Analyse this drafting approach please!

Hi guys, I draft for my grp of friends when we play CM, avg MMR of around 3.5k (one 5k rated player, rest 3k) and we have fairly successful games most of the time (yes, often thanks to our 5k rated player carrying us pretty hard at mid or no.3)

My issue is that while I have a fairly solid plan for how our draft works, I dont know what type of lineup it is or how it works 'in theory'. I just know what we do and how to execute, more or less. So, Im hoping you guys can help me to analyze what I'm doing to better understand why I do it:

Without further ado, here is a breakdown of how I am drafting in the current meta:

First bans:
Invoker
Only when we dont have a voker player, which is 90% of the time. I justify this to myself as having seen to many good voker players just wreck my team no matter how well we're doing, the hero is so versatile, and requires coordinated early attention to shutdown well.
Brewmaster
Brew seems to be pretty broken to me atm, so I ban him. I used to ban Bristle in this slot, but Brew messes with our mojo too much, even if our mid beats him well early game, once he find a modicum of farm, he rebounds too well and wrests the initiative from our team in most situations.

First picks:
I almost always pick our trilane first, but sometimes in different orders, usually supp/1 but sometimes supp/supp. I will use supp/1 for demonstration purposes.

Shadow Shaman
This is my go-to support, almost always first pick him. He can push with wards, has 2 solid CC's, which in turn allow him to be a great initiator with a blink, as well as having a solid, low-CD nuke. Whats not to like?

Wraith King
I often 2nd pick a WK(as opposed to picking him later) because the fact that he can be played as either a support or a carry means that until I pick a second supp(and even then, only if thats a supp that is rarely played as another role), it is not certain that he will be our no.1, leaving uncertainty in the opponent's mind during next ban/pick phases.
We run brown boots into blink with our WK, and use him to help initiate with the SS.

2nd Ban phase:
In this ban phase I will try to ascertain the intent of my opponent, but if nothing in particular strikes me, I will typically ban heroes like Bristle/DP/Void/Magnus/Tide. Otherwise if I sense an intent to rat, I may ban NP/Lycan along with one of the former mentioned.

2nd pick phase:
Here I will grab our second supp, and whichever of our 2/3 position i think will be harder to hard counter.
Our second supp is where I usually tailor for the enemy lineup so far, but still often go with heroes with another hard cc such as SD/Lion. If I am particularly worried about something I think the enemy is up to, I may grab a countering support like a rubick/kotl/naga or occasionally an omni.
Then I will typically pick us a second core, heroes such as Mirana, offlane doom or slark, or mid tinker/SF/BS. I grab the second core here so that I have room to pick a 3 core lineup later if I need to once I've seen all(at least 4) enemy heroes.

Final Ban:
Usually just ask my mid who he least wants to lane against if they havent picked their mid yet, so as to give him the best chance of winning that very important lane. Otherwise, will do the same for our offlane.

Final pick:
Depending on how greedy the other team picked, I will either grab us a 3rd core, out of the list I just mentioned (+ weaver off or TA Mid) or I will grab us a counter pick of sorts to fill a whole versus what the other team has, perhaps something like a puck/qop if we need some more nuke, a mid Nyx if they have some juicy squishies, or an offlane timber if they have a lot of strength heroes.


With this lineup we are happy to go agressive or defensive tri, and will often get at least a couple of kills with that tri against any solos (standard).


So, what I am looking for please guys, is for someone to say "ahh, thats x type of draft" and perhaps explain its strengths and weaknesses a bit.

I get the sense that I innately avoid big teamfight heroes, which must mean that we are a ganking lineup as per the popular paper/scissors/rock analogy.

Please help me to take my draft to next level! Thanks in advance for reading!

You may get a few different opinions on this:

I'd label this a "balanced/ganking" lineup, in that you've got a relatively good range of hero strength throughout the game, with a slight emphasis on early. You focus on banning out specific "OP" heroes rather than trying to counter particular strategies, and can do because your strategy isn't particularly focused.

You're somewhat reliant on winning your individual lane battles and generally outplaying the other team.

Balanced strats/selections like yours are generally pretty stable and not particularly easy to counter because you don't have a specific strategy really - you react to what the other team picks and does as best you can.

Weaknesses - both your supports (if you end up with WK and SS) are somewhat level dependent (both want 6 ASAP), and also somewhat farm dependent (I wouldn't classify either as a hard support) - this means that you HAVE to get kills in lane, or at least have successful roaming and good times in the jungle. You're particularly vulnerable to good offlane play that denies you this.

I'd also question how you might get on in tri-vs-tri battles - SS has a great disable, but the channelling can be broken easily too, Lion's Hex is much stronger at low levels. It kinda depends how aggressive your carry pick is, and whether the opposition can potentially drive you back with harassment alone.

The other weakness is if the opposition "go big" on a particular strategy - pushing, teamfight, ratting or ganking. You're fairly well balanced so not massively vulnerable to any of them, but done well they could cause you significant problems, particularly if they get the drop on you while drafting. E.g. they ban out Naga and Rubick then go big on teamfight. Or they go big on early ganking and pushing, leaving your underlevelled supports struggling.

Thanks for that Sando, very helpful analysis, and pretty spot on vis a vis aggressive tri's and extra importance of winning the laning phase. Also, the "go big" thing u mentioned was a bit of a revelation because it explains some losses we've sustained recently, against very strong pushing teams. All in all very helpful, thanks!

I really don't think you are flexible enough in your drafting, personally I would not pick heroes in any real order although I normally save easily countered heroes/cores for last. Shadow shaman I really don't like, in low level games he is ok because people are scared of his wards but higher level people will just tp in and take the gold. As for king he is countered so easily, better to pick him late, also you don't always have to tri-lane and you probably are always doing defensive tri-lanes, aggressive tri-lanes are great.

Not sure if this is what you wanted, but anyhow

Hope this helped
Fleet

If you have problems with Heroes, rather than Banning them, consider how to counter them. Take Brewmaster] for example, he isn't nearly as scary if you can prevent him from using [[Primal Split. There are plenty of good answers for this:-

• Chronosphere
• Doom
• Global Silence (can be removed, but requires a Brew to farm his BKB first, or a Hero that can Purge Debuffs)

So long as these Heroes remain options, you can always Counter whatever they throw at you, hell, when I get super serious with Drafting I always 1st Pick Doom Bringer just so I can always counter whatever they throw at me.

Generally these days it's better to Pick 2 Cores and leave Supports for the 2nd Wave. This is because if you Pick 2 Supports 1st, the other Team has twice as many Bans to remove troublesome Cores from your potential lineup. Taking the Brew example further, if they 1st Pick Brewmaster and you pick 1 Supports, they can ban out Faceless Void and Doom, giving the Brewmaster much less to worry about. Add in the fact that they've got 2 Bans from the 1st Wave and it gives them 4 Bans to protect their 1st Picks, which are usually the strongest Heroes in the Lineup.

Picking Supports 1st isn't that bad, but it's harder to pressure your opponent as most Supports don't act as good Counters to much. For example, Rubick is good at stealing powerful Spells, but that doesn't mean he'll have the chance to use them effetively, i.e. he's not going to Farm a Blink Dagger as fast as an Enigma, so he has to walk in to use Black Hole. He does, however, discourage the ohter Team from Picking Heroes with powerful Channelled Spells, or Spells that are just plain easy to steal, such as Fiend's Grip, Black Hole, Viper Strike, etc.

The other benfeit to picking Cores is that your Lanes are less obvious. Take your Wraith King (assuming that it's clear he's a Support, as most Support pics are) + Shadow Shaman. They're not good Junglers and there are better Dual Lane Supports ( Bane, Abaddon, Dazzle, etc.) so it's clear you're going for either an Aggressive Tri-Lane, or Dual Roaming Supports. If you picked Doom and Mirana however, it's entirely open which Lanes they could end up in.

Ascertaining your opponent's intention is a good idea, but if you can't do that, it's best to Ban out Heroes that can give you a hard time, e.g. if you're focusing on a Teamfight lineup, you may want to Ban out Naga Siren and/or Silencer. By the end of the 2nd Bans, the other Team can only steal 1 or 2 Heroes (if they guess correctly and can successfully run those Heroes) and/or Ban out 1 more Hero, so you can show your hand a bit more.

Pickup whatever you need before it gets stolen or Banned out. Hopefully, you left your opponent guessing your Lanes, but with 4 well aimed Bans, they've probably figured out your Strategy at this point. That's completely fine.

If you can get 3 powerful, flexible Cores by this point, you're in good shape, although getting both your Supports here instead is also good, especially if you've ascertained what kind of Lanes the ohter Team is running and have a certain Laning composition in mind that you're sure will succeed no matter what at this point, e.g. Aggressive Tri-Lane against a greedy Safe Laner + Jungler + Lane Support.

Pretty much the wisest choice here, since the final Pick is saved for surprise picks anyway.

Generally, you should aim to Pick something that surprises the other Team, e.g. you've Picked 3 Cores and a Jungling Support, now it's time to reveal that Juggernaut Support you've been practicing recently! >8{D

I wouldn't say Wraith King + Shadow Shaman + ??? is a good Tri-Lane. Granted, you have some good lockdown and WK is pretty Tanky, but unless you pick a 3rd Hero who puts out a lot of Damage, e.g. Ancient Apparition, Skywrath Mage, etc., you aren't likely to get any Kills.

It does seem that way, but generally you don't want to pidgeon hole yourself into 1 strategy. For example, a Nature's Prophet is good at Ganking and Split-Pushing, Doom Bringer is good in Teamfights and Ganking, Luna is good at Teamfights and Split-Pushing.

Drafting this way leaves you more open against potential Counters, it's harder to counter a Hero at both things they do than it is to Counter a Hero who only does 1 thing.