’s a long time until TI, hopefully we learn [enough] by then at least.”
— Cr1t on their toughest opponent at Dotapit
6.88 was rough for the new EG, particularly at Boston. Fly correctly predicted the adjustments Cr1t would make in semis and one-upped them. OG played faster than EG had anticipated and took the series 2–0. It was a deflating exit for the NA squad.
In some ways, Fly molded Cr1t into the superstar he is today. The duo were support partners for a year and became intimately familiar with each other’s philosophy about the game. Cr1t left after TI6, but Fly seemed to be still in his head, silently watching what the Dane was cooking.
Maybe a new patch was all EG needed. A reset. For Cr1t had the ability to read OG’s game plan as well—
“Often when we play against them I can tell what their idea is, […] how they wanna move on the map, and I have an idea about how to respond to it. But sometimes it’s hard for me to give it to my team.
That’s something we have to specifically look at when we wanna play OG.”
— Cr1t on their struggles versus OG
The two teams met in the Upper bracket finals at Dotapit and history didn’t repeat this time. EG out-drafted & out-executed their nemesis twice to sweep the series. The underdog finally got a punch in.
But Fly is a cruel, cruel mentor.
When they met again in the grand finals, he dusted off the Alchemist once more in Game 1. EG’s troubles against the hero are well-documented (6 losses out of 7 games in past 6 months — 4 versus OG), but no team had touched him at the event before the series. He was supposed to be gone in 7.00.
It’s like when you try and bury a relationship problem instead of dealing with it properly and that shit comes back to haunt you when you least expect it.
EG lost Game 1, and Alchemist ate up one of their first phase bans for the remainder of the series. Fly had carved out a decisive advantage for himself in the drafts going forward. The drafting phase was tightly fought since, and the series went down to the wire — Game 5.
The Boys out-executed once more.
All five from the superstar lineup came alive when it mattered and OG’s gameplay faltered in comparison. The difference in skill level — however tiny it maybe — was apparent.
EG don’t lay claim to the crown of the world-beaters yet, and maybe the mental block versus OG isn’t fully gone either. Fly will also come back stronger next time they meet. But Dotapit was a giant step in the right direction for EG. They know they can rely on themselves to out-execute despite some draft/strategy shortcomings.
No second-guessing anymore.
2. The curious case of Benjamin Burning
Burning missed his first TI last August after a tumultuous year.
After continuously shuffling through various “all-star” squads with no results and an underwhelming stint as a position 5 support, the old god joined a team with three academy recruits and ex-CDEC captain Q after TI6. He took on the role of team captain and returned to the safelane. The lineup wasn’t expected to be good — they had three players without any premier LAN experience. They went under the radar after a mediocre fall season.
Nonetheless, the new patch brought new life. IG went 10–0 in their DAC Qualifier campaign and finished fourth in their debut LAN at Dotapit. Boboka & Op stepping up is at the center of this rise, but Burning’s tweaks to his game haven’t gone unnoticed —
Burning abandons a free-farm lane bottom to find a trade for his mid player. Though he is unsuccessful, the fact that he is willing to rotate so early is a good sign for his (and IG’s) understanding of the meta. It’s all about fighting early at the cost of some farm. The DotA gods are pleased with this adjustment and reward him with a free Bounty Hunter kill.
If the efficiency monster Burning from TI2-TI3 found about this, he’d be shaking his head very vigorously.
Here’s another clip from the same game —
Again, he leaves a free farm lane when Ember dives mid. The rotation discourages Secret from engaging any further and forces them to back out. His impact this time was being a literal scarecrow, for he walks into the Pit of Malice and gets rooted twice (did someone not read the changelogs?).
Burning finished with a solid stat-line of 6/0/10, holding the fort when IG fell behind 6k gold in the mid-game and ultimately buying enough time for his Shadow Fiend to recover and win the game.
His otherworldly efficiency of old may have paled a little today, but his improved teamfight presence and willingness to adapt more than makes up for it.
3. Bow to the Shrines: Teleport Edition
If ESL Genting demonstrated shrines’ ability to turnaround fights via healing, then Dotapit gave us a glimpse of how they can be used as effective access points for farming and for teamfighting.
Universe’s Underlord used the bottom Dire Shrine to fake out Secret in what would turn out to be the game-deciding fight —
EG’s positioning is compromised after Khezu’s epicenter and Secret starts to close in from three sides. Universe bails out his team using Dark Rift — but instead of making a fountain trip, he only goes to the Dire Shrine while Suma1l stays behind as a possible bait.
Secret at this point feel that the fight is over, and they can finish off the Chen creeps for easy gold and disengage. That’s when the EG trio returns to the radiant jungle and completes the team wipe.
Notice how they didn’t even wait to heal at the Shrine — the fake-back had a small timing window and EG relied on Underlord’s greaves and the IO to sustain through the second half. The fight tipped the net-worth (and the game) in EG’s favor and Secret never came back into the game.
On the flipside, IG.Op’s Tinker versus Elements Pro showed the potential of shrines for farming —
In that one minute, Op farms two lanes, four neutral camps, picks up two bounty runes and buys a point booster. The gold gained over the duration of the clip — 750g and it was all relatively safe farm.
For a hero all about efficiency, Shrines have been an indisputable contributing factor to Tinker’s resurgence as a top mid pick.
4. Rune King Ana
The OG mid-laner did not have a particularly pleasing conclusion to Dotapit, but he kept a recurring pattern alive till the end.
On average, Ana picked up 4 more runes per game than the opposing mid-player at Dotapit.
The difference varied highly — versus VP.N[o]one he was +19 on the rune counter while as Invoker versus Suma1l he went down to -9. The EG mid was the only one to beat him at collecting special boosters.
The added emphasis on rune pickups wasn’t for naught. Over the course of five games on Day 1, Ana contributed directly to 12 kills under the effect of an Action Rune — Haste, Invisibility or Double Damage. (Day 3 data was all over the place because of unavailable replays)
In a time where bottle-crowing was all the rage, ex-mid turned offlaner s4 continued to collect runes and make big plays with their aid. Haste came to be known as the ‘s4 rune’ because he seemingly always had it at the most opportune times. Untill the end, he was willing to let go of a few creep kills for a chance to force ganks with the right rune; all while the mid role slowly transitioned into one of a full fledged carry.
But in a meta where full-blown teamfights are happening earlier and earlier, Action Runes provide a significant advantage to its wielder. OG still often use ward spots with rune vision at the start instead of the more common lane wards. And it seems s4 has whispered some sweet nothings in Ana’s ear about the beauty of them.
5. The obnoxious camp pulling by Team Faceless
Just watch this —
Black^ gets an easy level 2 without leeching from his offlaner and also stacks the small camp in the process, all while denying gold/XP to the enemy. He has Hook and Rot online by 1:15 and the Faceless duo take down Universe easily since he can no longer teleport away as an escape.
Pudges are supposed to be forced into choosing level 1 hook, but the easy pull effectively starts every butcher with both skills.
It’s not limited just to Pudge, xy- also does the same pull as an Earth spirit.
But wait, there’s more! (and more) —
This one is worse. Nutz just disappears off the map to safely gain XP/Gold and the Dire have little idea about what’s going on. At least in the case of the Pudge pull, the disturbed equilibrium and missing creeps gives away that something funky is happening.
In this pull, Black^ doesn’t need to tank creeps or last hit under the tower at all. The enemy team is also forced to play safe for all they know the enemy Rubick is smoked and waiting to gank a lane.
Faceless abused these pulls through the entirety of Dotapit to gain easy levels on their supports and secure their early game.
Alright one more, but this one comes from the OG Camp —
Jerax did this pull three times to varying degrees of success, but Suma1l being Suma1l still led Ana in CS at the end of the third one. (oops)
It‘s pretty ugly to spectate, but DotA is all about gaining an advantage by any means possible. This ain’t no beauty pageant and kudos to Faceless for not giving a single hoot.
6. Team Secret’s (slightly) unusual farm priority
Khezu and Puppey share a lot more farm than other offlane/pos 4 duos from other team teams — frequently playing a hybrid position ‘3.5’ role.
The Gold graph for s4/Jerax almost closely follows that of Khezu/Puppey but the Last Hit chart is vastly different. Puppey’s playstyle is more selfish — it emphasizes farming through the mid-game rather than continuously assisting/ganking lanes like Jerax.
There’s two recognizable schools of offlaners in DotA — the Universe school which prioritizes efficiency over playmaking, and the Moonmeander school which focuses on space creation & ganking over farming.
The actual reason for Forev’s departure from Team Secret remains unconfirmed, but his style never meshed properly with Puppey. He might have been the hottest offlaner post-TI6, but Forev graduated summa cum laude from the Universe school.
And Secret.Universe is a travesty we’d all like to forget.
With Secret.Forev, once again there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Pieliedie was already playing a sacrificial role as is, and still, there wasn’t enough farm for everyone’s fill. The Korean star decided to go ring-chasing with MVP.P at the Boston Major thanks to the half-baked substitute rules, and Puppey set out to find a replacement.
Khezu’s light-farm, gank-heavy playstyle compliments Puppey’s greedy support nature well. As the graphs show, he farms for most of the early game and then sets out to assist other lanes, while Puppey catches up in the mid-game.
For once, instead of trading up for a superstar offlaner as he has done multiple times in the past, Puppey decided to downgrade for a better fit. While Khezu has still a ways to go before reaching Tier 1 status, he has enough elite pieces around him to make Secret a legitimate contender going ahead.
Sometimes all you need is a solid role player.
7. Invoker vs Ember Spirit — Give it not a second thought
Ah, to see him go from a top mid pick in 6.88 to a glorified counterpick at Dotapit.
According to Dotabuff, Ember finished with second highest winrate of 81.25% (games played >5), while also being the most picked hero overall.
Invoker was picked 10 times — 7 of them after Ember had already been selected by the opposing team. The mage only won twice, and the wins weren’t exactly pretty.
Still, Ember is a slippery hero and having multiple forms of CC should be an effective way of dealing with him in theory.
If the matchup is looked at in a vacuum, Invoker has quite the attractive kit for dealing with him. A Quas-Wex Invoker during the laning stage has a great right click animation/base attack-speed to punish the melee hero’s low armor, EMP to take away his mana, Cold-Snap to slow his retreat and Tornado to purge the pesky flame guard. In several pockets of 1v1 time at Dotapit, Invoker really did control the mid lane against him.
However, a good Ember will reliably dodge EMP & Tornado with Sleight of Fist, or just save the flame guard till Invoker is forced to use Tornado and the mid lane hasn’t been 1v1 haven since forever.
The duo faced off once more in Game 4 of the grand finals, with Suma1l on the Invoker and Ana on the Ember. Even though it was losing effort for OG, the game showcased the strengths of Ember, and how little he needs to be relevant in the mid-game.
Ana was ganked repeatedly by the Spirit Breaker & Earth Spirit and fell 1500g behind the Invoker — dying three times in the first 10 minutes of the game. EG did not let go of the gas in the mid game either and Suma1l’s lead ballooned to 3500g at the 25 min mark. Still, with just a veil & blink in his inventory, Ana was able to contribute heavily to these successive fights —
Suma1l died twice in the span of two minutes, and the Dire clawed their way back into a lost-looking game. Twenty minutes later, Ana had managed to climb back to the #2 networth spot after being fifth for all of the mid-game.
Even with only a Veil of Discord, Ember Spirit enjoys quite an extended peak through the mid-game courtesy of his strong talent tree. His kit stays relevant despite losing the early game, and affords him a reliable way back into the game after a couple of successful ganks.
8. The Hard 5 is still alive... except for EG.
Virtus Pro’s late rise to the top in 6.88 brought with it many subtle tweaks to already existing ideas— Solo’s hard 5 was one of them. He bought all the wards, sentries, smokes, TPs for whiny cores etc., allowing Lil to maximize his impact in the early game as a support.
Teams have largely stuck to the same formula in the new patch. Fly, Pieliedie, Q, Solo etc. still do all the grunt work and don’t focus much on farming —
These position 5 players put their partners on a pedestal, and (only) in DotA that strategy works well (trust me). However, EG’s supports love holding hands throughout the game —
Even though Cr1t buys the majority of wards at the start, the two supports try to distribute farm amongst themselves equally. Depending on their draft, they switch warding duties as well. With their cores all being efficiency monsters, Cr1t/Zai have limited amount of resources to work with.
The Danish captain calls their setup ‘two position 4.5s'.
EG are unusual in the sense that they have a superstar at each position, so a compromise was unavoidable. Their support strategy tries to utilize the map to enable both of their playmaking abilities. Well, when your position 5 can do this on a reliable basis, you don’t have to justify the setup much —
One thing to note is that Dotapit is a pretty small sample size to draw definite conclusions from. These graphs only point to a possible pattern and the section is meant to be an observation only.
Let me compare multiple games on the same graph, oh Dotabuff!
9. Quick Meta comparison between ESL Genting & Dotapit
- Lifestealer went from winning 80% of his games to being complete doodoo at Dotapit with 30%. Four of his seven came versus Earth Spirit — a hero that jumped up 28 spots from #31 at Genting. Dotapit did have the two best ES players in addition to xy- and Boboka who frequently play the hero.
- Pretty much every team now plays the switchy weaver popularized by VP/Newbee, and drafters continue to employ that flexibility even in the absence of Drow Aura.
- The rise of Nyx is closely correlated to the Ember finally showing off his true potential. Carapace into Impale is a reliable source of CC on the slippery hero.
- Dark Seer was banned 14 times (second after Slardar) but to no avail — teams doing so had a winrate of 28.57%.
- After dominating much of last year, Mirana joins Batrider in the “Anthony Bennett” doghouse. Picked or Banned only 3 times with 33% winrate.
- Rumors of Meepo’s strength may have been over-exaggerated as he fell out of favor quickly and was also demolished in his only appearance.
- The meta might be settling down a little, with only 76 heroes being picked or banned in 30 matches compared to Genting’s 91.
10. ODPixel is a gem
Game 3 & 4 of the finals were played offline after a laundry list of technical difficulties and since the game wasn’t ticketed, Godz & ODPixel were forced to commentate without proper player aliases. Despite the long hours, the latter never lost his cheeky wit and came up with my favorite call of the event —
“… allowing Rhythm and Blues [Sumail] to come in. The combination of the two there, cause Cr1t [Earth Spirit] knew how to rock.”
Truly the play-by-play king.
BONUS 11 — Arteezy priming his bear towards a successful gank
The gank is designed around the Lone Druid reaching level 5. The LC is doing well in the top lane and EG seek to punish her aggressive presence. Arteezy hits level 5 and animation-cancels his bear thrice as the two supports lie in wait patiently.
Since the root follows a pseudo-random distribution, the priming effectively increased the proc chances from 5.57% (first hit) to 22.28% (fourth hit).
As soon as s4 shows his face, EG pounce and secure first blood. The Entangling Claws proc right before the Slithereen crush ends, and the Savage Roar prevents the LC from dispelling the root.
Set plays in DotA are such a joy to watch.
