Playoff Power Predictions — RD2L Season 24, Week 8
After two months of staring at dogshit games of Dota, my time as your designated content-shitting machine is drawing to a close. No longer will I extoll the virtues of Master or the incompetence of Style. No more being pinged immediately after I fucking release an article because some Melvin decided to clarify whose fault the game was. Alas then for EST-SUN, because all of you are clearly gonna get knocked out in playoffs. As with prior weeks, I’ll cover a series LVP, MVP, and a prediction for the playoffs.
Also, I’d like to point out that the entire time I was writing this I was listening to the Rome: Total War soundtrack, so to fully capture the mood of this article you need to do the same. Here’s a good track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAs31v2IxIs
Cuh vs Erock (1–1)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263946161
Insofar as you can get hyped about an RD2L beer league matchup, I’ve been looking forward to this one, partly because I like both of the teams in question but also because I figure if anyone can beat Erock just first-picking Luna, it’d be Cuh. Turns out I’m right, but not in a way that I’d like to be right. Cuh’s response to the speedy push and early fighting of Luna is to simply pick Techies, which is the equivalent of castling your king in chess followed by napalming the board. Erock’s stack was firmly in the lead for the vast majority of the game, but they just absolutely could not close it out or breach high ground… and by the time the 50 minute mark rolled around, Cuh’s cores had finally wheezed their way to being online. Classic Techies game. Really makes you sympathize with murderers, really, so long as they’re going after Techies players. Another shoutout to Grace for deciding “Yeah, a 52 minute Dagon is really what I need to win this game”. One of God’s own prototypes, right there. Too weird to live, too rare to die.
It’s actually incredible just how Erock literally lives or dies on this Luna pick and whether or not he can play it. In game 2 he does the same shit, only doubles down on the early push by picking a Broodmother and bans out the Techies. Cuh’s response is to pick ET, which is bold, and I love playing ET into Broodmother for maximum damage, but it doesn’t do enough to slow down the push given his other limp-dicked cores. Cuh just doesn’t have any damned catch whatsoever, which, as I’m sure we all know by now, is a recipe for floundering your way into an early grave. They won their lanes, too, and even had more kills. As ballsy as the ET pickup was, I don’t think it’s the play. If you look at the four prior heroes, you need someone who has catch, and a 2-second windup while ET groans his way to a sleep is not “catch”.
MVP: Waffz definitely wins the Master-valued player for this series. Good performance both games.
LVP: That Dagon purchase makes me want to pick up Grace by his weak, frail limbs and huck him like a tomahawk. It’s such a grief.
PREDICTIONS: Cuh is now the undisputed champ of EST-SUN with his record, with Erock nipping at his heels. How will they do in playoffs? Well, that depends on whether or not Erock can play Luna.
A2 vs Logical (2–0)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263931199
This Game 1 was decided entirely by arrogance, and here’s why. Logical 16 picks an Ember Spirit, which is fine, and that gets immediately followed up with a Razor at 18 by A2. Logical picks up an Arc Warden at 23, which, hey, that has a slightly better game against Razor due to range — that’s probably going to be swapped into a safelane Ember, right? Wrong. For some goddamn reason they threw the Ember mid against the Razor where he immediately got his ass beat. “Beat” isn’t even a strong enough word. Sakura inflicted lasting structural damage. Historians will look at this Ember’s skeleton and question whether or not he even had an ass. This is the result of either Lemonardo saying “I can take him”, or Logical deciding that he could solo-carry the game in spite of having an utterly useless mid — because there’s no fucking way Ember comes out of that lane alive. In either case, it’s plain arrogance. The rest of the game was a foregone conclusion.
Game 2 has a laugh-out-loud item choice in it that doubles as an explanation of how the game was going. The mid Pugna, on Logical’s team, ended up building a Ghost Scepter. Roll that one around in your head for a second, because it’s fucking hilarious. I can see why, though; this is clearly the result of getting cranked on repeatedly by an opposing Night Stalker who decided to just pick off the supports / squishy mid and offlane over and over and over. What else does the Ghost Scepter tell us? It tells us that either he was too poor to afford a Force Staff, or that Night Stalker had already purchased a Nullifier (it’s the former). That means that Logical’s draft is already collapsing — he’s supposed to be buying time for his Naga, and he’s just getting obliterated. Ditto for the Pangolier and the two supports with no escape mechanisms (along with a Disruptor rushing an Agh’s…?). That one item tells you a hell of a lot about how the game was going. I will leave the rest of the analysis as an exercise for the reader. Hint: A2’s team fuckin’ owned.
MVP: Lemonardo for letting me talk about his play from my ivory tower.
LVP: I dunno what the hell Old Wise Sage is doing in the offlane, but I cannot condone it.
PREDICTIONS: I think Logical was maybe fucking around a bit this week, but I expect he’ll do fine in playoffs. A2 team on the other hand is looking pretty damn good — hope to see them make a decent run.
Wife vs Bearcat0611 (2–0)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263932501
As much as I enjoy shitting on Tidehunter for being a worthless hero that has no agency on how the game goes (oh, damn, I went and did it again), I have to admit that this game isn’t on the hero. He was immediately counterpicked by a Razor, which meant that General Ender on the Tidehunter wasn’t allowed to play Dota this game for at least ten minutes or so — really, for the whole match. Top that off with the other lanes going fairly well, and a lost top lane just spirals into a completely lost game for Bearcat’s team. There’s only so many things that Bearcat could maybe have done to alleviate this crappy scenario, but I sincerely doubt that last-picking a Rubick was the optimal play. Fuck’s sake, dude, you know your offlane is gonna get worked — pick something with some ass in its pants.
In this game 2 I’m honestly not sure just what the hell Bearcat was going for. The damage counts are pretty damn low, and it doesn’t seem like any of their cores were having a particularly good time, but calling GG when all of your t3s are up seems a little premature. Maybe they didn’t feel like they could ever put up a defense when Wife hadn’t even died once on the Drow yet, or maybe Stang lost his mind and decided to disband the team in a surprise eighth-week suicide that took down the rest of his team. More likely, I get the feeling that they were down bad enough that they just called it because they knew their playoffs spot was already secure. I’m sorta hoping for the disband, though.
MVP: Wouldn’t be a week without Master as the MVP once again. I feel like people should stop letting him play Riki.
LVP: I don’t feel like I can dunk on Ender too hard for game 1, but I will absolutely dunk on him for an echo-rush Slardar game 2 when his team’s already down bad.
PREDICTIONS: Wife’s going to kill everyone. Bearcat will lose first round of playoffs.
Ghost vs DrPizzakiller (1–1)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263978825
Every time I see a 1–1 between two 8–6 teams I always wonder if they planned it ahead of time so neither of them were in danger of leaving playoffs.
This game 1 draft is a great example of why you really need someone who can start a fight on your hero lineup. It sounds obvious, but as we can see here, teams will just routinely fuck it up over and over. Hindsight and analyst-sight is 20/20, admittedly, but I don’t get how you can end up at 23rd pick without taking a good, hard look at what your team does. Ghost’s lineup in game 1 is literally just countered by walking away from them. You know how you get advice sometimes about “if you ignore them, they’ll stop being mean”? That is literally true with this draft. To say nothing of the fact that playing a fat fuck hero like Underlord into a Zeus where he can happily drill lightning bolts into your ass from a kilometer away is… less than fun. Massive shoutout to Sqween for finally fucking playing a non-mouthbreather hero in a series. This is the character growth we like to see in RD2L.
By comparison, though, Pizzakiller just fell the fuck apart in game 2. There’s a winceworthy draft order problem (CK is forced to play into a Lifestealer — rough stuff), but far more confusing is the fact that after seeing a Windrunner and a Tidehunter they decided that the perfect hero choice was obviously Troll Warlord.
Troll Warlord hits fast, but not hard. Windrunner doesn’t get hit, and Tidehunter is explicitly good against lots of little attacks with his passive. Maybe it was a comfort pick, I don’t know, but there’s no way that lane has any success.
MVP: Sqween for showing character growth! Good work, man. I mean that.
LVP: Passion’s mid play proves that so long as he doesn’t have to engage with the fight (or really Dota) in any way, he’ll play just fine. Goddamn specimen.
PREDICTIONS: I was surprised as hell to see Ghost end up this high in the rankings, but I’m all for it. Dunno how far either of them will get, but given both of their rough starts both teams should be quite happy to be where they are now.
BMTS vs Iceyeti (2–0)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6265496566
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6265539237
The thing you have to remember about people who play Anti-Mage is that they’re retarded. Every patch, they look eagerly for Anti-Mage buffs, and every single game they play, they think to themselves “Could I play Anti-Mage this game?” It’s inoperable, really, and the best thing you can do for ’em is to put ’em down like a rabid dog. That’s exactly what BMTS did to Iceyeti and friends in this game 1. BMTS picks a Storm at 16, Iceyeti immediately shits his fucking pants and picks AM at 18, already stroking himself imagining the ultimate Mana Void rampage. BMTS then follows up by picking an early game carry and wins the game because Storm Spirit and Juggernaut are able to play Dota a hell of a lot faster than an Anti-Mage. One wonders if BMTS intentionally baited an AM pick. Get my shotgun, Ma, the herd needs some thinnin’.
Game 2 is I think, ultimately, a draft error, because Iceyeti has to haul around two additional cores that don’t do a hell of a lot. Razor and Invoker aren’t really good at starting fights or doing much of anything except existing (Invoker has some limited control, but his items are more damage oriented than draft-salvaging oriented). A really easy comparison to look at is that Invoker and Razor had 49k damage and 40.4k damage, respectively. The opposing Underlord has 41.5k damage, roughly the same and his entire job is just to park his fucking ass in the middle of a fight and push Q — far less brainpower (and all three of them were outdamaged by a Grimstroke at 64.4k). I think BMTS won this game by having more useful heroes than Iceyeti did, which is a mouthbreather-y kind of statement but you’re not fuckin’ paying me for 10k level insight.
MVP: Brok3n and hina amano jointly deserve a lot of credit for good work in both games.
LVP: Honestly, fuckin’ everyone except Iceyeti on his team put out a mediocre-to-crappy performance this week. There’s no big loser, but there’s just a whole mass of congealed failure.
PREDICTIONS: Turns out that when BMTS turns on his brain, he’ll play Dota pretty well. Getting smacked around like this bodes poorly for Iceyeti.
Alaska vs Redlegoguy4 (1–1)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263924739
I just spent the last series shitting on Anti-Mage pickers, but when you play an Anti-Mage so blatantly insane that you put it mid vs the Storm after last-picking it overall, I can’t call that anything but based. This game 1 is more the type of scenario that you want to pick Anti-Mage in; you have a clear path to victory where your team can make some space, you have at least one hero you’re explicitly good against, and you’re also literally just crazy enough to play mid Anti-Mage. I’d love to have heard the comms from Tempest in this game. “So I’ll probably be mid vs the Leshrac, that shouldn’t be too ba — what the fuck?” Alaska’s team put up a pretty solid fight, in all fairness, and actually ended up with more kills on the board, but fuzzytarantula’s balls were made of steel and he pretty much singlehandedly carried the game. Probably one of the wilder lane switcheroos I’ve seen this season.
Alaska figured that was enough of that nonsense for game 2, and spent the entire draft of game 2 just steadily picking apart Redle’s hero choices. The Night Stalker has a rough time into Monkey King. The Underlord doesn’t give a shit about Gyrocopter. The Outworld Devourer shits all over Doom and makes his game impossible. All three lanes steamrolled, in a completely unsurprising turn of events. I figure Alaska was annoyed enough about the game 1 that the draft plan for game 2 was just “How can I make these fuckers as miserable as possible?”
MVP: Alaska did an excellent job from the 4 position.
LVP: Gio needs to get a CAT scan or something. There’s something broken up there.
PREDICTIONS: Hell if I know; this is another suspiciously timed 1–1. Both of these teams have been somewhat inconsistent with their wins and losses, so I hesitate to make playoff predictions. If Alaska wins, though, I’ll return the favor and get her a mug.
thamaestro vs For The Thrills (2–0)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263959991
This is a series where the loser, if 2–0'd, is sent directly to the shadow realm, while the winner ascends to playoffs. In this case, Maestro dished out a beating for two games straight and finally rid EST-SUN (and myself) of the evil of having to look at Lemon’s games. In this case, For The Thrills made the weirdly ballsy decision of trying to pit an Axe vs a Leshrac mid. For the life of me I can’t fathom why anyone thought that was a good idea. Leshrac is pretty damn good at crunching through melee heroes, especially heroes who are notoriously weak to magic damage. I think it’s unsurprising that maestro thrashed his lane and went on to punish the rest of the game.
This game 2 makes me think that For The Thrills either didn’t want to do playoffs or that Guts is just too stupid to be allowed food. An almost identical scenario happened where a melee strength hero started to try and play into a heavy magical damage ranged hero, and, unsurprisingly, got crushed. Why the fuck would you try and pull this shit two games in a row? This is an elimination game — if you lose, there’s no praying your SOS saves you, you’re just done. Why go back to the well of an objectively incorrect draft? Hell if I know. It helps that KSTIGS had a damned easy game himself on offlane and decided that he was the carry now, but being denied a mid for two games straight isn’t the type of shit that gets you to playoffs.
MVP: LETS FUCKING GO KSTIGS
LVP: Guts is proof that we need bullying in schools.
PREDICTIONS: I think that if maestro keeps getting handed easy series like this one, he’ll do well in playoffs. Alas, that isn’t typically the case.
Muggsy vs Majka (1–1)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263932120
This week just seems determined to throw Anti-Mage after Anti-Mage at me. In this case, we have a similar scenario to the prior games where the AM is picked late in the draft, but Majka’s team pissed away their chance to counter the AM, which allowed Muggy’s team to make the baffling choice of picking up a mid Ogre with their last pick. Don’t get me wrong, it worked, but it’s baffling nonetheless. Majka’s draft is pretty damn bad against Anti-Mage, but they had a single pick to work with at the time of AM being picked, and they just… didn’t really do anything with it. I don’t think Gyrocopter is the answer you want here. At least we all got treated to a mid Ogre with an E-Blade and a Dagon. That’s the type of shit where you don’t even care if it wins, you just wanna see the multicast number go up. Lacking answers to the Anti-Mage and the absolute insanity of mid Ogre, Majka’s team folded.
Muggsy’s draft in makes me think that this series was an inside job. Both of these teams made it into playoffs, but if either team 2–0s, the other team is forced to go home for the season? Coincidence? When Muggsy drafts some shit like mid SB and a carry Abaddon? I think fucking not. As entertaining as the concept of mid Spirit Breaker is, it’s just not good. I also don’t give a shit how good Longoria thinks his Abaddon is, that hero just isn’t good in the carry role either. But they pull a draft like this after a series where they had a clean draft? That reeks of conspiracy. I demand that Muggsy and Majka release their DMs, so that we can shine some light on the sordid back-alley dealings of RD2L. Lock ’em up! Show me the e-mails!
MVP: Longoria’s brain parasite. Longoria himself gets no credit.
LVP: Droads is one of those people who plays one hero really well and is completely incompetent at everything else.
PREDICTIONS: Neither of you will be able to scam and sleaze your way to a playoff win. I’m onto you.
Corey vs Reedy (2–0)
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6263979070
This is the last series I’ll be covering for this week, given that we’re Playoff Power Predictions and not Dumpster Fight Analysis. This series includes the last team that made playoffs.
I just trashed mid SB in the prior series, but in this one, it appears to have worked. Both teams tried to do a mid-lane fakeout where they drafted heroes that would normally go mid, but they actually sent some dogshit hero mid as a prank. In this case, our mid matchup was a Spirit Breaker vs a Sand King. SB simply laughed at the SK, bought some vision, and spent the entire lane charging him — or at least, that’s how I assume it went down. This series was brutal, though, with over a hundred kills and a 53 minute timer. The net-worth graph looks pretty good until right at the end, though, where it’s all too clear what happened:
No buyback. He dropped a Rapier. If you didn’t recoil just now, you haven’t been playing Dota for long enough.
You wanna know what’s great about this series, though? Take a look at game 2.
Yup. The exact same thing happened. Cellomello bought a Rapier on Luna and then dropped it, only this time it happened at around the forty minute mark. It looks like they were about to pull the game back, too, judging by the net worth chart. Whether or not that was due to the Rapier purchase, I couldn’t tell you, but it’s insanely hilarious to me that both games were at least partially decided by a dropped Rapier. What a fitting way to end the season for playoff qualified teams. Very RD2L.
MVP: Hana made me eat my words about SB mid. Damn you.
LVP: You and I both know it’s cellomello. You can’t drop two rapiers in a series and get anything else but LVP.
PREDICTIONS: Corey stack has a pretty good winrate against opponents who feed them Rapiers, but outside that, it’s anyone’s guess.
Like I said, I’m not going to bother covering the series that didn’t make it to playoffs (and, honestly, I sincerely doubt that those teams need to hear me say they suck — they already know).
Thanks to everyone who read these. I hope you enjoyed eight weeks of me insulting everyone.