Drafting help

Ok so I'd just form this new team of mine and we went for teammatch mode.

Lost our first game.

I read from guides saying that picking & banning phase are important.

Did we lost due to our lineups?

If so, what would have been a better choice?

Not sure if it's with our lineups, or we just suck (I think so, lol)

Suggestions, reviews, comments would be very helpful =)

We are on Dire:

Radiant Bans:

Dark Seer
Shadow Demon
Jakiro
TideHunter
Lion

Dire Bans:

Nyx Assassin
Batrider
Bounty Hunter
Lone Druid
Undying

Radiant Picks:

Magnus
Rubick
Anti-Mage
Sand King
Enigma

Dire Picks:

Keeper of the Light
Phantom Lancer
Queen of Pain
Disruptor
Templar Assassin

lets break this draft down

they take out Dark Sear - so they want you to have a week solo lane and take away from your team fight
they take out Shadow Demon - this was a blunder from your captain. there are two main uses for Shadow Demon you pick him for his set up stun or to counter Anti-Mage, I could guess their team had an anti mage without looking

you take out Nyx Assassin - this means you want to have 3+casters or someone like Outworld Destroyer (I know they changed it but out of his three names I liked this one the best)
you take out Bat Rider - this shows you want to win mid at all costs since Bat Rider will win any lane he is in. QoP and Templar a so strong in there lane there was not really a point.

you first pick KotL - you are not giving anything away solid all around.
they pick Magnus and Rubic - I hope you saw there were going for team fight. At this point you needed to pick up something like lich, invoker or tidehunterfor the counter team fight.
you pick PL and QoP - They have Magnus, he can tear through PL illusions at most parts of the game, I mean his ENTIRE team will have cleave. QoP is squishy but other than that a good pick
they pick Anti Mage - they were not trying to hide this pick. Your captain probably lost you the game by not stoping this.

you ban Bounty Hunter and Lone Druid - they would be good bans if the other team did not have there HARD carry.
Undying was a good ban though, good job for that

they ban Jakiro and Tide Hunter - those were two team fight supports. If you did not notice they were going all in team fight this is were you should have figured it out.
they ban Lion - I don't actually know why they did this. They must have feared his disables but Shadow Shaman has better disables.

you pick disruptor - ok, another squishy hero. he has a good ulti but I fear he will die way to fast in a team fight

they pick Sand king and Enigma - All or nothing for this team fight team. Neither of those heros should have been in the pool and should have been baned instead of two more farmed heros.


Templar Assassin is your last pick - was this a miss click? You already have a good mid, Another squishy hero too. they have sand storm, Enigmas 1,2,3,4 skills will melt the shield once Anti MAge gets manta it will go down even faster.

Oh, one last note about your team the ONLY hero that can stop Enigmas ultimate is disruptors glimpse. 0 stuns so Anti- mage can move freely through your team and if Dirsuptor gets caught in black hole ( or any of there 5+ stuns) you will lose the team fight. your only hope at thgis point would try to get a pushing team and turtle with keeper wile heros like tinker or natures prophet push the lanes

It would help is you posted the lanes the heros went, I guessed for the radiant Magnus went mid Sand King soloed top and they sent Rubic with Anti Mage

For dire Templar mid QoP solo bot and a tri lane of Keeper + disruptor+ Phantom Lancer. Actually a good move would have been to send that tri lane vs Anti mage to try to stop his farm.

For game play it would help if you posted your match ID

Good analysis Mirror - I think you should be glad they went with AM rather than Naga Siren though or their team fight would have been even more evil :)

How did both teams run the lanes? I'm struggling somewhat to see how you ran yours - did you put TA mid, KOTL/QOP long and PL/Dis top?

The issue is your team is not particularly strong at anything - you've got some push/anti-push, some ganking power, but very little teamfight, disable, tanking ability and you're outcarried. Against this kind of line up you'd have to go pretty much all out on early ganks and/or push - mid-late game you'll get outcarried and destroyed in teamfights.

If you'd picked up any 2 from, say Enigma, Nature's Prophet, Leshrac, Shadow Shaman, Chen or Enchantress for your last 2 picks you could have gone balls out on a push strat. They don't have much in that line up that could counter a strong early push. Stick KOTL long lane purely to keep the tower up as long as possible, QOP mid and the other 3 safe/jungle. You could have tried annihilating their long lane towers ASAP and try to switch up into destroying their farm/other towers straight after. They don't have time to pickup the stuff they need, and you might be able to finish the game before AM becomes a problem.

It's a big change up in games against proper teams compared to pubs, teamfight ability counts for more due to the co-ordination, and invis heroes less as they're easier to counter when people are talking to each other. Try to pick lane combinations that really work well off each other and have a definite strategy for what you're trying to do.

Hi Mirror, Sando. Thanks for the deep insight.

I was the team captain and TA wasn't a misclick.

I guess I have still a lot to learn :/

Never thought about the sandstorm and Enigma's entire skill that could break down TA's defensive skills until you mentioned it =_=..It all makes sense T_T

In any case, here's the match ID. As you might had predicted, we're completely wiped out.

28 minutes games. The proper lane setup was right against Anti-Mage.

By the way, if the opponent bans shadow demon, does it mean they're definitely going to pick anti-mage?

Maybe this is really 'captain obvious' but I would like to learn more about counter-heroes.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/129893366

Thanks! Please do keep the replies going ><

Don't worry too much Gandalf, it takes time to figure all this stuff out and you're gonna make mistakes along the way. You might also be a bit limited by the heroes that your team can play well - you don't want to be going into this kind of match with picks that people don't know or can't use effectively.

The main thing is you need to have a plan going into these drafts about what your strategy is going to be, and try to figure out their strategy ASAP depending on their early picks and bans.

Tbh Shadow Demon is a reasonably common ban if they don't wanna pick him, they're not necessarily going AM. Same with Dark Seer - if you're not going to pick him, ban him.

Try to get good early picks that don't really tell them much about what you plan to do. Counter-picks aside, you want to have a definite strategy:

- Push
- Roam/Gank
- Turtle (farm up big carries)
- Teamfight

There are particular heroes that work very well against these strats:

Dark Seer and Keeper of the Light are very strong anti-pushers - probably the only two who can really keep off a strong early push with jungle creeps (i.e. Chen or Enchantress).

Rubick and Naga Siren are great anti-teamfight heroes - with careful positioning you can turn their big ultis against them, or at least make them wasted (then they're back on CD).

Turtle strat can be pretty well countered with most aggressive pushers/gankers, but it does depend on executing against their line up.

Gank strats also depend very much on execution and getting your lanes right (i.e. a strong trilane is difficult to pick off, heroes like Queen of Pain can jump out of trouble quickly in mid, and heroes like KOTL can sit so far back in the long lane. Good warding/counter warding is also key.

Pick lane combos that are really evil and difficult to deal with where possible.

Hi Sando, thanks for the insights.

So basically what I know now is that push strats are weak against turtles

So what counters Gank,Turtle & Teamfight strats?

I just had a game earlier(-CM) against a push team.

Somehow, I knew they were going to play a push strat but then again it maybe just luck.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/130792411/picks

The first ban, Phantom Lancer made me assumed that they do not want to play a late game.

But if I think about it now, they are mana dependent so if pl managed to hit late game with diffusal, they would be in trouble(That's what I thought as of writing now).

Is this the right way to think?

Their remaining 4 bans made me believe that they were entirely trying to avoiding teamfights as all the four bans have heavy ultimates.

The laning(We are on Dire) were..

Nyx Assassin
Undying and Rubick top

Queen of Pain solo mid

Necrolyte solo bot

Ours were:

Keeper of the Light
Naga Siren
Sand King top

Pudge Solo Mid

Dark Seer Solo bot.

I took down the first tower against Necrolyte and landed a kill against him so I guess my pick for Dark Seer to solo bot was right.

On the side note, I really thought our team was pretty solid.

I mean we had Dark Seer, Sand King and Naga Siren

But then again I am new to drafting.

How did we do on our picks and bans?

Thanks in advance ^_^

P.S what are the counter strats against Push,Gank/Roam,Turtle and Teamfights?

PL was probably the fact they did not know how to counter him
LS good ban, I have gotten in the habit of banning him in the first round
Mag a generaly good ban gives nothing away
NP shows you want team fight, it is better to give that away then to leave your counter in however

Nyx dear god I hate this hero, gives nothing away but forces you to get agi supports like veng or veno
DS good pick, your prediction of there lanes were perfect.
Pudge is hit or miss. He will win you the game or have little to no impact. I have seen games were Pudge wins it for them but personally I dislike him


Undying is a good hero this pick still gives nothing away.
QoP was a direct counter pick to Pudge

SK I like this hero, the Naga ulti to SK ulti should win team fights. Draft wise I think Keeper would have given away less because now it is eveident you are going for a more heavy team fight

The radiant ban give away a lot. Three early team fight/push heros. They should have banned Naga

Gandalf, I love your bans. Exactly the heros I would have banned. I might have banned Sven instead of Lycan since Sven is a more common pick but Lycan would have fit perfectly

Rubic They were afraid of you getting a tide hunter or something like that. I understand why they did this but I would think there would have been better picks like a push/cary like CK or another support like Keeper

Naga All in team fight.

Necro What? I can offer 0 competitive insight on this since that was a bad pick. It might have been because you had lots of tanks.

Keeper of the light!!!! Best Anti push in the game more synergy for your ultimate combo

If you traded Pudge out for someone like Invoker would be my only suggestion

They have a team build around small fight here and there. you have a team that is build around one big fight every few minutes. As long as they avoid your combo they will be fine. You said you lost this game? From the draft I would have thought you won.

Good heros to use vs a mobile gank team are better gankers like Night Stalker, heros that can TP in if they are tower diving like Tide Hunter, heros that can help any lane like Natures Profit. A real interesting one I found is Razer work well with his : speed, tank and static link.

From what it looks like here is they played to your weakness and you must not have found the moment to use your combo often.

Much better line up this time, your heroes had some synergy - Naga lets all of the others setup their big time fight powers perfectly if you get the timing right. Would question the Pudge pickup somewhat - it's much harder for him to stomp than in a pub, and like mirror said, he'll either win you the game or be anonymous. If you are going to get him, leave him until last pick so they can't pick a counter, or you can change your mind.

Looking at the lineups, I can only assume their tri-lane won and managed to do enough to screw up your early game? Even then you could still easily win a team fight, so did they pick you off with ganks first?

Traditionally:

Push beats Turtle
Gank beats Push
Turtle beats Gank

However, as always, this depends on how you play it and executing your strategy more effectively.

It's obviously easier with the benefit of hindsight, but against that lineup I'd tweak yours a little - maybe replace Sand King with a healer like Dazzle, sk gives you plenty of damage in team fights but you already have the advantage here, and Daz is no slouch in that department. He'd give you a lot more laning presence, and make it very difficult for them to pick off your heroes.

From their early picks you can guess their lanes are going to be pretty aggressive/ganky and you want a fairly defensive tri-lane that's difficult for them to get at. The longer that goes on with no real progress for them, the better for you. Plus between Daz and KOTL you have great sustain for heal/mana.

Change your mid up - you didn't really need or want an out and out ganker against a lineup like theirs - the only one worth hitting there would be Necro, and it sounds like you already had him contained.

Final note, if you do manage to pick up a Dark Seer (he's usually banned), try to get a Disruptor ban in - he's one of a very few heroes who can effectively gank him in lane.