His Bark is Worse than His Bite: Why did Lycan fare so badly at the StarLadder LAN Playoffs?

Lycan has been the talk to the town in patch 6.80, a patch that has arguably featured many push-heavy and fight-oriented lineups coming into the fray. We've seen the rise of Dazzle and Ancient Apparition, and the corresponding fall of other supports like Crystal Maiden and Lion. But today, we are not here to talk about the change in the support meta – we're here to talk about the abysmal performance of Lycan at the StarLadder StarSeries Season IX LAN Playoffs.

Featuring a 100% Ban/Pick performance, Lycan was banned in 75% of the 32 games played over the course of the LAN finals, with it slipping through 8 times. In the table below, we've included a short list of the games (in chronological order) Lycan participated in, and the eventual winner.

Match Info Side Lycan was on Radiant Team Dire Team Match Winners Match Time Group Stage Radiant Alliance Team DK Dire 54:00 Group Stage Radiant Empire Team DK Dire 34:63 Group Stage Radiant MVP Phoenix Team DK Dire 37:17 Tiebreaker 1 Radiant RoX.KiS Invictus Gaming Dire 56:67 Tiebreaker 3 Radiant RoX.KiS Na`Vi Dire 40:37 Winner's Bracket Finals Radiant Evil Geniuses Team DK Dire 32:97 Winner's Bracket Finals Radiant Team DK Evil Geniuses Radiant 31:75 Grand Finals Radiant Empire Team DK Dire 50:08

The statistics do not lie: out of the eight games with Lycan, there was only one win, and seven corresponding losses. Lycan was only given to the Radiant team in every single of these matches; it never once made it through to the Dire. The sole win was notched by Team DK, eventual champions and undefeated throughout the tournament. Out of the seven losses, Team DK dismantled Lycan five times, with Invictus Gaming and Na`Vi each clocking one win against RoX.KiS in the tiebreakers. In the following section, I look at the drafts of each of the games that Lycan lost, and attempt to find an overall strategy that would highlight Lycan's failure.

Before we begin, it is important to bear in mind three things: Lycan was only given away to the Radiant side, but in their Winner's Bracker First Round match against DK, iG banned Lycan against Team DK although iG were on the Radiant side. At the same time, BurNing mentioned in his interview that DK were happy to let Lycan through on the Radiant side because it is not as great a threat to take Roshan, and at the same time falls off in terms of late-game damage.

Game 1: Group Stage - Alliance vs Team DK

This match saw Alliance run a push heavy lineup, with Chen, Shadow Shaman, Lycan and Dragon Knight – a tanky combination with Chen's healing and neutral creeps, Dragon Knight's innate tankiness and poison, and Shadow Shaman's Mass Serpent Wards. This pushing lineup paid dividends when they were able to catch out Mushi and LaNm out of position in the game, allowing them to take the mid barracks off DK, and remain one of the two teams to have done it the entire tournament.

Comparatively, DK drafted an AoE heavy, team fight-oriented draft. With the exception of Lifestealer, the other heroes: Puck, Ancient Apparition, Sand King and Centaur all possess high magic burst, and large amounts of AoE CC (Dream Coil, Burrow Strike, Hoof Stomp). The magic burst is enhanced by Ancient Apparition's Ice Vortex, and the only really big cooldown on the DK team was Epicenter, which meant that DK would almost always be ready for a fight. With three Blink initiators (Sand King, Centaur and Puck), Lifestealer was not in want of targets to Infest for Infest bombs, which allowed for easy pickoffs, as well as a strong teamfight combination that forced Alliance to purchase four BKBs on their team.

By stalling the game out with their strong pickoff and teamfight lineup, DK forced Alliance into a position where they were unable to push early and were also forced to group up against the pickoff potential of DK. This eventually led to Lycan falling off with his Vlads and Necronomicon build against the hard carry potential of Lifestealer. However, as seen with Mushi's mistake on Puck, DK's team required superior positioning and movement to outplay Alliance – when they were caught out of position, the team with Lycan was able to heavily punish their mistakes.

Game 2: Group Stage- Empire vs Team DK

In this match, Empire drafted a pick-off centric lineup that would then transition into a push: with Visage's Familiars and Lycan's Wolves, Necronomicon and Howl, any pick-off with Mirana's Sacred Arrow or Clockwerk's Hookshot would allow Empire to take down a tower.

On the other hand, Team DK drafted a pickoff heavy lineup as well, with a high synergy burst damage lineup of Centaur, Shadow Demon and Invoker. The combination of Disruption, Soul Catcher, Hoof Stomp, Double Edge and Sunstrike cannot be understated here as it continuously got DK kills all over the map, blunting the push potential of Empire.

The lack of extreme burst on Empire to take out the tanky Lone Druid carry on DK was another big problem as they could not get fast and easy pickoffs on BurNing without suffering losses themselves, and were unable to take down the Spirit Bear in a tower or base siege since Lycan built Vlads, Necronomicon, and Heaven's Halberd.

Game 3: GroupStage - MVP.Phoenix vs Team DK

MVP Phoenix drafted a combat centric lineup that could transition into a push with a zoo strategy: with Enchantress, Lycan and Invoker, they had a strong siege lineup with plenty of summons (2 Necronomicons, Mass Serpent Wards, Forge Spirits, Summon Wolves) to take down towers without any threat to their heroes. This was rewarded in this game as well, with MVP.Phoenix being the only other team out of Alliance to take down a set of barracks from DK.

Comparatively, DK ran an aggressive trilane with Axe, Dazzle and Jakiro against the greedy draft of MVP, forcing Enchantress to offensive jungle, and also limiting the Lycan's safelane farm. While iceiceice was throwing the game with Axe, the real damage was done by Mushi's Ember spirit, which MVP was unable to lockdown as they only had one disabler, Shadow Shaman who was also easily picked off in the fights. Furthermore, Ember Spirit is a hard counter to the zoo strategy since he cleaves on Sleight of Fist, and is also invulnerable, meaning that he does not take damage from the Melee Neconomicon Creep's Last Will passive. DK were able to snowball with their combination and simply beat out MVP after that.

Game 4: Tiebreakers – RoX.Kis vs Invictus Gaming

This is the first game that did not feature DK playing against a Radiant Lycan. RoX.Kis drafted a heavy pushing and split-pushing lineup, with Nature's Prophet, Lycan and Invoker all having summons to push and synergise with Howl. With Bane and Lich, they secured a good early game by denying gold and experience to iG, getting Frost Armor against the physical-heavy lineup of iG, as well as providing lockdown against the evasive Mirana and Ember Spirit. This meant that if RoX.Kis had a good start, they could take down towers fast, and starve out iG's squad from farming.

However, what swung the game in iG's favour was not so much the outplaying of RoX.Kis, but instead the heavy snowballing of Ferrari_430's Ember Spirit, as well as the threat of a Sand King initiation combined with an Ember Spirit Sleight of Fist to delay RoX.Kis's early game-centric line up. Sand King posed a threat to RoX.Kis's heroes since there were relatively squishy, whereas iG had a spammable wave-clearing nuke in Sleight of Fist as well as great burst with Epicenter and Starstorm.

Game 5: Tiebreakers – RoX.Kis vs Na`Vi

This is the other game that did not feature DK playing against a Radiant Lycan. In this match, Na`Vi drafted a strong burst damage lineup with three farming cores against Rox.Kis's push-oriented lineup. Again, Rox.Kis drafted Nature's Prophet, Invoker and Lycan for an early-game centric push lineup. However, while they were able to shut down Dendi's early game, they were unable to out-greed the Na`Vi draft.

In particular, the hero that stood out again was Kuroky's Sand King, which was a heavy deterrent to RoX.Kis's pushes, and when combined with the Mirana and Ember Spirit provided a large amount of wave-clearing abilities to stop any incoming pushes.

Game 6: Winner's Bracket Finals – EG vs Team DK

The Winner's Bracket Finals between EG and Team DK was not the equal contest that people assumed it would be. Having given EG both Lycan as well as Arteezy's favourite Outworld Devourer, the expectation was that EG would dominate mid, as well as allowing EternalEnvy to get good farm on his Lycan for a mid-game push.

However, DK's draft capitalised on that greed and responded in kind. Lycan's strength lies in its early game pushing power when combined with Howl, as well as the strength Howl gives to the team in allowing for early creep kills. Since Lycan is a time-based hero – he requires close to free-farm to ensure he is able to rush a Vlads and Necronomicon for a push, DK's draft exploited on that fact: they chose to run a greedy support duo of Wisp and a jungling Enchantress that EG would not be able to punish. With the Tiny and Kunkka picks, DK secured the late game as well against a Lycan that would eventually fall off against these two hard carries. Moreover, DK's Enchantress pick also heavily countered the Lycan push - Enchantress can easily Enchant the Necronomicon Summon and gain the benefits, forcing EternalEnvy to build Desolator instead.

Moreover, a Wisp-Tiny matchup would be able to farm and splitpush, and yet still be present in a fight, which allowed BurNing to gather a large lead over his counterpart, EternalEnvy on Lycan. Most importantly, the early rotations of the DK supports enabled DK to snowball by getting kills on Arteezy as well as Universe's Clockwerk, which ensured that EG's lineup that relied on an early game dominance was never able to gather steam.

Game 7: Grand Finals – Empire vs Team DK

The Grand Finals between Empire and DK was a sight to behold as DK again demonstrated their dominance against the Lycan early-push strategy with an AoE wombo combo. Empire's draft was again centered on the early-push and teamfight lineup with Lycan synergising well with Vengeful Spirit's aura, and with Puck and Dark Seer's AoE combination as a deterrent to DK engaging on them.

However, DK thoroughly demonstrated their teamwork and awareness with a team that had spammable nuke damage and AoE crowd control. They punished the group up and push strategy with four large AoE crowd control effects, as well as the immense global burst damage from Sunstrike, Ice Blast and a Blinking Centaur with Double Edge. Moreover, BurNing's Faceless Void started with an extremely tanky build – Aghanims, Treads, and BKB. These items, when combined with Backtrack, made him the tanky initiator that DK required in the fights.

A well-placed Chronosphere would be the setup required for an Ice Blast, Sunstrike, and a follow-up Hoof Stomp or Kinetic Field, which would essentially prevent whoever is caught from escaping. Furthermore, teams on the retreat would be heavily punished by Disruptor's Glimpse as well, which ensured that a successful defence against a push would always be rewarded with more than one kill, assuming that the Sunstrike + Chronosphere + Ice Blast combination would always kill a hero.

Conclusion

The strength of Lycan as a position 1 carry lies in his ability to set his team up for a strong laning phase with Howl, as well as an extremely punishing push – this much is evidenced by the ability of any team with Lycan to capitalise on mistakes of the opposing team by taking out towers whenever they found a pickoff. The other strength of Lycan lies in his ability to take a quick Roshan in the early levels with Howl, his wolves, and a Vladimir's Offering. With the huge advantage given to the Dire in such a scenario, it is easy to see why even DK banned out Lycan when they were playing on the Radiant.

However, in the drafts between the teams, the recent buffs to Sand King and the power of Ember Spirit have made them strong counters to a Lycan-oriented push strategy. With Sand Storm, Sand King is now able to farm a fast and early Blink Dagger, which heavily counters any lineup that is focused on grouping up and pushing. He is also able to Blink + Burrow Strike for an immediate initiation with his team to provide greater follow-up disables on Lycan, and burst him down before he uses Shapeshift. Moreover, Ember Spirit can delay any push by spamming Sleight of Fist, which scales extremely hard once he owns a Battlefury. This combination was evidenced in both games RoX.Kis played Lycan in, and suggests that this remains a legitimate counter to the Lycan + Prophet + Invoker push, since there are so many summons to Cleave from.



EternalEnvy sneaking a Roshan - the ease and speed with which he did it are testament to Lycan's Roshan soloing ability.

On the other hand, Team DK's matches against Lycan were characterised by a focus on magic burst and AoE crowd control to counter the group-up and push mentality of teams playing Lycan. Their lineups heavily focused on a Centaur offlane that teams with Lycan would not be able to take down before level 6, as well as different ways of punishing the pushing lineup through pickoffs or AoE crowd control. Moreover, Stampede as a low cooldown ultimate was key in allowing DK to kite Lycan after he shapeshifts, minimising the damage done for at least four seconds.

DK also played very aggressively against Lycan, by shutting down his farm or the opponent's offlaner's farm. DK aggressively found pickoffs across the map through Blink initiations combined with global skills, such as using Wisp's global relocates to participate in fights, or their signature Blink, Hoof Stomp, Double Edge and Sunstrike combination to secure kills on enemy supports. DK also retreated in a very organised manner to limit their losses after finding pickoffs. All these strategies allowed DK to outfarm their opponents, delaying their items and levels, allowing DK to eventually dominate with better carries and better crowd control in the late game.

The strategies run by the various teams against Lycan seem to suggest that the fatal flaw in Lycan as a 1 position carry is that he just falls off late game. As a hero that relies on a group-up and push mentality, he poses problems for a team that has little anti-push, as well as a team that has poor positioning that allows for pickoffs. However, it appears that because of his poor man-fighting skills against other hard carries, he is unable to contest late game carries that arguably scale much better than he does – be it Ember Spirit, Tiny, or even Lifestealer.

It is evident that DK had considered this in mind when they decided to play a Lycan offlane for Iceiceice, using his micro skills to gain a vision advantage over EG, as well as applying a split-push pressure with Vlads and Necronomicon. By putting LaNm on the offlane to babysit Lycan as well, they were able to secure farm for the Lycan who was able to have his wolves up all the time thanks to Chakra Magic, while simultaneously allowing their real hard carry, Morphling, to farm easily in the mid lane. It is worth noting that on the offlane, iceiceice maxed Howl first, allowing DK to win the rest of their lanes by being able to trade autoattacks favourably, and then proceeded to apply split-push pressure with a Necronomicon and his summons. The relegation of Lycan to a no. 2 or no. 3 position seems to suggest that the hero is still very strong, but perhaps overrrated as a position 1.

The team that appeared to have the best results with a Radiant Lycan strategy against DK was Alliance's draft: a high sustain (Chen with Mekansm and Hand of God) line up with a tanky Dragon Knight and zoning Mass Serpent Wards. However, even that failed against a team that was able to defend and stall long enough for a stronger carry to trample on the power of the Lycan, which in this case was the Lifestealer.

With 6.81 on the horizon, it remains to be seen what changes lie on the cards for Lycan. However, as it stands, with a 65% win rate globally in 6.80, it is highly likely that some changes will be made to the hero sooner than later.

Banner of Lycan from Dota 2. Headline picture from Wallpaperscraft.com. Rotator picture from dotawallpaper.org







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