Introduction
This is my review for the recent mini, the second one I have participated in and third RD2L event in total. Usually I end up in the bottom division as a relatively high value player (Div 5 last mini and Div 3 SUN main) but I was drafted into division 3 this time around as a position 4.
I was pretty happy with this as I got to play at a higher level than the previous two RD2L events I’ve played in. However, it wasn’t like it was a big jump up in skill for me, as I usually end up playing in stacks with at least 1 or 2 divine/immortal players, but I was hoping that this would mean I would end up with some more dependable players and play some higher level Dota.
This would not be the case.
The Beginning
A day or two after the draft we all jumped into discord and played a couple of pubs and they went really well. I thought I had ended up in a team which genuinely had a shot of making it all the way to the finals, or at least giving it a good go.
There were some minor problems, but I just put it down to people not being used to other people’s play styles and that after a series or a scrim or two we’d be all good. Before we finished for the day, we played a last minute scrim against Greenman instead of one more pub game. This gave us a good chance to practise in a competitive environment to the exact skill level we would be playing at, in which we got absolutely trounced.
This revealed even more problems for our team:
- Our captain seemed knowledgeable but equally inexperienced and spent a lot of time dithering on picks and bans, leaving us with sub par drafts.
- Our carry was unhappy with the level of play from our hard support, being divine and having a legend in your lane takes some time to get used to.
- My offlaner was very stubborn and difficult to deal with, and required the lane to go perfectly for us to get into the mid game without any problems.
- All of these left everyone getting tilted at each other (except Ketchup, he is a chill dude), giving the comms a really toxic atmosphere and leading to everyone playing worse.
We were left with hard drafts with weak lanes that left us losing games in record time and this needed remedying before we lost too many games.
The Groups
Our first game in the groups was against Greenman’s team, the same team which absolutely shit on us in the scrim we played a few days before, and surprising no one they absolutely shit on us again. After this I did some reflecting, watching the replay back and doing some analysis, shoving it all into a google document and dumping it in discord. I found that our laning stage was flawed from the start with poor itemisation, we then had communication issues, and topping it all off we had classic cases of tilt set in.
The next day, we got together and talked about the game and what we need to do to improve since we didn’t all have time for a game. Ketchup acknowledged how his starting items led to the safe lane being hard and with being told how to improve he and our carry were happy to go forward. I also realised that I spent a lot of time after running out of regen doing nothing other than sapping XP, and that I should’ve got more regen sent out a lot quicker to continue to contest the lane.
This was not the case for Grozemag, our offlaner. He refused to acknowledge, let alone accept that he might’ve wanted to start with different items going into the lane, which frustrated Ipwnturkeys to a great extent. We questioned the Orb of Venom as a starting item, as although it is great on Pangolier, more regen or movespeed might’ve been more useful in a lane where we would be playing defensive more often than not, and that it wasn’t utilised to its full effect. It was then said that he couldn’t be aggressive on the Bane since “I was trading too far away from the lane with him” while he was playing the notoriously slow and immobile hero Pangolier.
He also didn’t really want to accept that he should’ve helped me when pulling the lane, since Ben1 was doing a good job on Bane contesting the pull from the Radiant hard camp, and that zoning out the enemy Bane would mean we would get the pull off, giving him a much easier time in a hard matchup (Pangolier vs Monkey King). He just wasn’t having it.
Despite this stubbornness, we went into the next series against Moggoblin, winning it 2–0. For this series I decided to do a scouting sheet since my teammates seemed to trust my game knowledge and someone needed to do it.
The first game was drawn out, with the 3 rapiers being purchased by whatisreal helping us win the game. The second game was a quick win down to them losing the draft extremely hard. We won the next series against Ashteezy’s team 2–1, where in the final game their Ember Spirit died giving us his two rapiers, stopping him from one shotting us and winning us the hard fought game.
These games were not without their faults, especially the second game against Ashteezy, which was a total capitulation on our end. Even though we were winning, there was still an unease and that even a minor misplay could trigger a major amount of tilt. The frustrations always started in the offlane during the draft, a couple hero suggestions from Ipwnturkeys would lead to Grozemag being exasperated, who eventually would get whatever hero he wanted whether it was a particularly great game for it or not. This would then annoy Ipwnturkeys and whatisreal, which led to bad communication for the rest of the game. The games we won were down to a lot of good individual plays, rather than outstanding teamwork and it really showed.
The Collapse
Our first game in the playoffs was against Lukeskyfaker in the upper bracket. Their team seemed good and they had won their group, but I thought it would be a fairly close series. The first game started horribly in the draft. Grozemag was getting tilted at us not banning Luke’s heroes. Now, I haven’t been playing in RD2L for long, I know some people’s favourite heroes and I can look at their most and recently played on Dotabuff but that’s it. Grozemag has a lot more experience in the league, he knows people’s hero pools much better than myself or my teammates and so has some right to be annoyed if the bans are messed up. However, he told us nothing other than that the bans are useless, refused to give us any information in the draft, and then went into the game with all of us being extremely tilted.
The game then started with Ipwnturkeys playing below his usual level because he was on tilt, Grozemag proceeded to mock him for the draft, as he said that he could deal with a Batrider if Luke picked it, which he then couldn’t. Grozemag then went mid, looking for a kill on Luke, saying that I should charge him. I said that I wanted to get bounty runes and stack ancients for my underfarmed Leshrac or Riki to take and that a kill on the Batrider was out of the question. He then died to Batrider because he was out of position mid and proceeded to have a go at me for his own mistake. I had been relatively quiet in most of our games as I felt I was walking on eggshells trying not to escalate anything but by that point I was done with his shit. In previous games he had also been diverting the blame to either myself or someone else and I’d just put up with it, but we were all done with it at this point.
Whatisreal got us to group together and use the advantage we have with our draft early on to start winning fights, and if he didn’t do this, we would’ve lost in about 20 minutes, instead of eventually throwing at around the 40 minute mark. Everyone was still on edge, but at least we were winning for a time.
The second game was another capitulation from us, starting in the draft. They showed their safelane duo, Jakiro and Juggernaut, and Ipwnturkeys was trying to suggest heroes for Grozemag, who was getting more and more frustrated at each suggestion. Grozemag then muted himself, and then pinged that he wanted Mars. Mars was picked, it was not a good game for the hero but in this situation what else are you going to do? Our game was for all intents and purposes taken hostage.
After this series, Grozemag left the team discord, with us still having a series to play on Sunday against Moggoblin.
For our game against Moggoblin in the lower bracket, we got hi(5) to standin. Game 1 went very well with us winning with a tempo push strat team, but games 2 and 3 went nowhere as well. Game 2 was lost due to ipwnturkey’s overconfidence in the draft, picking Timbersaw in a game where it didn’t help or add to our draft. Combine this with a chronic lack of jump and catch; Lucky’s Sniper was able to clean up fights undisturbed. Game 3 was just poor from our end, every time we won a fight we were never in a position to take objectives and we were almost always on the backfoot. We didn’t have the best catch for Mint’s Weaver and they were able to dictate the fights, knocking us out, putting an end to our run in the Mini.
Player Reviews
Here are my reviews for my teammates. This might repeat some things I’ve mentioned previously.
Whatisreal
Whatisreal was our carry and one of, if not, the highest mmr player in the pool for division 3. We relied on him a lot to carry our games if they went past the 30 minute mark, which he was not always able to do. He was very confident in his builds and plays, and played very aggressive once his lane was over. A staple play was to rotate to another lane if he died and just start shoving it in and collecting farm there, with success varying.
He was incredibly feast or famine, and was either absolutely huge, carrying the game or unable to do much or affect the game in any way. I think this was down to this aggressive playstyle, which if didn’t pay off left him very far behind everyone else. His triple rapier Phantom Assassin was a highlight, with him deciding that two was not enough to one hit the enemy Juggernaut, so another one must be purchased to win the game.
Ipwnturkeys
Ipwnturkeys was our mid and captain. He was very enthusiastic but equally inexperienced, being new to RD2L. In the limited amount of pubs we played he always played really well, ranking up a couple times throughout the duration of the Mini, but in official games he couldn’t quite replicate what he was fully capable of. He was also very confident and optimistic, maybe a little too so. He was confident in playing bad hero matchups, and would say and show evidence of him being able to win poor matchups, but in officials this was rarely the case.
As a captain, his inexperience really showed. I don’t think we played enough pubs or scrims to really get going, only playing a couple scrims and a handful of pubs. During the draft he could dither on picks and sometimes we’d only have 10 or 20 seconds left of reserve time going into the second phase of picks, which left our drafts rushed and always missing something. I think he could improve a lot as a captain, but with how enthusiastic he was he easily could do so if he decides to captain again next time around.
zGrozemag
Now for most people reading this, this is probably the part that you’re skipping to for the juicy drama. In the beginning, Grozemag was fine and we got on fairly well, but as each game went on, more and more tension was building up between him and the rest of the team, to the point where it was completely untenable.
We were stepping on eggshells a lot around him, as he was incredibly stubborn and it would get to the point where some minor incident would lead to a major amount of tilt and frustration for everyone. His attitude annoyed all of us to a great extent and helped contribute to some of our poor performances, as our communication would break down in the draft and never recover. Once we got into the mid game there would be some comment from him, or something that he may have misinterpreted as an attack on him which would then explode our comms into a bunch of bickering and toxicity. Expanding on this, he often refused to take on advice or take the blame, usually diverting it to someone else. A simple suggestion would usually end up in an unnecessary back and forth, ruining the team atmosphere and eventually there would be some autopilot afking or call of “this is over” from him.
In the end he left the team discord before our final series against Moggoblin’s team and that was the end of that. Does that mean that he’ll be banned for a couple seasons? I don’t know, I also don’t particularly care and as it isn’t my choice to make I’ll leave this section here.
Bleapo
This is the part where I get to self reflect and talk about how cool I am. I was picked as a position 4, a role that I used to play a fair bit, but haven’t done in a while. Although it isn’t my main role, and I certainly wasn’t playing consistently, I don’t regret signing up as I did.
I got to breakout my Earth Spirit, which I hadn’t played in what feels like nearly a year and whilst I am incredibly 50/50 on the hero it is great fun to play and I’m glad I got to pick it up again. My laning was pretty poor at times and I should’ve made more rotations early on, but I think I played really well once the laning stage was over. I also was consistently low on deaths, meaning that either I was always in position, or I played like a massive bitch most games.
If I didn’t sign up saying I was happy to play any role, I probably wouldn’t end up in division 3, which has its positives and negatives. If I ended up in the god division which is division 4, I could be on some scuffed draft like my former teammate Lightning (nice one Panda), which probably could’ve been just as frustrating as the team I ended up in (but probably not).
Ketchup
God bless Ketchup, that dude was just trying his best as our hard support every game having to put up with some conflict between Grozemag and someone else. He massively improved after our first couple games as whatisreal never really complained about him misplaying in lane afterwards.
He was happy to play most heroes, although he was uncomfortable playing heroes such Winter Wyvern which limited our drafts at times. A reserved guy, who can quietly do a solid job as a hard support and won’t complain while doing it, I can thoroughly recommend him for your next team.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, we did alright as from what went down you’d expect us to be the first team out. We certainly would’ve done a lot better without all the arguments and tilting that occurred and on paper we looked like one of the stronger teams, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. I don’t think any of us played to our best often enough, however that was likely down to, and affected by, the constant disagreements and arguing that took place.
Well that’s it for my mini season review. Thanks to my teammates for the experience, I guess.