So I drafted my first CM game....

Hello!
So recently I played captains mode and was captain and proceeded to draft.
dotobuff - http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1150865981
Ok, so before anything else, I want feedback on my draft. NOT MY GAMEPLAY! I know i fed and probably could've won if I wasnt consistently just trying to rush their base and dieing. Now to the draft and my thinking.

Early bans for us (radiant) with first pick/ban. I went for Doom and they void. nothing unusual so I chose weaver because I was prepared to deal with a lycan (trench tier) or other top tier heroes BUT NOT Weaver.

Anyway I first picked Lich purely because it would give a defensive tri-lane creep control easily or if aggro keep creeps back for easier ganking. They went for Viper/ Slardar and My logic was Viper mid, Slardar safelane. So I picked Shadow Shaman because of most of the players on my team having limited experience and also because he has nice early game kill potential along with push for mid/late game.

So going onto the bans with my theory of mid Viper and safelane Slardar I wanted to ban out some supports that could give problems overall. they banned Invoker me thinking that they would hate an Invoker mid against Viper then the Sven for Slardar.

Anyway picks, they went goblin techies so I thought that he would be utility with them still needing supports. So cue more support bans anyway. I went LD because of mine control from bear and Razor because then easy mid from Static Link. So they picked tide and I was slightly confused. Why two utility? They still needed a support so I banned Jakiro because he has puch + aoe to capitalise with tide.

They banned pa for carry and then picked Bane, So they had high magical damage and physical but lockdown only coming from Bane, Tidehunter and Slardar stun. Went AM for resistance against magic damage and can wait outside Ravage then come in and destroy.

What happened in-game; We had safelane tri of SS, Lich and AM. Mid Razor and solo off LD.
They had offlane techies, mid was Bane with him roaming more than staying in-lane. Tide changed from mid to offlane for them and safelane Slardar with what was a in-lane support Viper which was ******ed at most for me. Anyway I had a 4 man gank attempt on my life start of the game, I survived (just) and bear beat got them too half health.

Anyway if you want game story watch replay otherwise giff feedback based on draft NOT results shown in the dotobuff. Plz watch game for it to make more sense.

Thanks.

This is literally one of the very few scenarios a Techies can actually work. What your draft is lacking, is the means to jump-start a fight. If you want to put pressure on the enemy team you HAVE to group up as 5 and run down one lane....which with an AM and LD can - at the earliest! - happen at the ~30 minute mark. On the other hand you had to defend with at least 2-3 players when the enemy team made a push attempt.

The idea behind your draft was most likely a mid-game centric push strat with Razor Shadow Shaman and Lone Druid. Unfortunately those heroes are horrible to play from behind, making the AM a weird pick to me. There will be no surprises for the enemy team. They literally can jump every single one of your cores on sight and shut them down, without the fear of retaliation: No counter-initiation; limited brust potential; no CCs except Shadow Shamans and overall very poor mobility.

ok so

on the draft.

yours:

bans - weaver and doom? doom maybe was ok but weaver? why weaver? and as a first phase ban? u wot m8 lol jks but seriously how would he hurt your draft? you have heroes that are good laning against a weaver it would have been ez peez ladeez not matter where you would have outlaned him.
dazzle? ... GOOD thats a good ban. AA? not so much i would have preferred a offlaner banne dlike cent tide or slark who would really hurt you.
and then jakiro? huh? why jakiro? i dont see why you banned the things you did.

picks - this is what happened. you reacted to their picks and bans yea? you went oh they banned this they dont want this.. or oh **** they picked this ... oh this would be good lets pick this to counter them. yea no.... dont do that. you end up with drafts that are horrible.

the ss is a greedy support that needs levels to have an huge impact. lich is best in a dual lane offlane or in an aggro trilane he works in a tri safe but i feel that only best against a hero like cent or tide. the am pick was weird i would have preferred a harder carry like spec or fv. and your offlane druid pick was really really really bad. (you played well some awareness issues but overall well) it just wasnt the hero needed. like lobster said you needed an initiator and the only one close is maybe SS if he went blink but hey then he would need bkb to stop getting stunned out but bane is there so :P ...plus AM is bad against a bane. just fiends grip AM and boom dead AM. a FV would have been amazing here. but they banned him out quick. the idea was there ... but

bear and AM.... better at split pushing solo. and after watchign the game ... you didnt do it much. mostly experience issues but you guys kept rotating into each other. your supports kept showing themselves in lane and yea not good gamplay. and if you want to push with bear you need radiance. but even then

if AM druid are picks you cant leave ... go for three heroes that can fight as three and a powerful three lion tide undying omni DP (dp ***uld have been amaizng) puck magnus jakiro silencer QOP pick three of them and draft them. into it and you got a nice lineup.


but in saying all that ......

they had a bloody horrible draft too just well they had one that was better at certain things. that had cc and lockdown and counter push. things you couldnt deal with. also.... dont want to point fingers but...

mcshrek didnt go BKB .... lost you that game with that single choice and razor was ... i dont know what razor was.

how to win: carry dust, pick timbersaw or some ****, ddos razor for extra gold and less feed, buy one of those mysterious golden things people don't buy because "it does no damage"

yeah, I have heard that

Ok lets do dis.

The doom ban is ok, since no one is going to pick brewmaster or io, and skywrath batrider and ember are not going to dominate at that level, but the weaver ban confuses me. i get that you might be afraid of not having enough lockdown, but then i would fear slark much more, since weaver players are generally awefull because they all buy linkens 100% of the time.

lich is really strong in low pubs cause he is strong in lane, but when you know its going to be trilanes you just waste all his potential, he becomes completely useless later in the game, so you should have run him in lane with druid. but then the shaman pick didnt make any sense, because he is weak in lane and VERY greedy. so he kinda needs to be in a defensive trilane. so no matter what you were going to have 1 worthless support.

the AA ban is .....decent, but you didnt have any healing so there isnt much reason to be afraid of it.
the dazzle ban is perfect, since he would enable them to go REALLY agressive.

your second pick phase was really good, since you seemed to go towards a draft focus on lane domination followed by midgame push. your team is bad from behind but theirs is probably even worse at making comebacks, with viper and slardar who can become useless VERY quickly.

tide shouldnt have come through the bans though, techies can be in place of an offlaner, but i doubt that they would just abandon a lane, since pubs tend to be greedy.

jakiro ban, sure, they needed a support and his slows could really **** up the bear.

And theeeeeeeeeeeen you descided to randomly pick AM and **** it all up, you didnt need a carry, it didnt fit into your strategy, and it isnt even that good against their heroes.

as the others said you needed something that could jump in and start a fight. the tide should have been claimed by you early in the draft.

this way you could have run duallanes with shaman + 1 top, and druid + lich bottom. but now you ended up with druid who isnt really an offlaner, a team that has to wait for AM even though they want to push and an unutilised lich.

you would still had the problem of a razor who looks like playing his first match, but thats not really the point :P

Ok, thanks for all the wonderful advice! I will spend some time going through and re-read with comprehension in mind and then post a detailed response.

So although I know your focus in this post is to become a better drafter, the reason to become a better drafter is to(I would imagine) win more games. And for your group of buddies to win more games, gameplay overall is gonna have to improve, most specifically item choices. Part of drafting is giving your team an item guideline.

Just looking at dotobuff, it looks like your trilane did the job of getting your Am fat, but he didn't do his job. His job is to make game winning item choices with the gold he has, and he got no survivability. He needed a BKB to survive the ravages and viper slow, and he might have even needed a heart to survive getting wailed on during a bane ult.

On Lone Druid, I'm not really an LD player but I sense that the Admiral Bulldog Radiance/Pipe build would have been very helpful this game.

Your team lacked the ability to start a fight, which could have been halfway remedied with a Blink on SS.

And Razor, well... yeah.