The International 5

at least better then chinese vs chinese

Bloodseeker and WW aren't tier 1... they are left untouched in quite a bit of games (not banned or picked) and they are never banned or picked in the first round...
Tier 1 are undying, naga, gyro, qop, lesh, sf, tusk, gondar and dazzle.
If those heroes aren't banned, they are instantly picked in the next pick phase.
BS and WW might be strong heroes, but they certainly aren't a tier 1 pick at TI.

Actually I think it's better to describe it as; Leshrac is a tier 0 hero, everything else mentioned is a tier 1 choice. Because I mean... Leshrac is just a little better than everything else in the hero pool atm.

Like heroes that are conceivably 1-2 picks or bans are; Shadow Fiend, Leshrac, Gyrocopter, Earthshaker, Queen of Pain, Dazzle, Tusk, Undying, Anti Mage, Naga Siren, Bounty Hunter, Io, and I would argue Bloodseeker and Winter Wyvern. I argue the latter two, because you do see them get this kind of love and respect, it's just more team dependent.

So that's a huge amount of options for first pick/first ban. And you see more stuff get picked up first than that, like there's been first pick Pugna, Techies, Disruptor, Keeper of the Light, Dark Seer as well iirc.

It's very hard to draw tier distinctions right now, because the technical tier 1 hero pool is huge. That's part of the reason why the games lack major hero diversity, because so many heroes are so good that drafts get centralized a little more than people want. Meanwhile I think it's actually a great patch for TI, because we are getting amazing games from it. I'd rather have a tourney like this than one where say there was a massive hero pool, but the games themselves were just eeeeh.

Likewise you have to consider how long we've had 6.84 now; It's been a good 3 months since it got announced, that is a huge length of time for a competitive patch. Like 6.84 came on the test client back in April, and the b patch in May (b patches usually force a meta shift from the initial meta of a patch just for people who don't know). It's not a surprise that the patch has been figured out by now, and thus the games being centralized around a kinda small hero pool. In contrast the TI4 patch was also released in April, but the b patch only came around in June, a month before the actual event.

So in essence all teams have a better grasp of what's good right now than they would have coming into TI4 if that makes sense?

EDIT; Io being tier one in my book is less to do with how often his being first picked/banned, and more to do with what the hero actually is and does. It's basically really hard to discount Io from a patch, because he's the sort of hero that's almost always viable.

" Techies is top tier pick."

-s4.

Game 1 of the main event about to begin. So psyched.

....

Stream daed boys.

Pack up your bags and go home.

Andddd, it's 18 Million...
Seriously, wtf?

Well, compLexity's up tomorrow, may as well use today to get caught up on schoolwork, which I neglected to do last week since I was watching the group stage.

The 322 is strong with empire

8'{(