As early as ESL One New York last fall, Team Secret was one of a handful of teams in the world which favored more equal gold distribution between their supports and carries.

Gustav "s4" Magnusson and co. took enormous mid-game strengths, as their average win on patch 6.82 was almost 10 minutes faster than their average loss. They used this strategy with moderate success, even when their mid-game advantages were notoriously punished by late-game comeback mechanics.

During the International 2013, Zhi Lei "BurNIng" Xu said that "Alliance's power comes from their excellent distribution of resources[...]" along with their communication and execution.

As Secret continues their Western dominance, it's increasingly common to hear that this TI may be a repeat of The International 3, with Secret playing Alliance's role. The two teams do share quite a bit in common, including an offbeat economic strategy.

But if Alliance were the Huns, then Secret are the Mongols, and the threat they represent is far greater to their contemporaries than Alliance's ever was.

When we look at Elo ranking (the well-proven system used to rank chess players), Secret has nearly doubled their distance from the average team in only two months on patch 6.84. Transitioning to this patch, teams which already employed a more even gold distribution have performed better, but Secret were a step above. Case in point: they've only lost nine games since the update.

However, until 6.84's release in late April, Secret had been on the decline since September and were even ranked below European rivals Team Empire and Cloud9.

That's changed.

Alliance didn't share this implicit patch advantage; when 6.78 was released, they struggled to maintain their rank and erratically bled games until the start of The International.

The patch didn't shape their needs so much as they made their playstyle work anyway by relying on superior teamwork and strategy (similar to Secret's 6.82 mid-game strategies in a late-game world).

Alliance managed to keep gliding despite the turbulence, staying near the world's top rank by taking huge win streaks between their awkward losses. Viewers remember Newbee's rise in 2014 as indomitable, but Alliance took the championship with three losses across almost 30 games — a TI record unmatched since Na'Vi won in 2011 with a 10:1 win/loss ratio.

Yet Secret are already more than three-quarters of the way to Alliance's days at Elo rank number one. Even DK and iG, both steeped in Dota history stretching before TI 2011, will fall behind shortly after the end of this year's TI if no team surpasses Secret.

Secret's rise isn't just due to patch happenstance. The weaknesses they had shown in the past were fixed this year during a period of regular time off and practice six days a week, some roster changes which saw Evil Geniuses' Artour "Arteezy" Babaev and Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg replace Tal "Simbaaa" Aizik and Johan "BigDaddy" Sundstein.

When Secret crashed from one of the longest undefeated streaks in pro-Dota history to a third place at the Dota 2 Asia Championships, lack of draft diversity seemed to be a core cause: all but one loss at that event showed Secret's opponents banning at least two out of the same six heroes, while more than half of their wins came with them.

This rapidly evolved. Clement "Puppey" Ivanov stepped away from drafting, with teammate Kuro "Kuroky" Takhasomi saying, "Puppey is a strong voice as a leader, it has not really worked out for us so we are switching things up, as different methods work for different teams/players."

After an unceremoniously early defeat in Starladder XII, Gustav "S4" Magnusson became the team's drafter. He became famous as the captain and drafter for Alliance during their successful International run. Their drafts were hardly surprising, with over 60% of their games playing Nature's Prophet and four other core heroes drafted between 30 and 40% of their games.

Then they habitually banned the same five heroes: Lifestealer, Outworld Devourer, Dark Seer, Visage, and Batrider.

Ironically, since S4 took over drafting, Secret have distanced themselves from Alliance's reserved style of pick-bans. In a similar number of drafts over the last month, Secret haven't drafted any hero more than 36% of their games, demonstrating a significant flexibility when it comes to incorporating a comparably sized hero pool.

Against Alliance, opponents ganked and teamfought, but in doing so gave them freefarm on the other two-thirds of the map. They simply couldn't deconstruct Alliance’s strategy despite the latter's participation at 14 tournaments in fewer than four months running up to The International.

Secret have taken almost three months of accumulative days away from competitive play since adding Zai and Arteezy in December, typically in chunks of 10 days or more. Alliance had only about 30 inactive days in the same runup to TI, and those days were mostly due to a lack of games. Arteezy has even stated that Secret doesn't practice during events anymore.

For a team with as much raw skill as Secret, this seems to be the recipe for success. Each tournament they take the stage with new strategies, draft compositions, and a renewed thirst for success. They keep their opponents guessing at the secrets they'll reveal and keep fresh minds via periods of rest and private experimentation.

Alliance relied on live-fire drills in tournaments, and it landed them 3rd place or worse in half of their tournaments running up to The International 3

Secret's surreptitious strategic development appears to mean teams have even less opportunity to decipher them; their opponents will be forced to simply play better. Easier said than done considering Secret's top opponents are already higher ranked than their 2013 equivalents.

In fact, The International 2015 currently has better teams than any prior TI with less variance between them. The competition is much fiercer for Secret, and yet they have managed to take four consecutive titles, including the recent ESL One Frankfurt against most of their strongest opponents. They aren't just mirroring Alliance's historic success: they're doing far better in a more difficult field of teams.

Ryan "Gorgon the Wonder Cow" Jurado writes about Dota 2 and freelances for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.