Getting Stomped in Team Matchmaking Versus: "4 protects 1" Lineup

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For the second blog post regarding lineups that always stomp you, I'll show a loss of our team. While I thought we had the upper hand in the picking phase (and I'm pretty sure most of you will agree on that), we underestimated that cyrillic-writing team with a childish name and didn't pay much attention to our laning phase.

But anyway, we'll talk about what we did wrong later, after showing the draft:

Bear Grylls's Team of Survivors
Bans:
Picks:


PWNZ*
Bans:
Picks:


Let's start from the mistakes we (and them) made in the picking and banning phases:

• First stage: common bans from both sides. I was actually very surprised about the Furion ban though, that meant they wanted to play a hard carry.
• Picks: they picked Clinkz first, and that already made me think about playing someone that doesn't get insta-killed by him. I went for Alchemist and Nyx Assassin since they both can support and go, respectively, mid or solo off-lane; Alchemist can also carry. What I didn't take into account was that they both are melee: playing a support Nyx, which was what I wanted to do in the beginning, isn't good choice with a support Alchemist.
• Second pick from their side: they got Wraith King for unknown reasons. Maybe they were used to play him? Anyway, after that pick I was thinking about a carry that can either kite him ( Weaver) or drain his mana ( Anti-Mage).
• Then, we banned Visage and Bane, two strong supports in the current meta - especially Bane because he kinda counters both the carries I mentioned above. They removed Venomancer and Storm Spirit: Storm would've been a very good pick for us, actually, and even Veno is a really strong support.
• Other picks from our side: since I decided we would go support Alchemist (maybe a bad decision, but we really needed that hard stun to secure the farm for our carry), we got Dragon Knight who is a durable mid that is both a bad target for their Clinkz and a decent pusher with and AoE nuke. He also has a hard stun.
• Our second pick, after their Enchantress, was Weaver: a good Enchantress usually roams around getting kills and leaving the mids underlevelled, so a carry with a cheap escape was the best way to go if the supports needed to rotate.
• Then they picked Treant Protector, and I was like What? Why? That was a really bad pick for their side, since they basically prevented their team to have a good roaming duo to gank. Or actually, their bad pick was Enchantress if we want to be exact, because she doesn't give any defense to such a hard carry (WK) that can easily get outfarmed.
• Lastly, Timbersaw and Crystal Maiden get banned: we opted for Timber because I thought they would've gone mid with the Clinkz (as putting him solo is a very risky strategy); they banned CM because, obviously, they thought we needed a support.
• Now it's where we probably made a bad decision (without counting Nyx in the first place): off-lane Nyx Assassin is nice, but we let our less experienced player use it. As Nyx is pretty difficult to play versus a trilane and my friend didn't have much experience for the off-lane in the first place, I knew there was something wrong. But still, we got the Shadow Shaman for two reasons: lots of disables to win our laning phase and, mostly, pushing power: Mass Serpent Ward and Elder Dragon Form can quickly take down a tower and prevent Wraith King from farming.
• Their last pick was Dark Seer: we actually wanted to ban him instead of Timber, but since we had a 4-0 (consecutive!) winning streak versus DS off-laners we decided it wasn't worth it. Well, they actually put him in the mid lane!

Comparing the two lineups: 5(+1 with Spiked Carapace) disables from our side, 1(+ Enchantress' creeps) disable from their. The late game advantage is pretty even, depending on how hard Clinkz snowballs and how many towers Dragon Knight can get, and the ganking advantage is pretty even, too. Actually, with a good support partner for Enchantress they could've had a lot more advantage.


Our builds:






Pretty standard builds: not too focused on pushing and not too focused on farming. We have little teamfight presence, but in exchange we have armor reduction; we rely on Nyx Assassin for initiations.

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I decided to get Weaver as I'm the most experienced player in my team with carries, but that meant the off-lane Nyx Assassin would've been played by someone with less than 300 hours of playtime. Still, we didn't get discouraged by it and headed to our lanes, me carrying in the top Dire lane.

After a few minutes we had a chance to kill Clinkz: unfortunately Alchemist threw the Unstable Concoction too late and he escaped; just before we tried to gank him the enemy trilane scored the first blood against our Nyx Assassin, as expected. That was poor map awareness though, as he had a ward just behind the radiant trees.

What we realized was that their Enchantress was simply getting a creep and standing behind the treeline waiting for Nyx to get a bad positioning: I think that's not the right way to play her and only works versus unskilled players (as their pseudo-dual lane was formed by two melees and Nyx has Spiked Carapace and Impale to stop them), but it worked nonetheless. Needless to say their WK quickly got farmed.

We had another chance to kill Clinkz, with Sentry Wards this time, but Alchemist forgot to place them just before we could kill him! That made us lose a big kill, but we tried to push anyway. And here I also realized both Clinkz and Dark Seer had Tranquil Boots! That made me feel better, at least.

Meanwhile, in the mid lane, Dark Seer started roaming and got a few pickoffs more than once; as our supports started feeding I decided to push and get the tower as soon as possible. But because of the Living Armor, the tower returned to more than half HP so I, discouraged, headed to the jungle to farm a Drum of Endurance, since I literally had no gold and I needed a quick way to get on par with WK.

By this time, we start to get killed over and over: their scoreboard reaches something like 14-0, we can't even get a single kill! After they pushed our two mid towers and we couldn't do anything to stop them, we decided to concede.

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Our mistakes? First, as always, the picks.
While we had a big advantage in the first picking phase ( Alchemist and Nyx Assassin versus Clinkz and Wraith King), we didn't take into account the fact that both Nyx and Alchemist are melee. I think this was the main "problem" of our strategy, as playing off-lane Nyx is pretty risky and a Clockwerk would've been a better choice for both initiation and laning presence. I guess we should've swapped them.
Another "mistake" in the picking phase was, maybe, the choice of Weaver: they had a Clinkz, so I should've bought a BKB eventually (as the Orchid Malevolence really screws up Weaver); as they had only one stun I maybe should've opted for Anti-Mage and start split-pushing before WK got some presence.

Second error: underestimating the enemies.
Even if you're playing against a team called PWNZ* that speaks the "cyka language", try not to fall in the "they're noobs!" trap. I was actually pretty convinced that they knew what they were doing since they banned two very popular Heroes, but their first two picks kinda misled me; they proved to be even less familiar with the game after they bought Tranquil Boots on both Clinkz and Dark Seer, while their mid (DS) had no Bottle. But still, something went wrong as we lost 0-14 kills-wise.

Third, and maybe most important, error: bad communication for the trilane.
While we had a pretty strong trilane, we made two big mistakes: the first one was letting Shadow Shaman do the pulling instead of Alchemist who, being melee and with low starting damage, was only good for stealing experience in lane; in the second place we didn't manage to kill Clinkz one single time. This is because when we tried to gank Clinkz for the second time the support who bought Sentries, Alchemist, forgot to place them even though I told him to do so more than once! Because of it, Clinkz got enough levels to start hitting pretty hard and get some last-hits while also harassing me, Weaver, a bit.

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Long story short: if you want to beat a lineup focused on a hard carry, just get as much early experience as possible or try to outcarry them; denying experience by defending towers and never getting too far to score kills (so that you don't get killed in turn) are also important things to keep in mind. We lost pretty hard, but I still had the second highest GPM. It wasn't enough, though: as they had a lot more levels then us, we couldn't do anything against their early pushes.