Esports Today 12/22/2015: Year-End Review

[Rob Zacny]

Esports Today December 23, 2015:

Year-End Review

Rob and Andrew close-out the year in Esports Today with a retrospective on their favorite moments of the year and what they meant, plus they discuss the legacies of StarCraft's retiring giants. Then, listeners share their top moments of 2015 and what made them special. Esports Today will resume January 12!

League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Dota2, CS:GO

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[Rob Zacny]

6 Million Dollar Slam - Every caster's reaction

 

1000 FPS

[Rob Zacny]

 

Dreamhack London - Envyus Kioshima Molotov Defuse

 

SKT vs EDG | G5 Final MSI 2015 Mid Season Invitational | SK Telecom T1 vs Edward Gaming Game 5

[Rob Zacny]

Star League TY vs Byul

[aeolist]

So the Echo Slam is the obvious big moment of the TI5 finals, but I think there were better games from EG. They had that one fairly well in hand and even despite the Storm Spirit pickoff they were probably going to roll CDEC up.

 

Game 3 of the finals was really great and close, basically an incredible duel between Agressif's Slark and all of EG trying to catch him, which felt almost impossible until that last huge chase through the Dire jungle.

 

Probably my favorite moment from the whole thing was game 2 of EG vs LGD in the lower bracket. EG was down against Maybe's Shadow Fiend and Sylar's Gyrocopter, both of whom were really farmed with BKBs to deal with Leshrac and Butterfly evasion to counter Clinkz. Fear finally gets a MKB to cut through the evasion, LGD go to take Roshan and EG move to contest. Sumail initiated, died, and EG picked off the supports without really being able to touch the two cores.

 

At that point it seemed pretty bad, but then ppd pulled off a crazy juke and baited Rubick over to the Radiant side of the river, where Aui and Fear could kill him. SF and Gyro were split up but came to help, and after he died they tried to back off. Universe caught SF with a crazy force staff + hookshot play, and they finished him off with some great coordination between ppd and Fear. At that point Sumail was back and came to catch out the respawning supports and Gyro, at which point it was basically over. They forced out Gyro's buyback and still took the full set of mid rax, then with the gold they'd gained were able to finish LGD off a few minutes later and force the GG. It was probably the single best teamfight I can ever remember seeing in Dota.

 

http://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti/v/10183804 (can't get the timestamp to work right, the fight in question is about 53 minutes in)

 

Love the show guys.

[sclpls]

Okay, now I kind of really want to see clips of Byul's mom crying, does that make me a horrible person?

 

As far as EG, I was at TI5 and for me the most hype moment was probably Sumail styling all over EHOME as Windranger. It was a brilliant counterpick to Storm Spirit who was such a dominant hero that tournament, especially in the hands of a player like Cty. Although Sumail wasn't the first pro player to run that Slahser build of rushing aghs followed by a blink dagger, that was definitely the game that convinced me of how legit the build was. The excitement of that game can't be understated either because these two teams had the loudest fans out of any of the teams at the tournament, I get chills just thinking about it.

 

I'll defend the Echo Slam too. I feel like it is fashionable to kind of trivialize it because CDEC were getting pretty seriously outdrafted and outplayed throughout the grand finals, only winning won game thanks to a bit of last pick Broodmother cheese. Which is a fair point. But there's something to be said for cementing your victory in a dramatic fashion, and that was definitely a perfect way to do that.

 

A personal favorite moment was the DOTA Red Bull Battlegrounds Grand Finals between Team Secret and IG just because it was the first e-sports event I attended in person. It was a best of 5 that went the full 5 games with some incredible back and forth aggression. Prior to this tournament Secret were looking really bad (not unlike the situation they are currently in), but shortly before this tournament the 6.84 patch was released and suddenly the team came to life. Zai started playing out of his mind on Dark Seer and Clockwerk, and S4 was looking like the best mid in the world. From then on the team looked unstoppable until they fell apart at TI, but it was an amazing run while it lasted, and this tournament was the start of it.

[McDoom]

Thanks for a great first year of podcasts and a wonderful introduction into Esports. I don't find much time to watch matches, but watching the International was a pretty magical experience. As someone who found even the newcomer stream a bit above my level, there were great stories there with the young hotshot Sumail and old man Fear, and then the aftermath of kicking out Aui2000. Thanks for putting all these narratives in an understandable context. For some reason it's way more interesting to me than pro athletes. I think what I really want is a closer look at the day-to-day life of Esports players off the stage.  The Dota 2 documentary kind of brought that to light, but it seems like there's way more that could be done. I would definitely pay money to go behind the scenes of an Esports team like Evil Geniuses or of an almost champion like ByuL, but I'm probably only one of three people who would.

 

That podcast intro still makes my day.