[DotA] Mind Games vol.6

totallnewbie is quite renowned for his "Art of Mind Games" compilation. After quite a while, finally he comes out with his 6th video. The quality of the highlights are good, but to be honest I prefer his Mind Games vol.5 than this one, mainly because of the uber synchronize with the music in vol.5. But still, overall all his video are enjoyable to watch :3

his description:

The Art of Mindgames Vol.6: Commentary and Descriptions

0:08 – 0:33
My friend was playing CM, and I was the tidehunter. Pretty self-explanatory scene, demonstrating great prediction and a well-timed blink dodge. The reason why we didn’t turn around to kill Razor and Centaur is because CM was out of mana.

0:34 – 1:21
A battle in the forest. I sorta waste my blink a little bit too early because I didn’t want to get hit by the neutral creep’s stomp, and to avoid taking any additional damage. Anyway, I turn back around and lure the Naix while my allies go after Undying. Notice the direction that I run in when Naix is chasing me. I don’t run towards my allies, but rather away from them. This is done to give Naix a sense of security so he won’t retreat too fast. I pull out the blink again at the last possible moment with 2HP remaining, and proceed to own him.

1:22 – 1:58
This took place shortly after a battle in mid lane. I’m pretty low on mana, and my teammates don’t have their ultimates. I can’t kill the pugna 1v1, so I was just disabling him, stalling time for my allies to come help. I didn’t really expect the pugna to do what he did after coming down from the cyclone, but I reacted JUST in time to avoid death. See the time difference between my blink and the time you see the hawk explode. Quite a close call I must say…

1:59 – 3:39
This is quite a long scene. It shows how much of a difference you can make, and how you can still contribute to the team with very low amounts of HP.

After my illusion dies, I see that DK is out of mana and my ally (weaver) is on the way. I blink up to him with less than 300HP, and fight until I would have died in 1 more hit. I was going to retreat right there, but then DK would probably be able to get away from the weaver. I turned around and chased him back, despite my low HP. As a result, DK ends up making a total ass out of himself and gets raped in the funniest way possible.

I still have under 200HP, and Drow pops out of nowhere. I blink up and chase again, trying to repeat the same procedure. I kinda wasted a cyclone, but I didn’t want to risk getting criticaled and dying. After that, I still have 200HP and a terrorblade carrying a radiance comes into our vision. I blink up and chase again. I mana voided a second too late after he got the sunder off on weaver, but it’s all good. He used time lapse and got his HP back.

After the sunder, I thought for sure that he would turn around and hit me to try and get the kill (at this point, I’m at 130HP). He choose not to do it, and it was a good decision on his part. Earthshaker would have hit with his enchant totem, and it would have resulted in his death. Seeing that he is on the run, I blinked up and chased him again. I cycloned him for my allies to catch up, and got out of the range of the radiance immolation with less than 20HP remaining.

3:40 - 4:33
My vid just wouldn’t be complete without a Bristleback scene, so here it is.

Most people would just run back after the void retreated back to his ally. I, on the other hand, saw an opportunity there, and I took it. I dodge the axes, kill the BM, dodge the timewalk, survived his hit with less than 30HP remaining, and had just enough mana for a Quill Spray to kill the Void.

4:34 – 6:01
Before I get into anything, I would like to direct your attention to my items. I basically have nothing except boots, 6HP regen, and a stout. I’m not buff in any way. I will also tell you what items the opponents have. You can tell that the Void already has a MoM after he timewalked over. He also had treads and some wraiths as well. The Jakrio had boots and couple of null talismans.

Void timewalks over and activates MoM. This is obviously an indication that he’s going to use Chronosphere. I blink out of the way. I walk back up to the void, and take away his remaining mana so he couldn’t time walk. After I blink out, I have 270HP, compared to Void’s and Jakiro’s HP of around 850. Void has no mana, and Jakiro has around 500 mana out of 900. Right now, I can probably safely say that nobody in their right mind would fight those 2 heroes with an anti-mage, taking into account the differences in HP and items.

When I saw Jakiro going to cut me off, I knew I had a chance to kill both of them. When they split up, I no longer have to worry about the other character, and I can just deal with them individually 1 on 1. With a versatile skill like blink, you maintain good control of the battle. There is really nothing to worry about, especially if your opponents lack mana. If I kept them separated, that would increase my chances of getting 2 kills. Notice that I run in a way that sorta makes them stay apart.

After getting out of the aggro range of the enemy creeps, I turn around and exchange hits with the void. I blink out after I see Jakiro pop up. They separate again trying to cut me off. I see that, turn around in the fog of war to get in a few more cheap shots on void. I could have killed void right now with a mana void, but I wanted to save it for Jakiro. I blink away again after a while because Jakiro would appear soon. Now, Jakiro tries to hit me with Dual Breath by clicking on the ground, but unfortunately, I’m not the type of player that runs away back to base so fast. I blink over, drain his remaining mana, and void him for the kill. 1 down, 1 to go.

At this point, I have 200HP, and IIRC, the void had around 375HP. I turn around and abuse the fog again, getting a couple more hits in on void than he could get in on me. I knew that I couldn’t win if I kept exchanging hits, so I blinked out with 140HP and let my Regen kick in. Notice that I have 1 ranged creep hitting the void the entire time, which made a huge difference as it took off about 40HP from him. I run around until my HP is back up to 200. Now I’m quite confident that I would be able to kill him. My instincts were right, and I survive with 50HP. That extra 60HP I gained from my regen was the deciding factor in the battle. Sure he could have got lucky and got a bash off, but I could have gotten lucky and blocked some damage with my stout. It was a risk I was willing to take, especially since my chance to block is higher than his chance to bash. In the end, his bash didn’t trigger, and neither did my stout.