Greetings and salutations RD2L fans, my name is sunshineduck and today I present to you the very first edition of the Monday Matrix, a (hopefully) permanent offseason fixture that aims to educate prospective captains whether they are fresh meat or seasoned veterans. My goal is to prepare a guide to help people that are not typically comfortable with captaining broaden their horizons a little and enjoy one of the greatest feelings RD2L has to offer — knowing with absolute certainty that you won’t be getting PolarBURIED on your team.

I wrote this joke before he was banned. It didn’t age very well.

The overarching idea behind the Monday Matrix was to create a spreadsheet that centralizes all the useful information gathered through hours of painstaking Dotabuff research and (more importantly) knowledge gained through seasons of playing. It’s no secret that established captains that know the pool have a significant advantage when it comes to the player draft — my plan is to help bridge that gap to incentivize people to captain that normally would refuse.

If all you care about is how I rank players at each position and what I think of them as prospective teammates, click the very large and friendly link at the top of this page.

If you’re interested in my methodology and how I would use the sheet to draft an ideal team, read on. You will probably just want to click the link. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Probably you, trying to figure out how the hell to read my dumb sheet

How to read my dumb sheet:

If this is your first time captaining this is probably your first time looking at anything like this monstrosity. No worries, I can explain!

Most of the sheet is pretty simple. To the left here’s the player name, their adjusted rank, and links to their Dotabuff and Opendota pages in case you don’t trust my numbers. You’re probably not confused about that.

Smack dab in the middle of the sheet there is a huge block of red and green and gray and numbers. This is the meat of the sheet, and why it was released just two days before the draft. I’ve graded each player at every position based on their Dotabuffs, listed role preferences, and occasionally completely subjective changes based on past experience playing with or against them. If this wasn’t abundantly clear, the numbers on this sheet have little to no factual basis and are all created by my individual opinions as a captain and player drafter. It’s how I would grade players if I was conducting a player draft for myself. The general strategy I would use if drafting by the sheet would be to sort numerically and target players that are green (value at their role) and avoid red (antivalue) if possible. A rating in gray means I think they would play at around their badge level at that role.

I’ve also listed the drafting (marginally useful) and secretary (useless) roles next to the ratings. The only one I would pay attention to is drafting, even if you plan to draft having someone else that pays attention to the meta and is comfortable discussing hero picks with you is typically very valuable and more opinions will only make your drafting stronger. If you aren’t able to secretary your team and organize scrims and games on your own I don’t think you will find much success as a team captain and you should just draft the best possible player and hope they carry you.

Finally, there is a STAB rating nestled right next to the player statement. It’s a multi-use shortening for “stability” and also “likelihood that I will wish I could stab you through the computer screen by season’s end” and boils down to a single number that is supposed to show how easy a player is to have on your team if you’ve never played with them before. Generally speaking, I would only draft a player with a 1 if they held me at gunpoint and I would think hard about reaching for a 5 if they play a role I need to fill.

I personally think the success of my past team has been due in large part to the culture of the teams. Out of everyone I have drafted I would say only one of them has been a 2 and he would be higher for me personally as I ended up randomly getting along pretty well with him. I would not, however, recommend him for a new captain so I tried to reflect that in the STAB rating. It’s easier than you might think to identify positive players from their player statements and Dotabuff pages, but now you don’t have to!

Now that we’ve established what my sheet is, let’s talk about how to use it to draft the best possible team.

We want our team to look like this. Especially the rigged free agent.

Know Your Role

The very first thing you need to establish when preparing for the player draft is to decide what role you want to play on your team. Generally speaking, lower MMR players play support in this league and captains are no exception. Making sure you draft around yourself is almost as important as drafting around your first pick and you need to have a plan in place on what roles to prioritize with your earlier picks. Generally speaking, if you are not a mid-ancient or better mid player you will want to target a mid player with your first pick. This season there is, however, a shortage of high MMR mid players and you may want to target a strong 1 position player with your first pick. Regardless of your first round decision and which position you wish to play, I strongly recommend having both your 1 and 2 positions secured by the second round if you want to have any chance at winning this division.

Know Your Numbers

With the change to the new “EU” draft format, it is more important than ever to acquire players that are value and not just the best player left on the sheet. Each player you pick will directly influence your draft position in the later rounds, so reaching on a player that you think is better than their listed draft badge is almost always a good move. The later in the draft the less this strategy will influence the results, but a good rule of thumb is that you want to make your big reach on your 4th pick to secure a higher pick in the last round. Why go through this trouble? This allows you to effectively dodge having to pick one of the lowest MMR (Guardian/Crusader) in the tail end of the last round and instead allow you to rotate in a better player.

Know Your Place

When choosing who you want to be on your team, something often overlooked is how well you will mesh with the players you draft. Oftentimes the highest skilled teams have trouble properly communicating with each other and struggle with making cohesive team decisions. This is where you play a large role. If you are a lower MMR captain you want to choose a high MMR player in the first round that is a good communicator and will help with shotcalling as well as drafting. These players can be hard to find even with the matrix, so I would suggest picking someone with high STAB that has a 4 or 5 for drafting and organizing and hope for the best. If you are a higher MMR player, you will probably want to target quieter players — people that challenge your decisions and refuse to play with the team are going to be very detrimental to your efforts to win.

Know Yourself

We’ve spent all this time talking about what to do to make your team the most optimally drafted team possible, but it’s important to take a step back and think about what you want out of the season. If you want to win it all, it’s probably best to stick to a plan and hope you can land some sneaky value. If you’re trying to make friends, perhaps you want to draft players that you’ve never talked to that seem friendly! No matter what you choose, it’s up to you to make the season your own. At the end of the day, if anyone on your team has complaints about the decisions you made then they can go captain next season.

Kudos if you’ve made it here. I would have tapped out at the first paragraph.

Thanks for reading!