Thoughts on season:
The below section was written ahead of the final group stage game. Post-elimination comments will be made in [brackets].
I’ve come to not expect much out of linear draft seasons (see below for reason why), and I’ve had the experience of doing extremely well in groups only to fizzle out in the playoffs multiple times, so I’m not particularly excited about topping the group.
That said, I’ve also been thoroughly unimpressed by all of the teams in our group, and it doesn’t look like the level is much higher on the other side of the aisle — at best the haraway team looks okay, some others might be slowly figuring shit out. Definitely a winnable season, but I’m not really… expecting a win, like I usually might in this situation.
My expectation is that our level in the playoffs will hinge largely on my ability to craft drafts and gameplans that are stable enough to get through a Bo3 — our button clicking is above average, but having people in the correct place to click said buttons is a bit more complicated. Frankly, this expectation is why I have doubts about how far we’ll get; I don’t know that I’m able to do all of that at a high enough level. Past that, I’ve done okay drafting thus far, but still don’t really have a great read on my players’ hero pools, so past the first phase I have to play the drafts by ear.
Thoughts on season, part 2
Written ahead of playoff round 2
I don’t really know that I have any new takeaways. I’ve gotten a good idea for how I want to approach drafts, and generally have an idea of how I want to play them (which is I suppose just a dressed-up way to say I’m picking DP Tree).
A useful crutch I’ve given myself is asking people for heroes they’d like to play ahead of games; I might ignore it sometimes, but when my go-to ideas fall through, I can anchor drafts around heroes people bring up (usually Gecko and his hero).
My preference for first pick lets me secure shit like Undying/Tree/DP and is where I feel most comfortable, though I’m running into the issue of not having consistent ideas for 17 and 23 core picks, which thus far I’ve been allowed to sorta just brute force our way through by trusting in Harb and myself to have significant enough impact on fairly safe picks. Second pick drafting is still a bit hit or miss, as DP is usually contested in this scenario and the option I looked at as a notable alternative in place of it (Dawn) is probably more abusable than it’s felt thus far.
Most of my uncertainty about our games stems from people being very hesitant to make any sort of play independently, leaving us outpaced for much of most games.
There’s still a dread I feel about the inevitability of some team eventually punishing our many mistakes, and being unprepared to deal with it and respond to it both ingame and in subsequent drafts.
Thoughts on season, part 3
Written ahead of semifinals vs Yaz
The cracks I expected to appear in the playoffs reared their head last week against Buzda’s team. Admittedly it’s hard to ascribe much importance to issues in a series with a standin, but I don’t think the problems we had were necessarily absent previously, rather they just didn’t get punished as hard.
Annoyingly, my ability to direct the flow of the game does suffer a good bit when I can’t really be very involved into plays, and I think at some level realizing this leads to me forcing high risk calls.
In hindsight, some amount of energy through the season could’ve been committed to providing Gecko and our supports with the freedom to make more independent plays (or rather I suppose force them to do so); as it stands, I’ve spent too much of the season barking out things, and it’s at a point that ideas don’t come up organically and people are, I feel, too hesitant to take charge (and they’re not innately predisposed to doing so, which I suppose is why we’ve gotten to this situation where I’m doing a lot of the shotcalling in the first place — lord knows that’s not what you really want).
This series was pretty damn hard overall, and I miiightve had a bit of an angry tilted yell incident directed mostly at Gecko (who was enjoying happy creep hitting time before being berated about not taking a tower or doing things on the map). Oop. Sorry geck.
Thoughts on season, post-elimination
We suck fucking ass
Player Reviews
Lil og Skril
The Good
- Presses buttons ok for his MMR
- Doesn’t require much coaxing to play lanes aggressively and has a decent idea of when and how to go on heroes he’s comfortable on (lanes better on Undying than a number of 5ks)
- Is down to play Tree and Undying on repeat
The Bad
- Extremely prone to zoning out, so often has to be prompted multiple times to say or do things
- Doesn’t do a particularly great job of internalizing advice or taking it from one game to another — the first time you ask whether we have smokes on hand in any match, you won’t; will leave lane to run to 3 minute bounty every second game
- If prompted for hero of choice, will ask for some nigh unplayable shit (but has 0 complaints about playing good shit when picked it so)
- May require checking in on items lest he queue up the Gleipnir on AA or buy 0 defensive items
Ruski
The Good
- Chatty — keeps vibes up, doesn’t allow for dead comms
- Presses buttons decently enough for MMR & in general feels like he plays above his MMR
- Has higher peaks than equivalent MMR players (occasional popoff)
- Down to play just about any hero in Dota, plays a decent Wisp which is cool to have
- Shrugged off a car crash midseason
The Bad
- Chatty — will override important comms for unimportant idle chatter
- Feast or famine — can become invisible (and a bit whiny) if his hero doesn’t have great matchups
- Down to be picked anything, but won’t really like it if he doesn’t deem it fun (read: if it’s a good hero that doesn’t happen to be a favorite of his)
- 5 player in 4 players body — or other way around, whatever: has a very apparent preference for ranged int heroes, and doesn’t play many melee 4s (which is often a significant strain on draft options)
- Departed on a journey to Nippon mid-season (our standins were sugoi desu though)
Gecko
The Good
- Very good button presser, generally reliable and easy to trust on a lot of heroes
- Good eye for openings, good sense for his hero’s limits and isn’t afraid to push them
The Bad
- Extremely prone to autopiloting how he plays the map — as such, very likely to use TPs badly or not internalize calls regarding overall gameplan, or just sorta exist at a medium neutral camp while everything is falling apart
- Degenerate
Harbinger
The Good
- Harbinger
The Bad
- Harbinger
Madsen
The Good
- Doing the best job of actually captaining the team ingame I probably ever have
The Bad
- The above means very very little
- Usual issues still present
- Can’t talk words and have a game of my own
