Team Strategy help

Hello there, Like many, I need the help of the community, because I'm at a point where i'm pretty much hitting a wall regarding my team's DOTA play. Here is the context :

I've been playing DOTA 2 for like 2-3 months with a group of friends, and we manage to play fairly often together (15 games a week) with a fairly low rotation in our roster (we have player pool of 7 persons). We are using TS for voice communication also, so I'd say we have a pretty descent theorical advantage over our opponents ( knowing each other + voice comm'), even in CM. .
And still, we lose. A lot (esp. since we play CM). And I can't manage to identify exactly what's wrong.

So I hope some fine minds around here can give us a hand.

Here are two matches from this week end (hope the match ID is enough to retrieve the replay); I'd appreciate any advices possible on the following points (if we do something right it will be usefull to know too) :
1. Lineup / Ban : did we pick properly as far as roles are concerned, do we have enough disable, etc.
2. Lane setup : we tend to go trilane, maybe we should not ? Do we have the proper heroes as solomid, offlaner, etc. ?
3. Starting equipment - item build: do we pick proper starting equipment and item build following that ? Are there situational items we should have picked ?
4. Team fight : do we engage team fight properly, do we focus the right heroes at the right time ?
5. Farm repartition : do we farm our carries properly ? Should our support farm less ?
6. General Strategy - Team positioning : We could we be more agressive / should be more defensive ? When ?

( when doing suggestion about something we are doin badly, knowing if this is a major point or a minor one would be best )

Replay A ( 171589103 ) : How to be destroyed by Phantom Assassin
At the beginning of the game, one of my buddy says : "beware of PA, the player is lv30 the other are low level". And indeed he destroyed us all by himself Posted Image How could have we shut him down when we have a descent advantage at the beginning of the game ?

Replay B ( 171686595 ) : How to lose with a 22 kill advantage
The game starts pretty bad, and we lose many towers. But then we have our Enigma + aoe combo rolling and it seems like we can't lose a teamfight anymore. But we still end up getting our towers chipped away. What could we have done to transform our teamfight advantage in a victory ? How to be agressive yet still being able to defend towers against an elusive pusher like weaver ?

There, I made my profile public in case some of you want to watch more of our replays. I hope there is some fundamental flaw in our play so that i can dsicuss it with my partners and solve it.

I know I'm asking a lot, but to be honest i'm fearing that the way the matchmaking works will always push us toward opponent that globally play better than us, and thus will make my DOTA evenings more and more painfull ...

Thanks a lot for your help,

Kerm.

bonus track : if we were to create a team and use team matchmaking, would our life be easier ?

Afraid I can't get on Dota at the moment, so can only comment on the team selections.

First game they had really poor team composition (4 melee carries), your veno pick was a good answer to this (they really suffer against him), but not really followed up. Your team is pretty squishy on the whole though (big problem vs PA), you've got a ton of AOE damage, but no AOE disable to back it up, and your choice of Weaver for a tri-lane carry is kinda confusing. Why not Naix for a safe carry against that kind of line up?

Warlock is always a good pick against melee heavy line ups like this, better than Crystal Maiden in this case - great combo of Fatal Bonds and Poison Nova, CM really needs someone to keep enemies nearby for hers. She needs a carry who can get early kills. Batrider is a reasonably decent solo, but he really needs backup for ganking fairly soon if you want him to be effective. Clinkz would maybe have been a better choice as he's very dangerous.

Second game it's really difficult to see how you lost from the stats - you had better team composition, more levels and they had no obvious synergy - the only thing I can see going for them is they did a better job of concentrating farm on their carries. Take it you lost 1 fight or got vital players ganked and then lost a bunch of rax?

BTW, most of the teams you'll be matched with on AP/CM etc will probably be 5 stacks as well.

For your first game:

I don't understand any of the picks/bans. But some things I want to point out for you.

1. Your early game is phenomenal but you have no push, no way to push up tier 3 tower. Venomancer and CM were not good picks - once the game goes past 25min, which I'm sure it did because you have no base push, you are up against 3 BKB carries. CM and Veno become completely useless at this stage. You should have looked for Shadow Demon, Beastmaster, even Enigma (because melee carries tend to group up) as lock down if you were looking for a 30min+ game.

2. Why did you lose your trilane? You were 3v2 with some of the best early game slows/stuns available. At 6min, they had 13cs compared to your total of 21, and you had the jungle.

This requires a longer answer. One, I think your bat and weaver should've exchanged lanes. Bat is useless bottom because of PA slow + Ursa slow and wack. His normal laning superiority with sticky napalm is nullified. However, with a weaver you can easily evade those two on the bot lane, and get more last hits than the Batrider. If Bat is on top lane, you could have easily killed Sven or Axe. 3 Sticky Napalm stacks, one cm stun, one Gale, and they'll be at 10 movement speed. Easy kills. With batrider and veno you can easily zone those two melee heroes from the lane, and totally deny them any exp and gold. Weaver on the other hand does not have the early game DPS to kill them.

They got FB top at 7min. Lots of bad decisions leading up to this. Look at your team's strengths. You have two of the best lvl 6 heroes in the game - Batrider and Nyx. The moment these two hit lvl 6, it should translate into a kill or two for your team. Yet Nyx waited from 5:30 to 7:00 before rotating top, lvl 7 already. Batrider never tp-ed top or mid for a gank on Invoker until 9min. This is silly. One Nyx stun, Batrider lassoo, anybody is dead. Their team are all so poor by lvl 6 - Invoker and PA have passive lvl 6s, Ursa and Sven hit a bit harder, and only Axe has something useful. This should have been thought of during the drafting stage. Why did we pick Nyx and Batrider? Really OP ultimates? Hit 6 and get kills - that should've been your thought process.

3. At 6min, only Nyx mid had boots. All their heroes had boots except for Axe. This is not good.

4/5 - I can't help you there. This is about individual skill and judgement.

6. That kill on Sven at 9:45. You do not need all 5 heroes. You only need 2-3. And if all 5 were there, you should really really push the tower, both tier 1 and 2. Instead you waited around because you were afraid to dive and gave them time to group up top. They managed to win a teamfight because your Nyx and Bat were poorly positioned. Your venomancer should have really gotten plague wards instead of poison sting, it would have really helped your push.

What amazes me is that you all spent the next 5min at top trying to fight them. They just waited with 3 heroes while the other two farmed. Even though you did manage to win a few fights, this is hardly worth it.

By 20min, you had killed a tier 1 tower and you just won a fight at Roshan. However, their Sven had already killed two tier 1 towers because of your stubborn 5 man top. Nyx, CM, and Veno were bottom feeders on the cs chart, while their offlane Sven had more cs than your safelane Weaver. At this point, the game is already astronomically difficult for you to win. A winning position at 20:00 would be to have killed 4-5 towers, and you having a 5-7k gold/exp lead. Your heroes get more useless past this time, while their heroes only get stronger.

For your second game:

I'm just going to answer your strategy question, because everything else is a matter of experience. Once you play more games and better yet, watch some professional games, you'll get better at things.

What they did by 20:00, is exactly what you should've done the first game. 5 towers up, 7k gold lead and 2k exp lead. You should note how aggressive they were to push those towers down and how unafraid they were of dying. Because they had the game plan in mind - you had carries that get scary past 35-40min. So they take all the advantage they can get before then.

A side note: I don't know how you lost the towers considering you had really good anti-push: Enigma, Gyrocopter, KROB, PL. If you asked my friends/team, they would give you the same answer we give ourselves: "we're ****".

You got your first tower at 27min. They did really well defending them all game, but considering how you had enigma and death prophet, you should have had all their tier 1s by now.

At 32min, they took your last tier 2. For the next 10 minutes, your team did not move past the the arc where your tier 2s would've been. This really stifled your carries's farm at a time where they should be getting 500-600 gpm. You had a 10k exp lead on them this whole time, why didn't you push out as 5? Sure you'd lose a rax, but you'd probably throne it. If they can't beat you in a 5v5, what makes you think they can beat you without Weaver?

I want you to go to 43:00 and look at mid lane. You had eidalons and a seige creep. Death Prophet ulti was up in 40seconds. Just take the mid rax and sack top. This should be a no brainer. You had gem, you had Gyro ult, you had PL. Instead 3 heroes spent 20seconds walking back to base. To protect a ranged creep rax?

Your mid rax fell in a similar fashion. If it's too late for you to TP and defend, you should just go for the trade. Your lack of pushing all game punished you hard late game as you wasted precious time pushing Tier 1 and 2 towers. It should've been obvious to you that you can take teamfights. So just push one lane and throne. It's actually really easy. Towers don't do **** to you at 45min. Well once they got mega creeps it was over for you.

I just want to address these concerns, because they're probably more important than the two games you played.

You do not have a theoretical advantage. Other teams speak to each other too. Really good teams don't even need to speak to each other.

What is wrong?
1. You do not have a plan in mind. You pick heroes that a)you're good at or b)you see pros play and you think they are good. You need to develop a gameplan during the draft.
What are we trying to do by 10min? by 20min? by 30min? by lvl 6? by lvl 16?
What are they trying to do by 10min? by 20min? by 30min? by lvl 6? by lvl 16? How do we counter that?

2. Man up. Your games are plagued by uncertainty and fear. Know what your strengths are, know that you are ahead, know that you are 5v3, and make something happen.

Despite what people say about MM, I think it's pretty fair. When my team gets stomped a few games, we get to stomp a few back. Don't worry, you'll meet challenges but winnable games. Both those games were winnable, especially the second one. You have not hit a wall with your teamplay. You guys can all get better, individually and as a team. A year later once you hit 500 games, you can come back and tell me you've vastly improved.

Cheers, hope I've helped,
PeachFuzz

ABOUT TEAM MM: my friends and I have an easier time just party queue CM. Team MM gets really serious, and we have to put 100x more concentration into those games. In my honest opinion, you should stay away from it given your skill level. Hell, even we stay away from it. But if you want to experience having your banners fly around and your team name on the top, then give it a shot. But don't expect to win games, and even if you do, they'll be really really hard.

Replay 1
Watch it again from minute 9 - 18
watch sven,ursa,pa farming (middle or bottom lane)when u guys fight top 5 vs 4, 9 minutes long
so gold and exp goes away radiant side

(maybe your trilane go bottom and push hard, weaver solo top)
my opinion or completly wrong ?!

i'm not so expirienced in captains mode and rotation stuff
hope to read more impressions of that replay

I really enjoy picking in captains mode. The only advice I have is don't let your teammates bully you into picking terrible. natures prophet is a really good early game pusher, if you want to get more pushing power consider drafting a Leshrac or a Shadow Demon. Also remember that getting early kills can win games, make sure you draft heroes that have a good lane composition, so you can get any early lead and push towers without a whole lot of Resistance. Also make sure you always have a tp scroll.

Just wanted to quickly thank everyone who replied, really usefull feedbacks here.

Thanks again.