85% winrate on PB past 20 games. rank 1028

https://www.opendota.com/players/175650369/overview?region=7&lobby_type=7

Dude went 2 null talisman (maybe a wand too) treads phylactery kaya. Mystic snake was doing crazy damage. I guess you would eventually sell then nulls and maybe get a kaya and yasha, shard then skadi + butterfly/daedalus and upgrade phylactery to khanda

i've always been bad at drafting, so for the last 2 months i've been building a draft overlay trained on 8.7M ancient-divine games (7.41e/f). along the way the data told me some things i didn't expect:

• the draft alone calls the winner in ~59% of games. a coin flip is 50%. so the draft matters a lot more than the "just play your hero" people think, but way less than the "gg draft diff" people think

• necrophos is the hero that ruins the most picks. he's the worst matchup for WK (both pos 1 and pos 3), DK (mid and off), and he's in the top threats for half the carries

• PL is a trap blind pick. strong hero, but tidehunter, axe and ES all destroy him. tide alone is -6.3%. last pick him, never first pick

• dawnbreaker and nyx are the safest first picks right now. zero hard counters among the 40 most picked heroes. you can't really get punished for picking them early

• OD is the best blind mid. the only real counter among popular heroes is PL

the overlay sits next to the pick screen, suggests heroes for your role based on picks/bans, and once you lock in shows how your hero fits (best/worst ally, who to watch out for). it just reads the screen + valve's official GSI, doesn't touch game files or memory. screenshots in my r/dota2 post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1xcwxn0/im_so_ass_at_drafting_that_i_built_a_tool_that/

i'm opening a small closed beta, if you want a spot: https://tally.so/r/rDjJ2p

two questions: 1. which of these is wrong in your bracket? 2. what's the draft situation you always mess up? (last pick, counter vs synergy, banning, etc)

after my last post a few people argued about how much the draft actually decides games and whether it matters more at high mmr. so i trained the same draft model separately for every rank and tested each one on the last 7 days of games it never saw (7.41f).

1. the draft matters about the same at every rank. 58.3% in herald, ~59% everywhere from archon up. "draft doesn't matter in low mmr" isn't really true, and it doesn't matter much more in divine either

2. but WHAT matters changes. in herald the strength of the heroes themselves does most of the work ("heroes only" is highest there, 57%). the higher you go, the more it's about counters and synergy. counters go from 37% of the model's signal in herald to 43% in legend+. so in low mmr: pick strong heroes. in high mmr: think about matchups

3. 1 in 5 games is basically decided in the draft. in about 20% of games the draft gives one team 65%+, and that team actually wins ~70%. those are the games where a better draft would have changed the outcome. even then it's not over: the losing side still takes 3 out of 10

4. most lopsided draft of the week (94%): PL, Pudge, Tinker, AA, Winter Wyvern (94% to win) vs Sniper, TA, Nature's Prophet, Silencer, TB. PL's team won

notes: 13M games across all ranks from opendota. "divine+" because opendota caps the average rank at divine 5, so immortal lobbies are in there too. this is correlation, not causation, players pick heroes they're good at. only the 10 heroes count here, not roles, lanes or items.

this is basically why i built the tool: the higher you go, the more it's about counters and synergy, and that's exactly what's hard to keep in your head with 30 seconds on the clock. (last post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1xcwxn0/im_so_ass_at_drafting_that_i_built_a_tool_that/)

questions: 1. does #2 match your experience? does your rank feel more "pick strong heroes" or more "counter the enemy"? 2. how do you even lose with that 94% draft?

Inspired by this post from r/Dota2.

Is he not viable in today's patch? If I were to play it today, what would be the game plan?

I like to play Chen before due to the micro aspect. I usually play him as utility in the early game then transition to an aura bot/healing guy mid to late game. I do not have a decent win rate with the guy but that's probably just me or might be the meta?

Note: Have not played him in Ranked in a long long time. Iirc, this year, once or twice during AP or Turbo.

Try to make khanda usefull/unique item that players would actually want to buy 👍.

Sup everyone today I'm uploading a new guide for the Offlane series on my YouTube channel, and today's hero will be Dawnbreaker

In this game I'll be showing you my thought processes, itemization approach among other things and explaining how this hero works and the ways she can play and the role she has on your games

I'll be explaining most of the things I do and trying to share why I do them as the game moves forward so you can keep these concepts, questions, and mechanics for your own games and apply them and get ya some Ws.

I appreciate you all people who drop some nice comments on my videos, I do understand many might not like them it's just fair that some people do and improve with them, I also appreciate the ones who provide me with kind and respectful feedback and positive criticism, I'm not here for nothing but to help you by sharing a bit of the experience I have and the little knowledge about this wonderful game.

You can find the full video here:

https://youtu.be/Y4uexc45H78?si=m_r8u3UmLUzCCOQp

For any coaching inquiries or more dota related content you can find it on my page:

www.skylightcoach.com

Thank you all for viewing, let me know what any other heroes or any other kind of content you would like to see on further videos.

Make the assassin playstyle great again 🔥 👀.

Hi everyone, this is my first post—please go easy on me.
Basically, it’s become impossible to play on the Southeast Asia, US East, or Japan servers. I live in Kamchatka, and while I used to be able to manage okay-ish, the current situation is just beyond the pale. In every single match—and I mean *every* match—there are these bots that spam the chat and just stand there AFK. Do you know how they’re managing to run so many instances? They’re using Sandboxie version 1.12.9—you can verify this yourself; any other version will trigger a VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) verification error. I have no idea why the developers have been intentionally ignoring this for the past 3–4 years. What’s more, while they used to limit this to a single lobby, they’ve become so brazen now that they don’t even try to hide it anymore.

Involer Arcana when?

Sup everyone today I'm bringing a new guide for the support series on my YouTube channel, and today's hero of choice is Nyx Assassin

In this game I'll be playing vs a hard lane and explaining you how you could itemize when you find yourself in this position so that I can show you how you should be approaching the game from the laning phase to the early to mid game.

I'll be walking you in depth on map movements and things that I'm considering as the game progresses so that you can maybe apply these concepts to your own games and help you make better decissions overall.

I appreciate you all people who drop some nice comments on my videos, I do understand many might not like them it's just fair that some people do and improve with them, I also appreciate the ones who provide me with kind and respectful feedback and positive criticism, I'm not here for nothing but to help you by sharing a bit of the experience I have and the little knowledge about this wonderful game.

You can find the full video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB8-oCGPkUI

For any coaching inquiries or more dota related content you can find it on my page:

www.skylightcoach.com

Thank you all for viewing, let me know what any other heroes or any other kind of content you would like to see on further videos.

Malr1ne has just played his first BO3 series with Team Liquid, so I decided to go through the games and look at the small details in his gameplay.

Not just his big plays, but the things that are easy to miss when you're watching a pro game how he moves his hero, where and when he clicks on the map, how he positions himself

These little habits might not look important at first, but they can tell us a lot about how a professional player approaches the game at the high level

In this video, I'll break down some of the details I noticed from Malr1ne's first series with Team Liquid and explain why they matter.

Link: https://youtu.be/fqIojMyYZ-I

I used to think every fight was worth joining, even when my team was clearly outnumbered. Now I realize sometimes the best play is just farming, pushing another lane, or letting your teammates respawn instead of feeding one by one 💀 What’s one mistake you kept making before it finally clicked?

https://youtu.be/f7-CDlal_WI

What are some specific behaviors or things your teammates do that make you absolutely lose your mind?

I'll give you a few examples of things that tilt me beyond belief:

1. The useless pos 4 Pudge. I am pos 3. This guy Picks Pudge, misses every single hook, and then just stands there watching me struggle to CS. Doesn't block the enemy pull camp, doesn't pull, doesn't harass, doesn't do anything remotely useful. Just stands next to me and occasionally "helps" me CS. Why? Make yourself useful.

2. The absolutely terrible last pick. Someone has the luxury of last pick, sees the entire enemy draft, and somehow manages to pick one of the worst possible heroes for that game. Like picking PL into Sven and Timbersaw. You had ONE job. This is 6k ranked.

3. The feeding teammate who thinks everything is hilarious. This one genuinely drives me insane. Someone is playing absolutely dogshit, feeding nonstop, and constantly spamming their hero's laughter voice line. Every time they die, they laugh. Pinging how far ahead the enemy team is because of their own feeding. Why? Wtf is so funny about ruining the game for your teammates? I genuinely don't understand this mentality. If you're playing like shit at least have some humility instead of treating the game like a comedy show while the rest of us are trying to win.

What are yours? I'm especially interested in the ODD things that shouldn't bother you as much as they do but somehow send you over the edge into maddening rage.

Hi guys! Astini here. (coached nouns/cloud 9/parivision/nemesis/playtime lately)

Before we move on, yea its F**** AI. I know most people hate it. But I put a lot of hard work into making this tool to be my dota 2 second brain. Over 600 ranked replay analysis done by me and rdo (brazilian former pro, played SA and EU dpc), and 80 scrims/officials analysis of my teams that I added into making build this intelligence.

It's not "your GPM is low, just get more gold LUL". It's "wave was pushing to you, their mid was missing, you walked to the rune, here's what to do instead and why".

Just paste your match ID (or log in with Steam) here: https://www.dotaflix.com.br/en/analise/gratis

No account, no card. Takes a few minutes because it runs on my own machine, so there's a queue.

It's not perfect. It still gets things wrong sometimes, and I fix something almost every day. So far around 150 people used it in the first days, 40 rated it (average 9.1/10) and 37 out of 37 said it helped. Tell me where it's dumb (besides thats its me and I have been losing too much competitive dota lately...) , that's exactly what I want from this post.

I seriously change when I experienced it myself.

It goes to show the error of my ways and undeniably a great experience. I wish you guys could experience it too.

No this isn't a hate post but a means of change of me as a person

https://youtu.be/Xu2U8jfSTgg

Hello, I'm jawker. I'm a 7k mmr coach and this is a little snippet from one of my recent coaching sessions that I thought would be useful to share.