DAC - The Enigma of Team Secret March 2nd, 2015 16:46 GMT Text by itsbluething Graphics by Ninjan

The Enigma of Team Secret

Secret at DAC



The Draft

The Playstyle

Toppling Secret

Out, But Not Yet Beaten



Liquipedia





With the additions of Zai and Arteezy to their star studded lineup, all eyes were on the new Team Secret entering DAC. How would the team adapt and switch up their positions to fit their new additions? Would they have enough time before DAC to be able to mesh as a team and to figure out new strategies and drafts? How would they fare in a tournament that had the best of the west coming to clash with the east on Chinese home turf?



It soon became apparent that Secret had by no means been wasting time with their new members. After a convincing 15-0 run through the group stages, they were poised to take the playoffs by storm. It seemed like the stars had aligned for Secret. While the other three teams in the top four (BG, EG, and VG) also had respectable runs (all of them going 11-4), none looked as terrifying or as intimidating as Team Secret. Unfortunately, Secret would surprise everybody once more by being eliminated from the playoffs before making it to the finals, dropping series to VG and EG, both of whom had stellar performances against the titans of the group stage. While 3rd place at an international tournament is nothing to scoff at, everybody wants to know: what happened? Did they choke? Did VG and EG figure out some glaring flaw in their strategy? What caused this team of superstars to come crashing down?



Secret’s overall strategy focusing on ensuring a strong midgame can be very formidable if successful. However, their strategy had some flaws and vulnerabilities that teams could take advantage of. Though their drafts usually had a formidable midgame, they required a relatively successful early game to come online; therefore, their laning stage was susceptible to aggressive early play, which denied Secret easy farm for their cores. In addition, their predictable lineups and limited hero pool left them vulnerable to being outdrafted. They usually lacked strong teamfight ults such as Ravage and Epicenter and oftentimes their drafts were also weak in the ultra-lategame. Still, even with its flaws, Secret’s tri-core drafting style was one well worth taking the time to understand and analyze.

The Draft

Puppey’s drafts are the foundation for Team Secret’s strategy, and will always end up setting the tone of the game. As many have noticed, Secret tends to pick a lot of the same heroes, and their lineups functioned more or less in the same way throughout all of DAC. Now obviously, every pro team will deviate from their standard style here and there with some unusual pickups or different strategies, but Secret generally tends to run this kind of team. When Puppey drafts, his goal is simple: to secure an advantageous midgame through a safe and defensive earlygame. To achieve that goal, he tends to pick from a small pool of heroes that bring certain skills to the table. One such example can be found here:





Arteezy Arteezy

Kuroky Kuroky

Puppey Puppey

S4 S4

zai zai



Here we can see a very standard Secret style lineup. For the support picks, we see Puppey and Kuroky on Chen and Lion, respectively. The two form a strong duo that can roam and be active around the map. Their job is to stabilize the lanes and ensure that their three cores get the farm they need. Puppey tends to prioritize heroes that bail them out of poor engagements, farm out the jungle to get more xp and gold out of the map, and scale well into the mid and lategame. In this particular case, Puppey’s Chen would farm the jungle and provide the Hand of God to bail them out of poor engagements, while Kuroky’s lion would pick up a blink and get off some crucial hexes and stuns in the mid-game.



Of course, Secret’s supports would be nothing without their cores. By having a strong roaming support pair, Secret is able to run tri-core lineups that become powerful and allow them to take control of the map during the midgame. For Zai and s4, Puppey picks up heroes who have powerful tempo-controlling abilities (heroes like Puck or Axe) or heroes that are a complete nuisance, ones that require constant attention and rotations to keep in check (Broodmother, Bristleback). By doing so, Puppey gets Secret more space mid game and, in the event that Arteezy has a poor earlygame, allows Zai to carry the team during the mid-game until the position 1 player can catch up in farm.



And speaking of the carry, the last piece in this set is Arteezy on the position 1 carry mid. Though confined to a small hero pool, mainly Lycan and Shadow Fiend, Arteezy is able to use the mid lane in order to get experience and farm safely. Should he have any trouble or should a support need some gold, he can easily rotate into the jungle. Simple, efficient, and effective. Arteezy is Secret’s closer; once he gets online Secret can be very aggressive, take more map control, and end the game.



Of course, the draft is one thing, and the execution is another. What was it about this strategy that was so difficult to deal with? And what did teams in the playoffs manage to figure out?

The Playstyle

As mentioned earlier, Team Secret’s playstyle has one goal: to secure a midgame lead for their tri-core through a stable earlygame. Kuroky and Puppey are the players who make this happen. The supports picks rotate around the map to make space for the cores to farm. It’s important to note that Secret’s supports are reactive, as opposed to being proactive. Given the opportunity, Secret would love to be left alone to quietly outfarm the enemy team with their jungling support and strong midgame heroes, save for perhaps a couple of ganks on a few choice targets. Puppey’s Chen is often a good litmus test for the condition of the game; sometimes he will send a creep to harass the enemy mid laner and give Arteezy an easier time; other times he will stay in the jungle to farm a quick mek, giving them the edge in early engagements. It’s no exaggeration to say that the supports are the key to Secret’s early game.



Assuming that the early game goes well for Secret, they will now seek to take control of the map and begin to smother the enemy. Because all their cores need are one or two items they come online very quickly and take map control, which enables them to steadily deprive their opponents of space as Arteezy gets a few big items up to end the game with.





In this series against Na’vi, Secret displays the ease with which they assert dominance over the map very early in.



This style in which they slowly stifle their enemies is what Secret are so well known for. They secure an early game advantage in order to leverage their strong mid game heroes immediately and begin to crush their opponents with their global presence and overall map pressure, all while steadily out-farming the enemy team and eclipsing them in the net worth.



In the above game from Secret vs Na’vi, Na’vi’s complete lack of vision is easily noticeable. Secret, with the aid of Zai’s Broodmother, were able to push in quickly and take control of the Dire’s jungle, suffocating Na’vi of farm and allowing them to easily dominate them in fights. If they have to recover from an early game deficit, usually the team will try to make space for Arteezy and stall until he gets strong, a fairly successful strategy unless Zai happens to be too underfarmed to be able to carry the midgame.



Should the game ever go late, their lineup’s respectable late game power coupled with their midgame advantage is usually enough to allow them to close the game. In the few games where they have to recover from a disadvantage early on, after slowly chipping at the enemy team’s outer towers, they wait for a good opportunity and use Arteezy’s Lycan to backdoor the throne to narrowly take a win.





Cloud9 learns the hard way about keeping tps on them versus a Lycan.



Overall, the style strikes a strong balance between your typical offensive and defensive strategies. Secret’s supports are much stronger than they would have been if they ran the old-school 4 protect 1 strategy, while being a lot less all-in than your typical deathball. It’s very flexible lane-wise; the supports can rotate around to help lanes that are struggling and the offlane and safelane farming heroes can oftentimes be switched around. This ensures stable lanes and makes sure that all the cores get farm.

Toppling Secret

Now that we know what makes Secret tick, how can they be beaten? Secret actually has a few key vulnerabilities throughout the stages of the game that, if taken advantage of, can cause their game plan to crumble. Enemy teams can take advantage of them and either sabotage their early game to prevent midgame dominance, or ensure a victory in the late game.



One of Secret’s more apparent vulnerabilities is Puppey’s tendency to let certain heroes through the draft. Oftentimes Secret will let some strong picks slip through, because they’re confident that they can deal with it.



However, this isn’t a shortcoming that can easily be taken advantage of; Secret is a skilled enough team that they actually can oftentimes deal with choice picks or counterpicks from an opposing team. Zai had significantly less trouble with FATA’s axe than he did with Universe’s, for example.



Another big weakness lies in the way that Secret relies on their players during certain periods of the game. Earlygame Secret relies heavily on its supports to secure exp and farm on heroes that might struggle in lane versus the enemy team, while in the midgame the team relies on Zai to pave the way for s4 and RTZ to get farm.





Due to the pressure applied by Vici’s powerful roaming support duo combination, neither Zai nor s4 were able to make up for poor laning phase RTZ had mid.

Secret also tends to shy away from heroes with big teamfight ults, since they tend to be fairly weak during the early game and have a fair amount of downtime during the midgame. This lack of strong initiation sometimes cripples their ability to take teamfights decisively in the mid and lategame and can be particularly noticeable when Secret lacks a sizable lead. This, in conjunction with Puppey’s refusal to draft hard carries such as Anti-Mage or Medusa for Arteezy, means that Secret’s lineups tend to fall off in the ultra-lategame.





Despite their strong start, Secret ends up being thwarted in the long run by EG’s strong teamfighting capabilities, which allowed them to recover from their bad start and get their Medusa farmed.

In order to beat Secret and take advantage of their vulnerabilities, there were a few different strategies that various teams used. One thing that some teams would do was take advantage of Secret’s narrow hero pool and predictable drafts. By banning and block picking some of Secret’s favorites, the opposing team can limit Secret’s options and draft to deal with their remaining heroes.



One specific implementation of this strategy that C9 used was to ban Puppey heroes; doing so limited Secret’s flexibility in the laning stage and denying him Chen and Enchantress meant that he couldn’t babysit Arteezy with a creep mid, nor farm up a quick mek to boost their fighting power in the early-midgame.



A particularly reliable way to shut down Secret is to interfere with their early game. Picking heroes that are strong at laning or good at ganking allows enemy teams to pressure Secret’s cores in the laning phase, and maybe even snag a kill or two, while picking strong counter-gankers allows teams to disrupt the rotations Secret love to do in the early and mid-game to make space for their cores to farm. Picking a strong mid laner like Sniper or Tinker to limit Arteezy’s farm mid is a very effective way to slow them down, as it both cripples Arteezy and forces rotations from the supports. A good example is the strong support duo that VG did in game 3 of their series against Secret. The Shadow Demon/Mirana combo was able to harass and pressure Secret very effectively in the early/midgame and prevent them from recovering from Arteezy’s poor lane farm against Sniper in the midgame.



The important thing to realize is that Secret’s strategy is fundamentally a greedy one. Running a tri-core is very costly to do and difficult to pull off; by overcoming Secret’s earlygame support duo safety blanket and taking away Zai, their midgame safety net, VG was able to take a decisive game 3 by 30 minutes.













Here we see Secret confidently picking up the Broodmother, despite EG’s Axe and Tinker pickups. Zai would be unable to provide Team Secret the traction they needed midgame to make up for Arteezy’s failure in the mid lane against tinker.



Above is an excellent example of EG exploiting several of Secret’s weaknesses. By drafting a Tinker against what they knew would be a mid Medusa, Sumail was easily able to deny Arteezy farm middle. And, as mentioned earlier, the Axe was able to both serve as a block pick and shut down Zai’s Broodmother. Ironically enough, come the midgame, EG would be the one to have dominance over the map during the mid game. Though Arteezy and Zai were both able to find a respectable amount of farm, they were unable to cope with EG’s gold lead, and EG would be able to chip away at Secret’s T3s and close the game decisively.



Unfortunately, it seemed that many of the teams were able to find and exploit some of Secret’s weaknesses come the playoffs. It’s not too much of a surprise, considering their perfect group stage run; it’s a given that most teams would take the time to develop some strategies to defeat the juggernaut of the group stages. But despite this, Secret still put up a great performance throughout the tournament.

Out, But Not Yet Beaten

Despite their unexpectedly early withdrawal from the tournament, Secret is still a team that constantly impresses. Secret’s core focused draft and playstyle were a very clever innovation at first, allowing them to get the most out of the laning phase and farm out the entire map, acquire a sizable lead in the midgame, and take control of the map, allowing their cores to close the game through a couple of decisive teamfights. It takes advantage of the weakness of traditional defensive trilanes and allows Secret to win by outfarming the enemy team. Though their strategy had been figured out and defeated by the end of the tournament, Secret was still able to put up a very strong showing at DAC and their run there demonstrated that they most definitely still deserved their status as one of the best teams in the world.





CREDITS

Writer: itsBluething

Editors: Sn0_Man

Graphics: Ninjan

Above is an excellent example of EG exploiting several of Secret’s weaknesses. By drafting a Tinker against what they knew would be a mid Medusa, Sumail was easily able to deny Arteezy farm middle. And, as mentioned earlier, the Axe was able to both serve as a block pick and shut down Zai’s Broodmother. Ironically enough, come the midgame, EG would be the one to have dominance over the map during the mid game. Though Arteezy and Zai were both able to find a respectable amount of farm, they were unable to cope with EG’s gold lead, and EG would be able to chip away at Secret’s T3s and close the game decisively.Unfortunately, it seemed that many of the teams were able to find and exploit some of Secret’s weaknesses come the playoffs. It’s not too much of a surprise, considering their perfect group stage run; it’s a given that most teams would take the time to develop some strategies to defeat the juggernaut of the group stages. But despite this, Secret still put up a great performance throughout the tournament.Despite their unexpectedly early withdrawal from the tournament, Secret is still a team that constantly impresses. Secret’s core focused draft and playstyle were a very clever innovation at first, allowing them to get the most out of the laning phase and farm out the entire map, acquire a sizable lead in the midgame, and take control of the map, allowing their cores to close the game through a couple of decisive teamfights. It takes advantage of the weakness of traditional defensive trilanes and allows Secret to win by outfarming the enemy team. Though their strategy had been figured out and defeated by the end of the tournament, Secret was still able to put up a very strong showing at DAC and their run there demonstrated that they most definitely still deserved their status as one of the best teams in the world. twitter.com/itsbluething With the additions of Zai and Arteezy to their star studded lineup, all eyes were on the new Team Secret entering DAC. How would the team adapt and switch up their positions to fit their new additions? Would they have enough time before DAC to be able to mesh as a team and to figure out new strategies and drafts? How would they fare in a tournament that had the best of the west coming to clash with the east on Chinese home turf?It soon became apparent that Secret had by no means been wasting time with their new members. After a convincing 15-0 run through the group stages, they were poised to take the playoffs by storm. It seemed like the stars had aligned for Secret. While the other three teams in the top four (BG, EG, and VG) also had respectable runs (all of them going 11-4), none looked as terrifying or as intimidating as Team Secret. Unfortunately, Secret would surprise everybody once more by being eliminated from the playoffs before making it to the finals, dropping series to VG and EG, both of whom had stellar performances against the titans of the group stage. While 3rd place at an international tournament is nothing to scoff at, everybody wants to know: what happened? Did they choke? Did VG and EG figure out some glaring flaw in their strategy? What caused this team of superstars to come crashing down?Secret’s overall strategy focusing on ensuring a strong midgame can be very formidable if successful. However, their strategy had some flaws and vulnerabilities that teams could take advantage of. Though their drafts usually had a formidable midgame, they required a relatively successful early game to come online; therefore, their laning stage was susceptible to aggressive early play, which denied Secret easy farm for their cores. In addition, their predictable lineups and limited hero pool left them vulnerable to being outdrafted. They usually lacked strong teamfight ults such as Ravage and Epicenter and oftentimes their drafts were also weak in the ultra-lategame. Still, even with its flaws, Secret’s tri-core drafting style was one well worth taking the time to understand and analyze.Puppey’s drafts are the foundation for Team Secret’s strategy, and will always end up setting the tone of the game. As many have noticed, Secret tends to pick a lot of the same heroes, and their lineups functioned more or less in the same way throughout all of DAC. Now obviously, every pro team will deviate from their standard style here and there with some unusual pickups or different strategies, but Secret generally tends to run this kind of team. When Puppey drafts, his goal is simple: to secure an advantageous midgame through a safe and defensive earlygame. To achieve that goal, he tends to pick from a small pool of heroes that bring certain skills to the table. One such example can be found here:Here we can see a very standard Secret style lineup. For the support picks, we see Puppey and Kuroky on Chen and Lion, respectively. The two form a strong duo that can roam and be active around the map. Their job is to stabilize the lanes and ensure that their three cores get the farm they need. Puppey tends to prioritize heroes that bail them out of poor engagements, farm out the jungle to get more xp and gold out of the map, and scale well into the mid and lategame. In this particular case, Puppey’s Chen would farm the jungle and provide the Hand of God to bail them out of poor engagements, while Kuroky’s lion would pick up a blink and get off some crucial hexes and stuns in the mid-game.Of course, Secret’s supports would be nothing without their cores. By having a strong roaming support pair, Secret is able to run tri-core lineups that become powerful and allow them to take control of the map during the midgame. For Zai and s4, Puppey picks up heroes who have powerful tempo-controlling abilities (heroes like Puck or Axe) or heroes that are a complete nuisance, ones that require constant attention and rotations to keep in check (Broodmother, Bristleback). By doing so, Puppey gets Secret more space mid game and, in the event that Arteezy has a poor earlygame, allows Zai to carry the team during the mid-game until the position 1 player can catch up in farm.And speaking of the carry, the last piece in this set is Arteezy on the position 1 carry mid. Though confined to a small hero pool, mainly Lycan and Shadow Fiend, Arteezy is able to use the mid lane in order to get experience and farm safely. Should he have any trouble or should a support need some gold, he can easily rotate into the jungle. Simple, efficient, and effective. Arteezy is Secret’s closer; once he gets online Secret can be very aggressive, take more map control, and end the game.Of course, the draft is one thing, and the execution is another. What was it about this strategy that was so difficult to deal with? And what did teams in the playoffs manage to figure out?As mentioned earlier, Team Secret’s playstyle has one goal: to secure a midgame lead for their tri-core through a stable earlygame. Kuroky and Puppey are the players who make this happen. The supports picks rotate around the map to make space for the cores to farm. It’s important to note that Secret’s supports are reactive, as opposed to being proactive. Given the opportunity, Secret would love to be left alone to quietly outfarm the enemy team with their jungling support and strong midgame heroes, save for perhaps a couple of ganks on a few choice targets. Puppey’s Chen is often a good litmus test for the condition of the game; sometimes he will send a creep to harass the enemy mid laner and give Arteezy an easier time; other times he will stay in the jungle to farm a quick mek, giving them the edge in early engagements. It’s no exaggeration to say that the supports are the key to Secret’s early game.Assuming that the early game goes well for Secret, they will now seek to take control of the map and begin to smother the enemy. Because all their cores need are one or two items they come online very quickly and take map control, which enables them to steadily deprive their opponents of space as Arteezy gets a few big items up to end the game with.This style in which they slowly stifle their enemies is what Secret are so well known for. They secure an early game advantage in order to leverage their strong mid game heroes immediately and begin to crush their opponents with their global presence and overall map pressure, all while steadily out-farming the enemy team and eclipsing them in the net worth.In the above game from Secret vs Na’vi, Na’vi’s complete lack of vision is easily noticeable. Secret, with the aid of Zai’s Broodmother, were able to push in quickly and take control of the Dire’s jungle, suffocating Na’vi of farm and allowing them to easily dominate them in fights. If they have to recover from an early game deficit, usually the team will try to make space for Arteezy and stall until he gets strong, a fairly successful strategy unless Zai happens to be too underfarmed to be able to carry the midgame.Should the game ever go late, their lineup’s respectable late game power coupled with their midgame advantage is usually enough to allow them to close the game. In the few games where they have to recover from a disadvantage early on, after slowly chipping at the enemy team’s outer towers, they wait for a good opportunity and use Arteezy’s Lycan to backdoor the throne to narrowly take a win.Overall, the style strikes a strong balance between your typical offensive and defensive strategies. Secret’s supports are much stronger than they would have been if they ran the old-school 4 protect 1 strategy, while being a lot less all-in than your typical deathball. It’s very flexible lane-wise; the supports can rotate around to help lanes that are struggling and the offlane and safelane farming heroes can oftentimes be switched around. This ensures stable lanes and makes sure that all the cores get farm.Now that we know what makes Secret tick, how can they be beaten? Secret actually has a few key vulnerabilities throughout the stages of the game that, if taken advantage of, can cause their game plan to crumble. Enemy teams can take advantage of them and either sabotage their early game to prevent midgame dominance, or ensure a victory in the late game.One of Secret’s more apparent vulnerabilities is Puppey’s tendency to let certain heroes through the draft. Oftentimes Secret will let some strong picks slip through, because they’re confident that they can deal with it.However, this isn’t a shortcoming that can easily be taken advantage of; Secret is a skilled enough team that they actually can oftentimes deal with choice picks or counterpicks from an opposing team. Zai had significantly less trouble with FATA’s axe than he did with Universe’s, for example.Another big weakness lies in the way that Secret relies on their players during certain periods of the game. Earlygame Secret relies heavily on its supports to secure exp and farm on heroes that might struggle in lane versus the enemy team, while in the midgame the team relies on Zai to pave the way for s4 and RTZ to get farm.Secret also tends to shy away from heroes with big teamfight ults, since they tend to be fairly weak during the early game and have a fair amount of downtime during the midgame. This lack of strong initiation sometimes cripples their ability to take teamfights decisively in the mid and lategame and can be particularly noticeable when Secret lacks a sizable lead. This, in conjunction with Puppey’s refusal to draft hard carries such as Anti-Mage or Medusa for Arteezy, means that Secret’s lineups tend to fall off in the ultra-lategame.In order to beat Secret and take advantage of their vulnerabilities, there were a few different strategies that various teams used. One thing that some teams would do was take advantage of Secret’s narrow hero pool and predictable drafts. By banning and block picking some of Secret’s favorites, the opposing team can limit Secret’s options and draft to deal with their remaining heroes.One specific implementation of this strategy that C9 used was to ban Puppey heroes; doing so limited Secret’s flexibility in the laning stage and denying him Chen and Enchantress meant that he couldn’t babysit Arteezy with a creep mid, nor farm up a quick mek to boost their fighting power in the early-midgame.A particularly reliable way to shut down Secret is to interfere with their early game. Picking heroes that are strong at laning or good at ganking allows enemy teams to pressure Secret’s cores in the laning phase, and maybe even snag a kill or two, while picking strong counter-gankers allows teams to disrupt the rotations Secret love to do in the early and mid-game to make space for their cores to farm. Picking a strong mid laner like Sniper or Tinker to limit Arteezy’s farm mid is a very effective way to slow them down, as it both cripples Arteezy and forces rotations from the supports. A good example is the strong support duo that VG did in game 3 of their series against Secret. The Shadow Demon/Mirana combo was able to harass and pressure Secret very effectively in the early/midgame and prevent them from recovering from Arteezy’s poor lane farm against Sniper in the midgame.The important thing to realize is that Secret’s strategy is fundamentally a greedy one. Running a tri-core is very costly to do and difficult to pull off; by overcoming Secret’s earlygame support duo safety blanket and taking away Zai, their midgame safety net, VG was able to take a decisive game 3 by 30 minutes.