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[Kagus]

Just asked the guy about a potential match-off, and he said that he'd get back to me when it's a good time.  In their Lina's defense, she is really still just learning the game, and is apparently in the lineup because she's the girlfriend of one of the other guys.


Still though, it doesn't change the fact that they play 3 carries as a general rule...


EDIT:  God I hate bots.  I really do.  There is absolutely no reason for there to be a 22 - 3 split in the enemy bot team's favor in the first 19 damned minutes.  I certainly wasn't feeding, but apparently my fellow teambots had no concept of self-preservation.  Or of laying the magical smackdown of Magnapyre, Chain Lightning, or any of the other nukes we had on the entire enemy team as they were stuck in my time bubble.  Nope, gotta wait until after it's run out before moving right in to say high to Mr. Chaos knight and Ms. Luna.

[aenri]

I'm totally up for some 5v5 action with fellow Bay12ers. Hopefully it will be played when I have some free time .

[ranter]

I'm in for the stomp if I'm available whenever it is. I suggest going PL-Kotl to show them what a true stomp is.

[umiman]

PL + Kotl, CK + Wisp, and Magnus mid. Huehuehuehue....

[Kagus]

What's the gimmick with the PL + KotL combo?  And really, I don't think cherrypicking the besties would be in particularly good form...  Gotta keep a little fun in it.

[Alg]

Getting the lowest winrate heroes would be funnier, really. As it happens, the lowest five are Brood, Morphling, Antimage, Meepo and Clinkz (I really don't get why Clinkz is that low, he's really not that hard) which would make an absolutely terrible team, but by picking only heroes from the worst 20 you can actually get a very good team composition as some great heroes have a terrible winrate in low level pubs (for example Chen, Shadow Demon, Lone Druid, Tinker, TA)

[Kagus]

I'm absolutely shite at Chen (I have the micro of a stoned slug), but I don't understand why someone like Shadow Demon would be in the bottom 20...  He's brilliant.  Lone Druid needs a bit of knowhow/farm/skill, but he's got some quite decent power if you know what you're doing.  Not to mention the tactical advantage of effectively having 12 inventory slots...

And yeah, I don't understand why Clinkz is so low.  Clinkz is great, and AM is notorious...  And Broodmother actually has some awesome potential (especially in pub matches) if played with a bit of finesse.

[umiman]

There's no gimmick. It's just an absurdly strong lane with incredible synergy. You can't stop it early game and you will lose late game if you don't stop it. In the past, in Dota 1 days it used to be called the ultimate Asian Rape lane because all the Chinese teams would run it 24/7.

For good reason. It's almost impossible to lose that lane. Spirit Lance is strong on it's own. PL being able to spam it is like getting smashed in the face by Zeus thunderbolts every 4 seconds... except it also slows you... and spawns an illusions that reveals your position and does even more free damage. That's not counting the gigantic nukes KotL likes to throw at his enemies. It wouldn't be so bad if you could leave them alone, except you can't because PL is one of the hardest carries in the game. So you MUST stop him! But that involves going into this crazy lane.

After all that, even if you gank him, you need to deal with his invisiblity and his speed boost. All this to stop him from getting one relatively cheap item... Diffusal Blade.

It's the same issue as AM, except AM doesn't have the spammy nuke that PL has.

However, it has been stopped before in pro games. It's just really... really... really... really hard.


----

There are many scarier lane comps. Things like KotL + Lich. Or Axe + Silencer. The only difference is that all the others don't have super strong carries that autowin matches. It's essentially the same principle as trilanes.

[ranter]

The gimmick is that pl is the most unstoppable carry late game right now and that kotl can force any game to go late. Also, having a mana battery to spam spirit lance in lane is the definition of sadism.

We should do the match in CM, though, just to see how would they draft, because it sounds like a pretty hilarious thing to watch. That way we could show them a bit of that wonderful thing called counterpicking.

[Kagus]

I don't even know how CM works, and my own counterpicking is...  Well, fairly nonexistent.  I don't have quite that firm of a grasp of all the concepts and relationships yet.

And normally, I actually play an early-game KotL that DOESN'T spam Illuminate all the time and push the lane...  I actually prefer just going all-out Chakra and Mana leak.  I don't understand why more people don't use Leak as a harassment tool, it's fantastic..  And moreover, completely harmless to your own side as it doesn't push.

EDIT:  Anyone else having an issue where after the first match, subsequent matches have a chance of bugging out so that you can't view mana or health bars in the HUD?

[umiman]

Yeah, it's a bug. The latest patch kinda weirded out a lot of stuff.

CM is a game in and of itself. It's a mindgame you play with the captain of the opposing team, trying to secure a strategy without being noticed and blocked by the opponent. It's quite compelling and can be quite stressful if you find yourself slowly "losing" it.

CM can also give you an insight into what kind of player you'll be fighting against in a pub. For example, when I accidentally joined a couple of Russian CM games, first ban was always Riki.

[ranter]

Kotl with mana leak+antimage can make the most passive lane ever. You don't move? No mana for you. You move? No mana either. I played it against a treant-naga lane and they stayed the first ten minutes of the game doing basically nothing while kotl pulled.

But the thing is that illuminate is just ridiculous early game, so most people go for it.

[etgfrog]

So i'm doing better at the game and managed to get my win rate up to almost even.

I understand why shadow deamon is low win rate...people don't know how to stack shadow poison properly, most people i see play him will send out 1 shadow poison then release right away, I mainly say this because I ended up winning a 2 vs 3 game(shadow deamon and sven)...anyways, silencer does well at keeping the enemy's out of mana initially, while I have only 27 or so wins as of this post, I have gone up against people with 300+ wins and done just fine(was grouped with others). mainly saying this because I'd be up for helping out with the 5vs5 scrim to determine team feasability.

[ranter]

No, the problem with shaodw demon is that he has awesome skills, but they all require a lot of help from your team to be actually useful, just like AA.

Disruption is a great initiation with a super long range, soul catcher boost a lot the damage output on an enemy and demonic purge is a slow that goes through bkb. All of these abilities are great to kill one enemy fast if you have the damage to do so. SD does not have it. Yeah, poison might be a big nuke, but you have to stack it for too long for it to be actually of any use, just like sticky napalm (though it is a great way to have vision). You need a few teammates to finish the guy you served them in a silver plate. And that's uncommon in pubs.

In fact, SD is one of the few heroes I panick when I random. It doesn't matter how well I do, Late game I feel even more useless than treant.

Also, disruption saves on enemies. Way too common.

[Kagus]

Whoah there partner, don't you go dissin' on Treant...  Strength-based hero with the second highest strength gain in the game, and natural attack damage outmatched only by Tiny, with on-demand low-cooldown soft disables and a combat invis/movespeed boost?  The guy can actually build to be a semicarry/more with the right items, and in contrast to other carries/semis he's brilliant early game.  If he chooses to farm, his laning phase is a cinch due to his great health and attack damage for last-hitting.  If things get hairy, head for the trees.

Yes, his abilities are most certainly the most use early on, when the regen/lifesteal values are high enough to mean something.  But I think people may underestimate the power of Living Armor later on.  Due to the damage block, at max level it's a free 560 effective combat health on a 15-second cooldown, plus a teensy bit of regen.  It makes a difference.


Just like how you shouldn't underestimate Shadow Demon being able to shove the beefed-up enemy carry out of the fight for 2.5 seconds, after which two high-powered illusions (look at the percentages they get, compared to other stuff like Manta style or Siren's Mirror Image) pop up and start tearing apart their origin.  Great fun on anyone who thought to dominate using a Diffusal blade.


And yeah, while Illuminate does do a lot of damage, and does it early on, it is by no means without its faults...  The high mana cost means you basically need to hog a lot of your own Chakras when it's up, and the channeling time requires either some incredible planning/luck, or some very strong disables courtesy of somebody else.  Sure, it will help to wear down the enemies and possibly let your carry get a gank or two, but it also pushes and can potentially steal the kill...  Whereas Mana Leak simply drains and/or stuns enemies so they can't run away or effectively fight back while your carry mashes them to bits.  And yeah, KotL and AM can make a very fun pair, at least as soon as AM gets his ultimate up and running.