Analyze my team's play

Recently, my team, Continuum|eSports, obtained a brand new lineup, with only 2 of the original 5 players. We've played 3 games together so far, winning all. The first two we met with fairly easy success, but the last one we very easily could have lost.


Game one - Dire side Match ID: 1752370546
Could you take a look specifically at the movements of the supports and how they could have been better. Would also be great if you could comment on the offlaner's overall Dark Seer play, and how it could have been better.


Game two - Dire side Match ID: 1755256488
For this one I'd appreciate input on the Ember Spirit's movements in lane, and how, if ever, he could have played it more defensively when he was farming. Also, how should the Bounty Hunter (myself), have done a better job of applying pressure to the lanes?


Game three - Radiant side Match ID: 1755325482
The supports are what I'd like to focus on for this one. How could the Earthshaker have played better in general, and avoided getting caught out so much or dying in fights. How could Silencer have used his spells to greater effect, specifically Global Silence. Last one for this is I'd like to know if you guys think PL was over aggressive in the early game. Again, this one could have easily been a loss if we started tilting in the mid game, but eventually our PL became more than they could handle.

could you give the match id for some of us guys who can't open dotabuff? (yeah i know, but its for reasons that you don't need to know). if i have the time i'll gladly take a look at it since i play for a competitive team aswell (not that active but i'm not that rusty when it comes to team planning).

Edited the OP with the match Id's

Okay here it goes

Game one:

first the Supports:
So far so good! but your supports don't know some of the efficient ward spots all over the map, thus wasting wards which makes them take more time trying to save up for their core items. Also your supports needs to rotate between the lanes more, since your support heroes ( Earthshaker and Disruptor) doesn't need much levels, which means they can safely rotate all lanes. Since i only see a small amount of ganking in the bottom and mid and more on the top (its more on the top because they were tri-laning)

now lets see the actions of the offlaner DARKSEER:
good lane management, could be improved, a little slow on getting the items, since he is solo on the lane, the offlaner should be right behind the mid when it comes to items and exp in early to mid(or atleast this is my team's style of playing the offlane, yes a little greedy but it makes space for the carry, for this case Razor to farm more efficiently after the laning phase.)

There you go mate, hope this helps, about the 2 other games i'll watch it when i have the time and/or motivation to do it, but for now sorry chap. :)

Cheers, IgnoranceIsBliss

Also not enough smoke ganks!(haha kidding, but when you go for roshan just let two-three people take roshan but use smoke before entering(agianst wards), the two other people should show themeselves in lane (protect yourself with wards and tp of course) so that the enemy team won't think that you are getting rs)

Game 1: The Dark Seer could improve on his item build. He needs a stout at the start to make him difficult to zone and if the supports ever leave the carry alone he can just creep skip and ruin the carry's farm (depending on the hero) while securing every last hit for himself. He can't do this without a stout. He needs a couple clarities as well. Could probably do without the salve and 3 iron branches (3 doesn't even build into anything anymore). When he got to the lane before creep spawn he just places a lazy pull block ward that is easily dewarded. Show him some of the better ward spots. Its the radiant pull camp so you can go wild with that ****.

After creeps spawn, DS should shell the wave earlier, so when creeps meet he can shell another one. You need the double shell to get cs early, hence the needed mana regen. His item build is questionable too. He went aghs first, which is really inefficient because the upgrade is percentage based. So, if you get it early, the percentage boost on illusion damage doesn't amount to much at all. This game, the standard mek first would have sufficed especially considering they had a bloodseeker.

At the start of the game before rune spawn (gotta get out of fountain quick for this) the supports can roll into their own jungle to make sure the offlaner doesn't get a ward down. Fortunately the clock didn't have one. Later on, you waste a sentry checking if the clock placed a ward. Disruptor does a good job zoning the clock and es should just be able to stack pull when needed. After the clock is adequately zoned though the supports should have rotated for a smoke gank mid. Razor destroys clock in that lane and doesn't need any help. However, pugna is actually a decent matchup versus qop. Pugna is also a really easy kill for your 2 supports. So you gank him over and over again, causing the enemy supports to respond, which frees up your ds, slows down their carry, and allows ds to just creep skip.

Game 2: A lot of support related things I said about the first game so these will be pretty brief. Bounty Hunter is easy. You just sit mid, right click enemy with OoV from invis. Keep ****ing with them until you get level 2 and then try to snipe the courier. Mid lane is won. Your item build should be different though. Start with OoV, tango, sentries. This way you can't be stopped in mid. If they have a sentry, you just place yours down and eat their ward with a tango. This whole process will win mid harder if mid has a highground ward. You may need mana regen so you can always fly out a clarity at the same time mid gets his salve from getting rune. After you win mid lane, it's situational. You go to whichever lane you can **** **** up in. Generally you wanna mess with safelanes pulls. Then after about minute 10 you wanna sit in a lane and get solo exp until 6.

Ember's movements in lane seem to be fine. He's low on cs though, but the disruptor isn't doing much to help the cause by constantly drawing creep aggro and just leeching a lot of exp in general while simultaneously not doing a good job at zoning. Here is a case where it would be completely fine to bring the bounty top to get kills on the Legion. This works because Qop is nearly impossible to gank and their mid is getting *****tomped anyway (68 cs to 28 cs at 10 minutes). I'm kinda curious on what the mmr difference was in this mid matchup. Lesh should win, but not that bad.

Game 3: Same deal as game one. Silencer zones and shaker pulls. You guys have that down. Always look to pull as soon as your wave gets 2 ranged creeps because then its going to push hard. The silencer's item and skill build here is completely off. Always skill glaives level 1, then max last word. You can endlessly zone an SB with glaives. Here he has a harder time cutting through the stout without the pure damage. He also buys pieces to a null at the start. Supports should never start with these kinds of items because it means that he eventually has to fly out sentries to deward. Sentries are way more important than the minimal amount of stats. If the sb had blocked it would have been a harder lane.

Here's another safelane where once your carry has a level advantage, he can easily deal with the offlaner. This means you can smoke gank mid, and get the easy kill on TA especially since storm is winning the lane pretty hard early on. Winning the lane that hard and early rotations let the storm get a 14 minute orchid, which you guys could have 4 manned with that much better. The PL does have some problems prioritizing the right targets in fights, but I don't think he is overaggressive. There's a skirmish in the safelane around 8 minutes where the TA melds and he forgets about her when he coulda got the kill. However this also comes down to the supports not dusting immediately. There's also a time he gets ganked around 14 minutes and the rotations are really slow. This comes down to communicating the urgency of turning around the tower dive which you can easily do with storm.

There was a couple of bad globals that game. It sounds obvious, but you only want to use global when it would be heavily inconvenient for the other team to use spells. So you want to avoid panic globals, like what happened when the slark when on him and already used all of his spells. Silencer was one right click from death, global does nothing. The other big time was when Storm+1 (or 2 idr) initiate on rosh to get a necessary steal. The global comes after the fight is lost. It really just takes practice at playing the hero and knowing when your team needs your ult.

Good games here, hope the advice is useful. Talk about it with your team, figure out what you guys could have done better, and make a plan from there.

i did a vid of the first one and ill look at the next but if you have a loss send it to me and ill look at that more so then wins.

ill upload the vid maybe tonight after my team trains. if im awake :P

How's that video coming along Smuggles? Also OP, You should consider posting this to other forums as well (reddit/playdota/whatever) so you can get more advice/ideas since you only got a couple responses here.

We put it on reddit and got some helpful stuff from there. BTW our new lineup is 7-0 so far on practices so the dream is alive. Thx to you guys who did post here. Your walls of text are appreciated.

But smuggles, is the video uploaded yet?

nearly i want to watch your latest win cheers