MMR Match 2: Defense of an Ancient

Before I start in on the match itself, I think I should make one thing clear, namely my system for deciding when I want to play a Ranked game. Many of you probably played ten games in a row to get your rating, maybe even on the same day. But my mind doesn't work that way; I'm the type of person who peels the bandage off slowly instead of yanking it off all at once, firmly believing it actually IS less painful that way. That being said, this is the system I used to decide to play my second Ranked game.

1) Are friends on? --Yes--> Play unranked. --No--> Proceed to step 2

2) Is there a hero you're itching to practice? --Yes--> Play against bots. --No--> Proceed to step 3

3) Have you had lunch? --Yes--> Proceed to step 4. --No--> Go make lunch.

4) Was lunch a yummy pizza veggie burger? --Yes--> Play Ranked. --No--> Loop back to step 1.

As you can see it's a very complex, meaningful system that always leads to a good outcome. I like it. But since I had a pizza burger the other day, I played another game of Ranked. And oh boy what a game it was.

The team MMR was 2810 on both sides this time, meaning that, as far as Valve could tell, this was a perfectly even match. This time around I didn't have to wait until the last second to pick a hero: our team was first to draft and one of our players picked Chaos Knight. We even got a Keeper of the Light to go with it! Then, the inevitable happened:

I was wrong last time. I thought every single game would see me playing either with or against Troll Warlord, but I'd forgotten about someone. Someone I usually love to see picked because he's my friend SafeWOB's hero, a hero who the meta finally caught up to: Sniper. Next pick is mine (as it worked out), and what's my response? Jakiro!


Now, in order to save some face, I realize Jakiro doesn't really counter Sniper very well, but I didn't pick them with that in mind, I just picked them because I like 'em and can play 'em well. In fact, according to Dotabuff they're my BEST hero (highest win rate, discounting heroes with 100% win rate after only a few games played), with a win-rate of 84.62%! So I figured the game couldn't be TOO bad.

The game begins on a high note almost immediately. The Axe and Crystal Maiden have gone into our safe lane and are cutting creeps (like Axe do), so our CK calls for a gank from me. I grab a TP and leave the offlane, catching them both in an Ice Path which leads to a first blood on the Axe! The Ember Spirit rotates from mid and cleans up the Crystal Maiden, and two minutes into the game things are already looking good.


... Please try and be a little professional here. I'm keeping quiet out of faith, DON'T SPOIL IT.

... Noted. Anyways, things continue to look up as I grab a kill on the Crystal Maiden and Ember Spirit gets a kill off the mid Oracle. The pressure from Axe and CM (and a roaming) Earthshaker) does cause us to lose top tower by 6 minutes in, but we grab the deny on it and no one dies. The momentum keeps up, and at 11 minutes in the score is 5-10, and one of the enemy's kills is a Techies suicide. The Ember Spirit is 6-0-1! I still haven't hit level 6 becase I've been roaming and warding, but neither has the Earthshaker so it's not too bad.

Then a sloppy engagement bottom leads to four of us dead, Ember Spirit included. The Techies gets too kills off of well placed Land Mines afterwards, but the gold and experience swing back towards the radiant is uncomfortably big, and in the wrong direction.

The game enters an odd sort of standstill. The Radiant group up mid and begin a slow, long seige down mid, trying to push down the tier 1 tower against the Keeper of the Light, Ember Spirit, and Chaos Knight. I, having warded the enemy jungle, begin my own seige down their bottom lane while the Techies mines their jungle like crazy. Tier 1 tower goes down, but the Axe stays bot to defend against my push. I get some damage on it, but he eventually kills me. At 25 minutes in the score is tied at 17-17, though our team still has a one tower advantage... until a minute later, when t1 mid finally falls.

The Axe has died one too many times to the Techies by this point, and buys a Gem of True Sight, leading to a mass purge by the Sniper of all the mines, traps, and wards in the Radiant jungle.


From here on out things begin to slowly slip out of our control, a series of pick-offs and poorly initiated team fights leads to the Radiant gradually chipping away at our early game advantage the same way Sniper sat back at a safe distance and chipped away at our towers. Techies, bless their little hearts, has a Bloodstone and Boots of Travel and does an amazing job split pushing, keeping us even as far as towers are concerned until a poor engage by our Ember Spirit leads to the destruction of our last t2 tower. The time is 41 minutes in, and Dotabuff tells me this is the first time in 15 minutes radiant has the advantage again.

At 42 minutes in, the Radiant take Roshan and Sniper takes the Aegis. Cue a collective freakout. With the extra life on Sniper the Raidiant push in and take two of our t3 towers, as well as the mid melee rax. We do manage to pop Aegis and kill Sniper and Crystal Maiden, but things are looking grim.

At times like this, my buddy Safechar would say 'it's time to play Defense of an Ancient'. Walled in, at a disadvantage, our best shot is to farm the creeps that push up, get out into the jungle if we can, and otherwise make the enemy team come to us. We have an almost perfect comp for it, really, the amount of defense and creep clearing we can do is pretty impressive. Dual Breath, Illuminate, Land Mines], [[Sleight of Fist, these are used on cooldown to keep the creep waves and the Radiant at bay. We hold out until Ember Spirit gets enough gold to farm up his Black King Bar, just as the Radiant is trying to break bottom rax.

The resulting team fight happens... fast. I'll try and illustrate it best I can with a series of images:




Ember Spirit has an amazing Sleight of Fist that instantly blows up two heroes. He then proceeds to clean up the Axe and the Earthshaker while the Oracle... commits suicide? I'd assume because he used False Promise on himself and somehow damaged himself more than he healed himself, but hey, good for him.

A huge teamfight, yet all it does it stall for time. They're all back up before we can push anything down, even t2 mid. Resume 'Defense of an Ancient'. Another push bot leads to another set of kills for the Ember Spirit and a forced buyback from me. The Sniper buys back, gets a lucky invisibility rune, and kills me while I'm pushing out bottom lane. That hurt. While I'm dead, the Radiant take Roshan a second time. Not that my being alive was stopping them.

They push up bottom lane. We teamfight. We win. Ember Spirit is now godlike and has enough gold for Eye of Skadi and Buyback. Our ranged creeps even kill the Radiant courier! With Sniper down for 92 seconds and Oracle down for ONE HUNDRED, we push out again, managing to take t2 mid and t3 top before we have to fall back and play Defense again. Another won team fight and we try to push down mid, but the Sniper buys back AGAIN and kills both Ember Spirit and I. In my defense, I was struck by a sudden, huge lag spike and the game threatened to DC me, though my auto-connect managed to get me back in with 13 seconds on the timer.

The Oracle must have been hit with the same lag spike. He disconnected. Unfortunately, he didn't come back. We hoped that the other team would leave after he officially got an abandon, but no. They could sense victory on the horizon. Who could blame them for continuing on? They push up midlane, forcing buy backs from Ember and I, and we handily clean them up again... though Earthshaker lands an AMAZING refresher Echo Slam that demolishes Chaos Knight and I, and seriously hurts Ember Spirit and KotL (he didn't get hit with both, that's how he survived). Off of that, we push bottom lane, grabbing the tower and the ranged rax before needing to back off.

We contemplate grabbing Roshan, and manage to pick off the Sniper while he's checking it himself. As we chase after the Crystal Maiden that was with him, Earthshaker jumps us and rocks our faces, setting CM up for one hell of a triple kill.


Off of THAT they push up and grab ranged bottom barracks, then back off and take Roshan a THIRD time, even killing the Ember Spirit and Chaos Knight that try to go in and disrupt it. Axe takes the Aegis in the confusion, though, and Ember Spirit buys back immediately. Techies blows up his Remote Mines and kills Sniper and pops the Aegis on Axe. Ember Spirit dies when Sniper buys back and tps in with Boots of Travel. Techies, Keeper of the Light, and I band together and clean up the reborn Axe, the Earthshaker, and even the Sniper. CM has the sense to run and TP back to base.

Both teams push down mid-lane, the Axe gets the jump on Techies and I, but I survive thanks to a heal from Techies Bloodstone. Ember Spirit jumps in to save the day, but Sniper is up and tps right on top of us. Chaos Knight however, flanks from behind and immediately stuns and smacks down the poor guy, then the Axe. He finally has his farm. The Techies even wrecks Crystal Maiden with mines he placed AGES ago. We push down all three lanes and are able to secure mega creeps.

It's 75 minutes into the game, though. Mega creeps mean nothing. The Axe stays in base to deal with them as the Radiant push up our mid lane again. There's only one t4 left, after all. They want throne. They want their victory. The tower goes down, our ancient starts taking damage... but we're ok. We push them back again. We run down mid lane and finally, finally end it. GG. Ancient defended, ancient destroyed.


The Dotabuff page for the match can be found here, and you're all welcome to download the game and watch yourselves if you'd like. Post any comments you want, but I'd ask you to direct your focus on me, yeah? No reason to drag anyone else through the mud about this game. As for me, I'll chip in my own preemptive mud-dragging:

1) I g0t picked off more than once. I'd like to think my positioning was ok for most of the game, but it only took a few times for me to really fall behind. If I'd been checking my opponent's items more frequently, I would've seen when [{Axe]] got his Blink Dagger and stayed further back, or when Oracle got his Dagon 3 and I couldn't afford to 1v1 him.

2) I ended up with far less last hits than most everyone else in the game. Maybe as a support, this is more forgivable, and I DID manage to save money for a grand total of four buybacks. It is a little disconcerting to see everyone with so many more items than me, though. I'd have at least liked a Force Staff or something.

One thing to keep in mind about this particular match, I was experiencing some serious lag spikes... I think the server threatened to disconnect me a total of ten times. If you decide to watch the game, and you see me suddenly stop moving for a few seconds, or aimlessly walk in some random direction, that's probably why. I can't guarantee ALL moments like that are because of lag, but there should be more of those than usual.

8 more matches to go guys. Someone help me.

Safecyn, signing out.

The Entire MMR Experience

Match 1: Grains in the Hourglass