Good Pub 5 Stack Drafts

As with any good draft, the Trick is to do everything well, but nothing especially great. Focus on your teamfight with Ravage, Invoker spells, Death Ward, and chrono? Prepare to get split pushed to death by that Lycan or Nature's Prophet. Ideally, you want a team of 5 heroes who
-all have something to bring to the table
-all have qualities that let them do different things
-all can fulfill one or two different roles

With that in mind, here is my pitiful draft: it is in no way good, current, or OP--please pick it apart
-Dual mid- Tiny or Chaos Knight, and Io
That gives you global capabilities, and then later. Pushing
-a solid solo-offlaner: my go-to is Bristleback, just cus
Then a strong dual offlane that changes based on the lineup

Send Lone Druid solo offlane.

Solo gold, solo levels.

Tranquils > FaZe Boots > Radiance > Aghs > gg rat bear

I agree with Sando, and yes the stacks we played kind of sucked. Even though a lot of dotafire stacks I play are really easy games, so there's no curse. Definitely >60% winrate from experience. Well...unless Xyrus starts playing jungle Lion xD

Anyways that's true that some better coorditaion could help.

Okay, so my idea is Oracle + Gyrocopter. Very strong lane, lots of burst damage, and False Promise makes Gyro IMMORTAL AND IMMUNE TO STUNS for 8 seconds meaning that he can just run in and wreck teamfights. He can probably delay BKB since he can't be stunned anyways, and go straight Demon Edge stacking for maximum damage. Also a natural Satanic carrier, so he'll survive at the end with double lifesteal.
Add in a Keeper of the Light or Crystal Maiden for infinite spamminess in lane and you can aggro trilane that stuff.

I am glad that you've created this thread. Our stacks have a pretty bad winrate, I am afraid. Around 20% at best.


The reason is, in my opinion, also the MMR/hours played difference between players and regions that some players are from. If we have a #1 who has 400 games played and is from SEA/NA region on EU West located game against #1 4k MMR guy from Germany... That's just not gonna work. I do agree that we need to discuss our roles at least, even before we start searching a game.


About the picks - I think we should more often pick heroes who can compensate some mistakes in our team, like Abaddon and Omniknight ( Dazzle might be a little bit tricky). Those heroes are known for high winrate in pubs and they are great defensive supports that I actually never seen in our DotaFire 5 stacks (and I played plenty of them). How about that?

True, we are petty disorganised. X{D

I suppose calling Lanes before matches is ideal, but some higher skilled players like to Random (lookin at you Nubtrain! -_- ). It may actually be better to decide an order to Picking instead, e.g.:-

1st guy randoms, lowest MMR player picks 2nd, guy who only feels confident playing 5 Heroes picks 3rd, Xyrus 2nd last, 4k+ player picks Carry/Mid last.

We'll probably have more success with that ^

Dazzle seems to work quite well, we only lose if someone waits too long in Random Draft and randoms Mid. 8{3

I should probably play more Dazzle anyway. <}3

Edit: gonna see if I can dig up an old threa where I posted easy comboes...

Edit#2: can't find it ._.

Problem is when I play in a stack, is that I play so few heroes. I maybe play 3 or 4 with relative success, while pretty much all other heroes I have never played/ have 1 or 2 games with.

If I play a hero which sounds good on paper, chances are I'll have a higher chance of losing than If I pick a hero that doesn't fit into the lineup that well, but I can at least play them well.

I know this so well, its almost sad. Not necessarily the "role" issue, but the "we have 0 team synergy thanks to 5 insanely greedy picks" thing :D .

The problem imo is however, to find a strat you can all agree upon. Personally - for example -, i hate push strats and like "pickoff -> objective" playstyles much better.

Then there obviously are things that every team needs. I found, that if you just follow these "guidelines" you ll have a pretty balanced team, that will be able to adapt to most scenarios.

1. Have long range Waveclear! there really is nothing worse than to be a bystander when the enemy team is taking your tower(s) (and teleporting in your entire team all the time can be quite costly as well).

2. Have a way to start a fight! Even if its just a Blink Dagger slapped onto a Lion.

3. RELIABLE damage! This is what ruined a lot of games for me. A draft like:
Magnus, Sven, Witch Doctor, Vengeful Spirit and Bristle Back
may (!) have good potential on paper, but it all comes down to what damage they can actually do. Lets say, Bristle Back got shut down hard (dies instantly in fights) and Witch Doctor isnt able to channel a full ult, because some1 on the enemy team can cancel it easily --> here goes your synergy and paper damage.

Draft: Drow Visage Lycan Furion Jakiro
Drow mid
aggro tri with Furion
Lycan solo safelane

Drow gets fast 6 -> push of doom commences on all lanes -> ??? -> win

If it's organization you want, I think there's a very easy way to do it. Just do it like in competitive.

At the beginning of the game, everyone calls his farming position, from #1 to #5.

Do not start a game unless every one of the 5 players has called his farming position.


#1 : safe lane carry (e.g Phantom Lancer)
#2 : solo mid (e.g Queen of Pain)
#3 : utility hero, either solo offlane or solo safe lane (e.g Tidehunter)
#4 : rich support or jungler (e.g Omniknight, Enchantress)
#5 : hard support (e.g Dazzle)

And for the lineups :

Defensive trilane :
1, 4 and 5 tri safe lane
3 solo offlane
2 mid

Aggressive trilane :
1, 4 and 5 tri offlane
3 solo safe lane
2 mid

Dual lanes :
1 and 5 dual safe lane
3 and 4 dual offlane
2 mid

Jungler :
1 and 5 dual safe lane
4 jungle
3 solo offlane
2 mid


And NO RANDOMING. Randoming only screws up your lineup.

Of course you can change your position every game if you want.

P.S : I think it's a terrible idea to make the picking order based on MMR. There's no specific position for high MMR players and no specific position for low MMR players.
If some players are only comfortable with a small pool of heroes, they can deal with it by calling the position that fits them best. Like if you only know how to play Lion and Shadow Shaman, just call #4 support and you're fine.

Some really useful comments here guys, keep it going :).

Whole range of issues here cropping up - relative skill differences, limited hero choices, late picks etc.

We could play Captains Draft to solve some of the team pick issues, but that means you're likely to be up against an even more serious/organised opposition.

Trying to fill roles is difficult - for example, I'm 4k+ so you might want to auto-stick me into Mid/Carry...but they're actually my least played positions. I'm probably one of the stronger players we have for playing #5 for example...but is warding and not feeding effectively worth the same as making bigger plays as a #3 or #4? Hard to say.

Totally agree btw we should discuss before match - less experienced players having a limited hero pool could actually help us here, as it narrows down the potential list of line ups.

Also agree on having more "savers" like Dazzle, etc. I also think there's a very naughty Naga Siren AS/teamfight strat hanging around somewhere. Or an Alchy AS rush?