Dota 2 and The Internationals

Dota 2 has been the talk of the vast majority of dota community for months, and the anticipation to see the suitor of the current warcraft 3 custom map DotA finally reached its peak last week when Valve held their own tournament at Gamescom 2011, Cologne, Germany, dubbed "The Internationals" where Dota2 made its debut to the public. The tournament which grants a massive 1 million dollar to the winner, featured 16 well known international Dota1 teams to battle over 5 days (August 17th -21st).

The tournament, which used group stage format before proceeding to playoff in double elimination format, concluded last Sunday which saw Ukrainian powerhouse and one of the tournament's favorite, Navi clinched the top spot, beating the unexpected Chinese team EHOME in the best-of-5 grand final.

Tournament info:

• Dota2: The Internationals (participated teams, bracket, VODs etc)
• Gosugamers: Photo
• Gosugamers: post-tournament picks/bans statistic

Final standings:

1. NaVi ($1,000,000)
2. EHOME ($250,000)
3. Scythe.sg ($150,000)
4. MYM ($80,000)
5. Moscow5 ($35,000)
6. iG ($35,000)
7. OK.Nirvana.int ($25,000)
8. MiTH-Trust ($25,000)

..................

I was very unfortunate not being able to fully follow the tournament due to work, though I still managed to get the update every now and then, as well as watching Video on Demands (VODs) of a few interesting games. To be honest it was not the tournament that I was looking forward to. But rather, like many others, it was the very dota2 itself. After months and months of waiting, we finally got to see what Dota2 looked like, what the heroes, items, icons looked like.

My impression toward Dota2 after watching The Internationals is rather mixed. The overall graphic is actually nice, because of the cel-shading touch to the 3d environment which made it easy to my eyes. The way the map layout (Neutral creep position, juke spots etc) looked almost exactly like in Dota1 made it even better. But there are also many things about the graphic/design that I do not like. The UI (User Interface) is way too bland and boring, with some space wasted between the hero avatar and the minimap/inventory (like HoN). The dots on minimap is kinda too small and hard to see, and that's a problem to a person like me. I also wish the color scheme of sentinel (now the radiant) and scourge (now the dire) is modified because at the moment I have difficulty differentiating sentinel and scourge's creeps -_-

A typical Dota2 screen: main game (left) and picking phase (right)

Some of the hero models were nice (Doom and Nightstalker got my award for best models), but some others were terrible. Storm Spirit is too small, and I REALLY want a Panda model : ( Earthshaker now looked like a chimpanzee running around with a totem. Mirana's "dog" is awfully designed, while Antimage need his head changed, or at least made him blindfolded. It's definitely going to take time to get accustomed to these new model, and over time we might forgot the fact that Rhasta and Dazzle were trolls. The courier model kinda looked retarded, but I somehow like it : ) There are also various effects/icons (eg Radiance aura, ES ulti, Nevermore's Raze etc) that I think need to be changed, and I definitely hope the full (?) version of Dota2 which is likely to be released next year to be slightly different than what we saw at Gamescom. The image of all currently available heroes and items can be viewed at this website. You can also comment about their models, and who knows, someday the critics might reach to Valve so that they changed/modify the models that the community think didn't suit the hero.

graph for difference in gold earned

As for in-game feature, there's some adjustments, but one thing I like is the stats/graph that show the difference in gold earned by both team, which give a mild indication of which team had the advantage at that point of time.

....................

The Internationals

As I previously said, I didn't pay much attention to the significance of winning or losing the tournament, because the game itself is still in beta phase with over half of Dota1 heroes unavailable, which means some of the current metagame featuring the mainstream picks (eg Omniknights, Broodmother, Invoker and Batrider) can't be used at its fullest. But that being said, I still enjoyed the tournament, because the tournament still produced some interesting games. And the fact that everyone's favorite shoutcaster TobiwanKenobi was there to shoutcast for Dota2 made VoD viewing much more fun. Gosugamers user vertigo compiled the VoD links to some of the best moments/matches of the tournament in this thread, so check it out.

One game that particularly amazed me is NaVi vs EHOME final game 2, which many others also voted as the best game of the tournament. This game has everything Dota2 can offer (it also has Pudge getting picked!), and it was evenly matched, going back and forth with both teams exchanging kills in each team clashes, and it's hard to tell which team is going to win until the last moment. NaVi always has 2 or 3 kills advantage throughout the game, but EHOME had significant gold and roshan advantage midway through the game. The game also had some of the best moments in the tournament, coming from Puppey's Chen - amazing micro to use dominated screep to block the enemies and save himself from being killed, then on many occasions later, he saved his allies by teleporting them back to base with Test of Faith. Totally amazing stuff pulled by Puppey.

Now that The Internationals is over, we're back to Dota1, and I can't wait for ESWC, WDC and our own's SMM : )

MYM vs Navi F4F3

Last 2 weeks, one particular game caught the attention of competitive dota community. Or to be exact, the non-chinese community. It was game 2 of Winner Bracket Final of Farm4Fame3 between Danish-based MYM and Ukraine-based Navi. The game was rated Replay of the Week on Gosugamers, with over 11 pages of comments cumulated in just a few days. I admit that since WDC last year, I barely followed European scene and I never watched any European game this year, so for the first time, I feel compelled to watch this so-called epic game of MYM vs Navi.

Events: Farm4Fame3, Winner bracket final
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.72f, version 1.26
GameMode: -cm
Length: 82:07 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

VOD: [Tobi's Joindota] (amazing shoutcast, really)

After watching the whole game (Tobi's VOD, that is), I would agree that the game is worth the RR status because of the epic comeback. It was indeed an epic game – Navi managed to claim mid and bot rax and took MYM’s Tree of Life’s health to just below 200, but somehow MYM managed to defend and crawl back to steal the victory. A recommended game to watch, but IMO it did not deserve the RotW status as labelled in Gosugamers, because the game is filled with many unnecessary mistakes that almost cost MYM the game, but certainly cost Navi, and some that I'd like to point out:

• Base-rush by both side @44 min. It was a judgement mistake by MYM to have Windrunner going for top rax alone, while the whole of Navi went for mid. In the end MYM claim 1 rax in exchange of their own 2 raxes, and almost the Tree itself. MYM certainly could play it safer by having Windrunner TP back to base to help defending against Navi’s push. But if not for this decision, we would never see the epic comeback, no?

• The biggest mistake in the game – Alchemist’s item choice. Whether it is good to get a Manta Style and keeping that Vanguard late in the game is debatable, but not getting a BKB when he had 8k gold in his pocket is a big mistake. So many times Alchemist was rendered useless in battle because he was repeatedly hexed by Tinker and Windrunner. If he had got the BKB, he could probably finish the low-HP Tree of Life (at 57:30 game time). Now you might say MYM had Beastmaster’s Ulti that can counter BKB, but Navi’s Broodmother (who was virtually useless all games because of BM's Ulti) also got a BKB, so Beastmaster can only Ulti/disable 1 of them, and the rest of MYM (who had tons of disables in Tinker, Windrunner and ES) cannot do anything to the other BKB’d hero. I would even say Dendi's Venomancer also should try to get a BKB.

Nevertheless, it was still an entertaining game to watch particularly if you watched the VOD with Tobi’s shoutcast, his energy simply made any game worth to watch. Kudos to MYM for the great teamwork shown while defending their base, especially Mania's Earthshaker’s many great stuns and ultis.

Anyway, with Dota 2 The Internationals coming next week, pitting the best teams from all over the world, I am still not convinced that MYM or Navi (or any other non-Chinese team) could beat the Chinese. Yes the Chinese scene went through the Great Shuffles several times this year, but you don't often see them doing unforced error/miscommunication that could cost the game, like what Navi did many times in this game, and their grand final game. I hope I'm wrong though, because I do want to see that for once, a non-Chinese team could reach the top in an international LAN event.

p/s: I actually want to cover Tyloo's victory over iG at last week's WCG, but the replay is still not out -_-

After Mega Creep....

Often we thought a dota game is virtually over and victory is secured when one side managed to get a mega creep, while the towers in one of their lane were untouched. Well it's not always true. This time I want to deviate from the usual competitive games to the casual inhouse games, which caught my attention due to the sheer amount of endurance shown by the winning team to withstand Mega Creep for... over FOURTY MINUTES, and ended up winning.

click on picture to enlarge

Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.67b, version 1.24E
GameMode: -ap
Length: 96:26 minutes

more info and download: [Playdota Replay Forum]

It's an old game played last year, and it was brought to my attention when I was reading a gg.net thread about "most creepkills", and the above screenshot was shown, along with the original thread. Medusa with 1273 creep kills says it all about this game, about the amount of post-mega creep that they had to endure. The game started pretty balanced, but although both sides were equally farmed, the sentinel was outpushed with the scourge heroes constantly targeting towers and raxes which resulted in mega creep within 50 minutes. But the real action started after that - for the next 40 minutes, scourge decided to farm neutrals, hanging around the map without real effort to attack the Tree, and eventually failed to end the game due to medusa and drow's resolute defending. Then the scourge decided to change their approach, by getting Euls and try to end the game while Medusa/Drow/others were in mid air! But the plan failed, needless to say.

Anyway, the game doesn't really had that much action, and worth proceeding at 2x-4x speed throughout, but it kinda mesmerised me to see how long sentinel were able to hold the 1k hp mega creep for that long. Rikimaru played rather retarded with 3 orb item choices and suicidal actions early-mid game, but it was learnt that he was just returned to dota after about 2 years of absence. The 1273-cs Medusa was definitely the MVP, and he got the perfect item build when facing this situation. The only thing about him that distract me is the way he always aim his Mystic Snake on heroes first - hence not maximizing the damage potential of this skill.

Moral of the story: Mega Creep doesn't always guarantee victory. Do not waste time and try to end the game asap, or we'll regret it.

p/s: and yeah, this is definitely the highest scoring creep kills I've ever saw, even eclipsing the epic 700+ kills made by EHOME's longdd and LGD's zsmj.

RD Replay of the Month - Back to action

It’s been awhile since I post anything about Dota, not since the conclusion of SGNDT 2010. Partly because since coming back from Australia, I had to wait till February for my PC to get shipped, and in the mean time, using a worn-out 5 years old laptop which didn’t have WC3 installed. 2 months without dota is a nightmare I tell you.

Anyway, that still didn’t prevent me from following the competitive scenes. Since the start of the year, much changed had happened, and by now I’ve almost completely only follow Chinese/Asian scene. Not that the European scene was uninteresting or something, it’s just that I simply lost my passion to follow their scene. Back to the Asian scene, there was quite a good number of games that catch my eyes, unfortunately some of the games didn’t have any replay available for download (so far). I’m referring to Chinese’s Lunar Cup which was featured some exciting games in the final between LGD and Nirvana.cn. The game was still available for view on youku, but I’m not sure if the replay was ever released.

One game that caught my attention recently was an ADC game of Scythe.sg vs AEON.MUFC.

Events: Asian Dota Championship (ADC) IV
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.71b, version 1.24E
GameMode: -cm
Length: 80:48 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

rating: 7.5/10

It actually wasn't that long, since about 10 minutes of the total 80 mins were used for -cm drafting. Although it was not that epic compared to the classic LGD-EHOME encounter we've seen throughout last year, the game was still rather tense and interesting, especially the final 20 minutes. A close game.

From the picking phase, we've seen a clear intention of AEON to win by sheer carrying power of Medusa, supported by Invoker and Puck. Scythe had other idea though, as their final pick of Antimage provided the trump card against a farmed up Medusa. And Yamateh's Antimage did just that, also thanks to great combination with Hyhy's Tinker.

Medusa did the best he could, maxing her inventory real fast - Linken, Manta, Skadi, Butterfly; and by that point she was almost unkillable, but then made one mistake that cost them the game: buying a Divine Rapier (as a classic Medusa always did) and lost it very soon after. Not having a BKB against Tinker with Guinsoo and Antimage on the opposite side proved to be suicidal. She did have money for buyback, but recent changes with the addition of cooldown to Buyback means she couldn't afford to die a second time, which she did later when Scythe pushed to AEON's base, and hence unable to buyback, leaving their base open to demolition.
Scythe then went on to win the semi-final against LGD, and the grand final against Nirvana.my to lift the ADC season IV title.

On a side note, Lich as solo was... kinda good. Depend on situation I guess, but Sharky did a nice job playing a semi-carry Lich. In the end, he even had a rapier lol. Oh, and a bad invoker play.

SGNDT 2010 Grand Final - The Same Old Conclusion

Tournament info:

Sendi Mutiara Multimedia [SMM] Grand National Dota Tournament [SGNDT]
Venue: e@curve, Damansara
Date: 3rd-5th December 2010
Time: 10am - 10pm (GMT+8) daily

More info:

• Gosugamers - tournament info
• Gosugamers - tournament grid and bracket
• SMM live stream courtesy of TobiWanKenobi
• Gosugamers - Replay list
• Gosugamers - event photos

Following the end of the 2nd day of SMM Grand National Dota Tournament 2010, only 6 teams remained in the tournament to battle for money and pride: 4 Chinese teams LGD, EHOME, Nirvana.cn and Deity; 1 Malaysian team Nirvana.my and 1 Vietnamese team StarBoba. The day started with winner bracket final being played between EHOME and Nirvana.cn. Having previously beaten Starsboba in the WB semi final, Nirvana.cn seek their second grand final appearance, however they failed to emulate their victory against EHOME, as EHOME put off their best performance to beat the WDC champion in the WB final, in what best described as one of the best game of the tournament, and effectively send Nirvana.cn to the lower bracket final.

Winner Bracket - click to enlarge

Full Bracket can be viewed on Gosugamers coverage

In the Lower Bracket, meanwhile 4 teams were battling out in order to gain the privilege of fighting against previously beaten Nirvana.cn. Deity won quite comfortably against Vietnamese powerhouse StarsBoba, and on the other bracket, Nirvana.my met LGD in the same manner as they did in the last SMM. To refresh things up, last year SMM saw LGD knocked out to the loser bracket after losing to cD [the current Nirvana.cn] by picking Techies. In the loser bracket, they met Kingsurf [the current Nirvana.my] in one the most epic game in 2009 - ZSMJ as Phantom Lancer losing his sacred relic after the bird carrying it were killed, only to re-farm the same item within the next 8 minutes. This year both team met again in the same manner, and again produced the same result, although the game itself wasn't that eye-catching compared to the last SMM. With that, it's confirmed that the top 4 of SMM 2010 will be dominated by Chinese teams...

To make things short, LGD beat Deity quite comfortably in the loser bracket final to set up the encounter against Nirvana.cn, where winner will advance to the SMM 2010 grand Final. Unfortunately the game wasn't played on the live stream, and no shoutcast was made either so I have no idea how the game went, but LGD came out on top to meet EHOME once again in the Grand Final. The Grand Final match were played in best-of-3 format with EHOME having 1 game advantage due to winning the Winner Bracket. We expect another epic encounter between these 2 teams as they did in Day 2, unfortunately it didn't really happen. Both teams went for a safe defensive strategy with EHOME went for Alchemist+Sniper as DPS, while LGD relying on Morphling to counter EHOME's tanking ability [basically almost the reverse of their previous meeting]. After much farming, finally EHOME decided to push mid and a big teamfight ensues with EHOME coming out on top while also getting mid and top rax. Having only Morphling as the real DPS hero, LGD were unable to stop EHOME's imminent final push and lost the game, and with that, EHOME won the grand final and become the SMM Champion for the 2nd time in 3 years.

That's not the end though, as there's still a showmatch between the champion EHOME vs Malaysian favorite Nirvana.my. As it was a showmatch, it promised entertaining action throughout, which eventually won by Nirvana.my. Oh how I wish it was actually the real tournament game lol.

That's it for this year's SMM. Although there's quite ups and downs, I do find myself thoroughly enjoying the tournament, though a bit sad because I wasn't able to return to Malaysia on time to watch the event live. Tobi's shoutcasting throughout the tournament was awesome, really really awesome that he made a farming game never looked boring. Too bad the co-commentator, Kelly Milkies kinda ruined the shoutcast because of her excessive usage of Singlish, lack of in-game insight, unnecessarily spoiling team items and location, and always interfering Tobi's speech with repetitive and uninteresting questions/information. I hope the SMM committee would pick a more suitable shoutcaster next year, and hopefully, a Tobi+Synderen combo. These 2, along with the retired MadMordigan were the best DotA shoutcaster I've ever listened to.

Again, congratulation to EHOME for winning the SMM and proved themselves to be arguably THE best DotA team in the world. Hopefully we will see a team that can break the Chinese domination next year...

P/S Interesting fact: No Chinese team had ever lost to a non-Chinese team in this tournament, except Nirvana.my's showmatch game.


Oh, Match of the Tournament: Definitely those that were marked as "RR" in Gosugamers replay page. My personal top 3 favorite games in this tournament:

1. EHOME vs LGD, WB last 8. THAT MORPHLING!!!
2. StarBoba vs Nirvana.my, 5th-6th place placing decider. THAT FURION!!!
3. EHOME vs Nirvana.cn, WB Final. THAT MEDUSA!!!

SGNDT 2010 - Day 1 and 2 Summary

After a year, Sendi Mutiara Multimedia [SMM] Grand National Dota Tournament [SGNDT] is back with its 2010 edition, offering even much more cash prize than the previous year. As arguably one of the biggest DotA tournament in the world, along with the final big LAN event in DotA calendar, SMM become the benchmark to determine which team stands on top during that particular year. To recap, since the inclusion of international team starting from SMM 2008, EHOME won it in that year, and a year later in SMM 2009, another Chinese team For the Dream [aka the current TYJ.LGD] take the crown in what's best described as the rise of the tri-carry strat.

Coming into this year's SMM, much anticipation and expectation were held for the top teams, especially after so many things happening throughout this year. In July, EHOME march flawlessly to win ESWC 2010 Paris, effectively marked then as "the" best DotA team in the world. Just 3 weeks ago, another big DotA LAN tournament were held in Wuhan, China - the World DotA Cup [WDC], a very happening event which was eventually won by Nirvana.cn. These 2 teams come to SMM as among the favorites to lift the gold medal, along with the improving LGD who recently replaced their support player, Gx with versatile ganker/carry player 830. At first, several European teams like MYM, DTS and NWO were expected to come, however due to the high traveling and accommodation cost involved [largely because SMM organiser was late to announce the exact date of this year's tournament], none of them managed to attend the event, and hence this year's SMM become high-level tournament among the Asians only.

19 international teams, and 50 local teams participated the tournament. Prior to Group Stage, 48 of the qualified local teams [the other 2 are the seeded teams Nirvana.my and Aeon.mufc] went through qualifier in which eventually only 19 teams went through the main group stage. After 2 days of playing, the Group Stage has finished and almost half of the playoff were played, which will be continued on the third and final day, tomorrow.

Tournament info:

Sendi Mutiara Multimedia [SMM] Grand National Dota Tournament [SGNDT]
Venue: e@curve, Damansara
Date: 3rd-5th December 2010
Time: 10am - 10pm (GMT+8) daily

More info:

• Gosugamers - tournament info
• Gosugamers - tournament grid and bracket
• SMM live stream courtesy of TobiWanKenobi
• Gosugamers - Replay list
• Gosugamers - event photos

The final group stage standing:

click to enlarge

The updated Playoff bracket can be viewed on Gosugamers SMM coverage page: HERE

The coverage this year was excellent, and made even more awesome by the fact that everyone's favorite shoutcaster TobiWanKenobi is present in this tournament to add the mood into the games being played on stage. Despite that, there's still some weaknesses that the organiser might need to consider to improve, such as the lack of streamed games on all matches [only a few were streamed on Waaaaaghtv]. But overall it was a fantastic tournament so far, boosted by many high quality games being played.

The first thing that come to my mind upon seeing the group bracket was how stacked Group A and G were, having 3 strong Chinese teams sandwiching the unfortunate local malaysian team. Apparently the group drawing were done randomly without any seeding involved, which by chance grouped Deity, LGD and Dream together in Group A, while Ehome, Nirvana.cn and CCM [Mushi's new team] in Group G. Quite unfortunate, but then you gotta beat what's in front of you if you want to win. In the end of the day, LGD/Deity and Nirvana.cn/Ehome qualified, as much expected.

Not much surprised were thrown out in the tournament so far. Most big and known teams qualified through to the playoff. The exception is Aeon.mufc, the 4th place winner of WDC which failed to qualify from their group which consist of Sigaporean and Indonesian powerhouse, XtC and AlienwareDG. But then their performance in this SMM was overall a disappointment, winning only 1 game in the group stage. Other disappointment come to the Australian team LGD.au who also failed to qualify from their group which consist of Thai and Philippine's champion, Roccat.trust and Mineski. In term of the Clashes of the titans, there's also little to no surprise result produced. LGD, Nirvana.my and Nirvana.cn all won their respective group comfortably, even though they did face tough opponents like Deity/Scythe.sg and of course, EHOME.

The quality and strategy execution of the games so far were also top class. So far I've watched all Nirvana.my and most games streamed by Tobi, and some of them were quite entertaining to watch, especially when it comes to LGD. Their group stage games showcased some of the highest level of dota you've ever seen, and their quarter final game against Ehome was probably "the" game of the tournament, let alone the game of the month. Some surprise yet expected picks were thrown, where the likes of Alchemist, VS, WD, Lion, Doom, Enigma and Windrunner remained the top bans/picks, but the most notable change from WDC is the frequency in which Syllabear was banned and picked. I was quite happy that Syllabear finally got the chance to show himself in the competitive scene, although his winning rate at SMM so far seems to be 50/50. Morphling was also regularly picked, although he was no longer played the same way as he used to be - now often with Ethereal Blade rather than Manta. Fast push strat with 3-1-1 laning remained pretty much the winning formula. Unfortunately, so far I haven't see any game in which a very fast pushing strat or unorthodox picks were used.


Game of the tournament so far: Quarter Final 1, EHOME vs LGD.

No word can describe the astonishment I had while watching the game. Even Tobi who shoutcasted the game almost lost his breath, implying how tense and breathtaking the game was. 60 minutes game, ZSMJ's Alchemist got full inventory and he is facing Burning's fat, fat and FAT Morphling, as well as Dai's epic Tinker. The game was so close that you can't really tell who's going to win even after 50 minutes, although Ehome's victory was imminent considering how well they handle the teamfight - totally ignoring Alchemist while focusing on all other LGD's supporters. And this proves to be super effective as Alchemist can't handle a farmed Tinker+Morphling all by himself. Mind you at one point Burning's Morphling has 11k gold. Amazing game and the crowd at the venue was in total madness while watching this epic encounter. On a side note, this game also broke the live stream view with more than 18,000+ viewers watching the game. Showed how big this Clash of the Titan is. Oh, and Tobi's shoutcast made the game even more AWESOME than it already was.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the tournament in these first 2 days. He quality of games being played remained high, and the live stream and replay weren't disappointing either. Hopefully te last day tomorrow will serve us with another epic games with some unorthodox strategies being used.

WDC concluded - and Chinese domination continued

After 5 days running, the World Dota Cup [WDC] entered its final stage on Sunday with the 3rd/4th place decider, and the Grand Final game being played. Following the end of group stage on Thursday, the eight remaining teams battling out in best-of-three playoff format for the glory and pride of dota. After much anticipated games being played, Nirvana.cn managed to overcome all obstacle to emerge victorious in the Grand Final against the newly reformed Deity.

The final grid:



Having watched virtually most of the playoff games, my thoughts on some of the games, and the tournament as a whole:

• Thailand's Roccat.trust who managed to win all their group stage matches fell short in the quarter final against Deity. They actually played quite well in both game but eventually failed to take advantage of their momentum and lost the game 2:0. Regardless, a big applause to Roccat.trust for their participation in WDC, especially considering they're the only team that beat the champion Nirvana.cn during the group stage.

• The Malaysian Derby of Aeon.MUFC vs Nirvana.my didn't end with good note...for Nirvana.my fan like myself. Nv.my's performance in the Knockout phase was quite disappointing. The first game was pretty tight, but Yamateh's decision to go for BKB+Guinsoo+Refresher build on Shadow Fiend left many wondering about that decision, as it virtually left nv.my with no real DPS heroes while Aeon had a farmed Obsidian Destroyer to deal with. While in the 2nd game, Nv.my was totally outpicked by Aeon's clever push strategy featuring Necrolyte, Pugna and Rhasta. Apparently Nirvana.my was not fully prepared for WDC because one of the player fell sick a few days prior to the start of the tournament, that might explain why they still picks the bread n butter heroes in WDC, without any specific strategy being played.

• Nirvana.cn cruised to the final comfortably. Well, not quite. Dream put a very strong performance against them in the quarter final and almost take that game away from Nv.cn, but Zhou's amazing Morphling seal the deal for Nv.cn. In the semi-final, they met DTS, an opponent they once beat comfortably in RGC. Having beat the likes of LGD and EHOME, DTS would love to do the imposible - beating the three Chinese powerhouse in WDC by beating Nirvana.cn, but that never looked like happening. Nv.cn showed why they're the best team at the moment by beating DTS using their own strength - mass ganking/pusing- the same situation where EHOME beat DTS back then in ESWC 2010.

• The grand final game, especially game 1 truly show the real class of Nirvana.cn. It was a tense game with Deity also showed a strong resistance from Chuan's SF and Longdd's Medusa. But DGC's Enigma and Banana's Earthshaker showed their own class with gamebreaking stuns and ultimate that won them the game. Amazing teamwork, perfect positioning and execution. Knowing how deadly Enigma is at the hand of DGC, Deity replied by first picking Enigma in the second game, but Nv.cn was clever enough to outwit Deity by fast picking Silencer, a pick that totally counters Enigma and rendered his Black Hole totally useless in most teamfight throughout game 2.

• The strength of Alchemist, as a hard carry. These past few month Alchemist had been regularly picked, both as heavy carry and ganker/supporter. WDC however showed hy Alchemist SHOULD be played as heavy carry, demonstrated in LGD vs DTS and Aeon vs Deity [game2]. Goblin Greed easily made Alchemist 1000x rich faster than any other carry, and with enough farm, he is virtually unkillable. I smell nerfstick in next dota version.
  

• Cons 1: No immediate replay released. I don't mind this but many people actually rage that WDC committee decides not to release the replay from day 2 onward. I personally much enjoyed watching the Chinese stream because there's commentators involved, as well as the entertainment [albeit unrelated to dota] they put in between matches. Nevertheless, most games's VOD can be viewed here.

• Cons 2: Controversial tie-breaker rule. As I understand on Day 1, 2009 and EHOME was informed that tie-breaker games will be played if three teams were tied with the same point in the group stage. This apparently was changed on the 2nd day into a time-rating system, where teams with least amount of time taken to finish the game will advance. Due to this rule, EHOME and DK fell victim as they were eliminated from the group stage. he WDC committee definitely need to provide some explanation to clear this controversy.

• Cons 3 - lack of variation in executed strategies by all teams. Basically in this tournament there was little to no difference of picked heroes between 6.69 and 6.68. The bread n butter heroes - shadow fiend, necrolyte, VS, WD, Lion etc are still regularly picked, although there's a marked decrease of Morphling and Storm Spirit being picked. The only game were teams remotely utilize unorthodox picks was the DTS vs EHOME in groupstage game. I guess given the fact that 6.69 was just recently released, teams still haven't fully prepared to try unorthodox and risky picks.
  

Overall, I have to say that WDC organization did a great job in managing this tournament. Clear stream was provided at the cost of immediate replay, but I personally quite enjoyed the stream, even though I understand jack about what the Chinese commentators said. In between games, some entertainments were provided featuring girls dancing on stage - although I find their taste in music rather...weird. There's even showmatch of 1v1 Shadow Fiend solo mid contest featuring two of the best SF user, Yamateh and Yaphets [aka PIS]. Yaphets won the game, partly because he was on sentinel and had the right choice of item [starting with 2 slippers and some branch, while Ymt opted for more regen items and magic stick. Great showmatch though.

Again, congratulation to Nirvana.cn for winning World Dota Cup, proving themselves to be one of the best team in the world. Hopefully the upcoming SMM 2010 will provide even more entertainment to the dota communities.

Recommended games from the playoff:
-Nirvana.cn vs Deity, quarter final [game 1] - very tense games
-Nirvana.cn vs DTS, semi-final [game 1]/[game 2]- perfect execution of strategy
-Nirvana.cn vs Deity, grand final [game 1] - epic enigma and earthshaker.

The rest of the games can be viewed HERE.

World Dota Cup: Group Stage summary

One of the most anticipated Dota tournament, World Dota Cup [WDC] officially started last Wednesday which took place at Huazhong University in Wuhan, China. A total of 16 teams participated in the tournament, some after enduring rigorous qualifiers while others were invited. It's a shame that several qualified/invited team were not able to attend due to sponsorship issues [eg xtu.prd, NWO, Starsboba, LOST.eu etc], but in the end the final 16 teams were successfully registered: 10 Chinese teams [LGD, EHOME, Nirvana.cn, Deity, Dream, DK and 4 amateur university teams], 2 Malaysian teams [Nirvana.my and AEON.MUFC], 1 Thailand team [Roccat.trust], and 3 invited international teams [MeetYourMakers, DTS and TheRetry].

Group stage begin on first playday, Wednesday the 10th and concluded on the 2nd day, Thursday the 11th. The final standing of the four allocated groups:

Many of the games were streamed through PPlive's NEOTV Channel. I managed to watched most of the streamed games, sadly except a few important one [Nirvana.my vs LGD and Trust vs Nirvana.cn] due to uni commitment. My thoughts on the grouping, played games as well as final standings:

• Group C and D = totally GROUP OF DEATH. EHOME, DTS and AEON all in the same group in C, while LGD, MYM and Nirvana.my all in the same another group. These 2 groups were definitely the major focus in the group stage.

• DTS pulled a totally awesome strategy to beat EHOME in their first group game. After three consecutive loss against EHOME in ESWC 2010, DTS is now pitted against their old nemesis and had a chance to avenge their defeat. And they do so, convincingly by picking quite unorthodox lineup of Enchantress, Dazzle, Panda, Bear and VS, and execute it to perfection. EHOME meanwhile failed to foresee DTS's plan and never really made any attempt to counter the strat [eg Burst nuke/mass stun vs Enchant+Dazzle].

• Thailand's team Roccat.trust surprised everyone by beating everyone in their group, including the recently crowned Razer Global Challenge champion Nirvana.cn. Roccat.trust is not a stranger in Asian competitive scene, especially after the demolition of Yamateh's SF with effective use of Batrider in ADC 2010. However their performance leading to WDC wasn't that convincing and hence their straight victories in WDC Group A come as a surprise for most. Definitely looking forward to what they had to offer in the knockout round.

• And the biggest surprise- EHOME eliminated from the group stage. Following their victory in ESWC 2010, G-League and recently RoTK, EHOME was regarded as arguably the best team in the world and come into WDC as favorite to win the tournament. However they fell short in their first game against DTS, but do win their remaining 2 games against AEON and XFA University. While AEON beat DTS, and with all 3 teams tied at 2 wins and 1 loss, EHOME went out due to Time-rating rule in tie-breaker. Kinda sad for the favorite to be eliminated this way, but deep down I was kinda happy to see EHOME out.

• Another European favorite, MYM also bowed out of the tournament following two defeats against Nirvana.my and LGD. MYM come to the tournament without their influential captain Maelk and had to content with a Chinese stand-ins, Mamamiya [former XFY captain]. Nevertheless as a whole I thought MYM did so well in the tournament despite going home early. It's just a bad luck for them to be grouped together with strong powerhouses like LGD and Nv.my. In both games against these 2 teams, MYM almost pulled out a win if not because of some crucial mistake and Nirvana.my/LGD's perfect team coordination which denies MYM victories. These 2 games are totally RECOMMENDED!!!

Nevertheless, the bracket for playoff has been released and were set to be played on Friday,Saturday and Sunday.

Those were definitely interesting pairings. AEON and Nirvana.my have to content meeting so early in the quarter-finals, while on the other bracker, arguably the 2 best remaining team in the tournament, LGD and DTS met each other. Looking forward to these games!!

Extra infos: Gosugamers WDC Coverage

Recommended games:
1. DTS vs EHOME, Group C - awesome unorthodox strategy by DTS
2. MYM vs Nirvana.my, Group D - replay not yet released. Epic 81 minutes games
3. MYM vs LGD, Group D - replay not yet released. Epic comeback by the winning team

RD's Replay of the Month - October

World Dota Cup (WDC) is fast approaching, with more and more qualifier games being played. Among others, LGD and EHOME met each other in WDC China Qualifier (robin round, top 4 out of 8 teams will qualify to grand final), a historic match played on the historic days of 10/10/10 that tells 1001 stories about the strength of Chinese DotA. PURE EPICNESS!

Events: World Dota Cup China Qualifiers
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.68c, version 1.24B
GameMode: -cm
Length: 109:55 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

rating: ********** (intense)

One sentence for me to summarize this game - LENGTHY BUT EPIC! Although you might see the outcome, you really can't tell which team is going to win even in the last 5 minutes of the game. Watching the game live on Neotv, I have to say that the intensity of the game really got through me, and even the people at gosugamers went madness over the streamed game. So intense and epic, that's all I could say.

The tide of the game kept on swinging from one side to another. LGD started the game convincingly, gaining 10-1 kill advantage by 25th minute mark while getting 5 of scourge's outer tower. EHOME however maintained their composure to get quick roshan kills and get their asses back into the game. EHOME finally got their advantage when they managed to push and get LGD's mid rax, and by that point it looks like EHOME will make a comeback and win this. But a few KEY buybacks from YYF's Storm (more of this below) kept LGD in the game and they eventually managed to get EHOME's mid rax, nullifying the opponent's rax advantage. But in the end on this epic game, Burning's Shadow Fiend and Dai's Sniper get overly fed, and with virtually no pure dps hero on sentinel, LGD can only watch helplessly as EHOME pounced their Tree...

Some interesting points about this game:

• MVP: YYF's Storm, despite being on the losing side. "THAT" moments in 57 and 76 minutes are totally youtube-material. Died, buybacks, killed 1 heroes, died, BUYBACK again, killed another 1, died, then BUYBACK again, killed another 2 heroes, ULTRA KILL. I jizz in my pants.

• The power of KingJ. Who would have thought that a venomancer can out-cs ZSMJ's Necrolyte 1v1? 5 minutes in, veno had 25 cs compared to zsmj's 13. 12 minutes, veno had 63 compared with zsmj's 35. But in the end, ZSMJ is ZSMJ. By 16 minutes, zsmj's cs skyrocket to almost 80 (veno had stopped farming at this point), and almost reach 100 by 20 min =.=

• Dai's knowledge about Dwarven Sniper, and dota mechanic in general...questionable? I can't understand why he didn't turn off MKB's true strike because it totally renders his Headshot useless. In fact, none in sentinel had any sort of Evasion skill, even more reason to turn True Strike off.
  

Overall it was ohe heck of a game, and in my opinion it really deserved to be the replay of the month. Some people complained about the sheer farming that this game had, but hey, what can you expect when two of arguably the best DotA team in the world met? I find this game more fun to watch when the game was broadcasted live (along with shoutcast), but certainly a bit boring when watching the replay. To think this is just the qualifier, I wonder how will the real WDC going to be. Hopefully more epic games to come.

Don't get confused with the displayed game length, the game actually last only around 82 mins (which is also fairly long by today's standard). For those who wish to watch the replay, it's better to watch at 3-4x speed, then back to 1x when teamclashes happened, and most importantly, don't miss YYF's epic moments in minute 57 and 76 minutes.
If you value intense game with epic teamfights and skill demonstration, then this is the game for you.

RD's replay of September - the epic clash of Giants

Quite early for this month's replay, but since someone suggested me to cover this game, I guess I might as well do it now.

Events: Asian DotA Championship IV: Round 2
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.68c, version 1.24e
GameMode: -cm
Length: 60:36 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

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The merge of Nirvana+Kingsurf, which essentially saw 2 of the best dota player in Malaysia - Yamateh and Mushi combining force to take on arguably one of the best dota team in the world, LGD in Asian Dota Championship. Granted both team are currently rather unstable (2009 retiring and Sharingan return for LGD, while rumors lingering about Yamateh's imminent retirement for Kingsurf), they actually managed to put quite a spectacular show in this game.

I actually don't know how to express my feeling toward this game. It was certainly a highly recommended game to watch. Yamateh is back with his sick Shadow Fiend, while Mushi with Lion also performed spectacularly. On LGD, ZS-"rightclick"-MJ's Drow is getting his usual farm, while Sharingan's Enigma poses threat all day to KS. LGD had the advantage in tower, and they even managed to get mid and top raxes. But when it come to team clashes, Kingsurf showed their ruthless determination to defend the base, repelling almost every single of LGD's attempt, partly thanks to VS's swap every time Enigma blink in and ulti.

Despite the kill advantage, KS was forced to camp to defend their base, and when the time arise, it was then the mistake kicks in, which arguably decides the outcome of the game. As KS tried to push mid, VS went to swap ZSMJ's drow but ZSMJ managed to escape with BKB. Now that VS's swap in cooldown (and hence can't cancel Enigma's ulti), Enigma blink in and ulti, catching FOUR KS's heroes, killing them all and ultimately ended the game.

Overall, a really awesome game to watch, and a heartbreaking outcome for Kingsurf fan. KS looks like they could make a comeback in this game but a single mistake in team battle ended their abition. Despite that, LGD actually are quite comfortable throughout the game although they're behind in hero kill. In the end, as this round is played in 2 games, botht eam got a draw as KS won the first game earlier.

Replay rating: ********* (9/10)

[DotA] RD's replay of the month - July & August

Finally a post after almost a month, after a few "minor" things happened to prevent me to spare time on this blog.

Nevertheless, I only just realize that I forgot to put a post of my favorite DotA replay for July, partly because so many huge things happened in those month (ESWC, G-League, WCG ASIA etc), which made selecting good replay partially difficult. And even this month there are also some great tournaments being held in China, including Intel Extreme Masters and National Electronic Sports Open 2010. So many great replays, in the end I can only pick a few as my choice for these 2 months.

Starting with my favorite replay for July:


[WCG ASIA 2010] Grand Final: Nirvana.my vs Starboba

Events: World Cyber Games 2010 - Asia
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.67c, version 1.24e
GameMode: -cmoi
Length: 63:38 minutes

Replay download: [gosugamers]

The reason I like this replay is Starboba's unorthodox draft of picking a combination of mass heal+armor debuff strategy, which worked really well in this game. Their strength truly shine in teamfight when SP's ultimate, Warlock's mass slow and WD's bouncing stun combined to disrupt Nirvana's coordination, then added with Slardar's armor penalty and Jugger's menacing Spin and Omnislash (don't forget his Healing Ward too). It was clear that Starboba intended to do this strat for the grand final right from the start, evident by the very short time taken by Soso.on to pick each heroes (less than 10 secs for each pick).

Nevertheless, SB's way to victory was also helped partially by some of Nirvana's uncharacteristic mistake. Mushi's doesn't seem to be at the top of his game, and at one point when teamfight ensued near Roshan, he opted to continue hitting Roshan (almost died) rather than focusing on SB's heroes, and as a result, Nirvana lost the teamfight.

Overall it was a really nice game to watch, action packed, great execution of strategy and good team clashes. The only downside of the game is that Nirvana made too many mistake that cost them the game.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Now, to the replay of August. I had a hard time deciding for this one, because as I mentioned before, there are many great replay coming from the recent Chinese tournament, but not many of them actually have a distinct feature, or something that made them a memorable replay (eg 2 rapier medusa/mass push strat etc). Hence, my pick for replay of the month, August:

[NESO 2010] Playoff - LGD.SGTY vs GD

Events: National Electronic Sports Open 2010
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.67c, version 1.24e
GameMode: -cm
Length: 82:49 minutes

Replay download: [gosugamers]

Long game. This game is played in best of 3 format in the last 16 round of NESO, held in China 2 weeks ago. An event which saw the return of Chinese powerhouse CityHunter, the crack in LGD's domination, as well as the exposure of pub star like Ckk and Nada to competitive dota. With ckk on SF and ZSMJ on Medusa, you really would expect something awesome to happen in this game. As I said previously, the game probably didn't have anything spectacular in term of innovation in strategy, or a gamebreaking teamfight that triggers a comeback. But it was full of actions and imo worth the watch if you want to see some great kunkka/shadow fiend play.

LGD themselves played a part in their defeat as Ch's venomancer and 2009's Rhasta was caught so many times, giving GD the opportunity to gain the upper hand in many team clashes. On a note, at one point ZSMJ's medusa had over 10k gold due to some insane farming, unfortunately it was not enough to save LGD. This time he decided not to go for double Rapier (as he did against EHOME), which IMO is the right thing to do because the rest of LGD heroes can be taken down easily by GD, making it almost impossible for Medusa to wield Rapier safely. LGD eventually lost the game 2:1 and was knocked out to the loser bracket, but for some undisclosed reason the decided to forfeit their loser bracket game...a sad end to LGD's journey in NESO 2010.

p/s: the other 2 games of LGD vs GD are also nice to watch.

[dota] Clan Wars & Counterpushing

Can't think of any good title, so bear with it. I was planning to post this on Monday, but school assignment kept me busy from writing this down and since it was requested by a certain Cybergamer people, I decided to take some time to post it.

Anyway here's the thing. Last weekend we had a hard time gathering enough people for a game, because some went home to M'sia, some went for a travel to places like Tasmania, while others simply went missing. So some that remained decided to play public game...but due to some difficulty (well, public game, you know the gist), we decided to go to unofficial garena clan war room for Oceanea region, in MCC room. In an instant, we found people who are looking for 5 for a clan war, and we decided to accept it. In total, we played 3 games, but I'm more interested to comment about the first game, which was probably our first ever unofficial Clan War (against non-Malaysian ofc).

We never really come prepared for this game - we didn't even know that we're going to play -cm mode, and who's going to be the captain for picking. So the unfortunate man, cipantapeer who happened to sit on Green (or whatever the top color is) spot become the captain, and the game proceed.

Warcraft version: 1.24e
more replay info and download: [HERE]

This game is interesting (at least for us) because it was our first clan war against another team, and second, we succesfully draft a counter against sentinel's push strat. Looking at the bans and pick sequence, it was clear what sentinel planning with the likes of Enigma, Pugna being picked, while Earthshaker was banned. We however decided to go with the usual pick before decided to counterpush with our final 2 picks: Undying and Rhasta.

The game went as expected: sentinel went all mid and push, and got their first tower within a few minutes. But the key here is Undying - his Tombstone totally ruin sentinel's push strategy. This gave us a chance to defend against the push, while giving Sven some free farm and levels at top lane. To make it short, sentinel eventually went outlevelled and outfarmed because their attempted push strategy failed. GG calls from the sentinel.

But the next 2 games were total disaster - sentinel went for the usual carry/gank strat and we got totally outplayed, even worse than EHOME stomping every teams in eswc. Simply put, the skill gap and coordination was far too wide between both team, plus we didn't really pick heroes that we're comfortable with. I guess there is no need to post those replay, right...


moral of the story:

• Push strat is easily counterable - providing you ban/pick the right hero. Sentinel's mistake is that they forgot to ban undying, but then if they ban undying, it would be a clear indicator of a push strat.

• In a clan war, pick heroes that you're comfortable with. Don't just pick BM, VS, Lion, PL etc just because they're imba. i.e. don't pick for the sake of picking...

p/s: I remember seeing a player named paulxu back then when Garena was still in beta phase. And if my memory is right, he is also a former member of MCC team that qualified for Farm4Fame and once beat the old Kingsurf.int. Tough luck meeting this team -_-

p/s2: you'll also know you're in trouble when you face a player with YaphetS in his id : (

ESWC 2010 Day 3: Asian Pride Prevails

Continuing from Day 2, DotA division of ESWC 2010 continued with the playoff. To summarize the previous day, EHOME had already beaten Nirvana.int while DTS beat MYM in the Winner bracket semi final. Today, the winner bracket final, as well as a loser bracket games were played, followed by the Grand Final to determine who is the best dota team in the world. After "intense" games played, the winner was finally decided:

Tournament Result: Click to view

Final Standings:

1. EHOME (China) - $14000
2. DTS (Russia/Ukraine) $7000
3. MYM (Denmark) $3500

Links:

• ESWC Official site
• ESWC Live update
• Coverage: Gosugamers
• Coverage: Playdota
• Zeyall's live update on Twitter
• stream on Waaaghtv
• livestream shoutcast by Madmordigan/Tobi
• replays on Gosugamers

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: SPOILER ALERT ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Man, what a tournament has it been. The day start off with loser braket game between MYM and Nirvana.int. MYM has previously beat Nirvana convincingly in the Group Stage, and they managed to repeat the same feat in this playoff, and thus effectively ended Nirvana's dream in ESWC 2010. Looking at the pick, I would say it was a total outpick by Nirvana. Lack of disables while relying solely on Drow for hard carry, against the push power of Brood and Necrolyte is a total mistake. Just like their previous encounter in group stage, Nirvana is trying hard to turtle but in the end the pressure from MYM was too much for them to handle. Overall It's not really a spectacular game to watch and pretty much one-sided. I wonder why didn't Puppey do the pick for Nirvana (Fear was the one doing the picks).

The day followed with Winner bracket game between EHOME and DTS. With DTS's abundant LAN experience, many thought DTS would be the team that could end EHOME's winning streak in ESWC. But they thought wrong. DTS never looked like the team that won ASUS a few month back. It was a total rape, one-sided, total outplay by EHOME. DTS's play was really awful that they even failed to kill a low hp CM (at river), and instead getting killed. One-sided, but this game was better for watching than Nirvana-MYM if you want to look for a perfect teamwork. I wonder if DTS was also getting mindfucked in the picking phase, like many other team in the tournament felt when they face EHOME (AEON, Nirvana and LOST had already feel the mindfuck).

With DTS's defeat in the winning bracket final, they went into the loser bracket facing MYM whom earlier beat Nirvana. It was a replay to forget though, as DTS easily send MYM packing home. There's nothing much that I can comment about this game, except lines like "poor sf for getting swapped many times and died needlessly", and "wow, another strength hero with Urn! I gotta try this". The pick was kinda balanced, but MYM was simply outplayed.

With that, DTS proceed to the Grand Final of ESWC 2010, facing EHOME whom they lost miserably a few hours earlier. Coming from loser bracket, DTS had one game disadvantage and hence need to win 2 games against EHOME in order to clinch the Championship. Which normally is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to do. EHOME was unbeaten in the WHOLE tournament (and even ended most games within 30 minutes), so asking DTS to beat them twice is like asking Malaysia football team to win 2014 World Cup. This game actually send me nuts because the stream was not available (WTV site overloaded with visitors) until when the game almost ended. Better than nothing I guess. In the end I still managed to catch up with the live stream, and guess what did I saw? Yet another rape. DTS try to beat EHOME in EHOME's game - the 3-carry strats but failed miserably. Dendi playing SF, what the efffff? Picking Razor was rather innovative, but it clearly was not going to work against EHOME's massive chain stun. Leaving Lion and VS to EHOME is simply like asking for an anal. DTS got Drow and WD, but heck, EHOME got Medusa, the "imba hero that can farm 700-1000 creeps" easily. Coupled with Kunkka, ES, VS and Lion's stun, there's no way for DTS to stand a chance.


Final note: Overall, I would say that ESWC 2010 gives better impression than ESWC 2008. More team participates, the formats was better and the coverage was good. The bad thing is that some games wasn't streamed properly, and even the Grand Final was late because the server overload. I'm also a bit disappointed that some teams failed to live up to their expectations, in particular AEON and Nirvana.my. It looks like after losing against DTS, AEON totally lost focus (mindfucked) int he rest of their games. In the end, only MYM remained as the only top team who never face EHOME, and hence spared from being taken of their virginity by EHOME. On a side note, EHOME's victory proved that Asian (or rather, CHINESE) Dota is one step ahead of the rest of the world. The skill gap was too large. Undefeated, they easily crush all teams they faced without giving a slight chance for come back. They really are a proper dota team. Imagine when you have monthly salary, then having a team manager/coach who are willing to run around and note down other team's bans/picks then discuss them with the team. That's what true scouting was.

Congratulations for EHOME for winning ESWC 2010. I hope DotA will be back in ESWC 2011.



edit: I found one interesting EHOME facts from this ESWC, credit to the people at gosugamers:

EHOME stats in ESWC - Click to View

List of heroes used by EHOME:

• VS x 5
• WD x 4
• DR x 3
• SF x 3
• Rhasta x 2
• Necro
• THD
• Medusa x 4
• Lion x 6
• ES x 2
• Morphling
• BM x 2
• CM x 3
• Sven x 2
• Storm x 2
• Visage
• Kunkka x 2
• Doom

YOU JUST CANT BAN ENOUGH AGAINST EHOME


Kills / Deaths:

• Nirvana.my vs EHOME 5 : 19
• EHOME vs TEG 25 : 17
• Tribal.fr vs EHOME 8 : 28
• AEON vs EHOME 3 : 22
• EHOME vs Nv.GiGa.int 25 : 4
• DTS vs EHOME 11 : 41
• EHOME vs LOST 40 : 11
• EHOME vs DTS 29 : 6
• EHOME vs DTS 29 : 7

EHOME vs WORLD 258 : 72

Too troublesome to do tower count or creep count but the kill ratio alone is gay enough... 3.583:1 GG icefrogbalance

Other stats:

• EH kills: AAA 68，X67，J 44，820 41KILLS，357 38kills
• the 6 game AAA being main Carry, he has 1726 creeps while the opponent has a total of 2393 creeps.

ESWC 2010: Day 2 Summary

Friday July 2nd. ESWC 2010 Paris concluded its second day of the tournament. For Defense of the Ancients (DotA), all 2nd Phase of Group stage matches were played, along with the semi finals of the winner bracket. With 8 strong teams remained from previous day, this promised some of the best games in Group Stage 2nd Phase.

The result of Phase 2 of Group Stage:

MYM/Nirvana.int from group 1, and EHOME/DTS from group 2 advance into the playoff, which consist of Winner and Loser Bracket. The semi finals of the winner bracket has been played, and the remaining games will be continued tomorrow, supposedly the final day of the tournament. The Grand Final will be played at 6pm GMT+1.

Links:

• ESWC Official site
• ESWC Live update
• Coverage: Gosugamers
• Coverage: Playdota
• Zeyall's live update on Twitter
• stream on Waaaghtv
• livestream shoutcast by Madmordigan/Tobi
• replays on Gosugamers

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A lot of games have been played today, and I managed to catch a few games live on Waaghtv, while others via replay. I'm still disappointed that not all games were streamed on Waaaghtv, especially EHOME's two games in the Group 2 against DTS and LOST. Hopefully the replays would be released by the time I woke up next morning :) So as usual, my thoughts about day 2:

• There are a bit of tournament surprise today. AEON which has been touted as the team to win the ESWC (after EHOME), failed to win any of their group matches. Their performance never looked that convincing after losing that surprise game against Bulgaria team yesterday. It was a pretty one sided and hopeless game against EHOME. The same is true for Malaysian team Nirvana.my, which also crashed out of the tournament. But then without Mushi, I never placed that much expectation toward this team. They did beat MYM anyway.

• EHOME continued their winning streak, convincingly. The replays against LOST and DTS haven't been released, but just by watching their game against AEON and Nirvana.int in the semi final, it's no surprise that they remained as the team to beat in this tournament. They totally dominated their opponent and strikes fear into anyone who tried to beat them. Seriously, playing 3 carry strat will not work against EHOME because it's their own playstyle, they've mastered the strat for years.

• I've occasionally see some unusual build. For example, yesterday was the first time we saw a Slardar with Urn as FIRST ITEM (even before boot), and today we saw a Sven with Urn too. Thinking back, it was probably that they needed the extra 6 strength and mana regen more than the charges.
  

Some of the highlights of toda's game (those that I watched only):

1. Nirvana.int vs EHOME, playoff Winner bracket semi final
It was a bit of a boring game, but this game literally made me laugh. Why: I like how Ehome's trilane bot strike fear to Azen's Morph that he doesn't even dare to get close to the creep, basically giving free farm to Lion. Then he and Puppey's Dark Seer decided to neutral together. It was really funny if you ask me, leaving the bottom lane all unoccupied because of the fear of getting killed. Thanks to that, Lion managed to get a 10 min dagger and the rest is history. A daggered Lion, a rolling Storm Spirit, Sven's long range stun; it was basically gg for Nirvana.int after 10 minutes. Final scre 26-4, Medusa creep kill 425, outfarming the ENTIRE scourge team. Not bad, but still quite far away from ZSMJ's 720 cs and LONGDD's 1024 cs : D (ironically both came against EHOME)
Even the strongest of the Western Dota couldn't hold a candle against EHOME, I wonder what would happened if LGD participated in ESWC.


2. MYM vs Nirvana.int, Group 1
Probably today's best game. To be honest I didn't expect MYM to steamroll Nirvana in this game. MYM pick and teamplay was perfect that it didn't give Nirvana.int much chance to turtle and bounced back.

3. Nirvana.int vs OK, Group 1

Watch this for some Beastmaster's tutorial. Epic beastmaster play by Demon, flawless throughout the game. 15 minutes Necrobook, ganging all over the map and killing lone heroes in the forest.

p/s: Korok vs Kuroky lol

Final thoughts on day 2: As there are lesser games being played, the day was shorter than Matchday 1 but the quality of teams and games being played improved (somehow). EHOME still proved that they means business in this ESWC. I am a bit disappointed with AEON and Nirvana.my's performance today, but their exit was kinda expected given that they barely had consistency in this tournament. Even the great iceiceice couldn't save AEON from their doom. Meanwhile, the lack of Waaaghtv stream continued to disappoint me. Zetsubou-shita щ(ﾟДﾟщ)

ESWC 2010: Day 1 Summary

The first day of ESWC 2010 Paris concluded with all games being played in expected time. To briefly describe the format of the tournament;

• 16 teams participated in the tournament, divived into 4 groups (4 teams per group)
• each team will play against each other in the group (ala World Cup). The top two team will advance to the next round and the bottom two eliminated.
  
• The 8 advanced team will be randomly divided into 2 group - meaning this is the 2nd group stage consisting of 2 group, 4 teams each.
• Just like the first group stage, each team will fight against each other and the top two of each group will advance to the playoff (semi-final) while the bottom two will be eliminated.

Matchday 1 (1st July, Thursday) includes all matches of Group Stage Phase 1. The final standing of Phase 1 Group Stage:

Based on the table, AEON and MYM advance from group 1, Nirvana.int and DTS from group 2, Online Kingdom and LOST from group 3 and EHOME/Nirvana.my advance from group 4. These 8 teams were then randomly drawn into 2 groups:


The top two of each group will advance to the semi final.

links and more:

• ESWC Official site
• ESWC Live update
• Coverage: Gosugamers
• Coverage: Playdota
• Zeyall's live update on Twitter
• stream on Waaaghtv
• livestream shoutcast by Madmordigan/Tobi
• replays on Gosugamers
  

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my comments and observation on the tournament so far:

• Holy crap 2nd stage Group 2. EHOME, AEON, DTS and LOST all in the same group. These games will certainly give some of the best entertainment for dota fans. The two tournament favorite EHOME and AEON will try to prove who's the best, while DTS will want to show that with their LAN experience, they can beat the tournament favorites. LOST (former DDT) will also want to prove that they're one of the best European teams.

• Group 1 of stage 2 is also interesting with both Nirvana team meeting each other, added with the old timer MYM, and Online Kingdom which was reinforced by Kuroky. Overall, it's a touch call for both of these groups. I'm predicting Nirvana.int and OK to advance from G1, and EHOME/AEON from G2.

• It seems like the "3 carry strat" is still prevalent. (In) famously used to perfection by LGD.SGTY back then in SMM 2009, this 3 carry+2 supporter strategy has somewhat become a bread and butter strategy for almost every team as one of the most efficient way to win games. DTS did went for 1 main carry strat against Nirvana.int but it clearly did not work, although that game was a hell of an epic game. Nevertheless, kudos to Bulgarian team for effectively pull a push strat to beat Aeon in the group stage. More of these two games down below.

• All seeded teams managed to advance to the 2nd group stage. Really no surprise. I was looking for underdog team to go through, but it never happened and the best thing they could do is beat AEON with a push strat, but overall they still failed to qualify. The "Challenger" seed kinda disappoint us, you could say.

• EHOME simply steamrolled every team, even against Malaysian team Nirvana.my. It took them less than 25 minutes to get Mega Creep against Nv.my and Tribal. Their game against TEG was a bit tougher, but they still ended the game within 40 minutes. Truly the quality of Chinese dota.
  

• The first and only surprise of the tournament so far is Team Bulgaria's victory over Aeon, with an unorthodox push strat. Admittedly, Aeon has already won the group while BG has already been eliminated when the two met, but it was still a great game This is kinda like the repeat of eswc 2008 when Zenith (the current Aeon team) won their group games, then lost their final game against a Brazillian team which saw the potm bought a divine raiper.

• Despite the reliance of 3 carry strat, we still see a variety, and a lot more heroes being used. Enigma, Visage, Undying and Alchemist occasionally being used along with the regulars core heroes like VS, Drow, SF, Lion, Medusa and WD.

• MYM vs Aeon, hyhy vs maelk rivalry ended in the Hyhy's victory : )

Some recommended games from Day 1:

1. DTS vs Nirvana.int, Group 2.

I'm cursing the eswc because wtv stream was unavailable for this game, and have to wait for the replay instead. But what a game it was. Dendi's pugna in mid lane really amazed me. A lot of kills, very tense with good teamfights. At first it looks like Nirvana had the upper hand when they manage to score a few kills and towers, but then Light's sniper started to grow fat and getting beyond godlike, the tide slowly turned into DTS's favor. But the turning point is probably the 2nd roshan fight when all DTS heroes were killed. DTS then tried to bounced back with the third Roshan attempt at 52nd minute (good teamfight outside of scourge's base), unfortunately it was not enough to stop Nirvana.int from claiming victory. A lengthy but good game if you seek great teamwork in team battle.

2. AEONsport vs Team Bulgaria, Group 1

Both team has nothing to lose as one already won the group and the other had already been eliminated. The Bulgarian team went for an unorthodox push strat. What makes their strat interesting is that you can never see push strat coming until that last pick Undying. AEON might see the push coming with by looking at the bans and Chen pick, but they didn't make much effort in picking an antipush hero. Anyway the team fights was a bit messy and cluttered that sometimes you lost track of where's this and that hero, but overall it was a nice execution of push strat. Sven with Vlads and Necrobook tells everything you need to know.


Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome of Playday 1, and definitely looking forward to playday 2, later this afternoon. The only thing I would complain is the lack of proper stream by Waaghtv, because many streams died after the heroes finished their picking phase, or halfway through the game. Hopefully the games will be streamed better in future matches.