What really owns?



So, what really owns now, and makes one team win over another? I decided to think over these questions from my point of view. You can discuss skirmishes, pushes, defenses, strategies and farming as much as you want – but to me, there are two answers – stuns and blinks. Why is this the case?

1. Stun

Lets go back in time for about 2-3 years, when me and a lot of other (russian) DotA-players assembled at blizzard.ru. At that time local players invented the “mass stun” strategy, something like Centaur+Maiden+Sven+Silencer(when he had golems)+Panda(no stun but clap owned). Those guys just calculated the damage from stuns, taking away hero resistance, and understood that at lvl 7 no hero can survive, which means that it owns! At that time NOBODY understood why it worked so good, stun is not only damage and the possibility for another hero to stun, but it also gives you time for physical damage output – by just attacking.

At present this is obvious, and this is strong. Even the shortest stuns(0,5 sec for example) you can strike one more time and strafe to make 1-2 more strikes. So – as the longer the stun is, the more strikes and more strafes you can make. A hero with 600 range that begins attacking his target at melee range can do a lot of damage before the target runs away. Of course, this depends on move speed of both heroes, animation of the attacker, both heroes items and other factors, but the fact remains certain – ranged heroes with stun can do a lot of damage after the stun finishes – strafing and striking again. Why VP (not only VP now) usually win their lanes is because we had this knowledge – we were the first to learn how to do this, we abused it early and still abuse it now. Some teams shared our experience, MYM was even using "our" strategies. The benefit of stun is that while target is stunned u can strike it, and most of damage in DotA before 5x5 battles begin is done by hands(except some Power Nukers like Zeus, Lina, Lion and few more), so in any 1x2, 2x2 battle stun damage does not do much effect – its duration is much more important.

2. Blink

Accordingly – the best counter to stun is blink. Blink can save you from almost anything that can be a threat to you in DotA - there are a lot of different spells in DotA except stuns, and most of them can be avoided using blink. Blink is a counter to any of your rivals plans, if your enemy does not have blink, and you do - it becomes really imbalanced.

So, it is consistent that heroes that have blink as a skill are extremely powerful – they don’t have to waste 2150 and slot to buy dagger and even more abnormal and strange is that those heroes have powerful spells - by these heroes I mean Queen of Pain and Priestess of the Moon (also Puck red.). There are a lot of heroes that neither have nukes nor blink – and I don’t see what use you can make of them. Also any hero only with a nuke – Death Prophet for example – is a lot worse than hero with blink and at least one useful spell.

Another example of not so standard hero, that can be useful and even strong enough in some situations – morphling – owner of strange blink with high mana cost and big cd. It damages, but still is much less handy that QOP’s blink or POTM’s jump. But, even this strange hero comparing to DP is better – because he does have blink, though crappy one. It allows not only to escape, but to chase, that is very important too…

Antimage is rarely used in clan wars or tournaments - partly because people don’t want to generate new ideas and strategies, and because at present we play APXL mode that is a bit unfair for some heroes. AM just needs a lineup that can make some of the enemy heroes run – when that happens it's only the matter of time for Magina to kill them. Unfortunately, in APXL such heroes often get banned, or the opponent picks them – I mean different aoe-stunners-damagers, like zeus and warlock.

At Dota-Allstars.com people asked; why did MYM ban QOP and POTM when we (VP) had first pick in finals – while everybody knows, that MYM does have players that can play both of those heroes very well. The answer is obvious – they did not want us to pick either of these overpowered heroes. We, in our turn, were surprised by ourselves, how we didn't ban PotM when MYM had first pick.

Akasha can be a subject for separate discussion, because her blink, along with other her spells, makes her a really unique hero, so unique, that frankly speaking, she needs a lot of nerfing.

The only thing that absolutely counters blink dagger is hex, if we talk about the blink skill – hex and silence. Heroes with silence are almost useless (while puck is banned), heroes with hex are not any good either. Rhasta is strange hero, too little hp while his spells force him to be in the middle of the combat, and attempts to pick Lion – all of you have seen them, all of them were unsuccessful, neither our, nor MYM and KS. Maybe we did something wrong, but its more likely he is not strong enough for serious games.

At present time 90% of all heroes buy blink. Only those that don’t have to use a lot of skills during the fight don't need it, they just cast their spells at the start of the battle and after that they aren't as useful anymore, it doesn't matter for their team if they are dead or alive - warlock is a good example, he can play without blink dagger. A team with 5 blinks is almost always stronger than one with 3 blinks.

So, to counter blink which costs 2150 or only 60 mana if u have it as a skill – you need to buy guinsoo, which costs 3 times more! Balance? At least mana cost should be risen significantly.

Our team was the first to use mass-stuns and mass-blinks, it was the main reason we dominated half a year back, and it is the reason why we can’t win so easy now. Of course we have high-skilled players, and a good roster, but we are not cyborgs and not from Mars, currently there are guys that play on the same level. They shared our experience, and can now give us a battle, of course I speak about MYM first and foremost, but if nothing will change at competitive scene there will be about 10 more teams to conquer in near future.

3. Some observations

In the end I’d like to say few words about nukes. Heroes, that only nuke, without invis/stun/blink are useless with the only exception of zeus. All other nukers have stun or blink or both of them, sometimes invisibility - but invis is much less useful nowadays too. With the exception of NA of course, but he also has stun and the weapon of heavy harassment – mana burn. All other spell casters are never picked!

Today some guys asked me, what will be the new hype after mass-stuns and blink? A long time ago it was the mass-ults strategy (Faceless, Timestop/Magnus, Reverse Polarity) , later push-strategies (Chen, Syllabear), what will be the next big thing? And my answer is – nothing! Nothing will own, because if DotA doesn't change significantly – I mean changing the fact of blink and stun in DotA, which is already so familiar to us – there will be no better tactic, stun/blink/nuke will be the future of DotA for a long time.

Hope you enjoyed this article!

Written by Virtus.NS
Translated by lamocomp
Source: ProDota.ru