I realize I’m posting this much later than originally anticipated. I’m not lying when I said that I, like an idiot, was drafting the post on the actual tumblr text box instead of a google.doc, so when my firefox crashed I lost everything that I wrote. Pretty discouraged, it took me this long to muster up enough energy to write a whole new one. I wanted to get it out before DAC began, and I still have about 4 hours.

So here goes -

Pre-Shuffle & Personal Background:

Disclaimer - these are just my opinions, which may or may not mean jack shit. You decide -

*If you just want to read my opinions on my predictions for DAC, feel free to scroll down and skip this section, but I’m adding this because, after all, it is my personal blog and it helps put things in perspective*

I had known about the shuffle quite some time before it happened. Normally, I’d say “sweet, more drama in the scene - this will spice things up a bit” except I soon found out it would have a negative impact on me, personally. About 2 months before this whole shuffle thing happened, I started playing with Sumail a lot (Sumail is now playing for EG as seen at D2L finals, and soon DAC). He and I formed a team called Guess alongside his brother, Yawar, Waytosexy, and Sneyking. During our short time together, we had some very encouraging results in scrims and smaller matches. Even despite the first few scrims where Yawar and Sumail said literally not one word (shy bastards) we were gaining confidence and things were looking up to be another strong NA-contender alongside EG.

That all changed when Arteezy told me he and Zai were thinking of leaving to go to Secret. I had introduced Sumail and Yawar to NEL (well, Yawar played NEL a bit before, but Sumail never had) so we could play higher-skilled games together when we didn’t have 5 to scrim. I was really excited, because I had been really buckling down practicing and felt I was improving very quickly. I thought we might have a real good shot at going to TI. It’s easy to improve when you have motivation, and Sumail was my motivation. At the time, I was feeling pretty confident with my play overall, and tons of 1v1s with Sumail certainly helped. Sumail quickly got noticed, and easily placed Rank 1 last month. So when Artour told me about him leaving, I saw the whole scenario playing out in my head: long story short, EGs going to steal Sumail and I’m going to be left with a broken team. And lo and behold, that’s what happened. I don’t blame Sumail at all - it’s a good opportunity for him to get to play officials consistently and hey, let’s be honest - money talks. While I am happy for him and wish him the best, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little upset. I would love to go into this more in great detail, but maybe another time.

The Shuffle: Who got better, who got worse?

EG (Arteezy/Zai out, Sumail/Aui_2000 in) :

One of the biggest reasons Arteezy left at least to my knowledge was the drafting and strategy, quite frankly. He mentioned this on his stream, and put it in a much friendlier way. Something like “we had strategic differences… blah blah blah.” I can’t speak for Zai, because I haven’t talked to him about it. However, I think it was also the fact that both Zai and Arteezy couldn’t muster up the motivation to play anymore which greatly affected their play, whether it was the drafting or just simply the team had been together for so long it was time for a fresh change. Probably both. It’s for this reason I think this change is good for the EG team. Sumail is a good replacement for Arteezy, and as long as Aui can quickly understand how ppd wants to play the early game I’m sure he will be fine. These changes are usually most difficult for support players just because most cores play similarly, or at least have less options of what they need to do throughout the game, making it arguably easier for them in general. You can read my previous blog where I go into great detail about that. It’s actually an extremely even switch, if you think about it. Aui is an incredibly greedy support, even more so than Zai, and Sumail is a very competent mid player. When Sumail is on the right hero, I could easily say he’s the best mid player out there. It’s just a matter of whether or not that hero fits in with a particular draft. That’s the biggest factor, I think, that will determine how well EG places in this tournament.







Cloud 9 (Aui_2000/PielieDie out, Notail/Misery in)

I don’t know reasons as to why this happened so I can only speculate. Pieliedie was probably the weakest on the team, in my opinion, and I don’t think this was too shocking to many. As far as Aui goes, this was a bit surprising to me because I didn’t see anything particularly wrong with his play. Maybe his early game rotations were late, maybe he was too greedy. Maybe they didn’t get along outside the game. I don’t really know and I don’t talk to anyone from Cloud 9, so like I said I can only speculate. As for their replacements, I think Notail is actually a really fucking good support player. All of his movements and rotations make sense. A lot of support players will move around aimlessly because they feel like they’re not doing anything, but Notail’s are very deliberate. As far as Misery, I was a bit shocked because I personally wasn’t all that impressed with him on support at TI4. I thought his offlane, actually, was impressive when he played for Secret. I wanted to say that this would be a change for the better for Cloud 9 until I saw them almost lose to Fire in the “North American” qualifiers for DAC. *Side topic: that’s a goddamn joke that they were in the NA qualifiers. I don’t fault the team for it - a team should do everything they can to get whatever advantage possible - it’s fully the admins fault, and it’s laughable that they let this slide. * My prediction is that they will be pretty much the same. I do think Notail is an upgrade, though.









Secret (Notail/Fly out, Zai/Arteezy in)

Alright - So let me just put a disclaimer on this, as it were: when I said the things I said about Secret I was streaming and when I stream I normally drink a bit. Now of course, I wasn’t incoherent and some things I said I meant, but I definitely was being a little brash and hyperbolic because that’s just what you do on stream to get a rise out of your viewers. It’s like saying on a cast “Omg, they picked Riki - that shit’s the worst hero in the game” - you don’t really mean it per se (well, shit, maybe you do), you’re just saying it to get some kind of point across. For example, I remember Fear saying countless times during the Ti4 Na Qualifiers just how garbage Viper is and how it’s the worst hero in the game. I don’t think he really meant it was the worst hero in the game; he probably personally felt it wasn’t as good as people made it out to be at the time and there are better heroes that do what Viper does. Anyway, what’s that mean? It means when I say Secret aren’t getting top 8 I don’t really mean it. But, what you can infer from it was at the time when I said it there’s no question that they were underperforming. Of course, the public doesn’t know this because they don’t hear who’s beating who in scrims, and I’m not going to go into detail about that because it’s disrespectful to the teams to leak information about private practice (unless you’re Bloodynine’s team, who links post-game screenshots of their scrims vs. Secret on Arteezy’s own stream).

Anyway, that whole stream comment aside, here’s how I feel about Secret and how the shuffle affected them:

First, I think Arteezy/Zai needed it; I think they were underperforming and didn’t have motivation on EG. I highly question the decision to let Notail go, for reasons I mentioned above. Up until this last week where they’ve been practicing in China, they weren’t looking good at all. From what I’ve heard, they’ve been looking a better, though, in these days leading up to DAC.

I want everyone reading this to take everything I’ve said with a giant grain of salt because in the end, scrims don’t mean shit. Even though I disagree with the practice, many players/teams don’t give a fuck about their scrims but try their asses off in real games. I do wish Secret the best - I’ve always looked up to Arteezy since I moved from Hon, Zai’s been a friend of mine for years and S4 was my favorite mid player for the longest time. I can’t say fully whether or not this shuffle benefitted Secret just because I thought Notail was really good for them, and I think that Arteezy is a great mid player and putting him on the 1 role is a waste of his talent. Don’t get me wrong, S4 is a competent mid player, too, but I guess that’s the problem Secret incurred when they brought in two mid players, and it’s the problem they’re going to have to deal with.







Overall Predictions for DAC:

Since, as I write this, it’s getting close to starting I’m only going to be commenting quickly on what I think will be Top 8. I’ll try to give short reasons:

TOP 3:

Ehome/VG/CDEC

I really wanted to put Newbee in here, the problem is they just haven’t played in so long it’s hard to gauge where they’re at. There’s no question CDEC has tremendously improved since their disappointing finish at D2L. Their offlane player was replaced, and Maybe in my personal opinion is the best mid player right now. VG has Fy, who carries his team harder as a support than most teams’ carry players do. Ehome, fresh off their D2L win in Vegas, showed that they have some best strategies around, which I think will be borrowed by a number of teams: Drafting a trilane where the core can jungle at minute 4-6 with a 4 position hero that benefits from farm. Look for this from a number of teams.

4-6:

EG/Newbee/C9

I think any of these three teams has potential to place higher, but I think roster changes will affect EG and C9 to some extent, especially C9. It has been said that C9 are choke artists at LAN, and with a new roster it’s hard to say - but I think Notail will have a lot to do with any success C9 might have. If EG gets their drafting in check, they can certainly do better. Especially if they don’t give Sumail heroes like 1 position Sand Kings (poor Mason had to deal with that shit as well during the infamous 0-22 at ESL Frankfurt). It’s just simply not the best way to utilize someone as talented as Sumail. Fear and most of EG are LAN veterans, with the exception of Sumail, which might play a role in this tournament. Newbee is Newbee, TI4 champs and has one of the best carry players out there: Hao. Mu has looked really questionable lately, flat out getting destroyed middle by Rave’s mid player at the KDL-Global tournament in Korea. I think it was Ember vs. Panda - I don’t remember exactly. All I remember was Mu messing up badly in lane, and it had little to do with the matchup or ganks or anything like that.





7-8:

Secret/IG

Secret have been on their ups and downs in practice since forming, but make their debut official in this tournament and I wonder if the pressure will get to them. I think sheer talent will get them this far, but other innate problems such as inexperience as a team and positional/role issues will prevent them from getting any further. During D2L regular season, IG looked pretty bad. They swap roles all the time, and I think June struggles a bit with a limited hero pool. But apparently they’ve been playing better lately, and I still think Ferrari is one of the most talented mid players in dota.







Either way, I’m really excited to watch everything - I just wish the times weren’t so terrible for me. Wish I didn’t have to end this so abruptly, but it’s starting pretty soon and this is the best I could do after deleting my last one. Thanks for reading, and go Seahawks ~