poop_bomb_team Season Review

Clarity League Season 8, Division 1

Madsen
6 min readJul 26, 2023

Madsen | Draagaan | Arian | Calli | Nsphere

Draft

My general take on player drafts is that you either splash cash on a big name player and then hunt down the best cheap role fillers, or you aim to get multiple somewhat-expensive players that you’re confident make up a competitive core for the team. Good captains consider both and are generally prepared to do either, though will commonly come into the draft intending to do one or the other based on their thoughts on the player pool, and their general preference.

I tend to lean towards the balanced stack concept, but have been trying to explore more often the approach of trying to snipe the big names when I think they’re being undervalued. That seemed to me to be the way the wind was blowing this draft, so I landed Arian for 76c.

I think I also got pretty good prices for the rest of the team, though I was unsure how good of a stack it’d be overall, as it’d likely hinge on how vocal arian was — specifically in the sense of, how comfortable will he be microing a couple of monkeys with keyboards.

Season Overview

As it turned out, he was pretty damn good at it. I’ll save commentary on individual players for that section, though.

Our performances were a mixed bag. We won a fair few games, and very desperately missed Arian’s presence when he wasn’t there — and that is probably the focal point of the story here.

We’re probably very comfortably in the upper bracket if Arian doesn’t miss 2 group stage series; unfortunately, it wouldn’t have really mattered, as he wouldn’t have been around for the final match days. Neither would Calli, and for the Thursday game, neither would Nsphere.

Knowing this sort of soured any enthusiasm that might otherwise exist going into playoffs on the back of a solid couple wins, most of which solidified the understanding that we’re a highly competitive team when everyone’s there. That wasn’t gonna be the case though, so being eliminated where we were was basically irrelevant — we end 4th instead of 3rd, as we would’ve if we got through the BO1 gauntlet to LB finals, where we would inevitably lose, given we’d have to play with 3 new players. I’m fairly confident that this played a part in the final loss as well, because it’s sorta hard to give a shit about making a run when what you’re running into is a brick wall.

Players

Nsphere | 5

Well and truly retired from giving a shit, Nsphere I feel — in what might be a bit of a pot kettle black situation — signs up to play seasons purely because that’s what he’s used to doing.

I don’t know that he’s had the drive to really try very hard in a long time, and that’s perhaps best evidenced by the gargantuan chasm between games where he’s actually visible trying and the ones where he’s coasting. Even then I’m not entirely certain it’s a conscious effort to try, as much as some innate muscle memory to just click his buttons overriding his longstanding aloof persona.

He’s — somehow — the person I’ve played on the most teams with, and frankly, I’m certain we’re bound for 1 or 2 more goes around the block, and there’s still an immensely valuable player there, given you’re willing to deal with the way he insists on presenting himself to the internet.

In game he’s very quiet, will often forego doing fairly basic shit cuz he cba, but is also one of the rare people who I’d more or less trust to play any hero and any role. Just a…complex fella, let’s call it.

Calli | 4

With Calli you really do get exactly what you sign up for, which is honestly a bit of a blessing in the post-Glickening era. Incredibly quiet, has his hero pool, will play it to the level you’d expect given his MMR, gets good mileage out of having some direction. Has the occasional lapse in concentration and might as a result not be super self-sufficient sometimes, but fine for the most part.

I actually feel kinda bad that I don’t have that much more to say about Calli since I did him dirty in the ED2L review but that’s the plight of season reviews and I’m sorta over trying to force filler in so!

Arian | 3

Not to rehash this scorching hot take but 9k+ Dota players are pretty good at Dota. Yep.

i will provide you with no context

I was pleasantly surprised by Arian’s ability to consistently call shots and manage the team’s pace of play even when things didn’t perhaps shake out the way he might’ve expected to post-draft. This isn’t do say I ever had any doubts that he’s head and shoulders above all of us put together as a Dota player, just that I’ve seen a fair share of high MMR players struggle to craft plans and call them in a way that’s digestible for mediocre players — which is also why Ekken’s ability to do exactly that felt very unique.

While Arian is, in comparison, a fair bit calmer and more laid back in his communication, it’s still very evident that he got a grasp on what he’s dealing with (both in terms of teammates and opponents) and that only improved as the season went on. In the final weeks he’d even come in having done what I’m fairly certain was individual draft prep which I thought was really cool, and it had a significant impact on us developing a sort of default play style that was fairly well-suited to us. Him taking this kind of initiative was pretty hype, and I’m fairly certain it came from a place of, well, wanting to stomp animal 6ks.

For all the good though, it’s sort of impossible to skip over the elephant in the room. He missed 2 series, and had we made it to the finals, would’ve missed 2 more. This, suffice to say, was kinda dogshit, and pretty disappointing, but I’ve played these leagues long enough to know that short of having the entire playerbase memorize and chant the season schedule like a gaggle of CCP recruits, someone’s inevitably going to fuck their team in this exact way. Alas.

Draagaan | 2

It’s probably pretty easy to point to Draagaan’s rollercoaster of an MMR history as clear evidence that he’s a somewhat inconsistent player. I mean, case in point, the man was a pre-Glicko 7k, at some point dipped to low 5k, signed up here at low 6k. I think this did also translate into our matches, where he’d swing violently between destroying lanes and getting dumpstered; carrying games alone at some times and then having next to no impact at others; never setting a foot wrong one game then constantly getting caught out the next; buying BKB one game, not buying it the next. Part of this certainly is also that it took some time to figure out what we’re doing as a team, particularly in drafts, but is worth noting nonetheless.

He’s also a very warm and friendly and cuddly person, and I think is perhaps impacted more than the average player by what the vibes are like and that’s probably not a great thing here because there’s perhaps a lot of discomforting quiet at times, which I think he has the natural reflex to address and which might distract him from what’s happening in the game. In any case, I’d be happy to have another go with Draagaan, though ideally in a setting where we’re not beset on all sides by 7ks and 8ks and 9ks.

Madsen | 1

i dont play dota i play age of empires campaigns on medium difficulty

--

--