How does OG win The International 2018 — Macro Strategy and Draft Analysis
As promised, here is the in-depth analysis for the victory of OG. We will first focus on the strategy of OG using, and how that affects their choice of heroes, and then how that reflected in the drafting phase.
This is my first trial on analysis with this depth and hope that I can help you understand the strategy behind the games.
Current Meta
As many others have said already, it is an early-midgame focused meta, and teams tend to pick strong midgame heroes with good lanes. They pick cores like Tiny, Necrophos, Mirana, Drow Ranger and Gyrocopter, and these heroes have some very strong spells to dominate their lane, and have burst or push power in the mid game. They also pick supports like Vengeful Spirit, Dark Willow, Earthshaker and Crystal Maiden, which have very strong CC skills in the early game, and incredible nuking power in the mid game. Lastly they pick some high survivability core heroes like Wraith King, Weaver and Enchantress, these heroes require 2 or 3 heroes to kill, allowing the pos 4 support to rotate without being punished hard, and whenever they are ignored, they push hard and scale very well in the mid game.
The game plan is, win or at least draw all 3 lanes, when the offlane hero had enough level to survive ganks, or the enemy had over-invest resources to kill it, rotate the support to create space or help the mid hero to snowball. Once the snowball is going well, rotate the pos 1 core to push the offlane to create a safe farming environment in the enemy safe lane jungle. While the mid hero and offlane hero starts creating space and controlling the map, secure roshan and bounty runes, let the pos 1 core and pos 4 support to farm the power spike item, get roshan, and push with inevitable force.
There are also small things like ganking around 4–5 minutes to secure the first round of bounty rune, which LGD.fy does almost every game. Or pick Lich just to ruin the level timing of enemy mid hero, causing allied mid hero to snowball the mid lane since level 3.
All these actions are trying to achieve One goal — get the snowballing effect starts earlier and harder. Win the lane, win the game.
The OG Meta
Everybody describes OG’s strategy as utilizing the buy back, picking a late game carry for ana to win the game after 45 minutes. Yes, this is the first glance of value, but how do they achieve it? Is it just because Spectre with the 60% pub win rate is OP? Some teams tried to copy it, like the loser’s bracket finals, both EG and LGD tried Spectre, but LGD won with it just because they snowballed hard, and EG failed with the strategy. What is the difference?
Split pushing hard, with Pos 5 support
The stats of n0tail are exactly why very few people think that he is as good as other top-tier supports. He died a lot, standing at the top of the list with an average 10.31 deaths per game. But we are here to appreciate how much he did in the game and what the difference is. Apart from dying a lot, he had a much higher last hit than other pos 5 support and eventually giving him the highest GPM, he also doubled the tower damage. That is because he picks supports like Chen and Nature’s Prophet, which split pushing a lot, and helped farming even the hero himself was dead. They also created lots of space for the cores to farm up even he lose the lane, and also caused enemies hard to take objective even taking the lead, which extends the game length for OG’s favor.
On the other hand, since the support buys a lot of low cost consumables, dying does not hurt their reliable gold too much, and they can spam buyback due to low net worth. And as mentioned above, if he picked Chen or Nature’s Prophet, dying did not stop him from farming or split push, and the gold he earned are mainly invested to consumables, especially sentry wards, giving OG better resources to control vision even losing the map control.
Get everybody to the team fight, across the map
This is another amazing drafting strategy from OG, they have lots of heroes with a global presence. God Tier is Io which brings any other allies with Relocate. Top tier is the heroes that can travel globally, which is Spectre, Nature’s Prophet, Arc Warden(with Boots of Travel as core item) and Ember Spirit. Second tier is those can contribute damage to the fight, like Invoker, Zeus and Chen(by controlled creeps). Third tier is those gives minor contribution, which is Chen’s Hand of God, Silencer’s Global Silence and Treant Protector’s Living Armor.
Travelling is always an important part of the game, e.g Yasha is a good farming item not just because of the damage and attack speed but also because faster movement speed equals to less traveling time, and that is why these “get rid of traveling” heroes are so strong when used with a specific strategy.
It also enables some small but impactful in-game moves like:
- Use traveling skills to get a bounty rune even not controlling map, especially enemy is distracted by other things, or even deny the rune by summons
- Nature’s Prophet teleports into enemy base to ward before pushing
- Fake gank by topson Invoker to bait enemy heroes, which turned into an Io relocate RAT for mega creep
- Io Relocated to Phantom Lancer pretends to be a GG push and bait out buybacks then bring Phantom Lancer back to base
- Delay pushes with Treant Protector and Arc Warden
Utilize Buyback, and getting back to battle in 3 seconds
This is exactly why OG’s buyback is so impactful, they have multiple ways to join the battle after buyback within seconds, this makes the enemy team facing like 6 or even 7 heroes in a fight. On top of that, OG also picks cores that tank up tons of damage, once you invested too many mana and cooldowns on it, you are doomed in the buyback fights. Of course, OG also manages buyback so well that they always prepared to buyback(even selling items before death, wp ana), and they tried hard to not wasting any of them, which their enemy don’t seems on par.
Pick late game hard carries, with double save
As I have mentioned in the previous article, ana’s hero were always the ones with strong survivability, because with OG’s strong healing line up, once the core escaped, they could heal him up quickly to fight again, it is a similar case to buyback. Combo includes Chen and Winter Wyvern heal shield mixture, double damage reduction with Io and Centaur Warrunner, double shield from Winter Wyvern and Treant Protector, and double + boosted heal from Chen and Io.
Picking non BKB carry, to adsorb the CC and burst
On the other hand, since ana’s hero does not buy Black King Bar, enemy team liked to focus on him and tried to kill him first, but with the double save, these efforts were usually wasted, and this is why we saw a number of OG’s teamfights last more than minute. Also a side effect that by tanking, it created lots of space for teammates to do their job.
Don’t pick the right-click core off lane, pick the strong CC off lane
First of all, Ceb played a huge variety of heroes, but the ones he won, 5 out of 9 have a CC skills that goes through BKB, and Enchantress does not CC but the damage goes through BKB, which means he was always the one to control the enemy’s carry, and once he got on them, BKB became a wasted slot for enemy carry. These heroes are also very good team fight hero, which helped OG to stop or delay the snowball of the enemy since their pick are always weaker at the early stage of game.
They also pick heroes with long CD but very strong ultimate, and manage them extremely well, this is also how they defend the push even lacking behind.
Winning with a full game plan
Having listed many shattered reasons for how OG wins the series, OG gathered these little pieces, put them together and linked them up to make a full game plan, finally executed the plan good enough for them to win the game. The most interesting thing is how they came up with a totally different understanding of the patch, and created another set of meta. LGD and EG tried to learn from it, but they did not “go full retard”, they tried to do it by just picking Spectre, but not other combo heroes to work with, which finally became another thing, maybe some great minds can find a mixture or hybrid of meta, but that did not happen in this TI.
The OG Drafting
In top-tier drafting, we cannot expect a simple out draft or surprise cheese pick unless it was not used before. What we expect is to make the team play comfortably and fit the overall strategy.
Key points of winning TI, being difficult to ban against or counter pick
Facing OG in this TI, the opposing team had a lot of difficulties in drafting, OG had the line up that is not possible to ban against. First of all, teams always wanted to ban n0tail’s Chen and Nature’s Prophet, there were very few team’s support had such an impact to occupy two first ban slots for non-meta heroes, and then they had to ban JerAx’s Io or Earthshaker, if OG had the 1st pick, which made that there are not enough first ban slot against OG.
This is a huge problem because OG can first pick ana’s Spectre, and whenever the enemy starts banning Spectre, one of those heroes was leaked, and then ana can first pick Phantom lancer, and if both of them were banned, ana goes back to Ember Spirit which they picked a lot during the open qualifier.
After the first round of ban, they usually focused to ban topson’s heroes, but topson had the hero pool to get through it. Even if the enemy tried to ban all topson’s hero like Invoker, Arc Warder, Pugna, he can still go with Zeus which no matter how hard he loses in lane phase he can still dish out tons of damage thanks to the % based passive and gives the vision the team needed.
And Ceb was mostly ignored, he could pick anything that fit the team.
The same situation happened in previous TI, back with only two 1st-phase bans, it was even easier. In TI 7, when facing Liquid, teams did not want to give GH Keeper of the Light or Io, which opened up Earthshaker and Nature’s Prophet. Wings in TI6 could pick anything, ban pick was almost meaningless. In TI 5, Aui_2000 can always wasted the enemy’s 1st ban with Naga Siren and Techies, which easily opened up EG heroes like Clockwerk and Gyrocopter.
Going through the draft
In Game 1, OG was already going with their plan, but played safe with the flexible pick of Winter Wyvern and Lina, and Resolut1on is famous of hard carries too, so OG focused down carries that Phantom Lancer may have problem against. VGJ.Storm have a good idea of banning n0tail and topson’s heroes, but it does not help.
Game 2, VGJ.Storm tried to pick Nature’s Prophet themselves to save up a ban slot for Phantom Lancer. But OG surprised them with Troll Warlord, and Ceb’s last pick got Venomancer as a nice counter. We can see that VGJ.Storm cannot use the ban to protect themselves. Maybe due to missing their coach in the game.
EG did not respect ban Nature’s Prophet and Invoker in game 1, which cost them the game. And s4’s Necrophos got caught too many times, failed to snowball.
OG was experimenting Lycan in Game 2 but failed.
Edit: Thanks for the comments, I have reviewed the game for more details.
OG was exactly trying to do some countering, Ursa for Enchantress, Arc Warden and Lycan for Drow Ranger. The whole line up is a traditional push strategy, they had a very high chance to win around 20 minutes, but failed due to amazing play from Cr1t-’s Spirit Breaker to stun everyone in 1 charge. Like every push strategy, once lose the momentum, OG fell apart quickly.
And Game 3, EG tired to steal Gyrocopter from OG to avoid the combo, but Gyrocopeter is weak alone. Then EG played safe to pick 2 support first, and OG protected the Centaur Warrunner by picking him late. This game is also the first appearance of the double damage reduction combo, at late game, Spectre only toke 31.5% damage before armor, and reflecting 30% damage.
Game 1, LGD randomly banned Morphling in the 1st phase, opened up the Io Gyrocopter combo, they tried to cheese it with Huskar without considering Decrepify nullifies the magic resistance of Berserker’s Blood and the disarm hurts a lot; Enchantress also counters Huskar with pure damage. It is totally an out draft with a lack of respect.
Again, OG was experimenting Bloodseeker in Game 2.
Edit: Thanks for the comments, here is the details. OG tried another way to counter Enchantress, she is hard to kill not only Untouchable and the heal from Nature’s Attendants, but also with delaying the death, her movement speed work wonders, Rupture could be a solution to it. They also first tried Meteor Hammer on Invoker first time in the tournament, it got a number of kills, but did not win them the game. Until 25 minutes, LGD was starting to get their BKB on cores and win the game that power spike.
LGD got surprised by the Spectre first pick in Game 3, and tried to counter her with Terrorblade but lost the buyback war due to the long CD Metamorphosis. The 2nd pick Terrorblade also made them lose the pick of Earthshaker. Lastly, OG last pick Arc Warden helped them to delay the push by constant split pushing and magnetic field protecting buildings, which gave Spectre a chance to go super late game for a come back. The 4th-pick Pugna also baited LGD to pick Mirana, who counters Pugna in the mid lane, but that was a trap.
This time, with enough research, LGD did not give n0tail his hero, but that opened up Spectre, and LGD tried to have Storm Spirit as a catcher to avoid late game, but the early picked Strom was countered by the surprising Monkey King pick, causing him to swap to the safe lane. They also picked Bloodseeker to further countering ana’s Spectre in the lane time, but OG countered their lack of pushing power by Treant Protector. With topson’s Monkey King having a good lane time, he have been ganking a lot, getting kills and creating space for ana to recover from the bad laning time. With Living Armor, LGD only pushed 1 tower of OG. Although winning Game 1, OG feels the threat of Storm Spirit, he is banned in the rest of the series.
Game 2 drafting is one of the best for LGD, which opened up Io, but because OG decided to go with the Gyrocopter pick, which means OG is the one that losses late game. LGD picks Phantom Lancer to win the game, and Kunkka is such a good pick that counters all Io, Underlord and Distrupter by X marks the spot.
In Game 3, LGD had a good idea to counter OG’s late-game play by the Alchemist pick, although topson’s Morhling won the lane, but Alchemist farmed so fast that Phantom Lancer had no chance to go late game, as a result Alchemist was also banned in the next two games.
Game 4 is much similar to Game 1, but LGD opened up Io due to the dominating performance of Earthshaker on both sides. OG also secured ana’s Phantom Lancer in the 1st phase, LGD tries to counter it by Morphling which can morph himself to Phantom Lancer, with those 2 known bugs, it is questionable. LGD did not ban n0tail’s Chen in phase 2 because they needed to invest them on topson’s hero. And then they picked Chalice’s Brewmaster just like game 3, hoping to interrupt the Chen. But that opens up Axe because Brewmaster cannot counter the Axe creeps skipping, and OG forced that match up by going tri-lane too. This made Ceb to have a great early game, and when he start ganking globally with Io Relocate and Invoker Sunstrike, he created so much space for ana to farm up. Also, topson went Quas-Exort Invoker instead of his famous Quas-Wex Invoker surprised LGD and provide strong burst damage in the mid game.
Game 5, LGD was so afraid of ana’s hero, banned both of them in the 1st phase, which opens up n0tail’s Nature’s Prophet, LGD secured themselves the Earthshaker, but OG countered him with Rubick, LGD then picked Terrorblade to have a better late game, but again, he is bad in the buyback war. LGD had good preparation to counter ana’s another famous hero Ember Spirit with Silencer, but that does not work due to the Eul’s scepter plays. Ceb’s Magnus made the 21 min BKB of Terrorblade seem stupid. LGD tried to further counter Ember Spirit by Batrider, but the last pick Zeus made Batrider difficult to initiate.
n0tail’s Nature’s Prophet did a lot in this game, before the game-changing Roshan fight, n0tail baited Chalice’s Batrider to use his teleport scroll to defend the split push, he also use the Treants to deny a double damage rune in front of the roshpit. Then he immediately teleported to the Roshan area to contest the kill, lacking Batrider also delayed LGD’s Roshan kill which OG member revived to further contest it. Maybe’s Kunkka sold his Quelling Blade in 19 min, caused him to be zoned out multiple time by Sprout, he bought another one at 29 min, but he already lose the decisive Roshan fight and lacking behind 12k net worth. Finally losing the game.
It is so amazing that OG found another meta to compete with the current meta, and when Dota becomes more and more balanced, we don’t only diverse our hero pool, we diverse the available strategy too, hoping that we will see more creativity in the future.
Thanks for reading, see you next time after the next DPC tournament .
