MMR Match 9: Back with a Vengeance

Ranked matchmaking seems to have a REALLY hard time deciding what to do with me.

Hot off a three game losing streak (which is really an eight game streak with a nice breath of fresh Zeus pub-stomping air in between), I figured it was as good a time as any to queue up and see if I can get this thing done I promised I would. And I waited. And waited. Ten minutes later I stopped waiting, went and took a shower, did some stretches, set my alarm for work, and queued back up again. This time it only took five minutes. Hooray?

I'm somewhat encouraged by this: after all, longer wait times means there aren't as many people at my level to queue with, right? Then again, the guy who insta-picked Spectre on my team was only 2.7K so... maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up for a 3K+ calibration. 2.4K was my initial prediction, after all.

I was pleasantly surprised by how communicative our team was during the drafting phase: a nice change from previous matches I've played. Our orange said right away he'd do the five position supporting and grabbed Omniknight, I said I'd be a 4 and picked Vengeful Spirit, who I think is pretty strong right now.

Things start off well enough, with our mid Night Stalker securing the rune and doing pretty well in his lane against the Phantom Assassin. The Spectre takes some harass but is supported by our Omniknight, and Veno and I pressure top hard. So hard, in fact, that the Earthshaker tps up to gank us: he catches out Venomancer with a Fissure and secures first blood. I go aggressive on the Witch Doctor who's low and manage to grab the return kill, and end up in this awkward situation:

If you answered 'just loop around the trees and run away', you were, sadly, correct. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit but: should I not have died here? Or did I actually read the situation right and make a good play? Either way, it's a thing that happened. It happens a few more times in the first ten minutes or so of the game too: we trade Tiny for me once, and then Veno for the Witch Doctor again... a lot of rotations to shut down our offlane, which is fine by me, as Spectre is farming. I rotate mid to help gank the PA and by ten minutes in I'm 3-1-2, and the score is six to three: all of our deaths coming out of the offlane, wheras everyone on their team but the Earthshaker has died at least once.

Their PA goes on tilt a little at this point, I think, and loops around to our offlane hard camp stack to see if anyone is farming there. She finds Omniknight, who ults to buy time while Night Stalker runs from midlane and I tp into our tier 2 tower. A swap, a stun, and a Wave of Terror later and PA's down for the count.

It's not all that an impressive play, really, a simple tp in and swap save... but it felt important. This was the moment in the game where, to me, it felt like we all collectively relaxed and felt like we could trust each other. Twelve minutes ago we were a bunch of strangers who were reasonably polite to each other while playing a game. Now, we were a team. And this one was in the BAG.

We win our first big teamfight at about 17 minutes in: our Night Stalker secures a dominating spree when we trade three for none, our Spectre haunting in at just the right moment to secure the kill on a fleeing WD. The Clinkz does put some heavy pressure mid in the meantime though, so we're kept on our toes. Dust of Appearance and Sentry Wards get picked up by myself and Omniknight... heck, Spectre even grabs Dust at some point. They rotate four bottom to disrupt her farm and grab Veno in the meantime, which bites, but Night Stalker and I are able to go on the Tiny trying to recover from his laning phase and get some manner of trade. That's my last kill of the game.

Our Night Stalker continues to put pressure on the map, securing himself a mega kill streak by the time the twenty minute mark hits. We go on the Phantom Assassin in their jungle and she pulls an EPIC juke on us... in fact, she disappears so quickly I think that she's gotten a Shadow Blade that I didn't spot out and I use dust. I get incredibly lucky here, as a certain someone just so happens to be sneaking up on us:

He is murdered. Quickly. NS is now unstoppable, and the score is 15 to 7. Night Stalker has, to my shock, made good on his promise to rush Monkey King Bar, and the PA no longer poses any sort of threat to him. At 23 minutes in we take a teamfight mid and kill three, and we make the call to push highground.

In another game, this may have been where the Earthshaker gets a massive Echo Slam with a surprise Blink pick up and there's a huge net worth swing that evens up the game. But not here. Here, we manage to take rax before Earthshaker even respawns, as well as kill three of their heroes while only losing me, who used Nether Swap sacrificially to interrupt Death Ward and let Night Stalker preserve his godlike spree. The tempo of the game slows a little bit when Clinkz manages to kill Night Stalker and the dire mount a reasonably successful defense of their bottom lane, but in the end, we back out with minimal casualties, wait a little until Spectre finishes her Radiance (she gets Vanguard/ Diffusal Blade first, which explains the 28 minute timing), and then we push up and finish. 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... any more than I have already, sorry. As for me, I'll chip in my own preemptive mud-dragging:

1) I itemized to counter the Phantom Assassin by building Rod of Atos, even after the Night Stalker informed me he was going MKB. Maybe this is still ok, but perhaps a Medallion or an Aghs could have been a better choice, given that the PA really was a non-factor.

2) I think I waste Wave of Terror on pushing out creepwaves too much. Again, maybe this is ok.

One. More. Match. Dear god, the moment of truth is upon us.

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
Match 6: Sacred Blood
Match 7: Attack the Buildings!
Match 8: This one barely counts