the sadness of knowing what was ...

Playing dota since closed beta i have gone through with my beloved game a lot of changes...

frostivus
diretide
and
many many many many many many many patches and 6456789 patch notes.

ive gone from 4 protect 1 meta to the dual core to tri core to the split push to the team fight and now we have the death ball....

and it is with this true sight of the evolving changes that i am feeling progressively more and more sad about where the meta is going.

"Deathball" as it is affectionately known is the strategy of being able to combine 5 heroes in such a way that you have a strong advantage in early game and the composition of those heroes allows you to basically stick as a 5 and push down the enemy towers in such short order that you end up with such a gold and XP advantage that the enemy has now way of being able to fight back.

this Meta allows teams to force 16-20 minutes gg's because the other team knows there is no possible way that they can bring themselves back into the game.

i know im not the only one who has heard these saying in casting

"Well looking at this XP and gold advantage there is just no way that *insert team name here* can bring this back"

or

"*insert team name here* just can not fight at this early stage because they know they will lose"

or

" its just 10 minutes in and we can already see that the game is *insert team name here*, there is no way they could lose this"

to me this makes me sad, why you ask?

i want you to look at your feelings coming out of TI4 and then compare them to TI3 or TI2?

what did you feel watching and listening to thos games compared to the years before?

ill tell you what i felt.

let down.

TI3 and 2 were exciting, one team fight could change the sway of the match , one clutch play by a player could have shocking repercussions, and MASSIVE team fight could go on for minutes and minutes... the plays were big BUT at no time did i feel that a team had lost until i saw a rax go down and EVEN THEN they could bring it back with some big plays. there were bases races, there were solo lycans just ratting away, there were 4v1 fights that were amazing shows of skill.(Excalibur's juking in the the leadup to TI4 were an exception).

All this made for a super exciting game to watch because you never know when or what could change a game around and throw it on its head.

now when watching i know from the 10 min mark who will win and i can say with certainty that i could turn off the match and come back in another 10 mins and it would be over and the team that was winning at the 10 min mark would have death balled and won by the 20 min mark.

and i find this sad.

the human spirit likes the under dog, the human spirit swells and fills when great things are accomplished by someone who we never thought could.

even teams that you love and go for when they are winning in such a huge fashion do you not cheer when a massive play is pulled off by the opposition ?

i am sad that the current meta is turning away from this exciting exposition of the human spirit and turning towards the slow drudge of the grind for towers and gg by 20 mins.

i want the team fights. i want the clutch plays. i want the one move the one play the one player that can change a fight and change a game.

i am happy though that slowly as with all the past meta's this too will fade and a new one will emerge one that i sincerely hope will bring back all that i wish for and hopefully .... just hopefully ....something more.







for a great come back from nothing with some massive plays but some even worst playing by me check this one out.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/870746949

all our towers down by 20 mins but we fought back on some big fights and we won it.

30 min blink
40 min refreshers

worst magnus game but even then ......it was a game that i would love to watch.

I myself love playing an agressive early-mid game and a kind of deathball strat, but I don't enjoy the deathball, I want to play like the deathball, and gain the advantages early, but have a carry that is farming for 30 min and then just comes out of now where and dominates.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/868268176
this is what I love.

I don't like watching deathball, I like watching ~45 minute games, I find them more enjoyable, and when you see a team that is losing hard win one team fight, and go straight for T4s and just skip the rax, with the whole other team buying back making a 3 min teamfight, I love that.

I agree, Smuggels

I prefer Rat Dota than Deathball. It has emotion, strategy and complexity.
If you can't overcome your strategy against a deathball line-up, there isn't much you can do unless do a suicide strategy or something alike.

@ oldkainen

i dont even know what you just said the syntax and wording makes my brain hurt.

are you saying you dont like deathball and that you like rat doto.

because if so .... thats exactly what i just wrote about....

I think the deathball is kinda over-rated at present. For me, EG badly blew it in the semi's because the lineups they picked (tri-core) were waaaay too greedy against Vici's lineup - they could easily have beaten them with better picks.

Vici vs Newbee - both teams picked the most aggressive/risky lineup they could for all games. Neither left themselves any margin for error or ability to come back later on if it went badly. Balls to the wall Dota. It's quite possible to play Deathball to a slightly lesser degree and give yourselves more options for later. I want to see teams utilising heroes that can stop/slow early pushes effectively without having to fight necessarily.

Give me deathball over Rat dota any day please! (even though last year's final probably was better in some games)

Yet EG was also the one who pretty much stopped the Void train.