Big God: Set Piece Battles March 24th, 2015 19:03 GMT Text by Ver Graphics by Ninjan

Big God: Set Piece Battles

Introduction



vs. Cloud 9

vs. Evil Geniuses

vs. Vici Gaming

vs. Secret



Final Analysis

Deficiencies



Liquipedia





In a way, the LGD vs EHOME showmatch at the Dota Asian Championship was the perfect fit for the theme of the tournament: a shocking display of how teams handle a dubious mechanic. This 2010 Dota 1 classic came from an era when buyback was cheap and had no cooldown. As a result, map control was almost meaningless as any attempt to take high ground would involve fighting enemy heroes with potentially three lives. In this particular game, LGD took the power of defensive buybacks to the extreme and sat four teamfight heroes behind a Medusa, who farmed 762 cs by 56 minutes. Once he was six slotted with a Rapier, a second backup Rapier, and multiple buybacks, ZSMJ attack-moved to victory.



Just like back then with teams trying to find the best way to abuse the no buyback limit, the current elephant in the room is the rubberband effect. Previously it would take two lost teamfights to turn a 10k lead into an even game. Now, two lost teamfights turn a 10k lead into a 5-10k deficit. Even though Icefrog has further nerfed buybacks, the extreme reward for kills creates the possibility of fighting 7v5 with buybacks and coming out way ahead despite seemingly “even trades.” The attacking team may choose to play safe and only risk the death of their aegis carrier, but even then, losing one hero can result in a massive swing. For example, contrast these two fights at the exact same game time:



Vici Gaming, up 8k, five man wipes EG at the cost of a carry and support.

Net change: +2000 gold, 3200 xp.





Big God, down 12k, kills one core hero for free.

Net Change: +2100 gold, 2500 xp.



To summarise, BG got more gold and slightly less experience for a 1 for 0 than VG got for a 5 for 2, solely because of the relative networth deficit!



At TI4, teams came into the tournament with a vast array of different strategies and paradigms of how to best play in the new patch. By the end, only a very limited subset of strategies that all focused on winning early 5v5 deathball fights remained. The patch was solved.



At DAC, teams also entered with many different plans, but as the tournament progressed, it seemed rather likely that teams would start shifting towards defensive, high ground teamfight strategies, just like LGD against EHOME. This type of playstyle revolves around having a better lategame, multiple mass aoe-ultimates, and heroes who could either counterinitiate or soak up enemy initiations. It is based on the logic that it doesn’t matter if you forfeit the entire map outside your base if they can never breach high ground. After all, if buybacks mean you can equalize a massive farm disadvantage in just two fights, what’s the point in trying to build up a lead with an inferior lategame?



This possibility turned into reality during two haunting Vici Gaming matches, where they “blew” a 16-2, 20k lead against Big God, and then another 20k advantage against LGD. Against LGD, VG simply could not find any openings and their engine sputtered out trying to force high ground. It clearly was a nightmare trying to attack into just a Medusa, let alone with Ravage and Chronosphere to back her up.

Vici Gaming LGD Gaming







Against Big God, VG played extremely well to achieve a large lead, but then weren't able to play with the utter precision required to translate that enormous lead into a victory against a BG team playing from their strengths. In this game VG didn’t even manage to break the T2 mid tower, let alone attempting to break the base.





And then, of course, there was “the comeback”, Cloud 9’s 30k loss against BG, which will be further analyzed in depth later on. Once again, a Medusa turtle strategy managed to come back from a seemingly nigh-insurmountable deficit.



Yet surprisingly, modern Dota strategy, or perhaps this patch, contains a surprising level of sophistication. As the playoffs went on, DAC did not turn into a repeat of LGD vs EHOME. The inflexible Ancient Apparition was ignored, and Faceless Void rarely made an appearance. Only a handful of heroes that excelled at high ground defense were chosen, though teams did made sure to ban Medusa against Burning.



In the end, the four best teams at DAC took widely different approaches, and the tournament did not devolve into a showcase of attempts to assault high ground. BG focused heavily on creating static set piece fights and won every game they could do so. Secret attempted to create a farm lead with efficient ganks, laning, and stacks, then heavily punish any midgame mistakes with an immediate barracks attack. EG chose to control the map with a surprise first pick Beastmaster+Storm Spirit combo or various global lineups like Tinker+Lycan+Treant, giving acres of space to Fear+Aui. Lastly, VG continued with their chaotic swarming that almost always won the laning phase and took over the midgame. By the end of the tournament, there was no one single dominant style of play. Either the patch wasn’t solved, or it was just more sophisticated than previous ones. Here’s how it all played out and fit together.



Big God: Set Piece Battles

From a strategic standpoint, Big God was the most fascinating team at DAC. Put simply, BG was a rare experiment: what happens when you take three all-stars, pair them with two unpredictable players, and have them play relaxed with little practice. Burning, Lanm, and Xiao8 were either the best or second best at their roles in the 2013-2014 season, but at the same time, BG had only played seven scrims in total. Because of BG’s extreme strengths and weaknesses, they also had to run highly polarized strategies. In place of pre-tournament preparation, BG used the round robin as valuable practice time to figure out what they could do best.



Dota skill is not something easily quantifiable in a vacuum. Most top players tend to do better with certain styles of play where they can fully bring out their skill, and so it is up to the team to find the most harmonious strategies that let the team function at their best. BG originally started the tournament drafting solid lineups around Burning’s best and meta-relevant heroes, but gradually created a more refined system that amplified their strengths.



For all the talk about iceice in the playoffs, he was a big liability in most group matches. Even in the playoffs he looked lost in the laning phase, surely making Lanm wish he was back with MMY. Combined with Rotk’s rather washed up “playmaking”, BG only survived the first 15 minutes by the virtue of Xiao8’s excellent play, and Burning’s reconfirmation as one of the best laners. In almost every playoff game, BG either started the midgame far behind, or even at best.



With these extreme deficiencies, how did BG perform so well? Somehow, despite really only practicing in the group stages, BG showed a commendable ability to execute set piece battles better than any other team, while drafting to exploit this strength. These are fights where both sides roughly know each other's position, rarely spanning multiple screens. Any Rotk throws would at least give them some kind of counterplay, and iceice looked like a gifted support in controlled, simple scenarios. Many times it appeared as though BG had worked out their tactical plan before the fight ever started. This one system repeatedly made up for their poor early game, and made BG look like a top tier team with near-perfect synergy.





BG often baited the enemy into attacking them by running fragile heroes, then expertly used the hidden resources in their draft to divide and conquer. Enemy supports frequently found themselves bullied away by 1-2 BG heroes, while the rest of BG kited and killed aggressive enemy initiators. It was the Dota equivalent of Napoleon’s Central Position Strategy, as BG would seize the center of the battlefield and minimize the impact of 3-4 enemy heroes with 1-2 of their own while encircling the now isolated enemy frontline. Depending on the situation, sometimes the hero positions remained static, while in other fights BG heroes darted in between the front and middle. When the dust settled, more BG heroes remained alive, and they would regroup and quickly rout the inferior enemy. The perfect game to first examine is their famous 30k comeback against Cloud 9.



vs. Cloud 9: The Comeback

In brief, C9 took a large early lead with some slick movements and the initiative of Axe+Chen. BG found no counterplay due to iceice+Rotk making zero impact, and as a result, they did not find a single kill until almost 20 minutes in. C9 gathered a 12k gold lead by 15 minutes, which eventually reached 30k. In order to hold out, BG had to extract the maximum value out of their position and play flawlessly with less than ideal heroes. For example, Clockwerk is usually a snowball hero who can completely control the map in the first 20 minutes, but if behind often just hooks in to feed.

Cloud 9 Big God







The most surprising part about BG’s defense is that they only possessed two excellent high ground defenders: Medusa and Ancient Apparition. Bristleback and Clockwerk were picked to bolster BG’s early game, not defend the base, while Lion excels at getting midgame pickoffs. Yet by some magic, BG somehow also drafted a lineup that possessed perfect synergy at holding high ground against C9’s heroes. Despite his nonexistence in the first 20 minutes, Rotk’s Clockwerk, normally a hero that falls off hard, had the impact of a (non-Rotk) Tidehunter.









For the first attempt at breaking base, C9 keeps their ranged heroes in the back with aegis Lycan hitting the tower and Axe ready to jump in. EMP is thrown out at the start, forcing Burning’s Medusa back to the fountain to heal. C9 jumps in, and Xiao8’s Bristleback teleports in, pops his BKB and charges like a berserker into the other four C9 heroes, zoning them away while disabling Axe’s blink. C9 has no way to kill him through BKB without EE’s Lycan, who is trapped inside BG’s base by a precisely timed impale -> hookshot -> cogs -> impale. By the time Xiao8’s BKB wears off, Lycan has died twice and C9 cannot win 4v5. The Axe who snowballed harder than a Tusk with 5 Meepos does nothing and outside of an EMP C9 cannot help Envy. Admittedly, C9 did poorly coordinate their Serpent Wards timing and EE aggressively cut the cogs into the base instead of retreating. However, in their defense, with their amazing lead how could anyone have anticipated the fight going so poorly?









Here is a clip you will need to rewatch multiple times. In the second fight, C9 learns from their mistakes and immediately focuses Burning down. However, BG actually kills Misery first due to Lanm’s heroic play. After these opening deaths, BG position themselves so that C9 are forced to target Xiao8 with BKB on, and right as he retreats back into BG lines, the patient Rotk makes a play of the tournament. His hookshot+cogs divides EE from his team, ensuring his death despite being in wolf form. Burning is forced to buyback, but once again C9 is routed despite an extremely large lead.









It is important to note that C9 did not just stupidly bash their heads against the wall in the exact same manner every time. Instead, each high ground attack went very differently, yet BG fluidly adapted and made the exact moves necessary to hold. In their 3rd attempt, C9 aggressively charges in and attempts to swarm the barracks, but once again Rotk hits a highlight reel initiation and divides C9 in half. It seems as though C9 might be able to kill Rotk, back out, and regroup, but Lanm gets another key Earth Spike, routing C9. These fights almost look as if BG is not behind at all, but that is just the result of exploiting every resource at their disposal for maximum effect.









Many people derided Cloud 9 for throwing the game, but in actuality that only happened later on. C9 played all the early fights solidly enough, making only minor misplays against BG’s perfect defense. However, as the game went on they began making more egregious errors. BG was starting to initiate into C9 outside their base despite the massive deficit, and C9, not expecting these gutsy moves, made game losing plays in the BG-fueled panic.



Here, for example, C9 is still setting up and not ready to go in yet (Notail is grabbing a creep). Suddenly, BG preempts them and blows up Bone7’s Invoker before his team can rally. The risk in fighting outside the base was offset by making the squishier Invoker the target, and for the fourth time in a row Rotk chops up the C9 battle line, isolating their target and rendering Invoker’s allies helpless. He then proceeds to ignore the Invoker after hooking him, immediately focusing on keeping EE/Notail out. Lanm quickly clues in into Rotk’s plan, and blinks in to disable Bone7. This type of ambitious play clearly upset C9’s equilibrium, for Misery and Fata couldn’t uniformly decide whether to jump in, retreat, or attack the base, while EE unfortunately blocked himself with his own wolves. Instead, BG killed Invoker, the Serpent Wards, and chased down Axe, taking the game one step closer to the dreaded 30k networth Burning Medusa.



If BG had waited, like in the previous examples, and allowed C9 to charge up high ground before initiating, they would have given C9 time to focus and prepare a plan. Then, once the situation became chaotic, C9’s players would all know what to do and could execute their own plan. Instead, they attacked C9 well outside the base, something C9 were clearly not prepared for, and thus did not have a prearranged course of action. Contrastingly, iceice had already fired his Ice Blast before Rotk had jumped in, Lanm handled Bone7 after the hookshot, and Rotk used his skills to thwart Notail and Envy. Lastly, Lanm and Xiao8 made the correct decision after killing Bone7 to ignore Misery and chase Fata down, knowing his team wouldn’t be able to save him.



Yes, the subsequent fights in this game that ended badly for C9 were more due to them making horrific unforced errors, but up till this point their errors were always forced by BG’s hand. These four fights are worthy of study for any team. Because BG lacked enough of the truly abusive turtle heroes like Magnus, Batrider, Tidehunder, Sniper, or Faceless Void, this in some ways is probably the best executed defense in Dota history. The ways the Clockwerk and Bristleback made C9’s backline irrelevant in four distinctly different scenarios while the rest of their team killed and kited EE and Fata have no equal. These fights looked like the old DK that practiced for twelve hours a day, not a casual group that didn’t practice at all!



vs. Evil Geniuses: Battle Zones

Though the above game may suggest that BG excelled only at turtling, they were far more versatile than just sitting in their base. BG needed to manufacture specific kinds of fights where there were few unknown or chaotic factors. Once that scenario was created, they consistently made better choices than every other team. Against EG, Burning and company used their same fighting style to win a decisive game 2 in a very different way.



In game 1 against Evil Geniuses, EG seized an early lead due to BG’s early fumbled rotations, then using the resulting map control to bury BG in the midgame by exploiting BG’s movements with Storm. BG’s Medusa turtle strat, which looked invincible against C9, was easily shredded apart. So what do Xiao8 and Lanm do once they see EG attempting the same idea in game 2? Bring back a TI4 deathball relic.

Evil Geniuses Big God







At first glance, this lineup looked nothing like what BG had been doing well with during the tournament, and they clearly could not have had a reliable pocket strat with their limited practice time. Yet as seen by their play, the Big God brains brilliantly fit together a counter to EG’s formidable Storm/Beastmaster map dominance plan as well as bringing out the best in BG’s players. EG found few openings to create space during the early game and were forced into a series of 5v5 tower defenses earlier than they wanted.







The same formula repeated itself in four teamfights in a row. Xiao8’s Razor and Rotk’s Axe stood in front and bullied EG around. Meanwhile, Sumail tried to burst down the BG backline but kept falling short. BG hit the exact timing window where Storm’s massive burst could be negated by Abaddon, and Storm did not have the excess mana needed to jump in, out, and back in to fights. While Sumail got focused down behind enemy lines, the rest of his team couldn’t get close enough to assist.



In this specific fight, Universe roars Lanm to prevent him from stopping Sumail’s initiation on the Shadow Shaman, but Rotk manages to catch Sumail as the Shadow Shaman falls. The draft and movement of BG enables them to surround and kill Storm, then turn on the rest of his team without suffering any extra casualties; Xiao8’s tanky Mek Razor took much longer to die 1v4 than it took for Sumail to get disabled and killed.









Here, with BG wounded and in full retreat, Universe jumps in first to draw fire and probably create an opening for Sumail. Rotk immediately jumps on the miscreant, leaving iceice vulnerable to an Orchids-death. However, iceice dodges Storm’s initiation and blinks into the trees, leaving Sumail the option of hitting...Lanm? The last thing you want to do as Storm is expend your mana on a hero you can’t even focus down, but Burning had darted to the left to slay Universe. This enables Lanm to use his spells to save the heavily focused Xiao8, and gives iceice the chance to hex Sumail from the trees. Once Sumail gets focused down again, EG is routed.



Sumail could have played closer to his team, but he was also facing the instant death threat of Shadow Shaman + Axe blinking on him. Additionally, his deep, risky initiations were quite predictable after seeing many earlier games. The timing worked out so that Sumail’s mana tank ran dry before BG’s zoning heroes disintegrated, allowing BG to rout the remaining heroes 5v4. The generally weak Lord of Avernus made a massive impact in this game, with Evil Geniuses so concerned about him that he, the poor 5th position support, ate the Beastmaster’s Primal Roar just to let Sumail possibly get an initiating kill on another support! That is the sure sign of an outstanding draft.



vs. Vici Gaming: Zoning Ultimates

Big God Vici Gaming







The score is 16-2 at 15 minutes. Big God is completely unable to farm at their towers without fear of instant death, while Vici Gaming can farm anywhere with impunity. Sound familiar? Upon hearing this, one might think this is another example of Burning’s Medusa turtling in his base against all odds. Yet strangely enough, they didn’t need to, for VG was unable to even reach the base. Time and time again BG stalled out their attacks at the T2 tower or out in the open. As usual for the tournament, BG managed to extract hidden resources from their position and negated the impact of most enemy heroes even at a great deficit.









A typical VG maneuver: show themselves in the middle lane, then make an extremely aggressive/rapid smoke behind the tower and attempt to catch a hero rotating to a safer lane. Here they immediately kill Burning before his team can support him, starting a 4v4 fight that Super soon arrives to.



Burning has always been seen by his peers as the ultimate, ever-reliable carry, while some fans call him overrated. One of the reasons he’s so reliable is that no matter how far behind Burning is, he always has buyback. In this patch especially, early buybacks against a strong initiation team like VG have enormous potential. If VG burn all their blink disables to start the fight 5v4 and you buyback, you can fight them on even ground and potentially get major returns; the rubberband bounty kill more than offsets any buyback cost.



VG’s clever gank culls Burning, but Rotk hits a brilliant Chronosphere that seals off Fy and Fenrir while also killing Black and Ice3. Though Rotk pays the price of death for this, his zoning presence allow his teammates to clean up. Super, holding the aegis, gets disabled until his teammates have fallen, and then is focused down twice.









The most remarkable part about this fight is that BG displayed that built-in Rotk redundancy: their draft contained a lot of extra potential within it, so they could win a fight 15k behind even with a patented wasted chrono into death combo. The initial stone gaze netted a crucial kill on Nyx Assassin, and afterwards BG made an orderly withdrawal.



As strange as it seems, the retreat was not something VG could punish despite their sizeable lead. Fy attempted a killing blow, but iceice’s prescient movement managed to get to preempetively reach maximum swap range and pulled Burning back. The instant swap not only saved Burning, but also iceice, as he managed to walk into the rear just before the VG heavy hitters got in range.



The small little movements of the BG backline really paid off, as they remained just beyond of VG, who could no longer burst down Burning either. This realization forced VG to flee, and as usual, BG netted two extra kills during the hunt. VG had a large money advantage, but looking at this you’d have never guessed it: all the incremental advantages built up by BG’s good micro decisions apparently weighed more.









Although by this point the Gods had reduced the gold deficit to <15k and had reached the lategame with Medusa/Void, it is still worth watching to see the ‘final form’ of BG’s lineup. 2 Chronos . In all these fights, VG’s heroes either could not participate, or they were disabled and getting focused down. As you are probably getting used to by now, BG consistently found ways to extract maximum value out of their heroes, while preventing most of the enemies from doing much at all.









vs. Secret: Space Controlling Glass Cannons

Sniper before BKB+Satanic+Bfly is the ultimate glass cannon carry: he sits far out of range of the battle and hits as hard as a howitzer, but wilts like a flower if anyone can get within smacking range. In general, teams naturally preferred to protect Sniper by showing bodies or in front of him and forcing the enemy to engage others first, or packing their lineup with extreme counterinitiation. For example, VG beat Secret by plopping Black’s Medusa in front of Super’s Sniper, with orders to activate Stone Gaze anytime the enemy got close to Super. As extra backup, Fenrir’s Shadow Demon sat ready to disrupt Sniper or any offending miscreant attacking him. Thus Super sat in the rear and murdered everybody without fear of retribution: he dealt 21,000 damage over the course of the game, with nobody else over 9,000.



Big God Team Secret







Rather than this boring approach, however, Big God paired the ultra-fragile Sniper with another all-offense carry, Juggernaut. This is reminiscent of Lanm’s “Mad Genius” TI4 drafts: BG drafted a fragile Sniper/Jug dual core, but with no barrier to stick in front of them. In theory, the concept was simple: Rotk’s Bat jumps in and grabs someone while Lanm Global Silences to stop any counterinitiation, and that hero is slain before the enemy can react. In practice though, Rotk happened. Bat got repeatedly picked off, purchased a useless Shiva’s Guard, and flopped multiple initiations due to his lack of BKB. Yet BG won anyway: Xiao8/Lanm were so smart that they made their seemingly glass draft Rotk-proof.



BG had to start many fights on the backfoot, when their draft was designed for them to initiate. Surprisingly though, BG won most of their fights that game letting Secret attack into them on open ground. Secret completely outmaneuvered them early, with Iceice and Rotk looking lost as normal, but once both sides started bludgeoning each other to death, Secret found their weapon blunted while BG cheerfully gunned down hero after hero. Secret tried starting fights in a variety of ways, but the end result remained the same: Xiao8 got saved from every hookshot while s4 was either impeded by his own teams machinations - Fissure/Cogs - or force staff-kited to death. While BG saved Xiao8 and dealt with the isolated s4+Zai, Burning’s Juggernaut menacingly charged at Secret to zone them out.









Right before this battle, Burning got solo picked off during a questionable Shadow Blade adventure. Yet upon seeing an advantageous position, BG smoked and Rotk boldly initiated 4v5. The dual fissures created a no-mans land between s4 and his team. He quickly perished 1v4, and afterwards BG’s superior ability to fight from max range forced Secret to retreat. Burning bought back, and the chase was on. Arteezy got chased halfway across the map until he was finally brought down at the dire t2 - and the fight started middle!



This fight perfectly illustrated the Big God philosophy. Divide up the battle, focus down one or two enemies while putting fewer of your heroes at risk. Once you gain a numerical advantage, chase relentlessly and mop up. But here BG initiated. What would they do when Secret got the first strike?









This time Xiao8 gets hooked, fissured, and bashed by Secret, but an emergency force staff keeps him alive. Burning immediately dives deep while the rest of BG focuses down s4. The timing on Rotk’s Lasso is of particular importance. Rotk stayed passive in the first phase, saving Xiao8 with a force and waiting patiently while Burning died. Only after s4 died and Arteezy attempted to regroup with his team does Rotk go in and Lasso. With Lasso+Global Silence, BG blows up Arteezy and Kuroky,with the rest of Secret was powerless to resist.









In that fight, it could be deduced, Secret’s downfall came from trying to focus only one hero that his team was ready to bail out. This time it was different: Zai jumped Rubick, while s4 rushed down Sniper. However, BG was ready and s4 quickly became isolated from his team. The keys to this battle were Burning and Rotk, who stood on patrol at the top of the hill. If any Secret hero rushed forward too quickly, they would die alone under lasso and thus they had to stumble around cogs and fissure before they could press forward as a group. During this time poor s4 got kited in circles by the 3 ranged heroes of BG, ultimately dying before reinforcements could make it. Once more BG got up a hero with little cost, then chased down some more after a retreat was sounded.









Even though Burning gets caught in a dubious position, BG still fight admirably into high ground. A couple of key decisions stand out here. First, Rotk lassoed Puppey, not s4. Burning had the aegis and a spin available, so BG were fine leaving him to occupy the rest of Secret and 4v1’ing a threat on the closer side of the fissure. By being forced to initiate on Rotk, Zai effectively gave BG’s backline an extra barrier and sealed his own fate.



After Zai, Puppey, Xiao8 died and Burning lost the aegis, BG looked to reinitiate. Now suddenly Lanm used the Global Silence that he had been saving, and along with a surprise force staff -> stolen Requiem, BG sniped Kuroky. In the ensuing confusion BG momentarily regroup again and wait for the best opportunity.



Perhaps the most interesting factor was the movement towards the end of the fight. If you watch closely, you can see how BG move as a unit, darting in and out at the right times. Meanwhile Arteezy, Kuroky, and s4 appear uncertain on how to best approach it. First Arteezy moved away to avoid the oncoming cavalry charge, leaving Kuroky to the wolves. Then Arteezy went back in as BG retreats, but quickly gets jumped, forcing s4 to blink in and save him. Arteezy backed away when s4 came in, then suddenly entered into the fray right as s4 retreated. Unfortunately, BG showed no mercy and quickly struck him down, gaining a near insurmountable lead.



In every single fight, multiple Secret heroes failed to make anywhere near their potential impact. Enigma got hard countered by the draft, Clockwerk’s targets got forced out of cogs, Troll was focused down, Shadow Fiend was isolated, and Earthshaker was presented no good ultimates. Yet against what other team did Secret’s players do so little in teamfights? None, this was an anomaly, a Big God fueled anomaly. Kuroky had little impact, and a better Clockwerk player would have used cogs to push his target towards his team instead of trapping them inside, like Rotk did against EternalEnvy. But the fact remains that Big God, the team that didn’t make these mistakes, were the casual team.



Though this is unconfirmed, the difference in play might have been from BG pre-planning their fights. Nearly all of these fights could be predicted 15-30 seconds in advance, and BG seem to have had a clear idea of how they would conduct them. For example, except in specific situations, Lanm wouldn't use his Global at the beginning of the fight. Instead he’d often save it for the second phase, when both teams had regrouped and his allies were looking to start phase 2.



For a team that had barely practiced, and Xiao8 who had never played Sniper, BG looked exceptionally refined. Games like this are the best example of a brilliant leader’s impact: there’s a reason why Newbee won TI4.



Final Analysis

What enabled BG to recover from so many deficits and win such a multitude of fights so convincingly? First, Big God's players were the best at focus firing, something that is much more difficult than one might think. After all, the enemy is doing their best to stop you from killing them one by one! Many fights multiple BG heroes would be at low-mid hp, while the enemy would have several high hp heroes and the rest dead. With judicious use of their space controlling abilities and movements BG created scenarios where they could focus down the enemy one at a time and prevent their foe from doing the same. If you look carefully, you'll notice how BG constantly rescued any beleaguered teammates, while oftentimes the enemy was stuck watching their friends die. This situation occurred whether BG defended or initiated.



In the initial fight BG wouldn’t usually kill that many heroes. They used their abilities to disrupt the enemy formation and lower their damage output, just trying to kill 1 or at most 2 heroes in the front. Then they’d always have at least one hero who could chase well, thus turning a rout into a massacre. Of all the teams, actually Cloud 9 did the best at avoiding extra casualties by always conducting early and disciplined retreats. They may have gotten a lot of flak for some horrendous misplays, but they also did some key things right.



The most flamboyant part about BG's strategy is how they used glass cannon cores to control the battleground. For example against Secret, Sniper is a hero that must be focused down or he kills your entire team, Juggernaut can quickly slay 2-3 heroes if briefly ignored, and Batrider’s lasso is a mighty threat to high impact heroes. In many of these fights the mere threat of one of these 3 heroes forced Secret to back up or halt their forward movement for a moment, thus allowing BG to kill anyone too far isolated.



In many of these fights, the BG players moved as though they were chess pieces controlled by a master. Heroes darted in and out at the right times, dodging or nullifying key enemy initiations and then hurriedly rejoining with the rest of their team. Of special note was how the BG backline constantly weaved back and forth, always staying just out of range of any threats but ready to move close enough to make a big play. Whether it was Lanm's max range Lion spells and multi-hero Impales, iceice's robotic max-range instant swaps, or the big Rubick spell usage, these two always stayed alive and delivered far more impact than their enemy counterparts. Lanm's Witch Doctor also deserves credit, for he somehow reliably managed get off all of his spells, and live to tell the tale. Much of this success came from various micro plays that allowed them to extract more from their position than one would think possible. It is telling that in all of the static position fights BG took, often from extreme deficits, their supports died in at most 10% of them. Above all else, BG were extremely good at keeping formation when it mattered.



Deficiencies

Secret has gotten a lot of flak for being unflexible and using up all their strats in the group stages, but Big God was inevitably going to be a much more rigid team. The difference is that BG's rigidity did not originate from their drafts or systems, but rather playstyle. They showed how widely different drafts could lead to their ideal gameplay, and although teams first-banned their main weapon - Medusa- after a certain point, they possessed many other options.



What BG needed to win games versus the top teams were lineups that could force and win 5v5 fights. A team with Burning and Xiao8 is always going to be canny enough to know whenever the enemy 5 man smoked, and so as long as BG had the right heroes to take those even teamfights, they would reliably come out ahead. This does not refer to ordinary 5v5 teamfight prowess, with mass aoe ultimates like Tide+Void+Enigma+Magnus. Rather, BG wanted a dual core lineup that possessed heroes who could make powerful threats or alter the battlefield, and thus seize valuable positions from the enemy. Having two strong core heroes was critical, because often one of them would either be focused or devoted to zoning out the enemy backline, requiring the other to do the heavy lifting. Xiao8 and Burning rarely starred in the same fight, as one would usually be creating a scenario where the rest of his team could dominate.



Several of their key losses came from running objectively good lineups that, based on their needs as stated above, they were simply unable execute well. For example in g3 against EG, Xiao8 drafted himself Batrider and gave Rotk Axe to complement Burning's Antimage. This double initiation, 4p1 lineup was more akin to something VG would run: chaos creating heroes who would break up battles into isolated chunks and win all of them due to superior skill and coordination. Unfortunately, this was not BG's forte. They performed quite poorly in chaotic, multi-screen fights where their allies had to instinctively know what the others were planning, and BG didn't have that capability. When iceice fought in static, known fights, he almost looked like MMY, but when he was thrown into confused clashes where he needed to coordinate disables with allies off his screen, he contributed much less.



Of course there are other things previously unsaid as well. The fact that it took Big God so many won fights to take the game meant that they were failing on other fronts. Specifically, they got outmaneuvered by all the top teams and conceded an alarming number of solo pickoffs. They almost always started at a disadvantage early on, and had to claw their way back in. The early game support movements were not entirely efficient, in direct contrast to teams like Secret who left their cores lush stacks. They got fewer pickoffs of their own than other top teams, and had suspect map movements in general. Those are all inevitable consequences of being a casual team.



Still, in the end BG overachieved because they quickly determined their strengths and crafted robust lineups that allowed them to play at their best. They used the group stage as a laboratory to experiment with potential plans, unlike Secret who used it to show off their best strategies. Where BG stuck to their strengths in the playoffs, they almost always won. The losses mostly came from deviating from what worked.



It also must be mentioned that Big God is arguably the most leadership-stacked team in history, with 4 players having captained teams to first place in the hardest competitions. This redundancy appeared to not only reduce the burden on each individual player - Xiao8 played brilliantly for example - but also gave them an excess of creative ideas.



Due to the above advantages, it is unsurprising that BG was the most innovative team in the tournament, nor that their developments may have far reaching effects. They presented a sharply contrasting style to VG's previously dominant rapid, chaotic swarming of sharp initiations and fights with unknown information, featuring many heroes jumping from the trees. Unfortunately it looks like the team will dissolve, but it is quite likely their strategies will shape how teams plan and prepare for TI5.





CREDITS

Writer: Ver

Editors: Firebolt145

Graphics: Ninjan

In a way, the LGD vs EHOME showmatch at the Dota Asian Championship was the perfect fit for the theme of the tournament: a shocking display of how teams handle a dubious mechanic. This 2010 Dota 1 classic came from an era when buyback was cheap and had no cooldown. As a result, map control was almost meaningless as any attempt to take high ground would involve fighting enemy heroes with potentially three lives. In this particular game, LGD took the power of defensive buybacks to the extreme and sat four teamfight heroes behind a Medusa, who farmed 762 cs by 56 minutes. Once he was six slotted with a Rapier, a second backup Rapier, and multiple buybacks, ZSMJ attack-moved to victory.Just like back then with teams trying to find the best way to abuse the no buyback limit, the current elephant in the room is the rubberband effect. Previously it would take two lost teamfights to turn a 10k lead into an even game. Now, two lost teamfights turn a 10k lead into a 5-10k deficit. Even though Icefrog has further nerfed buybacks, the extreme reward for kills creates the possibility of fighting 7v5 with buybacks and coming out way ahead despite seemingly “even trades.” The attacking team may choose to play safe and only risk the death of their aegis carrier, but even then, losing one hero can result in a massive swing. For example, contrast these two fights at the exact same game time:To summarise, BG got more gold and slightly less experience for a 1 for 0 than VG got for a 5 for 2, solely because of the relative networth deficit!At TI4, teams came into the tournament with a vast array of different strategies and paradigms of how to best play in the new patch. By the end, only a very limited subset of strategies that all focused on winning early 5v5 deathball fights remained. The patch was solved.At DAC, teams also entered with many different plans, but as the tournament progressed, it seemed rather likely that teams would start shifting towards defensive, high ground teamfight strategies, just like LGD against EHOME. This type of playstyle revolves around having a better lategame, multiple mass aoe-ultimates, and heroes who could either counterinitiate or soak up enemy initiations. It is based on the logic that it doesn’t matter if you forfeit the entire map outside your base if they can never breach high ground. After all, if buybacks mean you can equalize a massive farm disadvantage in just two fights, what’s the point in trying to build up a lead with an inferior lategame?This possibility turned into reality during two haunting Vici Gaming matches, where they “blew” a 16-2, 20k lead against Big God, and then another 20k advantage against LGD. Against LGD, VG simply could not find any openings and their engine sputtered out trying to force high ground. It clearly was a nightmare trying to attack into just a Medusa, let alone with Ravage and Chronosphere to back her up.Against Big God, VG played extremely well to achieve a large lead, but then weren't able to play with the utter precision required to translate that enormous lead into a victory against a BG team playing from their strengths. In this game VG didn’t even manage to break the T2 mid tower, let alone attempting to break the base.And then, of course, there was “the comeback”, Cloud 9’s 30k loss against BG, which will be further analyzed in depth later on. Once again, a Medusa turtle strategy managed to come back from a seemingly nigh-insurmountable deficit.Yet surprisingly, modern Dota strategy, or perhaps this patch, contains a surprising level of sophistication. As the playoffs went on, DAC did not turn into a repeat of LGD vs EHOME. The inflexible Ancient Apparition was ignored, and Faceless Void rarely made an appearance. Only a handful of heroes that excelled at high ground defense were chosen, though teams did made sure to ban Medusa against Burning.In the end, the four best teams at DAC took widely different approaches, and the tournament did not devolve into a showcase of attempts to assault high ground. BG focused heavily on creating static set piece fights and won every game they could do so. Secret attempted to create a farm lead with efficient ganks, laning, and stacks, then heavily punish any midgame mistakes with an immediate barracks attack. EG chose to control the map with a surprise first pick Beastmaster+Storm Spirit combo or various global lineups like Tinker+Lycan+Treant, giving acres of space to Fear+Aui. Lastly, VG continued with their chaotic swarming that almost always won the laning phase and took over the midgame. By the end of the tournament, there was no one single dominant style of play. Either the patch wasn’t solved, or it was just more sophisticated than previous ones. Here’s how it all played out and fit together.From a strategic standpoint, Big God was the most fascinating team at DAC. Put simply, BG was a rare experiment: what happens when you take three all-stars, pair them with two unpredictable players, and have them play relaxed with little practice. Burning, Lanm, and Xiao8 were either the best or second best at their roles in the 2013-2014 season, but at the same time, BG had only played seven scrims in total. Because of BG’s extreme strengths and weaknesses, they also had to run highly polarized strategies. In place of pre-tournament preparation, BG used the round robin as valuable practice time to figure out what they could do best.Dota skill is not something easily quantifiable in a vacuum. Most top players tend to do better with certain styles of play where they can fully bring out their skill, and so it is up to the team to find the most harmonious strategies that let the team function at their best. BG originally started the tournament drafting solid lineups around Burning’s best and meta-relevant heroes, but gradually created a more refined system that amplified their strengths.For all the talk about iceice in the playoffs, he was a big liability in most group matches. Even in the playoffs he looked lost in the laning phase, surely making Lanm wish he was back with MMY. Combined with Rotk’s rather washed up “playmaking”, BG only survived the first 15 minutes by the virtue of Xiao8’s excellent play, and Burning’s reconfirmation as one of the best laners. In almost every playoff game, BG either started the midgame far behind, or even at best.With these extreme deficiencies, how did BG perform so well? Somehow, despite really only practicing in the group stages, BG showed a commendable ability to execute set piece battles better than any other team, while drafting to exploit this strength. These are fights where both sides roughly know each other's position, rarely spanning multiple screens. Any Rotk throws would at least give them some kind of counterplay, and iceice looked like a gifted support in controlled, simple scenarios. Many times it appeared as though BG had worked out their tactical plan before the fight ever started. This one system repeatedly made up for their poor early game, and made BG look like a top tier team with near-perfect synergy.BG often baited the enemy into attacking them by running fragile heroes, then expertly used the hidden resources in their draft to divide and conquer. Enemy supports frequently found themselves bullied away by 1-2 BG heroes, while the rest of BG kited and killed aggressive enemy initiators. It was the Dota equivalent of Napoleon’s Central Position Strategy, as BG would seize the center of the battlefield and minimize the impact of 3-4 enemy heroes with 1-2 of their own while encircling the now isolated enemy frontline. Depending on the situation, sometimes the hero positions remained static, while in other fights BG heroes darted in between the front and middle. When the dust settled, more BG heroes remained alive, and they would regroup and quickly rout the inferior enemy. The perfect game to first examine is their famous 30k comeback against Cloud 9.In brief, C9 took a large early lead with some slick movements and the initiative of Axe+Chen. BG found no counterplay due to iceice+Rotk making zero impact, and as a result, they did not find a single kill until almost 20 minutes in. C9 gathered a 12k gold lead by 15 minutes, which eventually reached 30k. In order to hold out, BG had to extract the maximum value out of their position and play flawlessly with less than ideal heroes. For example, Clockwerk is usually a snowball hero who can completely control the map in the first 20 minutes, but if behind often just hooks in to feed.The most surprising part about BG’s defense is that they only possessed two excellent high ground defenders: Medusa and Ancient Apparition. Bristleback and Clockwerk were picked to bolster BG’s early game, not defend the base, while Lion excels at getting midgame pickoffs. Yet by some magic, BG somehow also drafted a lineup that possessed perfect synergy at holding high ground against C9’s heroes. Despite his nonexistence in the first 20 minutes, Rotk’s Clockwerk, normally a hero that falls off hard, had the impact of a (non-Rotk) Tidehunter.For the first attempt at breaking base, C9 keeps their ranged heroes in the back with aegis Lycan hitting the tower and Axe ready to jump in. EMP is thrown out at the start, forcing Burning’s Medusa back to the fountain to heal. C9 jumps in, and Xiao8’s Bristleback teleports in, pops his BKB and charges like a berserker into the other four C9 heroes, zoning them away while disabling Axe’s blink. C9 has no way to kill him through BKB without EE’s Lycan, who is trapped inside BG’s base by a precisely timed impale -> hookshot -> cogs -> impale. By the time Xiao8’s BKB wears off, Lycan has died twice and C9 cannot win 4v5. The Axe who snowballed harder than a Tusk with 5 Meepos does nothing and outside of an EMP C9 cannot help Envy. Admittedly, C9 did poorly coordinate their Serpent Wards timing and EE aggressively cut the cogs into the base instead of retreating. However, in their defense, with their amazing lead how could anyone have anticipated the fight going so poorly?Here is a clip you will need to rewatch multiple times. In the second fight, C9 learns from their mistakes and immediately focuses Burning down. However, BG actually kills Misery first due to Lanm’s heroic play. After these opening deaths, BG position themselves so that C9 are forced to target Xiao8 with BKB on, and right as he retreats back into BG lines, the patient Rotk makes a play of the tournament. His hookshot+cogs divides EE from his team, ensuring his death despite being in wolf form. Burning is forced to buyback, but once again C9 is routed despite an extremely large lead.It is important to note that C9 did not just stupidly bash their heads against the wall in the exact same manner every time. Instead, each high ground attack went very differently, yet BG fluidly adapted and made the exact moves necessary to hold. In their 3rd attempt, C9 aggressively charges in and attempts to swarm the barracks, but once again Rotk hits a highlight reel initiation and divides C9 in half. It seems as though C9 might be able to kill Rotk, back out, and regroup, but Lanm gets another key Earth Spike, routing C9. These fights almost look as if BG is not behind at all, but that is just the result of exploiting every resource at their disposal for maximum effect.Many people derided Cloud 9 for throwing the game, but in actuality that only happened later on. C9 played all the early fights solidly enough, making only minor misplays against BG’s perfect defense. However, as the game went on they began making more egregious errors. BG was starting to initiate into C9 outside their base despite the massive deficit, and C9, not expecting these gutsy moves, made game losing plays in the BG-fueled panic.Here, for example, C9 is still setting up and not ready to go in yet (Notail is grabbing a creep). Suddenly, BG preempts them and blows up Bone7’s Invoker before his team can rally. The risk in fighting outside the base was offset by making the squishier Invoker the target, and for the fourth time in a row Rotk chops up the C9 battle line, isolating their target and rendering Invoker’s allies helpless. He then proceeds to ignore the Invoker after hooking him, immediately focusing on keeping EE/Notail out. Lanm quickly clues in into Rotk’s plan, and blinks in to disable Bone7. This type of ambitious play clearly upset C9’s equilibrium, for Misery and Fata couldn’t uniformly decide whether to jump in, retreat, or attack the base, while EE unfortunately blocked himself with his own wolves. Instead, BG killed Invoker, the Serpent Wards, and chased down Axe, taking the game one step closer to the dreaded 30k networth Burning Medusa.If BG had waited, like in the previous examples, and allowed C9 to charge up high ground before initiating, they would have given C9 time to focus and prepare a plan. Then, once the situation became chaotic, C9’s players would all know what to do and could execute their own plan. Instead, they attacked C9 well outside the base, something C9 were clearly not prepared for, and thus did not have a prearranged course of action. Contrastingly, iceice had already fired his Ice Blast before Rotk had jumped in, Lanm handled Bone7 after the hookshot, and Rotk used his skills to thwart Notail and Envy. Lastly, Lanm and Xiao8 made the correct decision after killing Bone7 to ignore Misery and chase Fata down, knowing his team wouldn’t be able to save him.Yes, the subsequent fights in this game that ended badly for C9 were more due to them making horrific unforced errors, but up till this point their errors were always forced by BG’s hand. These four fights are worthy of study for any team. Because BG lacked enough of the truly abusive turtle heroes like Magnus, Batrider, Tidehunder, Sniper, or Faceless Void, this in some ways is probably the best executed defense in Dota history. The ways the Clockwerk and Bristleback made C9’s backline irrelevant in four distinctly different scenarios while the rest of their team killed and kited EE and Fata have no equal. These fights looked like the old DK that practiced for twelve hours a day, not a casual group that didn’t practice at all!Though the above game may suggest that BG excelled only at turtling, they were far more versatile than just sitting in their base. BG needed to manufacture specific kinds of fights where there were few unknown or chaotic factors. Once that scenario was created, they consistently made better choices than every other team. Against EG, Burning and company used their same fighting style to win a decisive game 2 in a very different way.In game 1 against Evil Geniuses, EG seized an early lead due to BG’s early fumbled rotations, then using the resulting map control to bury BG in the midgame by exploiting BG’s movements with Storm. BG’s Medusa turtle strat, which looked invincible against C9, was easily shredded apart. So what do Xiao8 and Lanm do once they see EG attempting the same idea in game 2? Bring back a TI4 deathball relic.At first glance, this lineup looked nothing like what BG had been doing well with during the tournament, and they clearly could not have had a reliable pocket strat with their limited practice time. Yet as seen by their play, the Big God brains brilliantly fit together a counter to EG’s formidable Storm/Beastmaster map dominance plan as well as bringing out the best in BG’s players. EG found few openings to create space during the early game and were forced into a series of 5v5 tower defenses earlier than they wanted.The same formula repeated itself in four teamfights in a row. Xiao8’s Razor and Rotk’s Axe stood in front and bullied EG around. Meanwhile, Sumail tried to burst down the BG backline but kept falling short. BG hit the exact timing window where Storm’s massive burst could be negated by Abaddon, and Storm did not have the excess mana needed to jump in, out, and back in to fights. While Sumail got focused down behind enemy lines, the rest of his team couldn’t get close enough to assist.In this specific fight, Universe roars Lanm to prevent him from stopping Sumail’s initiation on the Shadow Shaman, but Rotk manages to catch Sumail as the Shadow Shaman falls. The draft and movement of BG enables them to surround and kill Storm, then turn on the rest of his team without suffering any extra casualties; Xiao8’s tanky Mek Razor took much longer to die 1v4 than it took for Sumail to get disabled and killed.Here, with BG wounded and in full retreat, Universe jumps in first to draw fire and probably create an opening for Sumail. Rotk immediately jumps on the miscreant, leaving iceice vulnerable to an Orchids-death. However, iceice dodges Storm’s initiation and blinks into the trees, leaving Sumail the option of hitting...Lanm? The last thing you want to do as Storm is expend your mana on a hero you can’t even focus down, but Burning had darted to the left to slay Universe. This enables Lanm to use his spells to save the heavily focused Xiao8, and gives iceice the chance to hex Sumail from the trees. Once Sumail gets focused down again, EG is routed.Sumail could have played closer to his team, but he was also facing the instant death threat of Shadow Shaman + Axe blinking on him. Additionally, his deep, risky initiations were quite predictable after seeing many earlier games. The timing worked out so that Sumail’s mana tank ran dry before BG’s zoning heroes disintegrated, allowing BG to rout the remaining heroes 5v4. The generally weak Lord of Avernus made a massive impact in this game, with Evil Geniuses so concerned about him that he, the poor 5th position support, ate the Beastmaster’s Primal Roar just to let Sumail possibly get an initiating kill on another support! That is the sure sign of an outstanding draft.The score is 16-2 at 15 minutes. Big God is completely unable to farm at their towers without fear of instant death, while Vici Gaming can farm anywhere with impunity. Sound familiar? Upon hearing this, one might think this is another example of Burning’s Medusa turtling in his base against all odds. Yet strangely enough, they didn’t need to, for VG was unable to even reach the base. Time and time again BG stalled out their attacks at the T2 tower or out in the open. As usual for the tournament, BG managed to extract hidden resources from their position and negated the impact of most enemy heroes even at a great deficit.A typical VG maneuver: show themselves in the middle lane, then make an extremely aggressive/rapid smoke behind the tower and attempt to catch a hero rotating to a safer lane. Here they immediately kill Burning before his team can support him, starting a 4v4 fight that Super soon arrives to.Burning has always been seen by his peers as the ultimate, ever-reliable carry, while some fans call him overrated. One of the reasons he’s so reliable is that no matter how far behind Burning is, he always has buyback. In this patch especially, early buybacks against a strong initiation team like VG have enormous potential. If VG burn all their blink disables to start the fight 5v4 and you buyback, you can fight them on even ground and potentially get major returns; the rubberband bounty kill more than offsets any buyback cost.VG’s clever gank culls Burning, but Rotk hits a brilliant Chronosphere that seals off Fy and Fenrir while also killing Black and Ice3. Though Rotk pays the price of death for this, his zoning presence allow his teammates to clean up. Super, holding the aegis, gets disabled until his teammates have fallen, and then is focused down twice.The most remarkable part about this fight is that BG displayed that built-in Rotk redundancy: their draft contained a lot of extra potential within it, so they could win a fight 15k behind even with a patented wasted chrono into death combo. The initial stone gaze netted a crucial kill on Nyx Assassin, and afterwards BG made an orderly withdrawal.As strange as it seems, the retreat was not something VG could punish despite their sizeable lead. Fy attempted a killing blow, but iceice’s prescient movement managed to get to preempetively reach maximum swap range and pulled Burning back. The instant swap not only saved Burning, but also iceice, as he managed to walk into the rear just before the VG heavy hitters got in range.The small little movements of the BG backline really paid off, as they remained just beyond of VG, who could no longer burst down Burning either. This realization forced VG to flee, and as usual, BG netted two extra kills during the hunt. VG had a large money advantage, but looking at this you’d have never guessed it: all the incremental advantages built up by BG’s good micro decisions apparently weighed more.Although by this point the Gods had reduced the gold deficit to <15k and had reached the lategame with Medusa/Void, it is still worth watching to see the ‘final form’ of BG’s lineup. 2 Chronos . In all these fights, VG’s heroes either could not participate, or they were disabled and getting focused down. As you are probably getting used to by now, BG consistently found ways to extract maximum value out of their heroes, while preventing most of the enemies from doing much at all.Sniper before BKB+Satanic+Bfly is the ultimate glass cannon carry: he sits far out of range of the battle and hits as hard as a howitzer, but wilts like a flower if anyone can get within smacking range. In general, teams naturally preferred to protect Sniper by showing bodies or in front of him and forcing the enemy to engage others first, or packing their lineup with extreme counterinitiation. For example, VG beat Secret by plopping Black’s Medusa in front of Super’s Sniper, with orders to activate Stone Gaze anytime the enemy got close to Super. As extra backup, Fenrir’s Shadow Demon sat ready to disrupt Sniper or any offending miscreant attacking him. Thus Super sat in the rear and murdered everybody without fear of retribution: he dealt 21,000 damage over the course of the game, with nobody else over 9,000.Rather than this boring approach, however, Big God paired the ultra-fragile Sniper with another all-offense carry, Juggernaut. This is reminiscent of Lanm’s “Mad Genius” TI4 drafts: BG drafted a fragile Sniper/Jug dual core, but with no barrier to stick in front of them. In theory, the concept was simple: Rotk’s Bat jumps in and grabs someone while Lanm Global Silences to stop any counterinitiation, and that hero is slain before the enemy can react. In practice though, Rotk happened. Bat got repeatedly picked off, purchased a useless Shiva’s Guard, and flopped multiple initiations due to his lack of BKB. Yet BG won anyway: Xiao8/Lanm were so smart that they made their seemingly glass draft Rotk-proof.BG had to start many fights on the backfoot, when their draft was designed for them to initiate. Surprisingly though, BG won most of their fights that game letting Secret attack into them on open ground. Secret completely outmaneuvered them early, with Iceice and Rotk looking lost as normal, but once both sides started bludgeoning each other to death, Secret found their weapon blunted while BG cheerfully gunned down hero after hero. Secret tried starting fights in a variety of ways, but the end result remained the same: Xiao8 got saved from every hookshot while s4 was either impeded by his own teams machinations - Fissure/Cogs - or force staff-kited to death. While BG saved Xiao8 and dealt with the isolated s4+Zai, Burning’s Juggernaut menacingly charged at Secret to zone them out.Right before this battle, Burning got solo picked off during a questionable Shadow Blade adventure. Yet upon seeing an advantageous position, BG smoked and Rotk boldly initiated 4v5. The dual fissures created a no-mans land between s4 and his team. He quickly perished 1v4, and afterwards BG’s superior ability to fight from max range forced Secret to retreat. Burning bought back, and the chase was on. Arteezy got chased halfway across the map until he was finally brought down at the dire t2 - and the fight started middle!This fight perfectly illustrated the Big God philosophy. Divide up the battle, focus down one or two enemies while putting fewer of your heroes at risk. Once you gain a numerical advantage, chase relentlessly and mop up. But here BG initiated. What would they do when Secret got the first strike?This time Xiao8 gets hooked, fissured, and bashed by Secret, but an emergency force staff keeps him alive. Burning immediately dives deep while the rest of BG focuses down s4. The timing on Rotk’s Lasso is of particular importance. Rotk stayed passive in the first phase, saving Xiao8 with a force and waiting patiently while Burning died. Only after s4 died and Arteezy attempted to regroup with his team does Rotk go in and Lasso. With Lasso+Global Silence, BG blows up Arteezy and Kuroky,with the rest of Secret was powerless to resist.In that fight, it could be deduced, Secret’s downfall came from trying to focus only one hero that his team was ready to bail out. This time it was different: Zai jumped Rubick, while s4 rushed down Sniper. However, BG was ready and s4 quickly became isolated from his team. The keys to this battle were Burning and Rotk, who stood on patrol at the top of the hill. If any Secret hero rushed forward too quickly, they would die alone under lasso and thus they had to stumble around cogs and fissure before they could press forward as a group. During this time poor s4 got kited in circles by the 3 ranged heroes of BG, ultimately dying before reinforcements could make it. Once more BG got up a hero with little cost, then chased down some more after a retreat was sounded.Even though Burning gets caught in a dubious position, BG still fight admirably into high ground. A couple of key decisions stand out here. First, Rotk lassoed Puppey, not s4. Burning had the aegis and a spin available, so BG were fine leaving him to occupy the rest of Secret and 4v1’ing a threat on the closer side of the fissure. By being forced to initiate on Rotk, Zai effectively gave BG’s backline an extra barrier and sealed his own fate.After Zai, Puppey, Xiao8 died and Burning lost the aegis, BG looked to reinitiate. Now suddenly Lanm used the Global Silence that he had been saving, and along with a surprise force staff -> stolen Requiem, BG sniped Kuroky. In the ensuing confusion BG momentarily regroup again and wait for the best opportunity.Perhaps the most interesting factor was the movement towards the end of the fight. If you watch closely, you can see how BG move as a unit, darting in and out at the right times. Meanwhile Arteezy, Kuroky, and s4 appear uncertain on how to best approach it. First Arteezy moved away to avoid the oncoming cavalry charge, leaving Kuroky to the wolves. Then Arteezy went back in as BG retreats, but quickly gets jumped, forcing s4 to blink in and save him. Arteezy backed away when s4 came in, then suddenly entered into the fray right as s4 retreated. Unfortunately, BG showed no mercy and quickly struck him down, gaining a near insurmountable lead.In every single fight, multiple Secret heroes failed to make anywhere near their potential impact. Enigma got hard countered by the draft, Clockwerk’s targets got forced out of cogs, Troll was focused down, Shadow Fiend was isolated, and Earthshaker was presented no good ultimates. Yet against what other team did Secret’s players do so little in teamfights? None, this was an anomaly, a Big God fueled anomaly. Kuroky had little impact, and a better Clockwerk player would have used cogs to push his target towards his team instead of trapping them inside, like Rotk did against EternalEnvy. But the fact remains that Big God, the team that didn’t make these mistakes, were the casual team.Though this is unconfirmed, the difference in play might have been from BG pre-planning their fights. Nearly all of these fights could be predicted 15-30 seconds in advance, and BG seem to have had a clear idea of how they would conduct them. For example, except in specific situations, Lanm wouldn't use his Global at the beginning of the fight. Instead he’d often save it for the second phase, when both teams had regrouped and his allies were looking to start phase 2.For a team that had barely practiced, and Xiao8 who had never played Sniper, BG looked exceptionally refined. Games like this are the best example of a brilliant leader’s impact: there’s a reason why Newbee won TI4.What enabled BG to recover from so many deficits and win such a multitude of fights so convincingly? First, Big God's players were the best at focus firing, something that is much more difficult than one might think. After all, the enemy is doing their best to stop you from killing them one by one! Many fights multiple BG heroes would be at low-mid hp, while the enemy would have several high hp heroes and the rest dead. With judicious use of their space controlling abilities and movements BG created scenarios where they could focus down the enemy one at a time and prevent their foe from doing the same. If you look carefully, you'll notice how BG constantly rescued any beleaguered teammates, while oftentimes the enemy was stuck watching their friends die. This situation occurred whether BG defended or initiated.In the initial fight BG wouldn’t usually kill that many heroes. They used their abilities to disrupt the enemy formation and lower their damage output, just trying to kill 1 or at most 2 heroes in the front. Then they’d always have at least one hero who could chase well, thus turning a rout into a massacre. Of all the teams, actually Cloud 9 did the best at avoiding extra casualties by always conducting early and disciplined retreats. They may have gotten a lot of flak for some horrendous misplays, but they also did some key things right.The most flamboyant part about BG's strategy is how they used glass cannon cores to control the battleground. For example against Secret, Sniper is a hero that must be focused down or he kills your entire team, Juggernaut can quickly slay 2-3 heroes if briefly ignored, and Batrider’s lasso is a mighty threat to high impact heroes. In many of these fights the mere threat of one of these 3 heroes forced Secret to back up or halt their forward movement for a moment, thus allowing BG to kill anyone too far isolated.In many of these fights, the BG players moved as though they were chess pieces controlled by a master. Heroes darted in and out at the right times, dodging or nullifying key enemy initiations and then hurriedly rejoining with the rest of their team. Of special note was how the BG backline constantly weaved back and forth, always staying just out of range of any threats but ready to move close enough to make a big play. Whether it was Lanm's max range Lion spells and multi-hero Impales, iceice's robotic max-range instant swaps, or the big Rubick spell usage, these two always stayed alive and delivered far more impact than their enemy counterparts. Lanm's Witch Doctor also deserves credit, for he somehow reliably managed get off all of his spells, and live to tell the tale. Much of this success came from various micro plays that allowed them to extract more from their position than one would think possible. It is telling that in all of the static position fights BG took, often from extreme deficits, their supports died in at most 10% of them. Above all else, BG were extremely good at keeping formation when it mattered.Secret has gotten a lot of flak for being unflexible and using up all their strats in the group stages, but Big God was inevitably going to be a much more rigid team. The difference is that BG's rigidity did not originate from their drafts or systems, but rather playstyle. They showed how widely different drafts could lead to their ideal gameplay, and although teams first-banned their main weapon - Medusa- after a certain point, they possessed many other options.What BG needed to win games versus the top teams were lineups that could force and win 5v5 fights. A team with Burning and Xiao8 is always going to be canny enough to know whenever the enemy 5 man smoked, and so as long as BG had the right heroes to take those even teamfights, they would reliably come out ahead. This does not refer to ordinary 5v5 teamfight prowess, with mass aoe ultimates like Tide+Void+Enigma+Magnus. Rather, BG wanted a dual core lineup that possessed heroes who could make powerful threats or alter the battlefield, and thus seize valuable positions from the enemy. Having two strong core heroes was critical, because often one of them would either be focused or devoted to zoning out the enemy backline, requiring the other to do the heavy lifting. Xiao8 and Burning rarely starred in the same fight, as one would usually be creating a scenario where the rest of his team could dominate.Several of their key losses came from running objectively good lineups that, based on their needs as stated above, they were simply unable execute well. For example in g3 against EG, Xiao8 drafted himself Batrider and gave Rotk Axe to complement Burning's Antimage. This double initiation, 4p1 lineup was more akin to something VG would run: chaos creating heroes who would break up battles into isolated chunks and win all of them due to superior skill and coordination. Unfortunately, this was not BG's forte. They performed quite poorly in chaotic, multi-screen fights where their allies had to instinctively know what the others were planning, and BG didn't have that capability. When iceice fought in static, known fights, he almost looked like MMY, but when he was thrown into confused clashes where he needed to coordinate disables with allies off his screen, he contributed much less.Of course there are other things previously unsaid as well. The fact that it took Big God so many won fights to take the game meant that they were failing on other fronts. Specifically, they got outmaneuvered by all the top teams and conceded an alarming number of solo pickoffs. They almost always started at a disadvantage early on, and had to claw their way back in. The early game support movements were not entirely efficient, in direct contrast to teams like Secret who left their cores lush stacks. They got fewer pickoffs of their own than other top teams, and had suspect map movements in general. Those are all inevitable consequences of being a casual team.Still, in the end BG overachieved because they quickly determined their strengths and crafted robust lineups that allowed them to play at their best. They used the group stage as a laboratory to experiment with potential plans, unlike Secret who used it to show off their best strategies. Where BG stuck to their strengths in the playoffs, they almost always won. The losses mostly came from deviating from what worked.It also must be mentioned that Big God is arguably the most leadership-stacked team in history, with 4 players having captained teams to first place in the hardest competitions. This redundancy appeared to not only reduce the burden on each individual player - Xiao8 played brilliantly for example - but also gave them an excess of creative ideas.Due to the above advantages, it is unsurprising that BG was the most innovative team in the tournament, nor that their developments may have far reaching effects. They presented a sharply contrasting style to VG's previously dominant rapid, chaotic swarming of sharp initiations and fights with unknown information, featuring many heroes jumping from the trees. Unfortunately it looks like the team will dissolve, but it is quite likely their strategies will shape how teams plan and prepare for TI5. Writer