MMR Match 6: Sacred Blood

Both life and Dota put up a lot of resistance to me playing this match.

On the life spectrum: I've been busy working on my grandparents' new apartment, and have spent more time away from my computer than I like to. Between spackling, sanding, painting and what have you I've been a busy beaver. And tired. Very tired. It's been a while since I slept this well.

Nobody cares, talk about Dota.

Thank you, voice of reality. ;_; On the Dota spectrum, when I finally set aside time to do this match, there were a LOT of hiccups. The first time I loaded into a game one of our teammates just sat in fountain until he received an abandon. Thankfully, Valve detected poor network conditions and the match wasn't scored or this would be a very, VERY short and somewhat angry blog post. After that, people failed to load into my game not once, but TWICE. I finally decided to take a break, play some Sunless Sea (amazing, by the way, you should ALL PLAY THIS), and then return to matchmaking, and I finally got into a match. Woo!

I was on Radiant this match, and the MMRs shown for both teams were around 2545 for Radiant and 2355 for Dire? Something like that. They were decently close, and I still have no idea what the actual spread of MMR was. Dire first-picked Ursa, and we first-picked Bloodseeker. After watching Dire pick up Queen of Pain, Viper, and Centaur Warrunner , I pick up my support: Omniknight.

Omniknight's one of my favorite heroes and is probably my favorite support, as long as we all agree that Venomancer is a core. He might be on the greedy side when it comes to supports, but he's not TOO bad, and he can get by with very little if he has to. Degen Aura is also a good skill for helping him jungle later in the game thanks to how it slows everything's attack speed. When I was first learning the game I didn't understand his strengths and weaknesses and just kind of... fed... mercilessly whenever I randomed him, but nowadays he's one of my go tos. I even carried on him once, see?

What the...

Yeah, that... that game was weird, man. Anyways, on to the actual match. Here's what the line-up looked like:

The game starts out looking pretty ok. Four of us go contest top rune while Nyx Assassin goes for bottom. Their Viper gets greedy and over-extends, and between my Degen Aura (I waited to skill) and Silencer's Last Word, we slow him enough to secure first blood. Both bounty runes go our way, but the Ursa chases Nyx down and kills him, then redirects tower agro so that he doesn't die for his diving. Well played. A few minutes later, Silencer dies bottom to the Ursa Warlock offlane, due to... unfortunate timing, shall we say?


Ursa gets boots out of that fight and becomes a pretty scary presence in bottom lane, cleaning up Silencer and then rotating through our jungle to get our Razor mid! TPs from both Silencer and I punish him for diving, however, so the game sits at a decently even 2-4 at 6 minutes in. Our Bloodseeker has been getting pretty good farm in off-lane, so I'm not too worried... though I do begin to grow concerned a bit when Queen of Pain rotates down bottom and picks off the Nyx. Soon after, though, Bloodseeker and I are able to pick off both Viper and Centaur Warrunner on the top lane, my Enchanted Mango coming in handy for sniping one off, then quickly healing BS so he doesn't die to tower. #Mangogaming.

An interesting interaction I noticed in this game is how Razor is somewhat countered by Ursa. Thanks to Fury Swipes, the big ol' bear can still do damage even if all of it's been stolen by Static Link. This didn't matter too often, but it did result in him getting kills out of ganks that would have left other heroes helpless, so although he was picked off once or twice, he almost always took someone with him.

The game proceeds fairly evenly for a while, our gankier comp giving us a slight kill lead but not by much. Ursa takes Roshan at around the 15 minute mark (which would have completed my challenge if I was on his team QQ), and tps top where an enormous fight is breaking out near Dire tier 2.

Silencer and I have been slow-sieging the tower, when QoP and Warlock show up to defend. Silencer takes some damage but Force Staffs away and I heal him back up, while QoP and Warlock continue to give chase. Razor and Nyx Assassin rotate up through the jungle and Silencer turns around and cast Global Silence

Queen of Pain, robbed of her escape, melts. Nyx Assassin stuns Warlock before he can use Chaotic Offering, and I use Purification to drop him. Ursa pops his ultimate and blinks in between us, but Guardian Angel keeps him from doing any damage, and the four of us turn and pop Aegis. Viper dies to Eye of the Storm when he tries to go in and help. Centaur comes in to help Ursa as he respawns, and they take out Silencer, but then both of them drop. Five heroes dead. Aegis gone.

Bloodseeker has been pushing out bottom lane the whole time. He wasn't present for a single moment of the fight.


I look back at this fight and realize that there were a number of points where Dire could have pulled back and minimized their losses. Stilted engages on their part, rather than grouping up and counter-attacking as a team, is what really did them in here, I don't think we could have fought them 4v6 otherwise. Regardless, we get top tier 2 and a sizable lead out of this fight, Bloodseker has been getting tons of farm, and Silencer now has 22 stacks on INT.

Off of this and another favorable engage, I finally can afford my first major item at around twenty minutes: Diffusal Blade. Not the most common pick-up on Omniknight, I know, but between Warlock and his golems and Queen of Pain and her silencing stick, I figured it was a good investment. Dire mid rax falls at around the 25 minute mark, thanks in part to a golem getting blown up.

Things begin to look the slightest bit iffy when, thanks to our team being split, we take some heavy casualties in two fights, but it isn't quite enough to stop our momentum. Once we group up and push as five, mega creeps are secured, and ancient shortly afterwards. GG.


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) There is a point in this match were I heal myself instead of our Razor. Razor dies. Bad support is bad.

2) There is a point in this match where I have a Diffusal Blade, get silenced, and instead of purging myself and casting spells, I just kind of... die along with three teammates. I had ultimate off cooldown too, so that fight could have gone differently. Bad player is bad.

3) Looking back, there are a lot of times where I use Purification to secure a kill when I might not actually have had to. While the kill-stealing aspect of that wasn't intentional on my part, and kill-stealing doesn't do as much harm as it used to this patch... still. I should be a little more aware.

Past the halfway mark already. Dang. I might actually get this done!

Safecyn, signing out.

The Entire MMR Experience
Match 1: Grains in the Hourglass
Match 2: Defense of an Ancient
Match 3: Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death
Match 4: Snowballs and Space Cows
Match 5: To Hell and Back