January 13, 2014

Getting Stomped in Team Matchmaking Versus: Teamfight Lineups

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First off, this blog post is not meant to show my flawless victories; in fact I'll post both games in which I stomp with my team and have a good laugh at the enemy team composition, and games in which I get easily stomped and think about what I did wrong. I'm actually planning to add one of my most one-sided losses in team matchmaking.

The goal of this series is to teach players how to deal with teams that tend to win with a huge advantage the majority of games: this time we'll talk about how to counter teamfight lineups.
Match ID: 466527768 (not listed on Dotabuff because it was a team matchmaking game).




Welcome to the adventures of Bear Grylls's Team of Survivors!

The first game I want to show you is a match I played yesterday with my team: first off, keep in mind that even though 3 of my teammates are good players and I can trust them, Black Rose - the Lycanthrope in this game - is pretty unexperienced and I let him play with us because he's a friend of mine in real life and we can communicate via TeamSpeak. I know, I shouldn't let newer players play as carries (especially in team matchmaking), but he used Lycan a lot of times and that Hero was good for our strategy.

So, here's the draft and the item builds we wanted to go for:

Bear Grylls's Team of Survivors
Bans:
Picks: Lycanthrope


Resistance is Pointless
Bans:
Picks:


I won't go too in-depth for our picks, I'll just list a few points:
  • First stage: common bans from both sides.
  • Picks: Crystal Maiden for us was a solid pick. Then, as I saw them going for Dark Seer and Tidehunter (definitely off-meta Heroes) an alarm started ringing in my head. Teamfight Heroes? Okay, then I'll pick Nature's Prophet and split push the hell out of you.
  • From our side: Magnus and Lich, two really strong teamfight Heroes that can also disrupt NP and get early level advantage, respectively. I didn't want neither of those things to happen so I banned them.
  • From their side: Invoker and Slardar. Invoker was pretty standard, but I don't know about Slardar. I thought they were gonna pick some invisible Heroes like BH or Nyx, but they didn't.
  • Our picks: Rubick and Dragon Knight. Rubick can steal all those teamfight spells and DK is a strong split pusher and a good mid laner that can survive to those physical damage-based teamfight spells. They went for Visage (very good support in my opinion) and, strangely, Juggernaut. I guess they wanted to go for armor reduction and some survivability for counterpushing? Jug is also a good mid-game carry.
  • Last bans: Warlock and Chaos Knight. Dunno why they banned CK (maybe because he could outcarry Jug even early on, but I highly doubt it) as we already had plenty of disables, but we went for Warlock because I didn't want that guy to start teamfights.
  • Last picks: Lycanthrope and Death Prophet, respectively. I got Lycan because my friend didn't know how to play many other Heroes and couldn't play the ones we picked (he doesn't really know how to support in a trilane, also); but in fact a Lycan can go for Vlad's, BKB (which protects him from EVERYTHING aside from DP's ulti) and then get a Necro 3, which was the core of our strategy! Death Prophet is good for both teamfighting and pushing, but what I realize now is that she's also really good at counterpushing.
Okay, it was a bit in-depth. D:


Our builds:




Lycanthrope

As you can see, lots of Necronomicons; CM could've skipped the BKB, but it didn't hurt anyway. I, as Nature's Prophet, was the only one who managed to complete a full Necro 3.



So, the game starts: me as Nature's Prophet go solo hard lane versus Juggernaut, Visage and Tidehunter. At first I tried to block their pull camp with the Treants, but as they didn't know how to pull I stopped doing it. Not only the supports didn't know how to trilane and soaked experience from Jug, they also didn't have one single stun. Needless to say, I teleported away every time they tried to go on me. They managed to kill me once (don't know if it was first blood; I don't think so), but then I got a revenge kill on Jug which was worth way more than my life.

The mid lane was fine; I think DK died once but there wasn't much difference between the creep scores, probably.

As for the bot lane: even though my friend Lycanthrope pushed and didn't get a high cs, our Rubick was a good support and pulled constantly while CM harassed the off-laning Dark Seer and tried to deny him everything.


After a while, we get a kill on DS and start pushing bot: we didn't manage to destroy the tower, so I went mid and destroyed that one with the help of DK. From that point, we started to snoball out of control: they didn't carry Town Portal Scrolls, they stayed together to get better teamfight and yet we were pushing from two different lanes; I also sniped the Juggernaut who was tanking the creeps under his tier 3 tower. As I finished my Necro 3, they said gg.



What did they do wrong? First, the picks.
Picking unpredictably is key to win the early drafting phase; if you get two teamfighters, especially if they're not common in the current meta, you're shouting at your enemies "Hey, we're going teamfight, try to counter us!". On the contrary, our CM was a solid (and common) defensive pick and NP was just there because we feared they could've banned him (and we needed a good split-pusher). Their bans were "fine", as they didn't ban direct counters to their strategy ( Silencer, Enigma and maybe Puck) to make us think they were going for a different lineup. But as we started banning teamfight Heroes, they should've realized we wanted to stop teamfighting with silences or split pushers. Jug was a horrible pick for them in my opinion, Gyrocopter would've been better (or Luna, as they didn't have stuns in their trilane). If that DP + Jug combo was a desperate attempt at picking strong pushers, they did it wrong because our split pushing was stronger and they needed to group as 5 to push anyway.

Second error: the playing style.
The best way to counter a split-pushing lineup is to always carry TP scrolls: always do it! The second error was the poor early pressure to towers: as they were a good 5-man team and they had a Healing Ward and the Exorcism, tier 1 towers would've melt under their spells. We could still have split pushed with Furion, but if they caught even one enemy with their combination we would've lost a teamfight (and a tower) for sure.

Third error: bad manners.
This doesn't have a big impact in the gameplay, but it still shows how childish and superficial some teams are. Having said I don't know a word of Russian aside from сука, I could still feel they were laughing at us or saying to hurry when me and my friend Rubick disconnected for a while. If you want to look like a good team, always wait for the enemies when they kindly ask to do so. Speaking fluent English - often without abbreviations like "w8 pls" or "rdy" - is also what your common sense should tell you. No hate against Russans in particular, huh; I myself have played with a couple good Russian players that could speak a very fluent English.

Fourth error: laning choices.
As said in the comments, since they were basically outdrafted and couldn't kill a Nature's Prophet because of Teleportation the best thing they could've done was performing an aggressive trilane trying to shut down our Lycanthrope, which is a pretty passive Hero before he gets his core and an Aegis of the Immortal. Also, since a safe lane Dark Seer would be easily countered by Furion, they could've ran him mid versus the Dragon Knight which, being a melee Hero, would've had some troubles trying to out last-hit him, and let Death Prophet - who also has a Silence to prevent NP from escaping or trapping her - go to the safe lane, getting some laning advantage spamming Crypt Swarm to get rid of the Treants. These proves once again that unpredictable lineups and versatile Heroes are the best way to get more advantage: never stick with a strategy without thinking out of the box, as this team did.



In other words: do you want to see how to counter teamfight-heavy lineups? If so, watch this replay. If the enemies don't carry TP scrolls and play with little coordination and poor knowledge as supports, then you're in a really good spot.

PS: The only English word they knew was "gg": I bet they were used to say it. :D