April 27, 2015
NEED HELP !
Views: 1200
fires.of.hell
This day sucks, My team (with 2 stand-in) just played against a team in Best of 3 Captain's Mode: Enemy's first ban was
Silencer and
Invoker then a theory pops on my mind that they would pick heroes that rely on initiation, channeling spells and spell dependants and my expectations just happened. We are rekt every teamfight with their
Tidehunter,
Axe,
Lion,
Zeus and
Omniknight. How can I counter this pick-off since they banned heroes that can counter-initiate. Need help and I want a revenge match with them.
First, Aba and Rubick together form a pretty strong anti AOE damage shell, albeit Aba needs his Aghs before he's really dangerous to the enemies. Aba also breaks single target disable initiations like a god. With certain heroes, you can outfight that kind of team, but its probably not the best strat unless you have Rubick and Aba.
Second possibility is a turtling strat. If the enemies cannot break high ground, you will beat them if the game gets late. Sniper, Tinker, Timber as cores are pretty good at dealing with them. Veno is good too for his ability to lay down plague wards.
Third is split pushing. If their team is dependent on fights happening, just play cat and mouse with like Lycan or Nature's and they will fall apart. Tinker works too.
And fourth is heroes that break initiations well besides those they banned. Venomancer as previously mentioned can do it, especially as a core due to all that poison. Spectre ruins dagger carriers too. And then there's night stalker, with his unobstructed vision with aghs, he can easily identify and neutralize the most dangerous initiator.
So, heroes. Highlighted heroes are ones that can fit into multiple strats.
Out Teamfight them: Necrophos, Venomancer, Rubick, Elder Titan, Abaddon, Dark Seer, Earthshaker, Sand King, Undying, Magnus, Warlock
Turtle: Tinker, Venomancer, Sniper, Timbersaw,
Splitpushers: Tinker, Siren, Nature's Prophet, Lycan
Break their Initiations: Venomancer, Tinker, Siren, Rubick, Abaddon, Elder Titan, Disruptor, Spectre, Razor, Night Stalker
Essentially if they ban unusual heroes (here, counter-initiators), you can simply pick heroes that are widely considered overpowered with impunity.
Besides, there are a lot of counter-initiators in the game, you can't ban them all. Rubick. Naga Siren. Centaur Warrunner . Spectre/ Venomancer/anything that disables blinks. Disruptor is AMAZING against all those ability-based heroes, he's like a second Silencer. Not to mention the good old Doom.
But indeed the best way is to channel the ancient power of rat dota :)
An other way is to exploit their bad laning. Zeus's weak lane presence mid can easily be exploited by playing e.g Tiny mid, or any other greedy mid hero like Morph, Naga, Slark, whatever. Tidehunter or Axe offlane can be exploited by playing a ranged carry e.g Morphling, Drow Ranger or Clinkz (really good rat dota heroes btw), to zone them out 1 vs 1 and freefarm the lane. And Omniknight's terrible laning can be taken advantage of by either going for an aggressive trilane to shut down their carry, or to play a greedy hard carry in the safe lane (e.g Spectre or Anti-Mage) because they can't play aggressive on you or shut you down in any way.
I think there are other heroes aside from those two who can really wreck that strat - Naga Siren is a great example, as long as she stays slightly outside the main fight, she can fire up her ult after they initiate and allow your team to regroup/retreat safely - all their stuff is now on cooldown. Plus she's great at split push.
Rubick can be another strong one, stealing big powers and turning them around.
Or, if you want to win the easy way, you can draft a split pushing-oriented team ( Nature's Prophet/ Anti-Mage/ Io and Tiny/ Naga Siren) and defend towers as 4 (or 3 with Wisp) while the fifth pushes another lane. I've been using this tactic a lot when I played lower level CM games versus teamfight-heavy lineups: split pushing is their biggest weakness.