Drafting

Interesting. This is why I love posting Drafts, there's always some good ideas you ever considered. <}3

Well, that assuming they don't run him Mid, hell they could even run him Top if they know it's going to be Solo, so I'd say he could still be a big problem. 8{(

That is also why you run a tidehunter or enigma solo.
Tide destroys melee heroes. As for enigma, i once saw a game where sexybamboe played him in the offlane, he destroyed an alchemist so hard, he had literally 10 times the amount of lasthits. He didnt even kill him, enigma is just that strong of a laner.

As for running him mid, the chance of someone doing that is not that high in pubs, and if you have a semi strong mid hero he should win, unless your opponent is RTZ ofcourse.

ok hows this one lads?

Picks:

my strategy was based around sand king and centaur as my cores for the mid game domination with a luna as my late mid carry and a good ganker with kunnka mid against a mirana which he dominated (honestly i felt there line up was pretty bad). i ran a Trilane safelane with disrupter and sandking as supports but i had sandking jungle a bit and farm up his rushed blink since i wanted the initiation from those two to really have a quick impact upon team fights. early game they were running a trilane bottom and doing a good job of zoning me out with shadow demon but then for some reason (read "idiotic" reason) really they swapped it up to a 2-1-2 ... i thought it was to let them lvl quicker across the board but it backfired cause i got enough farm for my hood and tranq boots and i was now able to sustain better plus tiny lost his safe lane farm. we lost early game a felt with some bad communication but then as per my strategy come mid game we forced team fights and kept up the pressure. we found some good pick offs around the 26 min mark and pushed to GG.

Bans:

look not going to lie ... i just played 6 games before hand where we were nearly double there kills but lost due to rat doto ... i know i know its a viable strategy but i just cbf having to vs it again so i basically banned pushers first natures and lycan (because hes so OP atm) then they picked up the AA/tiny so i banned out the wisp to combat the relocates and the AA ulti combo. then i banned out the weaver because he would do well against my trilane and still get the farm, plus he could kite around my team fight and pick off targets. then i was throwing up between banning dazzle or shadow shaman but i didn't want to face the push of the snakes so i banned SS.

Match ID: 620871993

pick it apart and tell me all i did wrong :D ... btw we were losing by 3 and then we got our blinks and 2 team fights later we were back in it ... was a great game.

I like the draft, it has a good mix between teamfight and pickoff potential, while also having nice push with the luna aura.
The only thing that might screw you over is a good agressive trilane, and they could definately have done that with AA mirana SD.

But from what i read you got hood before blink, you should always get blink first, as that is the item that allows you to fight effectively. And if you do get hood, finish the entire pipe its a giant waste of item potential, and it would be great against AA ultimate.
I also didnt like your skillbuild, its a little bit all over the place.
1 point in return is sufficient. Double edge should be maxed over hoof stomp, the stun duration doesnt increase that much and the thing that make centaur so strong is that he has great initiation power along with really high burst damage, qualities that are great for an offlaner but few have.

yea ive been trying to use what you guys have been saying about the mix of strategies. trying to cover a few bases so to speak.

hmm i never thought of getting pipe but it actually seems like it would be worth it that way i can tank physical and magical damage, good point.

for my build i put more points in return just to deal with the harass in lane, it worked since shadow demon backed off a bit since he was taking more damage then giving. honestly apart from a few core builds i usually leave lvl 3-5-7-9 for situational lvls if i need the lower cooldown on the stun i put a lvl in that if i need more damage i lvl my damage skill. this way i can adapt to the game better. in saying that i should put more points in double edge :P i lost 2 kills cause i didnt haha.

The only thing i would situationally switch up are the supports, if you suspect an agressive trilane you need to be ready for that. Disruptor and sand king are great supports but they are not good at tri vs tri.

So try to predict where they are going with their strategy. If you suspect an agressive trilane pick AA with chilling touch if it isnt taken.

Well, lets start off by smack talking the other Team...

Agreed, they screwed up not sending the SD with Mirana, iG recently did it as a Dual Lane Mid against Liquid's QoP and Abaddon, Disruption + Sacred Arrow is easy Kills, especially when you have a High-Ground Ward. Add in Cold Snap and that's one dead Hero.

Picking Tiny without securing the Io was a blunder too imo, they had the chance to First Pick them both simultaneously since they Picked 2nd, athough, waiting until the 2nd Phase to pick them would probably be smarter, since you can just pick the Io then some other Carry if the other Team decides to steal the Tiny.

I don';t like their Slardar Pick either, he doesn't really Synergise well with this Lineup imo. No other Armour Reduction, he's Offlane so Blink Dagger gets delayed and thus, so does Armlet...he's better as a Mid than an Offlaner since Tiny will hog the Safe Lane, but against Kunkka? not good...

Yeah, you definitely have it here, Kunkka and Luna are good at clearing Creep Waves and only get better as they go on, not to mention, Lunar Blessing + Tidebringer? Where's the Vengeance Aura?! 8{D

So even though you don't have a Rat Hero, you have some good Split-Push, leaving no big holes in your Draft.

A smart choice, you have strong Laners and a Support that can Jungle, so your Mid-Game looks promising, not to mention, as you found out this match, it usually takes 3 Heroes to completely zone out Centaur Warrunner (although Mirana + Shadow Demon would have been enough).

I'd imagine they switched since they realised Slardar is not a good Solo Offlaner, without Farm, he's useless, all it takes is one well timed Glimpse and some follow-up to get a kill on him 3 vs 1. Add in Lunar Blessing and you can easily take their Tier 1 Offlane before they can do anything about Centaur. Since Tiny is really fragile early on, it's no wonder he couldn't handle the Centaur with only 1 Support.

As far as being "behind" goes, you just needed to Farm your Blink Daggers and a Shadow Blade on Kunkka before you could get Aggressive, so naturally, you're probably going to end up behind in Kills at first, but once those Core Items came in, that changed naturally.

Heroes like Clockwerk and Storm Spirit are good against Split-Pushers, failing that, just grab a Rat Hero for yourself! 8{D

Io Ban is obvious, but I'm not sure an Offlane Weaver can survive against your Lunar Blessing empowered Tri-Lane, one well timed Glimpse into Kinetic Field and...what's he gonna do? Not to mention, between Glimpse and Sandstorm, I don't see him picking off your Supports.

I think what Tim means, is to settle for a Casual Cloak if you don't need the Pipe. It only does Half as much work as a Hood of Defiance, but it won't slow your Blink Dagger down if you need it desperately, or you can just wait until a little after Blink to grab it.

ahhh Xyrus you are like my new favorite person i swear :) ...

ok so i tried your Clockwerk Invoker (exort) combo last night in All pick.

Match ID: 623487867

we rounded it out with a Slark safelane dual lane with Warlock and in the off lane with me Cloackwerk we had a Mirana ... reason for the Mirana pick was that if i happened to get a good cogs against a Terrorblade or Rubick, Mirana's sacred arrow would stun them long enough to kill them before Sunder or Telekinesis.

ok so the game went like this...

i picked up an early invisibility rune bottom rotated to mid with mirana, cogged and got first blood on Pudge.

we then proceeded to feed Terrorblade ....

so much fail in those first 20 mins ... so many times we nearly got double kills or triple kills only for bad communication or bad playing just lost us them.

i think the score at 21 mins was 18-6 against and we lost 4 towers... such fail. many bad doto. wow.

then we started to actually play well. i got two massive blind hooks Terrorblade and Silencer which gave us a full bottom lane of towers then Slark picked off a Pudge twice. then it stalled a bit when we were pushing middle lane Rax. couldnt force high ground at all with Terrorblade defending... that damage output holy sheeeeeit ... then we rosh'd while they were defending and as Terrorblade pushed out bottom mirana sent a scouting arrow to see him we caught a glimpse of him going through secret shop and i landed a hook on him at 2000+ units from midlane... cue sunstrike and a second arrow. dead Tb.

pushed bottom then mid. both rax down. GG.

how do you think the picks and lanes went? i dont really understand there picks but then again it was AP pubs so probs no talking. but jeez that Invoker Clockwerk Mirana combo whombo ...

did you think the Slark and Warlock picks were good?

maybe Mirana was overkill but the lane combo seemed pretty good...

So i know I haven't commented until, but reading this thread has been fantastic, keep up the awesome analysis guys.

This is a classic example of teamfight (you) vs. gank (them), which teamfight (theoretically) wins easily every time. AOE comparison isn't even close, the only way you could possibly lose was by getting heavily outplayed from the start. They had better lanes, but in midgame their lineup is heavily dependent on having lone pickoff targets, which is unfortunate for them since you probably rolled around as 5 the whole time.

I'm not sure it whether it was you picking well or them poorly, but TBH you couldn't have done much better with this draft. DS may have been better then Cent (him and SK have made a very strong and popular combo at the most recent Starladder), but that's getting pretty nitpicky.

In the future I would advise banning Lycan (and other splitpushers, NP mainly) every time you plan on picking heavy AOE/teamfight, because ratting is exactly what you don't want to let them do against you.