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!
So, here's the draft and the item builds we wanted to go for:
Bear Grylls's Team of Survivors
Bans:
Picks:
LycanthropeResistance 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.
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
The biggest mistake they made was their huge ego. Not banning rubick and the picks they made. If thy just picked like visage-dp-ds-jugg-tide their draft would have been much less predictable.
Agreed: even Visage-DS as first picks could've been a good option since they could've chosen to put DS mid or go for an aggressive trilane. I really don't understand those players that instapick unusual/predictable Heroes, unless they're their signature Heroes of course.
True that, but they couldn't do it in that case. As we picked CM, NP, Rubick and DK they were basically oudrafted; they could still have tried to get snowball Heroes like
Absolutely, showing your offlaner and one of your safe lane supports straight up immediately gives them a lot of information and counterpick options. If they'd picked the
Either way, as Wulfy says, they definitely should have ran an aggressive trilane - they had better early killing power and a less hard carry. Even if they'd have killed NP a few times up top it really would have done nothing much for them. As it was, BGS can easily gank
The fact that they picked the
Maybe they would have had a better chance as an agressive trilane with
I would have probably put the
As for the missing pulls/trilane support...well that's a pretty big fail right there. It's gonna be a very unlevelled lane and that trilane is utterly self defeating. It's kinda funny and kinda sad when people try to copy the pro game styles without having the basic skills to do it :/
I strongly agree with this: a trilane like that is always going to fail unless you go hard lane and leave the solo laner to the safe lane. But what made them lose that trilane really hard was the lack of stuns and setup for kills; I bet they could've killed me more than once with something to stop my
They were substantially outcarried too, so they'd set themselves up with only a brief window where they had a chance of winning the game (i.e. strong early/midgame pushing before you team BKB/farm up and destroy them).
True that, but they couldn't do it in that case. As we picked CM, NP, Rubick and DK they were basically oudrafted; they could still have tried to get snowball Heroes like
And I also wanted to add - mostly for the newer players - that you don't necessarily need a teamfight-oriented lineup to win fights; most of the time pairing your
I think the key pick there was
Team fight line ups only really work when you can take the initiative in the game and force the opposition to fight. Mixing in a strong ganker or two makes a big difference as it gives you that early game initiative and also makes split pushing considerably more dangerous.
As for the missing pulls/trilane support...well that's a pretty big fail right there. It's gonna be a very unlevelled lane and that trilane is utterly self defeating. It's kinda funny and kinda sad when people try to copy the pro game styles without having the basic skills to do it :/
+Rep for you sir ^^