It is now halfway through the season, hopefully your team isn’t ass garbage. There is still time to turn it around though, let’s see how you all did this week.
Near vs W.Stealer 1–1
Game 1: Near loves him some AM, picked at 8, and still it didn’t matter. Both sidelines for near’s team drew and had heroes that could make space early so near can farm to his heart’s content (even though he won his lane pepelaugh). Another solid performance cements this team as one of the best in the division (which their record obviously reflects).
Game 2: 24 pick medusa, the second one I’ve reviewed this week. I do like the way they drafted this game though, they picked a safelane doom to try and slow Near down in midgame/late game team fights. And it seemed to work as this might be Near’s worst game of the season so far (3/5/10) not even bad by most standards. But when Near is carrying 90% of the games and hanmingzyy/style the other 10%, you need him on the win condition that can’t be doomed easy. Anyways, let’s talk about the winning team. They last picked medusa and won the game. Cool see you next week. -lemon
NyamNyam vs SSD 2–0
SSD team Forfeit. womp womp.
Festival vs w0nka 0–2
Game 1: Offlane Strygwyr(bloodseeker for the uninformed) is pretty insane in the right game. 7dog (6/2/19) opted for the veil into straight bkb and more than likely ran all over the map pressing Q on void whenever he chrono’d. Seemed like a bit of a stomp as radiant had a nearly 8k gold lead at 15 minutes.
Game 2: Festival stack drops the 24 pick batrider mid, I guess they assumed the sniper would be mid and not the wyvern? ROFL. I am near certain that bat mid 24 pick is a cheese pick and can be completely unstoppable in the right game. Unfortunately it didn’t out that way for Festival stack as w0nka team simply had the better late game draft and ran away with the game around 15 minutes.-bitterra
Matooie vs Wizard of Chaos 2–0
Game 1: Matieu figured out the strategy vs wiz, ban ET… Prohibit being prohibit picked another weird mid hero and crushed it, going 14–2–13 with the most damage done by a fair margin. Matieu’s archon pos 5 witch doctor had an amazing game going 11–5–8 and having the networth of the enemy cores. As for the game, matieu’s team won all 3 lanes and never gave wiz’s team a break, killing them constantly and building the advantage that led to their victory.
Game 2: This time, prohibit went disruptor mid and performed decently but nothing special. The game was in wiz’s hands, his team was 21k up at 41 mins before losing a huge team fight where all 5 died, bought back and died again. In the span of 5 minutes, a swing of 26k net worth happened. Matieu had an exceptional performance on faceless void with a score of 15–4–14, which was what kept his team in the game. -zam
Baboon vs jae 1–1
Game 1: Baboon team picked an early ass timber at pick 8 after seeing Jae’s opening magnus/sven picks. Pretty cool pick. This draft semed pretty greedy to me with troll mid and riki offlane with the timber safe, but they managed to put their foot on jae’s team neck an never let up from the opening of the game. Well done. -lemon
Game 2: Jae once again picking himself an early alchemist and getting away with it. After his lane probably went better than it should have into gentleman bastard’s mk, jae hit the creeps and achieved an impressive 1.1k gpm. Yak on his end had a solid showing as well with a score of 8–1–17 on his offlane spirit breaker. In this quick game, the only thing that really mattered is that alchemist was allowed to freely hit the jungle creeps.-zam
Nera vs Fume 1–1
Game 1: Target got his hands on his best hero visage in an actual decent visage game and used it to pressure early with vinny’s offlane viper. Nera who had all the space in the world was off farming during his chrono’s downtime. After building a small lead of 5k, nera’s team took a massive teamfight and killed all 5, which allowed them to practically take the base with visage and secure their win in this first game. -zam
Game 2: 24pick mid lycan..jesus christ! Good game for it so I can see why they picked it. I have yet to see eli play a traditional mid hero as of yet since I’ve been covering them so look out for cheese when you play them. Yes Eli, I am aware you’re going to retaliate and say “buhbuhbuh I dont play cheese!!!”. Or “x isn’t cheese,” well you do in most of the games your team has won so suck it. -bitterra
Sonnegod vs goatsatan 0–2
Game 1: Forfeit (rulebookers pepepains) — Tira
I think only 1 game was ticketed on this? Anyways, looks like goatsatan team ran the ursa hero and just had a “we’re gonna jump on someone and they are going to die instantly team” With storm and centaur to back him up. Goatsatan stomped (heh) on centaur and went 2/2/28. Ticket ur games los animales. -lemon
Tokamak vs Hullcity 0–2
Game 1: Idk, Hull isn’t really known for his midlane, but I probably wouldn’t give him one of his best heroes for it (Void spirit). He will pick it in the first round. He went off on his new favorite hero going 11/1/24, even after the dire team had the rest of the draft after pick 7 to plan for it. Snow and acidrain also had good games going 11/1/14 and 11/2/10 respectively. 11 kill gang.
Game 2: Snow got snapfire again and had another awesome performance dropping 10/0/16. This hero may worth being looked at against this team because it looks like another one they aren’t afraid to pick early. This agh’s is nutty. -lemon
Kira vs Dark 0–2
Game 1: Dark and al capone won their lane very hard, coming out with a ton of kills. Al capone as the 5 wd ended up with 10 kills, the most in the game followed by dark who went 9–0–10. Poncho and sexysteve had a similar showing on timber and wr in the offlane. This game was a massive stomp, dire was not in the lead at any point after losing both side lanes very hard and drawing mid. Dark’s team used their lanes advantage to pressure and choke kira’s team out of a potential win.
Game 2: Dark got his hands on a last pick PA in a pretty free PA game which also heavily countered the AM on the other side. In normal dark fashion, he completely crushed the game, going 21–3–9, even though the rest of his team didn’t have an impressive showing. The game was favoring radiant by 10k until they lost a teamfight at the 39 minute mark where both anti mage and mars died back. This allowed dark’s team to walk down mid and take the throne after the mid barracks fell, securing their 2nd win in this series.-zam
Pishtya vs Majka 2–0
Game 1: Now usually when you see a mid skywrath with “Middle Lost” on dotabuff, I’d usually think that team lost and sky had an abysmal game. This was not the case. He recovered and went 20/7/7, crushing the damage chart this game at 35 k in a 38 minute game. Very powerful.
Game 2: Looks like it was just “put the eggs in the Yoey terrorblade basket”. Dude had a great game going 14/2/13 and having a good team around him in kunkka rum, lich, and a beefy mars boy in front so he could just throw out the damage. Not really a fan of this offlane sven at 17, and slark at 24 from Majka team. -lemon
Captain Pepega vs The Chupacabraj 0–2
Game 1: I think we are going to see a lot more of this snapfire hero in a core role, her aghs seems fucking bonkers. Looks like Chup’s team saw the potential and Zam abused the pepega team with the grandma (12/2/13). Cello also had a nice game on Naix. Looking at this draft I assume this tide was gobbled up by snapfire (with naix also infested) and they just got launched into dire team to blow them up.
Game 2: Actually this game, Captain pepega’s teams won the side lanes, but it just wasn’t enough. Zam winning mid on sniper probably kept them in the game a bit so cello could recover on his PA (15/4/10) and dominate the game. 24 pick sniper can be pretty devastating to teams that have no decent way of getting on top of him. Dk got a blink to get onto him but by the time he finished it at 25 minutes, Zam had MoM, maelstrom and a pike. Well played chup team. -lemon
Runandjump vs Izumi 0–2
Game 1: This game looks like a stomp for izumi, but both teams had rather beta drafts underlord, mk, doom vs pl, dk centaur. It just looks like dk and centaur didn’t have games, and such they could never win fights.
Game 2: Another stomp for the izumi team, my main question here is why is their a snap off lane and who tf mugged her bc she is super poor. Like I would think being a badass lizard riding shotgun wielding grandma makes you hard to mug but these networth numbers tell a different story. Also the 2x drums on the mid and safelane for run and jump i didn’t watch the replay but i’m assuming there was at least one moment where they popped it at the same time. -tiramisu
Calamity vs General Ender 1–1
Game 1: This game looks clear cut for the ender team no dmg to kill the safelane timber and a mid riki (or as i like to call him micky) killing supports with his diffusal blade. A nice side note is the 41 minute deso picked up by jakiro as the game ended. good meme bro.
Game 2: It looks like the ender team was trying some elite tech with mid sk, and safelane elder titan, alas after a hour long game they were snuffed out. — -Tira
Imphatic vs Geom 0–2
Game 1: Imphatic tried a cheeky Broodmother 23 pick, but then Geom’s team countered with a 24 pick magnus who just had the free-est(?) of games. At 25 minutes he had a bottle, silver edge, treads, blink, daedalus. He went 20/2/12, all aboard the cd_alix magnus train. He didn’t log a death until about 25 minutes into the match. Also im gonna assume this K7 Silencer was MAD SMART at 3/4/23.
Game 2: Geom’s team took another win in game 2, to close out the series. The whole team seemed to have a pretty good game with all players having a positive k/d. Cd_alix on Zeus did 36.7k damage in a 27 minute game, the entire dire team had 42.8k damage. So basically Zeus and Lich out damaged the entire dire team. Oops. -lemon
Stang vs kden 1–1
Game 1: Brightside seems to be settling into this offlane role very well. He played windranger game 1 and went 23/3/16, also making great space for their Noob on Sven to snag the top networth (although he had fewer last hits than Iceyeti Ursa). Unfortunately it looks like the double bear strat failed this game. Kden also playing the sacrificial mid (feeder) 3/9/26 on Puck.
Game 2: Something very very bad must have happened in this game. Dire was ahead for about 42 minutes and then it looks like ALL THE HOMIES DIED. Actually if I’m reading this right, they lost the game while only losing the networth in the last minute of the game. Pretty impressive. A true baldclown moment. Also Brightside was mid this game with disruptor shenanigans. Gg to the stang gang, although none of you really had a standout performance, good job all around though for whatever fight you won at 42 minutes. -lemon
Princess vs Captain Gotard 0–2
Game 1: This game was pretty swingy, the networth was almost dead even until the 58 minute mark where it began heavily favoring gotards team who gained a 20k advantage in 4 minutes before losing 15k of it 7 minutes later and regaining it all the following minute and putting an end to the game. Of the 6 cores, 5 of them had pretty good games and jorv3 fed all game on mars. Lemon had an solid 82k damage on clinkz but probably died a lot more than he should have, rocking 10 deaths, second most amongst the cores after jorv3. The end of the game probably felt awful to play for both teams but especially for passion who lost it despite a rocking a score of 17–5–11 on pl with almost 1k cs.
Game 2: Another 1 hour+ game coming from this series but this time Gotard popped off and carried the hell out of his team with a score of 28–4–20 on offlane nightstalker. The best I’ve ever seen gotard perform in rd2l. This game was reasonably neck in neck with a passive period between the 39 and the 45 minute mark where no kills happened on the map. Ultimately, in this longer than mentally tolerable series, gotard’s team took the 2–0 and put an end to both teams misery. -zam
Simple vs nonsense 0–2
Game 1: This game pretty much had nonsense team in the lead for a majority of the game until a a bad team fight around 35 minutes, but they turned it back around 5 mintues later, and then closed it out another 16 minutes later? Pretty good performance by Plupo on PL (9/2/14), who also had a magnus behind him to empower him by saying nice things so he can farm better.
Game 2: Next game looks pretty much like a stomp with both side lanes winning for Nonsense team and mid drawing. Naratheen went 17/0/8 on PA and FTR had a good game as well on offlane bloodseeker (8/3/21). Hard game for the supports on radiant team. Nonsense team closed this one out in about 32 minutes. -lemon
HappyHobo vs Econ 0–2
Game 1: Rumors of a disband in this Econ team are postponed again, as Mirage throws the team on his back on morphling (21/2/11) for game 1. I do like position 1 Nature’s prophet out of Gotne, the pick is nice, but he did “just ok” at 6/9/14, but I guess you just need to make a little space for this water man in the middle lane.
Game 2: Uhhh game 2, happyobo team was leading for virtually the entire game, and looks like they threw a massive fight around 50 muintes and loss less than 2 minutes later. Looks like the dire team all died twice in a 1 minute span (diebacks). Tough loss to swallow. -lemon
Tiramisu vs Envi 1–1
Game 1: Oh man, SvEnvi won a game. While I would say his 13/4/15 would usually be pretty standout performance wise, the mid riki went 17/5/19, and frostfire had an excellent game on jakiro only dying 1 time (least in the game, 1/1/23). Looks like envi got carried again pepelaugh.
Game 2: Habits wasn’t happy with his first match back so he decided to turn it up a bit and comepletely demolished the envi stack. Habits drow went 20/0/12 in a 30 minute game. Absolutely animale. Also blackout got tinker (10/1/9), not sure if this is the first time but I know it’s all he wants to play rofl. -lemon
Bestpinoza vs Holo 1–1
Game 1: Just as radiant were starting to pull away with this game they five man wiped and lost all their advantage. It was also super unfortunate because it came at a time where sven had aghs but was still farming bkb so he ends up getting a almost 30 minute bkb timing by which radiant had items to stop him from 1v9ing the game. It also looks like nightstalker feel off hard and never got a major item before the game ended going 2–10 pepehands. -tira
Game 2: Bestpinoza’s team swapped roles in this game with bespinoza playing safelane spectre and loqui playing offlane timbersaw. I guess the strat worked pretty well for them given that they both had solid performances, with pionza going 15–6 on spectre and loqui 20–3 on timber. Besides that, the game was fairly even with a big dive towards the end after pinoza’s team took a huge teamfight forcing buybacks from radiant’s side and killing them back for the win. -zam
Insane Corndog vs Tree 1–1
Game 1: This series had both teams grabbing their first win of the season, tree team all collectively had a pretty good game. Jugg didn’t have a single death, and Deesul on bat only had 1 death around 11 minutes. Pretty good for a 33 minute game. While 23 pick DK is nothing to write home about, Erock did his job and drew mid and made some space so this jugg could go off. well played
Game 2: My boys DID IT. They pull out their first win of the season with a 24 pick Medusa. Watching a bit of ppp last night, Erock seemed a bit salty at this pick and blamed their entire loss on it. Corndog went the correct build on jugg with his only job to run around with the squad and make space while this medusa farmed the map. 5 Slotted medusa at 29 minutes is very spooky. I also really like the oracle pick here, say you kinda get close to killing this medusa (you can not), there is also a false promise that can be thrown on her. Very cool. -lemon
That’s all for this week. I may hold week 5 predictions a few days just because we are skipping this week because Canada has Thanksgiving or something. Tomorrow is my dear friend Chester’s hot fries birthday, please ping him with birthday wishes today and tomorrow.