Well, it was a longer run than I expected, but we finally got knocked out in the round of 8, so I guess it’s time to post this. Ratings are based on perceived skill relative to medal, and are in no particular order.

Racc9:

I’m fairly certain throughout all my seasons I’ve said so-and-so player is “the nicest player I’ve ever played with,” which is usually a bit of hyperbole. So let me preface this with BEN IS ACTUALLY THE NICEST PLAYER I’VE EVER PLAYED WITH. Like seriously just listen to this guy.

That said, Ben is probably the most stubborn players I’ve ever met. He’s got his way of playing Dota, and good luck getting him to do anything else. Some of his item/skill builds are just wildly outdated, others I have no idea where he could have gotten the idea that it was viable in the first place. Generally though, his bizarre ideas weren’t too much of a roadblock, and he played a mean Skywrath all season (even if he forgot to buy boots once).

Suggestions for improvement: Try to think critically about your builds and why you do them, instead of blindly copying them from whatever ancient texts you have from ye olde WC3 days.

Personality: 11/10, Skill: 8/10

KBX:

KBX is a low 4k player mid player in a pool of mostly 5k+ mids, playing on a team that never rotated mid, rarely warded anything for him, and generally clowned around in the sidelanes every single game for 10+ minutes straight. He spent most of the season getting the short end of the stick, but almost always managed to come out with some decent items in the midgame. This is more or less what I expect out of my miscellaneous lower mmr core player each season, but KBX went above and beyond on a few notable occasions — he went ham in just about every game we picked Razor, and was pretty impressive considering he doesn’t actually play mid that much (like every other mid player Truck drafts).

Personality-wise he’s a tad on a quiet side, so I don’t have a lot to say other than that he’s a perfectly functional teammate. Probably could stand to inform us a little less frequently that he’s losing mid to their first pick, though. We know.

Suggestions for improvement: Try to establish a hero pool larger than Truckwaffle’s.

Personality: 9/10, Skill: 8/10

Cerys:

Cerys is probably already getting anxious reading this, so I’ll keep it simple. The only two things I really care about with low mmr support players is 1. a desire to play well and at least kind of improve, and 2. the ability to actually comprehend what I’m saying and actually do it. This is actually a surprisingly high bar.

Cerys exceeds expectations on both counts, has never complained about anything in game (after the game in PMs doesn’t count), actually learned a few things this season, and is generally a stellar teammate and A+ friend.

Suggestions for improvement: STOP CLICKING YOUR ITEM HOTKEYS IT PHYSICALLY CAUSES ME PAIN.

Personality: 10/10, Skill: 8/10

OK first off, disclaimer: SHARINGAN IS NOT SOME GOD TIER PLAYER WHO WILL CARRY ALL OF YOUR GAMES, PLEASE DO NOT SECOND ROUND HIM NEXT SEASON OR SOMETHING RETARDED LIKE THAT. This shit happens with these kinds of players in RD2L a lot, and it’ll probably ruin someone’s season.

That said, for his rank, Sharingan was an absolutely phenomenal teammate. This guy has 5 times the hero pool of Truck+KBX combined. He plays Wisp, he plays Chen, he plays Rubick, I don’t think we ever actually brought up a hero the entire season where he was like “yeah I don’t play that.”

I feel like every nearly every lower mmr player in RD2L either falls into the category of “too timid to try to make plays” or “too aggressive and chain feeds.” Sharingan is actually neither — the dude is fucking fearless, but more often than not his aggression leads to positive outcomes, like shoving out a lane I didn’t have to, placing a crazy deep ward somewhere, or just getting a ton of farm over the course of a game. Occasionally it led to some bizarre deaths, but overall his style of play was definitely a net positive for the team.

Outside of the game itself, he was a tad on the quiet side, but overall he and KBX were a lot better than some people I’ve played with who are actual mutes. He also did a lot of pregame scouting of teams we were playing against in playoffs, which was a big help when I was feeling too lazy to do it.

The only issue this season with him was that realistically he should have been our permanent 4 player. Sharingan tends to skimp out on buying support stuff on occasion, and Ben is an obsessive ward buyer, which led to some unusual games where we’d have a Warlock with a glimmer and half an aghs and an SK with no blink dagger at like 20 minutes (seriously).

Suggestions for improvement: Buy more wards.

Skill: 10/10, Personality: 10/10

I’m not going to review Truck’s skill as a player, because I’m fairly certain I’ve made my opinion pretty clear on that over the season. See the Fuckwaffle Diary for more details.

Despite all of the shit I give him, Truck is a fairly solid captain — he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the game (usually), and translates that to concise shotcalling, particularly in the lategame. Having solid teammates who don’t cause a lot of conflict is definitely helpful, but overall the team environment in-game was largely orchestrated by Truck.

He could probably improve in the draft department— I don’t think he went into most of our drafts with much of a plan, and a lot of reserve time got burned early on, which led to us making some poor last picks on occasion (or just outright not picking a hero).

Personality is definitely where Truckwaffle teams shine. His positivity is nearly unbreakable, and his antics lead to the team laughing when he feeds at least like, 50% of the time. This isn’t just a fun team environment thing either, it really does help win games. We won a match 2–1 after losing 8 of our 9 possible barracks in those games, and it took like 4 hours. I honestly think a lot of teams would fall apart in that sort of situation.

Personally, I’d probably still rather have a carry who doesn’t get solo killed by 3k players and has a slightly larger hero puddle, but hey, at least it’s been fun.

Captaincy: 9/10, Personality: 11/10, Skill: no comment.