ewokskick

Fear used to play support on EG after Maelk left. He was considered a good support player, but that team struggled a lot. I think it's likely that Fear will be a pretty good support again. I think it is especially easy to be a 4 when playing with ppd since he is so self-sacrificing in 5 role.

I thought I'd make a thread to share some pro gaming documentaries/videos I've seen and enjoyed and see if anyone else has any to share. Free to Play: Description: "FREE TO PLAY is a feature-length documentary that follows three professional gamers from around the world as they compete for a million dollar prize in the first Dota 2 International Tournament. In recent years, E Sports has surged in popularity to become one of the most widely-practiced forms of competitive sport today. A million dollar tournament changed the landscape of the gaming world and for those elite players at the top of their craft, nothing would ever be the same again. Produced by Valve, the film documents the challenges and sacrifices required of players to compete at the highest level." The Smash Brothers: Description: A 9 part series introducing the early competitive scene of Super Smash Brothers. The episodes tell the stories of the best players in the world including Ken, Azen, M2K, PC Chris, Mang0, and Korean DJ. An essential series for anyone even slightly interested in Smash and possibly enjoyable for those with no interest in Melee. D I R E B O Y S: Description: A look into EG's third place run at TI4. Mostly follows their captain ppd. eSports: Description: A Vice documentary that mostly follows LoL. It's kind of an outsiders view of eSports. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/esports-part-one

Thanks everyone who is sharing. I too would like a smash thread. It'd be great to have a primer and a place to talk about the scene. On that note, I have a fresh smash documentary. Well, it may be more of a video essay, but still. It's worth a watch.

I tried to watch a couple LoL games. Totally unintelligible to me and the casters assumed I knew way more. I think knowing one Lord's Management game isn't enough to easily enjoy another.

That article went from exciting to depressing really quickly.

I honestly think RTZ is the best player in the world and the only player in the world that is worth kicking someone to get. Most TI winners fall off pretty hard after the event so I can understand why they decided to be bold. That said, I am really really sad for AUI. In the end, he's still a millionaire and will find a good team once the dust settles. I'm sure it feels so shitty right now though.

AUI_2000 and Universe

Edit: Also the original old man saxon jam. Best video:

King of Kong is a fantastic movie. I definitely think those belong. Regardless, I definitely don't want to police what counts as "real esports."

I don't know the FGC that well, but it's pretty clear Smash is highly influenced by black & hip-hop culture. For example, their used to be crews and they would have crew battles. It's not as much of a thing now. But you can learn about it in the Smash Brothers documentary. I'm going to shamelessly promote my thread. If you're interested in that smash documentary or other esports documentaries please check out this thread and share anything you might know about: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10345-pro-gaming-documentaries/

Wow. Fnatic look like they are tearing up Europe.

I think there are zero pro-players. There are a few personalities/hosts who are women. Sheever is probably the most popular. She spent some time on the analysts desk in the group stage, I think. There are a handful of popular streamers and content-makers. It's pretty bad in the western scene. I've noticed that there seem to be more women in the Chinese scene. Another issue is that there are basically no black people in the North American scene.

Are western teams really that bad in league? They aren't even top 8?

I don't know what the final version will look like. That's the promo image. It's not yet implemented in the beta client. They had a beta of that on dota2.com during TI that looks just like that. What's hard to see on that is how interactive the menus are. You could click a players name and get more detailed info or switch the bar on the left to show a number of different items. The chat seems to be capped in size so it never gets as bad as twitch which is a plus.

I agree Seamus about the viewer interface not being great. Fortunately, this is improving a lot in source 2. This is what it will look like viewing in client: https://cdn.steamstatic.com/apps/dota2/images/reborn/day1/DotaTV.jpg

While we are on the topic of FMV games, I thought I'd share Justin McElroy's essential FMV Quest series from polygon. http://www.polygon.com/fmv-quest

This Huni guy is hilarious.

It's decent. I don't think I can wholly recommend it. I can't put my finger on it, but it has the problem a lot of Vice Docs have where the filmmaker comes off as kind of self-involved.

The Vice esports documentary discusses the risks of video gaming and internet addiction with a Korean neurologist. It's in part 2 if you want to skip just to that.

Yes. It's probably one of the more important and advanced elements of dota. In laning, you need to know about freezing the lane with pulls, denies, and blocking. You also need to know about creep agro rules. If you attack click a hero the creeps agro you, you can use this to adjust the lane. You also need to know how to work the 2 second agro cooldown to harass without pushing the lane. Once it becomes time to push, you can do a single pull with the cart. This will basically give you a double wave pushing into their tower. With some heroes that want to tower push early this is an important strategy. Since it will give you lots of creeps to protect your siege creep from the tower. As the game goes on, pushing out waves, especially on the long lanes will help build up momentum. There are heroes whose entire strategy is based around this kind of split push. Nature's Prophet has a global TP and can summon units so usually the strategy is to use the hero push out a lane and then TP into the fight. OR dodge the fight and TP to another lane to push the tower. Other heroes, like Naga and Terrorblade summon illusions teams use to push the lanes out. This means the enemy is always defending towers making it hard for them to claim objectives and map control. Late game, these strategies become viable on any hero because of boot of travel which allow you to teleport to friendly creeps (and heroes when upgraded). So, there always the ability to build up creep momentum and then return to your team. Rarely is the strategy about the creeps taking out towers though since in dota heroes are a lot more mobile with items and abilities they usually will push themselves and then rejoin the team.

I've got a strategy question.

Prog is the best. I think he is the first person I ever heard commentate in Melee. For those who don't know him, watch this video and you'll like him:

Sounds good. I think SC2 and LoL and Dota2 is a lot already. Especially with interspersed CS:GO. I keep telling myself I'll try LoL at some point, but I do. So, my understanding of the game is very stilted since I only know what Dota2 players say about it; and let's be honest, Dota2 fans have a serious little brother complex with league. On a side note, it was cool to have Sean on the podcast as the resident Dota guy on idle thumbs.

That makes sense. I thought it was weird he was always saying stuff we knew, but I guess it'd be even more useful if you didn't play it in one sitting. So you could call him up for a quick reminder.

Did it ever give useful hints?