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Rob Zacny

Esports Today 2/2/2016: Not Like This

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Esports Today February 3, 2016:

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Not Like This
It's an upsetting week in esports for Rob and Andrew. Rob's favorite StarCraft player, Life, is in police custody, and it seems like half of pro League of Legends in suddenly ineligible to play. But at least Evil Geniuses Dota remain runners-up at a major tournament.

StarCraft 2, Dota 2, League of Legends

Crib Sheet

Shkreli doesn't pay players

Nobody has a visa

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I'll not have any wrangling of hands from EG fans! They've certainly got the better narrative compared to Team Secret - a team that underperformed at TI5, broke up, got reforged, had some early success with the new team, but since this patch have looked like a tier 2 team that would be lucky to secure an 8th place finish at an important tournament. I'll take being the new Vici Gaming over that fate any day.

 

EG looked great at MDL to me, I thought they played the game as well as anyone could hope. EHOME has just been steadily improving. They looked great at TI when I think most Westerners noticed that this was a resurgent team. They looked even better at the Frankfurt Major. And so finally this tournament was their moment.

 

Despite EHOME sweeping EG 3-0, the grand finals were all fairly close matches. EG's play was great, I think the only problem in terms of how they played the game was EHOME's early rotations were much stronger, and that gave them an early lead that allowed them to control the pace of the game for the rest of the match, even when EG would come out ahead by whatever metric you might consider: net worth, kill count, towers destroyed, etc. they never really felt like they were able to take control of things. But I think the bigger problem was EG's drafting, which felt much less sharp compared to what you come to expect from ppd.

 

In game 1 EG first picked Invoker. That provided way too much information to EHOME, and they were able to focus on banning Universe's hero pool as a result. EHOME also pulled out a Lone Druid pick, which is an extremely strong hero this patch, but isn't a hero you see a lot in the Chinese scene, so I think that probably threw EG for a loop. ppd also drafted Nature's Prophet for Arteezy, and the less said about that pick the better.

 

In game 2 ppd seemed to learn from the mistake of the first draft and first picked Vengeful Spirit and Batrider. Arteezy also got a strong hero (Morphling). EHOME assumed the Bat pick was for Sumail, but they drafted it for Universe, so EHOME wasted some bans on Universe. Unfortunately for EG, EHOME was able to draft a ridiculously strong lineup of Lone Druid, Invoker, and Abaddon, and Weaver... basically heroes that nullified the strength of the Bat & Venge opener. And meanwhile ppd drafts Puck for Sumail. There's some debate about how strong Puck is this patch, personally I think the hero is great for a player like S4, but otherwise underwhelming and this game demonstrates why I think.

 

In the final draft EHOME had another outstanding performance with Earth Spirit, Morphling, and Enchantress. The Earth Spirit and Enchantress combo dominated the early game, and the Cty's Morphling became monstrous at the end game.

 

I think the big takeaway from EHOME's success if China wants to repeat its success is that Chinese teams need to expand their hero pool. I think for awhile Western teams have had a strong edge against Chinese teams because Chinese players didn't really play any cheese strats besides the occasional Broodmother pick, whereas Western teams have been perfectly comfortable running heroes like Techies, the Tiny + Wisp combo, Meepo, and other heroes that force the enemy team to play DOTA completely differently. EHOME has shown that right now a successful team needs to have a broad hero pool otherwise they risk being at a major drafting disadvantage. There are too many potentially viable strategies at the moment for teams to get complacent about running certain types of heroes.

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Sorry, it was my intention to keep my post brief, but clearly I failed! Here's the tl;dr version:

 

I think EG is fine. The Chinese teams, EHOME in particular, got a lot better is what changed. But EG have proven adept at growing and developing as a team, so they should be fine, and still should always have a shot at coming out on top at major tournaments.

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What are you guys even talking about with EG. I thought I missed like 5 tournaments or something because you kept talking like they had all these second place finishes,when in reality they a whopping 2 second place finishes. I know there isn't much to talk about but you are really reaching to make a story line that isn't there.

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If you're really starved for content you could talk about the PAX South grey goo tourney :P

 

With regard to Life and match fixing, no competitive event is immune from it.  And it's usually the lower tiers where it happens the most.  It's wrong to do, but I always feel kind of bad for the poor players that get caught up in it.  There is a great 30 for 30 documentary on netflix "playing for the mob" about college basketball fixing/point shaving.

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You guys mostly focus on the big weekend tournaments and other major things like The International and Blizzcon, but right now there is so much StarCraft 2 going on I can't keep up with it. There's Korean pro StarCraft 5 days a week (2x GSL, 2x Proleague, and SSL) as well as IEM Katowice qualifiers with big names in attendance. Then there is BaseTradeTV stuff which is live so often I can't figure out when the casters eat or sleep.

 

Anyway, I hope they find Life isn't actually guilty of anything, I don't know if I can handle one of the superstar Zergs being out of the picture. I think Zerg is really hurting atm; their best player seems to be Solar and he's still not as exciting as the players Protoss and Terran are fielding out atm.

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If you're really starved for content you could talk about the PAX South grey goo tourney :P

 

With regard to Life and match fixing, no competitive event is immune from it.  And it's usually the lower tiers where it happens the most.  It's wrong to do, but I always feel kind of bad for the poor players that get caught up in it.  There is a great 30 for 30 documentary on netflix "playing for the mob" about college basketball fixing/point shaving.

 

Another great (and very sad) 30 for 30 doc is The Two Escobars where a finally globally competitive Colombian soccer/football team gets dragged down by the drug cartels that generated the cash flow to make a top tier team possible.

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