The TI5 Meta: Secret Plans and Underdogs August 6th, 2015 04:29 GMT Text by Ver Graphics by Opterown Secret Plans and Underdogs

- Drafting Trends

- Offlane Woes

- Stay in the Trees!?

- Mass TP Suicides

- Inefficient Item Choices

- Wisp Emergency Double Suicides?

- Invisibility=/Invincibility

- The TI5 Secret

- Underdogs on Top





Drafting Trends Supports

Consistent with the rest of 6.84, teams have largely drafted lineups with a robust dual core combined with an offlane initiator. The key differentiating choices have come in how they want to balance offense and defense across the roles. For example, the main choice teams make for their support is between Bounty Hunter and Naga Siren. Both lead to completely different gameflows. A team that drafts Bounty Hunter will want to control the map via the threat of ganks and information, while a team with Naga Siren can either play recklessly aggressive and bail themselves out with Song of the Siren (à la Team Empire), or sit defensively and spread out the map by farming with illusions (Evil Geniuses). Bounty Hunter is also the only top hero who can innately counteract the most broken support item Icefrog has ever introduced (Glimmer Cape), while Naga simply gives a team a large margin of error for mistakes. Regardless of whatever they choose, teams will generally round out its lineup with a defensive, adequate farming second support like Earthshaker, Dazzle, Winter Wyvern, Rubick (if Chinese), or Witch Doctor.





Midlane

For mid, or the position 2 role, the main selection is between defensive, deathballish mids, and more flexible, playmaking mids. The former enjoy static fights where they can sit and fire away, while the latter create havoc around the map and deep within the enemy formation during fights. There is some overlap; for example, Dragon Knight can serve as an initiator in a more loose lineup, but he excels more as a beefy frontliner in a static deathball. The flexible Queen of Pain fits well in either situation.





Carry

As for the carry, or the position 1 role, teams primarily choose either split pushing mid-to-lategame heroes like Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer, or early fighting heroes who can turn the tide of the match in the first 15 minutes. Many of the previously discussed mid heroes also can serve as position 1 heroes depending on the kind of fights a team wants to take. For example, one of Team Secret's main strategies that many teams have adapted revolves around having a Shadow Fiend mid and Queen of Pain in the safelane. But outside of the already listed heroes, here are the main routes a team can go:





Offlane

Unlike the other roles, offlane is less of a diversified position this TI. Only a small pool of heroes have been consistently chosen as offlaners. The only real difference in offlane choices is balancing the need for initiation and map control versus raw teamfight power. Some heroes like Tusk combine this well. Traditional teamfight supports like Earthshaker and Sand King also remain a backup option for many teams.







However, unlike previous TI's, there is a large debate between teams on what heroes deserve what priority. While there are a few consistencies every game, such as Leshrac, QoP, Naga, and Gyro getting first banned or picked, the rest is up for grabs. In this somewhat chaotic environment, many teams have seemingly chosen lineups based on the type of fights they feel most comfortable in.



This was best exemplified in the clash of styles between LGD and Empire in game 1, where each team drafted heroes that synergize together in the way they want. Similar to the old VG, Empire's best asset is their ability to suddenly initiate a fight across multiple screens. The wider and more chaotic they can make any fight, the greater likelihood they'll be able to outplay their opponents thanks to their teamplay and inherent trust in one another. On the contrary, LGD, the archetype of the talented, disciplined Chinese team, thrives in controlled scenarios where they can see whole battle at once and make the best decisions. If LGD knows exactly what is going on, they almost always outplay their opponents.



Team Empire LGD Gaming







So how does this play out in game? Including Queen of Pain, Empire has three Blink Daggers available to play like traditional Russians. Anytime Empire spots an enemy, they blink forward, confident they can run away with Naga song. The key distinction lies in how they use their Blink Daggers to rapidly initiate and then blink sideways or further forward to spread out the fights.













This decisive engagement catapulted Empire into a commanding 10k+ net worth lead. With their lineup, LGD was not looking for a fight; they merely wanted to stall and slow the game down. Empire do not allow them this luxury, instantly blinking forward on xiao8. The decisive moment was Silent blinking up beyond LGD's tier 2 tower while Sylar charged forward below LGD's tier 1. This presented a moment of chaos where nobody in the game or stadium had full information, and Empire handled themselves better here than LGD. LGD vacilliated between going after Silent and going bottom without realizing how far Sylar had overextended. The rest of Empire's heroes saw Silent as a distraction and, regrouping with their supports, made the fight a 4 versus Sylar. Then, Empire quickly reengaged on the rest of LGD before they could react, and tore them apart.











This is a moment of truth for the two teams, for it is when Empire's lineup is at their peak and right before LGD's superior lategame has peaked. Empire has an option to slow siege the base, a difficult proposition against KotL and PL spam. Instead, they stick to what has worked previously and mass blink into LGD at an unusual time. Once inside the base, they then maneuver to the sides to spread the fight out. However, this time LGD has more information about the battlefield and reacts far better. Maybe expertly hunts down Silent while dodging Axe's Call while the rest of LGD takes a safe position and whittles away the other Empire frontliners. Once they gain an advantageous position in the fight, LGD regroups and ruthlessly chases down Empire's remaining heroes all the way across the map.



One might object to the viability of the previous example as it was a base defense fight, where the defending team notoriously has a massive advantage. Just a little later, however, LGD attacks uphill into Empire and wins anyway.











The key feature of note in this fight is how LGD controls the entire fight despite Empire holding the superior position and their attempts to spread it out. LGD initiates rapidly with the aegis and then starts grinding away at Empire's heroes. The longer the fight goes on, with a Dazzle, KotL, and PL sitting around unmolested, the greater LGD's chance of winning.



Empire realized they were in a losing proposition and tried to change the tempo by blinking outside the base onto the supports. Silent got flamed for seemingly committing suicide by blinking outside the base and dying, but he wanted to have his other 2 cores join him and kill LGD's backline before the Storm and PL could assist. However this time Sylar threw a wrench in the plan by keeping illusions on both Resolution and Yoky, disabling their blinks until it was too late. As soon as Silent leapt outside, Maybe and Sylar followed while Yoky and Resolution could not. Once again, thanks to having full information of the battlefield, LGD made superior plays and pulled ahead.



Offlane Woes If you closely examine the worst performing players at TI, both on a per team basis and overall, a very large portion of them are quite obviously the offlaners. The standouts include: Sunbhie, Luo, June, March, Bone7, and as insane as it may have sounded just 4 months ago, iceiceice. Many other offlaners not listed here have also put in subpar performances. For example, MoonMeander, Funn1k, DKPhobos, and Yoky have hardly been standout performers on their respective teams.



In some cases, it is simply due to player error, such as March's overzealous charges that kept Newbee in the game against MVP, or Bone7 demoting himself from offlane Prophet to support Prophet by staying in the trees instead of farming the enemy jungle and refusing to upgrade his boots. In many other situations, however, it appears that the emphasis on defensive supports like Winter Wyvern and Dazzle is placing too large of a burden on the offlaner, and many are cracking under the strain. As a counter example, Secret has worked marvelously because of how they split their duties: Zai never has to worry about securing farm thanks to Puppey and Kuroky's movements, and as a result, can concentrate solely on finding the right fights. Some teams' offlaners appear to feel like they have to carry the world, and might be buckling as a result.



This phenomenon may seem confusing, but if you invert the question the answer becomes clearer: why are certain offlaners not dragging down their team? Case in point, rOtK. rOtK has long been seen as a giant liability, not only for his "rOtK plays" (read: consistently feeding first blood) but also for making wishful-at-best plays throughout the game. Yet nobody is going to single him out as underperforming offlaner in either the groups or on the main stage.





Bai "rOtk" Fan

Maybe rOtK has simply stepped it up now that its crunch time. However, it is also likely that the rest of his team sharing his burden has allowed him to play more freely. He isn't under pressure to farm in risky areas while making plays, for DDC and LaNm outfarmed even Secret's selfish support duo. Neither does he worry about always having to start fights at the right times, for his entire team is pinging out predicted movements and ganks, and LaNm/Cty have taken on part of the burden of scouts and initiators. With all that extra backup and synergy in EHOME's lineup, it makes sense that rOtK can adequately do his job without worrying about doing others' as well.



As another example, Yao is clearly the weakest link on otherwise the most talented team in the tournament (LGD), and pre-TI, one might have gotten the sneaking suspicion he has remained on the team more due to friendship than merit. But even when they pick defensive supports, LGD has limited the burden Yao has to bear thanks to Maybe initiating, xiao8 farming, and their generally superb warding. It may have just been a coincidence, but iceiceice also had his best game of the tournament against Cloud 9 on Dark Seer when he was not the single focal point of Vici Gaming's lineup. He certainly performed incredibly on demanding offlane roles in the past, but given his struggles so far it only makes sense for his team to not put too much on his shoulders.



Stay in the Trees!? The have been a lot of positive innovations at TI5, but as an inevitable result, some teams have looked like they are playing in an era when when Batrider was broken. Here are some of the more humorous and impactful reasons that some teams seem stuck in the past. As evident by the title, the most obvious misconception is the tree-hugging ways of certain teams.



Back in 2012, the Chinese carry players would hide behind an empty sidelane creep wave when the enemy went off the map. This way, if the foe's dangerous ganking heroes had smoked and then revealed in another part of the map, the carry could immediately push out the creep wave. At the time this was one of the techniques that separated Burning/Zhou/Sylar (and later, Hao) from everyone else, but it has become commonplace over the years.



Then, thanks to Fnatic and Alliance's evolution of split pushing in 2013, teams have become more and more familiar with the tactic of hiding multiple heroes in the sidelane trees when trying to split the map. This was normally done based off of a prediction that a lone enemy would show up in the lane to gank. However, some players have taken this tactic to a rather ludicrous extreme:





A seemingly ordinary picture, until you realize that Dendi spent well over 10 minutes becoming one with the forest!



Mass TP Suicides A second old relic that is rapidly being exposed is the idea that 1-2 heroes can safely sit near a tower and expect their boys to TP in and save them from a full enemy assault. Put simply, the heroes usually favored right now do not allow this type of lazy reactive play: they have too much burst damage. When heroes like Gyrocopter or Lina are involved in a gank, people die, fast.









Bone7 thinks he is safe by hiding deep in the trees, but who is he kidding? Lina and Bounty are on the scene.



Watch how C9's heroes all try to respond and turn the dive but merely rack up the bounty count because they came in 1 by 1. Had C9 sniffed out CDEC's plan and brought heroes back before the CDEC gank began, the fight would have went very different.



In previous eras, the dominant carries actually took time to kill you. Back during TI4, nobody was afraid of getting instagibbed before backup could arrive because the dominant heroes like Razor, Death Prophet, and Brewmaster didn't kill through burst. Now, however, there are many early burst heroes in the pool; furthermore, they are usually paired with heroes like Dazzle and Winter Wyvern that can easily deflect an unfocused enemy counterattack.





To put it simply, outside of a single Secret gank in game 2 against EHOME and some decent Anti-Mage creep cutting, hiding in the sidelane trees has produced no tangible results outside of a lot of wasted time. In some cases the false sense of security has even led to completely unnecessary feeds. It would be one thing if the sacrifice gave a suitable reward, but it has given almost nothing. It would be a far better use of time for nature-loving players to instead enjoy their time in the jungle together with their team, where they could at least poach some creeps and keep their team safe. The current movements of top teams rarely reward camping out in the sidelanes for long, but evidently not everyone has realized this yet.



Inefficient Item Choices

One would think that as Dota becomes older and play more refined, itemization mistakes would lessen. Instead, TI5 has had a plethora of disastrous item choices even after just the first day. It's hard to say whether players have unrealistic views of the kind of game flow they can create or simply went for something comfortable that was illogical. Many of the items below indeed do fit in the "comfort zone" where it feels very smooth purchasing them, even if the results are underwhelming.



Fnatic.Kyxy went for the traditional, yet always underwhelming, Armlet on Wraith King against Virtus.Pro. He proceeded to get kited before dying to Rocket Barrage in every fight. Had he opened with a Blademail, he could have severely punished Illidan's Gyro who opted for the SnY before BKB and forced VP to play around him while his SF killed them.

*In the same game, Fnatic.Kecik Imba opted for SnY on Shadow Fiend rather than BKB and showed the worthiness of his investment by getting stunlocked and dying to Gyrocopter's AoE damage every time he tried to ult. Part of these deaths were simply a problem of not getting a BKB against VP's magic damage, but also part came from his positioning while trying to Song of the Siren -> Requiem, which inevitably put him in point blank range. There are certain situations where SnY first can work, but Fnatic could not create those fights.



*In the same game, Fnatic.Kecik Imba opted for SnY on Shadow Fiend rather than BKB and showed the worthiness of his investment by getting stunlocked and dying to Gyrocopter's AoE damage every time he tried to ult. Part of these deaths were simply a problem of not getting a BKB against VP's magic damage, but also part came from his positioning while trying to Song of the Siren -> Requiem, which inevitably put him in point blank range. There are certain situations where SnY first can work, but Fnatic could not create those fights. Newbee should have had a significant advantage over MVP Phoenix, but their two cores wasted well over 10k gold on near worthless items. As Newbee's 3-5 roles provided control and initiation, almost all of their damage came from their two cores. But instead of focusing on damage, both Rabbit and Mu got survivability items. Rabbit's safelane QoP grabbed a very mild Euls (sensible against Spirit Breaker) -> Aghanims (did little) -> Shivas, and as a result did nothing outside of his nukes. Mu, meanwhile, opted for a BKB over a Crystalys/Daedelus on his snowballing TA even though the BKB blocked very few relevant abilites. In the end, MVP won fight after fight since Mu and Rabbit did no damage to QO's tanky Shadow Fiend.



MVP.kpii maxed Bladefury and Healing Ward over Crit on Juggernaut versus Newbee and went for a fighting build with Drums. Not necessarily bad, but his max Bladefury apparently lured him into overusing it instead of Omnislash or simply farming. As a result of all of this, he had less farm than a 3k player and made QO do all the heavy lifting.



Bone7 didn't upgrade his boots on Nature's Prophet against CDEC and farmed at a snails pace in a game when he was already horribly behind and gambling on being able to split push his way back into relevancy.



As one example among several cases, VG's iceicecice opted for an Aghanims Scepter on his offlane QoP, a frequent buy that rarely pays off as pros have a lot of difficulty creating the gameplay situations where that item excels. His Aghanim's Scepter was basically a very expensive 390 hp. But as soon as iceiceice got a Scyth of Vyse, Na`Vi became way more exposed on the map. It also won several teamfights on its own and made XBOCT's job far more difficult: if his BKB wasn't active, XBOCT got stunlocked to death. Though the hex is indeed more expensive, the difference in game impact against an Anti-Mage was very striking, even if iceiceice hadn't uncharacteristically whiffed so many ults.



Wisp Emergency Double Suicides? By mid-late 2013, the full potential of Wisp was realized once carries realized they could farm exposed areas with no risk. Any time the enemy would initiate on a carry, his friendly servant Wisp could sacrifice himself to save the carry. Oftentimes the return of farming an exposed lane was greater than the damage done by Wisp's death. Now, unfortunately, these saves appear less and less often. Heroes simply die before the Wisp can finish casting Relocate. However, the play of carries apparently hasn't caught on to this new trend, as they continuously die farming in dangerous areas, expecting a Relocate save.











At this point in the game Cloud9 are taking a major risk, and it simply doesn't pay off at all because N0tail can't get the save. This ocurrence happened multiple times in seemingly every Wisp game. Teams are definitely acutely aware of the Relocate possibility, and if they have the time, they make sure to identify the Wisp's location and ready a disable - for example, CDEC's Garder was adept at scouting out the Wisp's location and disrupting the Relocate with a Shruiken. Outside of this preparation, another reason Wisp saves seem to fail so often is that there are so many strong burst heroes (just like why mass tp reinforcements aren't working well). The final reason is simple- player error. There would be not much point in writing this section if the world's leading Wisp player, MMY, had been playing the hero instead. Regardless, the margin of error on Wisp saves is getting smaller and smaller, and players should start reserving it for specific situations where the Wisp can hide properly, instead of using it as the default plan to save the dangerously farming carry.



Invisibility=/Invincibility For a long time, players have used invisibility runes not just to prepare for isolated ganks, but also to scout out the enemy team's movements. In the past this has paid off reasonably well, with crucial information gained from scouting often leading to an advantageous fight. However, perhaps due to the Bounty Hunter and Glimmer Cape epidemics invading TI, many teams have been on point with their sentry and ward placements. This makes scouting as a core while invisible an extremely risky proposition, with a big downside but limited upside. Yet some players still insist on doing it out of habit.











Here Silent, who in the first 20 minutes played an excellent game, adds another death to his alarmingly growing total because he can't resist the James Bond allure of scouting out LGD. Not surprisingly, he walks by an obs/sentry station and immediately gets jumped. The next game LGD's magnificent obs/sentry placements catch out Alohadance's Bounty Hunter 6 times in 20 minutes, effectively removing him from the map.



The TI5 Secret EHOME 2:0 Secret. Upset of the tournament. 91 odds. Supposedly a miracle, with all sorts of crazy explanations. The unassuming viewer might look at this series and simply conclude "Secret is overrated," "they had a bad day," or "Wow that was cool!" but what is really happened was a clash between Secret's dominant pre-TI5 strategy and EHOME's answer to it. EHOME did not just devise a a new method of playing against Secret's systems, they did it while integrating Secret's innovations into their own play. These two games are part of microcosm that shows a general Chinese-led refinement of how teams control the map.





A crucial part of Secret's strategy is their farm allocation on supports that paradoxically creates freedom for their cores. Here, ddc has "out-Secret'd Secret."



Secret has run two main strategies since they began their unprecedented 4 tournament winstreak back in April. The first is a dual core deathball, further described here, that turns a dominant safelane into more farm than normal for Zai, Kuroky, and Puppey. Secret then expertly leverages their dominant laning position to take Roshan and all the outer towers, following up with high ground pushes at an early timing. If this fails, then they spread out and use their extra map control to pull ahead on farm on all their heroes. This keeps constant lane pressure around the map, and makes their supports very beefy. This strategy is what Secret ran game 1, albeit with a few different (and frankly, dubious) heroes than usual. The Viper pick was singled out as a culprit for the loss, but this rudimentary analysis ignores the dominant wins Secret had over EG and iG just one month ago at ESL with that hero.

Team Secret EHOME







Thanks to some EHOME nerves and typical Secret movements, their draft succeeded and got far ahead in the first 20 minutes. Secret took Roshan, all the outer towers, and was poised to go high ground at any moment. This, of course, was the position EHOME was in against Secret a couple months ago, where they looked to have the game in the bag but gradually got outplayed. Now that EHOME had learned from their foes, the roles were reversed.



Just as Secret had done to EHOME, Zyf and Cty preempetively began split pushing the sidelanes even before it looked like Secret might push. LaNm also played his role superbly as usual, not only scouting Secret out but also distracting them. Three times he pulled them away from either an ideal farm situation or a scary push merely to chase down a lowly Bounty Hunter. Secret tried to ignore the sidelane pressure from the EHOME cores and force high ground, but they were forced back by spam from the Wyvern, Bounty, and Phoenix. With the major threat avoided, EHOME forced a decisive fight seconds after the aegis expired. Now Secret had to resort to their usually successful plan b, but this is where the EHOME draft kicked in.



The main problem EHOME presented Secret with was the Bounty+Storm combination. The presence and movement of these heroes severely limited Secret's ability to aggresively farm the way they normally would. Arteezy was forced into blowing his early BKB charges at bad timings, and other Secret heroes either died or forced their entire team to group up to protect them. In the past, Secret comprehended and accurately predicted time and again how opponents would react to certain situations, and here EHOME understood the same for Secret. Over half a dozen times this game, Cty and LaNm would force Secret to group; instead of forcing a fight, they would simply walk away and let the rest of their team farm ahead with little risk.











This fight is only possible because EHOME already divined exactly how Secret would move. From EHOME's vision, they see s4 farming bottom and Arteezy/Puppey middle. After a double raze, Arteezy retreats out of sight while Puppey remains. Ordinarily, no team would make this jump onto Puppey out of fear that Secret's other 3 heroes would be standing right behind Puppey. This is one of the many techniques that allowed Secret to pull ahead in farm. They'd feint grouping up, and then exploit the enemy's likely reaction (avoiding the "obvious" bait) by instead farming everywhere. EHOME apparently guessed Secret's plan, for Cty charged right ahead and got a very important kill on Puppey. Secret felt compelled to fight given the proximity of the rest of their heroes, but this only led to disaster. Everyone raved about the Song of Ice and Fire (Wyvern and Phoenix) that won the fight, but this was only possible because Puppey's crucial Dazzle was already dead before the real fight began.











This looks like an ordinary situation in a Secret game. Uncertain of their opponent's intentions, Secret groups up and farms their jungle/safelane together. As soon as Roshan is killed, Arteezy immediately heads top to force EHOME back to defend while his team retreats to farm elsewhere. EHOME knows the script, and doesn't let it happen. LaNm scouts out Arteezy's initial TP, while a dominated Wildkin also reveals Zai's position. Even though Zai is given a glimmer cape buff to protect him, Cty predicts his invis movements and makes a mad jump directly on top of him and gets the kill, pulling EHOME further ahead. Throughout the game, they repeatedly make ganks of this nature, slaying a hero that Secret thought was safe and taking further control of the map. This particular kill on Zai allows EHOME to quickly push out the lanes and ward up safely. From this ascendant position, EHOME forces Secret into a decisive fight midlane, where EHOME win the game.



The most revealing part about this game was not the Secret draft being unable to lockdown Storm after his Linken's Sphere purchase, nor the teamfight power of EHOME. It was the fact that EHOME engineered a 10k gold lead without a teamfight. Before TI, that never happened. If Secret lost, it was because they got outganked in laning phase (VG) or lost a couple key fights when outdrafted (EG, Empire). Nobody outfarmed Secret- it was just not possible. That's why this is not just some fluke game, but a result of deeply understanding Secret's play. The Storm/Bounty combo was absolutely instrumental for this type of map dominance, but what would happen when Secret banned it?







The second Secret system that won them MDL and ESL Frankfurt sets out straight from the start to spread out the map and dominate on farm. Rather than electing to hit a specific timing, Secret would force the enemy into making rash attacks by split pushing and farming on every hero. The resulting lane pressure would make ganks obvious and allow Secret to gain a gold lead without fighting. That way, even if some teamfights went poorly, they would still win anyway. In general Secret would draft s4 a tanky, robust hero who could defend towers, Zai an intiator, and Puppey/Kuro defensive farming supports. Though it typically featured their signature Puppey KotL, here Secret opted for a Dazzle/Witch Doctor combo.



Team Secret EHOME







In their last meeting at the MarsTV LAN, Secret pulled ahead of EHOME early on by simply outfarming them around the map. EHOME saw this and naturally smoked up to take back some control of the map, but as with so many Secret's games, their aggression turned into disaster.









EHOME felt pressured into making a rash attack to curb Secret's growing gold lead, which Secret easily read and parried.



Now it was time for revenge. From the beginning of the draft, Secret showed that they would use this strategy, first picking shadow Fiend and Anti-Mage. Furthermore, they denied the tools EHOME used to control the last game, banning the Wyvern and Bounty Hunter while making Storm a very risky pick against an Anti-Mage/Dazzle. In place of the Storm/Bounty combo EHOME used to control the map with last game, they drafted a highly unusual TA/Nightstalker duo. It may have seemed crazy at the time, but this was the same LaNm who crushed EG's dominant Tinker/Void/Beastmaster strat at TI4 by drafting 5 blink dagger heroes, including a support Juggernaut.



There were two primary advantages to Secret's global farming system. The first was that the lane pressure they put out made it difficult for opponents to group up to curb the farming. Anytime Secret would get the initiative, their foe's ganks would look very obvious because they wouldn't be on the map defending their towers. Thus, Secret could take many key teamfights with a natural defensive edge. Secret would intersperse these periods of farm with well-timed ganks that further took control of the map. In the end, Secret would reach the ludicrous farming levels that only the old DK has matched: 25-26 creeps a minute, when most teams are happy to average 20-22. Yet in both these games, Secret farmed less than EHOME.



The result of Secret's global farming was that it engendered more farming opportunities. The more the opponent had to react to deep lane pressure, the more Secret could farm elsewhere. Oftentimes, Secret games would look like 2010 Chinese farmfests for the first 20-30 minutes, with less than 4-5 kills a minute combined between the two teams.











Prior to this moment, Arteezy just forced EHOME's heroes top lane to handle his split push there, and he knows their positioning due to Secret's trademark deep radiant ward. With the Gyrocopter middle, this creates a safety net for Secret to farm their jungle and lets Arteezy kill the enemy ancients. With TP's being forced to top lane, EHOME simply can't threaten anywhere else fast enough. That is the usual story, and why Arteezy and Secret always get insane amounts of farm.



Instead of falling into Secret's trap, EHOME shows themselves top lane and then their supports and offlaner make an immediate dash towards the ancients before Arteezy even heads that way. In summary, a typically successful Arteezy movement was expertly countered.



Thanks to the movements of the LaNm Night Stalker, Secret was having some trouble establishing map control. Their solution was to send Arteezy to push up the offlane to force a reaction, and then be ready to creep cut or gank if needed. As EHOME would be compelled to react to Arteezy in force - he could likely kill a lone hero coming back to defend - this reaction would open up other areas of the map for Secret to farm. In their last meeting against EHOME 2 months ago, Secret executed this plan perfectly to make an amazing comeback from a dire situation. ==anchor to "the 6.84 paradox" section of of "team secret kings of ti strategy"



What I just described is, at its core, a split push philosophy. What is special about Secret's version is their precise execution and understanding of the opposing team's psychology. Their split push is far more flexible than the rigid 1-3-1 formation Alliance used in TI3, with Secret heroes frequently grouping up at odd times while splitting up into 5 solo farmers at other times.











This is a vintage Secret maneuver. Arteezy darts into a dangerously deep position that is awkward for the enemy to react to but also psychologically forces teleports. Who wants to let a hero casually farm behind your T2? Meanwhile, Puppey farms an exposed sidelane and s4 pushes up to the river middle with Zai and Kuroky also in farming elsewhere. It is this type of spread farming at just the right times that gave Secret such an advantage over other teams at MDL and ESL. Secret beautifully understood the psychology of other teams and moved in such a way that they could farm safely over a wide area in otherwise exposed positions.



Yet much to their suprise, their usual movements left them vulnerable here because EHOME was ready for them. LaNm hunts down Puppey, who sees the gank coming thanks to s4's dominated scouting creep. He thinks he is safe to tp out in the trees, but then suddenly gets vacuumed into his death by rOtK. In the past, these deaths by Secret's supports were completely okay, because it would give the enemy little gold and make the rest of the map safe for their team to farm.







Lanm's Nightstalker=Yellow, Rotk Seer= Pink, ddc Rubick=Green, Cty TA=Grey, Zyf Gyro=Brown; Puppey Dazzle=Blue, Kuroky Witch Doctor= Yellow, s4 SF=Purple, Zai Axe= Teal, Arteezy AM=Orange.

Watch the movements towards bottom lane and middle

EHOME, however, understood the trap other teams fell into against Secret, and sent the minimum number of heroes to assassinate at each location. Simultaneously, Cty camps in wait of s4, then as soon as Zyf can tp they both kill s4 seconds after Puppey dies. All of a sudden, Secret has completely lost control of the map and fallen way behind in gold/xp income, something that has never happened so far in 6.84. The last piece of the puzzle was the fact that EHOME had still held onto the mid and bottom T1 towers, thanks to their good early game movements which kept Secret from properly split pushing those towers.



As EHOME succeeded on gank after gank and kept taking away the map from Secret, Secret repeatedly reached into their toolbelt to pull out variations of the same patterns they had won with previously. But somehow, every time, EHOME could read the future.











With EHOME having revealed themselves mid and retreated, Arteezy remains top creep cutting, trying to pull EHOME back and make space for his team. EHOME does react and show themselves top, but before they do this, the rest of the team smokes up and goes for mid. The division of labor is perfect: LaNm covers Zyf top in case Arteezy decides to creep cut again, while the rest of EHOME goes middle towards empty space. But 15 seconds later, their prescience is rewarded by a Shadow Fiend showing up to party.



A little of EHOME's roughness leaks through here, as Cty and DDC remained too long, perhaps not anticipating Arteezy's early return. Still, the fact that they could see the opportunity mid 20 seconds in advance was astonishing. In previous tournaments, Secret's heroes were always just a little spread out too much when covering each other, but nobody could punish that until EHOME.











The main question about the final fight must be "Where is s4?" The answer to this lies in Secret seeing Cty's Templar Assassin farming out the bottom lane, in addition to ddc and Zyf in the radiant secret shop, all in no position for a 5v5 fight. As a result Secret seems to let down their guard even after Arteezy gets jumped by the other four EHOME heroes, not fully grasping how quickly EHOME will concentrate. Zai saves Arteezy but he goes right back in, and s4 arrives late. Arteezy's attempt at assassinating a Rubick turns into his own dieback thanks to a stolen Axe Call and TA blink, while the rest of his team is easily cleaned up. In short, EHOME finally did in 6.84 what VG succeeded so well with in 6.82 and 6.83, showing that it is indeed possible to dominate the map aggressively.



It's easy to think after this series, and many have, that "Secret is overrated," "They threw," "Arteezy just had a bad game," or "s4 sucks." But nobody was saying any of Secret's players sucked 2 months ago when Arteezy's Leshrac went 1/7/1 after 20 minutes against iG, because Secret's vastly superior paradigm and map movement won anyway. Back then it was "Arteezy such a gifted player" or "Secret has so much individual skill, what a dream team!" Yet it was the same brilliant play by Secret each time. It's just that before they were using a brand new, innovative system, and now it has been exposed over two tournaments. Just because Secret set the standard for TI5 doesn't mean they'll retain the strategic edge they have previously enjoyed within TI5.



It is clear that EHOME had done their homework and studied Secret in depth pre-TI. Not only did they recognize what Secret were trying to do, they had heroes preempetively in position to exploit it, something truly remarkable. EHOME showed that Secret is very mortal when they no longer possess a strategic advantage. If Secret want to win TI5 as comfortably as the previous tournaments, they need to reveal a hidden card and not rest on their laurels.



Underdogs on Top

The main event trend towards offensive map movements dominating a global farming lineup is not limited to Ehome either. Quite a few teams have tried to copy Secret's map movements and farm priority, and it appears Ehome was not the only team who researched how to exploit the spread out defensive farming posture. Unlike LGD who allowed Empire to farm up the map in game 3 despite being behind 3-19 at 15 minutes, Cdec expertly closed out an advantageous game against c9. When c9 normally gets behind, they are very successful at splitting up the map and dragging things out forever, like in EternalEnvy's famous rapier Antimage game during the group stage. That did not happen against Cdec Though LGD is more individually skilled and disciplined, the two scariest Chinese teams might actually be the underdogs: Ehome and Cdec, who most people predicted would finish outside the top 10.











When ganks like this happen, it looks simple, almost inevitable, but it is definitely not. The contrast is easily observed by watching a multitude of other c9, Secret, or EG games in the past where they have denied their opponents any gank opportunities because their farming was just one step ahead. Like Ehome, Cdec perfectly balanced their own growth with shutting down c9, and had all the right movements.











In addition to superior map movements by the Chinese teams, the other reason for this ability to control space offensively is due to the favored heroes of TI5. Now Bone7 did get humorously solo-killed here by a 5 position Winter Wyvern, but it is striking that Cdec solo killed 2 heroes while also simultaneously initiating on the rest of c9 mid. Heroes like Bounty Hunter, Storm, and core Lina, who were not favored for other reasons a month or two ago, now dominate the landscape, and they allow hero movements of just 1-2 to easily ambush a team that tries to spread out around the map too much.



The pre-TI5 strategic battlefield was dominated by Secret who spread out, farmed on their supports all across the map at the right times, and made a rapid defense -> offense switch to catch opponents who let their guard down. Now at the main event, the Chinese teams have refined their aggressive movements to balance pickoffs with keeping ahead on farm while keeping their foes in the dark. Ordinarily c9 is used to dragging out games forever with split push, but CDEC got a string of unbroken pickoffs while still keeping up their farm. Ehome not only shut down Secret's farm, limiting their cs/min to unheard of levels, but also kept their own up as well. It's not every day, well, ever, that you see a Templar Assassin with plenty of ancients ahead of an Arteezy Antimage on cs at 30 minutes. Now the question is, how will teams adapt mid-tournament to these new innovations?





CREDITS

Writer: Ver

Editors: Julmust, tehh4ck3r

Graphics: Ninjan, Julmust Consistent with the rest of 6.84, teams have largely drafted lineups with a robust dual core combined with an offlane initiator. The key differentiating choices have come in how they want to balance offense and defense across the roles. For example, the main choice teams make for their support is between Bounty Hunter and Naga Siren. Both lead to completely different gameflows. A team that drafts Bounty Hunter will want to control the map via the threat of ganks and information, while a team with Naga Siren can either play recklessly aggressive and bail themselves out with Song of the Siren (à la Team Empire), or sit defensively and spread out the map by farming with illusions (Evil Geniuses). Bounty Hunter is also the only top hero who can innately counteract the most broken support item Icefrog has ever introduced (Glimmer Cape), while Naga simply gives a team a large margin of error for mistakes. Regardless of whatever they choose, teams will generally round out its lineup with a defensive, adequate farming second support like Earthshaker, Dazzle, Winter Wyvern, Rubick (if Chinese), or Witch Doctor.For mid, or the position 2 role, the main selection is between defensive, deathballish mids, and more flexible, playmaking mids. The former enjoy static fights where they can sit and fire away, while the latter create havoc around the map and deep within the enemy formation during fights. There is some overlap; for example, Dragon Knight can serve as an initiator in a more loose lineup, but he excels more as a beefy frontliner in a static deathball. The flexible Queen of Pain fits well in either situation.As for the carry, or the position 1 role, teams primarily choose either split pushing mid-to-lategame heroes like Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer, or early fighting heroes who can turn the tide of the match in the first 15 minutes. Many of the previously discussed mid heroes also can serve as position 1 heroes depending on the kind of fights a team wants to take. For example, one of Team Secret's main strategies that many teams have adapted revolves around having a Shadow Fiend mid and Queen of Pain in the safelane. But outside of the already listed heroes, here are the main routes a team can go:Unlike the other roles, offlane is less of a diversified position this TI. Only a small pool of heroes have been consistently chosen as offlaners. The only real difference in offlane choices is balancing the need for initiation and map control versus raw teamfight power. Some heroes like Tusk combine this well. Traditional teamfight supports like Earthshaker and Sand King also remain a backup option for many teams.However, unlike previous TI's, there is a large debate between teams on what heroes deserve what priority. While there are a few consistencies every game, such as Leshrac, QoP, Naga, and Gyro getting first banned or picked, the rest is up for grabs. In this somewhat chaotic environment, many teams have seemingly chosen lineups based on the type of fights they feel most comfortable in.This was best exemplified in the clash of styles between LGD and Empire in game 1, where each team drafted heroes that synergize together in the way they want. Similar to the old VG, Empire's best asset is their ability to suddenly initiate a fight across multiple screens. The wider and more chaotic they can make any fight, the greater likelihood they'll be able to outplay their opponents thanks to their teamplay and inherent trust in one another. On the contrary, LGD, the archetype of the talented, disciplined Chinese team, thrives in controlled scenarios where they can see whole battle at once and make the best decisions. If LGD knows exactly what is going on, they almost always outplay their opponents.So how does this play out in game? Including Queen of Pain, Empire has three Blink Daggers available to play like traditional Russians. Anytime Empire spots an enemy, they blink forward, confident they can run away with Naga song. The key distinction lies in how they use their Blink Daggers to rapidly initiate and then blink sideways or further forward to spread out the fights.This decisive engagement catapulted Empire into a commanding 10k+ net worth lead. With their lineup, LGD was not looking for a fight; they merely wanted to stall and slow the game down. Empire do not allow them this luxury, instantly blinking forward on xiao8. The decisive moment was Silent blinking up beyond LGD's tier 2 tower while Sylar charged forward below LGD's tier 1. This presented a moment of chaos where nobody in the game or stadium had full information, and Empire handled themselves better here than LGD. LGD vacilliated between going after Silent and going bottom without realizing how far Sylar had overextended. The rest of Empire's heroes saw Silent as a distraction and, regrouping with their supports, made the fight a 4 versus Sylar. Then, Empire quickly reengaged on the rest of LGD before they could react, and tore them apart.This is a moment of truth for the two teams, for it is when Empire's lineup is at their peak and right before LGD's superior lategame has peaked. Empire has an option to slow siege the base, a difficult proposition against KotL and PL spam. Instead, they stick to what has worked previously and mass blink into LGD at an unusual time. Once inside the base, they then maneuver to the sides to spread the fight out. However, this time LGD has more information about the battlefield and reacts far better. Maybe expertly hunts down Silent while dodging Axe's Call while the rest of LGD takes a safe position and whittles away the other Empire frontliners. Once they gain an advantageous position in the fight, LGD regroups and ruthlessly chases down Empire's remaining heroes all the way across the map.One might object to the viability of the previous example as it was a base defense fight, where the defending team notoriously has a massive advantage. Just a little later, however, LGD attacks uphill into Empire and wins anyway.The key feature of note in this fight is how LGD controls the entire fight despite Empire holding the superior position and their attempts to spread it out. LGD initiates rapidly with the aegis and then starts grinding away at Empire's heroes. The longer the fight goes on, with a Dazzle, KotL, and PL sitting around unmolested, the greater LGD's chance of winning.Empire realized they were in a losing proposition and tried to change the tempo by blinking outside the base onto the supports. Silent got flamed for seemingly committing suicide by blinking outside the base and dying, but he wanted to have his other 2 cores join him and kill LGD's backline before the Storm and PL could assist. However this time Sylar threw a wrench in the plan by keeping illusions on both Resolution and Yoky, disabling their blinks until it was too late. As soon as Silent leapt outside, Maybe and Sylar followed while Yoky and Resolution could not. Once again, thanks to having full information of the battlefield, LGD made superior plays and pulled ahead.If you closely examine the worst performing players at TI, both on a per team basis and overall, a very large portion of them are quite obviously the offlaners. The standouts include: Sunbhie, Luo, June, March, Bone7, and as insane as it may have sounded just 4 months ago, iceiceice. Many other offlaners not listed here have also put in subpar performances. For example, MoonMeander, Funn1k, DKPhobos, and Yoky have hardly been standout performers on their respective teams.In some cases, it is simply due to player error, such as March's overzealous charges that kept Newbee in the game against MVP, or Bone7 demoting himself from offlane Prophet to support Prophet by staying in the trees instead of farming the enemy jungle and refusing to upgrade his boots. In many other situations, however, it appears that the emphasis on defensive supports like Winter Wyvern and Dazzle is placing too large of a burden on the offlaner, and many are cracking under the strain. As a counter example, Secret has worked marvelously because of how they split their duties: Zai never has to worry about securing farm thanks to Puppey and Kuroky's movements, and as a result, can concentrate solely on finding the right fights. Some teams' offlaners appear to feel like they have to carry the world, and might be buckling as a result.This phenomenon may seem confusing, but if you invert the question the answer becomes clearer: why are certain offlaners not dragging down their team? Case in point, rOtK. rOtK has long been seen as a giant liability, not only for his "rOtK plays" (read: consistently feeding first blood) but also for making wishful-at-best plays throughout the game. Yet nobody is going to single him out as underperforming offlaner in either the groups or on the main stage.Maybe rOtK has simply stepped it up now that its crunch time. However, it is also likely that the rest of his team sharing his burden has allowed him to play more freely. He isn't under pressure to farm in risky areas while making plays, for DDC and LaNm outfarmed even Secret's selfish support duo. Neither does he worry about always having to start fights at the right times, for his entire team is pinging out predicted movements and ganks, and LaNm/Cty have taken on part of the burden of scouts and initiators. With all that extra backup and synergy in EHOME's lineup, it makes sense that rOtK can adequately do his job without worrying about doing others' as well.As another example, Yao is clearly the weakest link on otherwise the most talented team in the tournament (LGD), and pre-TI, one might have gotten the sneaking suspicion he has remained on the team more due to friendship than merit. But even when they pick defensive supports, LGD has limited the burden Yao has to bear thanks to Maybe initiating, xiao8 farming, and their generally superb warding. It may have just been a coincidence, but iceiceice also had his best game of the tournament against Cloud 9 on Dark Seer when he was not the single focal point of Vici Gaming's lineup. He certainly performed incredibly on demanding offlane roles in the past, but given his struggles so far it only makes sense for his team to not put too much on his shoulders.The have been a lot of positive innovations at TI5, but as an inevitable result, some teams have looked like they are playing in an era when when Batrider was broken. Here are some of the more humorous and impactful reasons that some teams seem stuck in the past. As evident by the title, the most obvious misconception is the tree-hugging ways of certain teams.Back in 2012, the Chinese carry players would hide behind an empty sidelane creep wave when the enemy went off the map. This way, if the foe's dangerous ganking heroes had smoked and then revealed in another part of the map, the carry could immediately push out the creep wave. At the time this was one of the techniques that separated Burning/Zhou/Sylar (and later, Hao) from everyone else, but it has become commonplace over the years.Then, thanks to Fnatic and Alliance's evolution of split pushing in 2013, teams have become more and more familiar with the tactic of hiding multiple heroes in the sidelane trees when trying to split the map. This was normally done based off of a prediction that a lone enemy would show up in the lane to gank. However, some players have taken this tactic to a rather ludicrous extreme:A second old relic that is rapidly being exposed is the idea that 1-2 heroes can safely sit near a tower and expect their boys to TP in and save them from a full enemy assault. Put simply, the heroes usually favored right now do not allow this type of lazy reactive play: they have too much burst damage. When heroes like Gyrocopter or Lina are involved in a gank, people die, fast.Watch how C9's heroes all try to respond and turn the dive but merely rack up the bounty count because they came in 1 by 1. Had C9 sniffed out CDEC's plan and brought heroes back before the CDEC gank began, the fight would have went very different.In previous eras, the dominant carries actually took time to kill you. Back during TI4, nobody was afraid of getting instagibbed before backup could arrive because the dominant heroes like Razor, Death Prophet, and Brewmaster didn't kill through burst. Now, however, there are many early burst heroes in the pool; furthermore, they are usually paired with heroes like Dazzle and Winter Wyvern that can easily deflect an unfocused enemy counterattack.To put it simply, outside of a single Secret gank in game 2 against EHOME and some decent Anti-Mage creep cutting, hiding in the sidelane trees has produced no tangible results outside of a lot of wasted time. In some cases the false sense of security has even led to completely unnecessary feeds. It would be one thing if the sacrifice gave a suitable reward, but it has given almost nothing. It would be a far better use of time for nature-loving players to instead enjoy their time in the jungle together with their team, where they could at least poach some creeps and keep their team safe. The current movements of top teams rarely reward camping out in the sidelanes for long, but evidently not everyone has realized this yet.One would think that as Dota becomes older and play more refined, itemization mistakes would lessen. Instead, TI5 has had a plethora of disastrous item choices even after just the first day. It's hard to say whether players have unrealistic views of the kind of game flow they can create or simply went for something comfortable that was illogical. Many of the items below indeed do fit in the "comfort zone" where it feels very smooth purchasing them, even if the results are underwhelming.By mid-late 2013, the full potential of Wisp was realized once carries realized they could farm exposed areas with no risk. Any time the enemy would initiate on a carry, his friendly servant Wisp could sacrifice himself to save the carry. Oftentimes the return of farming an exposed lane was greater than the damage done by Wisp's death. Now, unfortunately, these saves appear less and less often. Heroes simply die before the Wisp can finish casting Relocate. However, the play of carries apparently hasn't caught on to this new trend, as they continuously die farming in dangerous areas, expecting a Relocate save.At this point in the game Cloud9 are taking a major risk, and it simply doesn't pay off at all because N0tail can't get the save. This ocurrence happened multiple times in seemingly every Wisp game. Teams are definitely acutely aware of the Relocate possibility, and if they have the time, they make sure to identify the Wisp's location and ready a disable - for example, CDEC's Garder was adept at scouting out the Wisp's location and disrupting the Relocate with a Shruiken. Outside of this preparation, another reason Wisp saves seem to fail so often is that there are so many strong burst heroes (just like why mass tp reinforcements aren't working well). The final reason is simple- player error. There would be not much point in writing this section if the world's leading Wisp player, MMY, had been playing the hero instead. Regardless, the margin of error on Wisp saves is getting smaller and smaller, and players should start reserving it for specific situations where the Wisp can hide properly, instead of using it as the default plan to save the dangerously farming carry.For a long time, players have used invisibility runes not just to prepare for isolated ganks, but also to scout out the enemy team's movements. In the past this has paid off reasonably well, with crucial information gained from scouting often leading to an advantageous fight. However, perhaps due to the Bounty Hunter and Glimmer Cape epidemics invading TI, many teams have been on point with their sentry and ward placements. This makes scouting as a core while invisible an extremely risky proposition, with a big downside but limited upside. Yet some players still insist on doing it out of habit.Here Silent, who in the first 20 minutes played an excellent game, adds another death to his alarmingly growing total because he can't resist the James Bond allure of scouting out LGD. Not surprisingly, he walks by an obs/sentry station and immediately gets jumped. The next game LGD's magnificent obs/sentry placements catch out Alohadance's Bounty Hunter 6 times in 20 minutes, effectively removing him from the map.EHOME 2:0 Secret. Upset of the tournament. 91 odds. Supposedly a miracle, with all sorts of crazy explanations. The unassuming viewer might look at this series and simply conclude "Secret is overrated," "they had a bad day," or "Wow that was cool!" but what is really happened was a clash between Secret's dominant pre-TI5 strategy and EHOME's answer to it. EHOME did not just devise a a new method of playing against Secret's systems, they did it while integrating Secret's innovations into their own play. These two games are part of microcosm that shows a general Chinese-led refinement of how teams control the map.Secret has run two main strategies since they began their unprecedented 4 tournament winstreak back in April. The first is a dual core deathball, further described here, that turns a dominant safelane into more farm than normal for Zai, Kuroky, and Puppey. Secret then expertly leverages their dominant laning position to take Roshan and all the outer towers, following up with high ground pushes at an early timing. If this fails, then they spread out and use their extra map control to pull ahead on farm on all their heroes. This keeps constant lane pressure around the map, and makes their supports very beefy. This strategy is what Secret ran game 1, albeit with a few different (and frankly, dubious) heroes than usual. The Viper pick was singled out as a culprit for the loss, but this rudimentary analysis ignores the dominant wins Secret had over EG and iG just one month ago at ESL with that hero.Thanks to some EHOME nerves and typical Secret movements, their draft succeeded and got far ahead in the first 20 minutes. Secret took Roshan, all the outer towers, and was poised to go high ground at any moment. This, of course, was the position EHOME was in against Secret a couple months ago, where they looked to have the game in the bag but gradually got outplayed. Now that EHOME had learned from their foes, the roles were reversed.Just as Secret had done to EHOME, Zyf and Cty preempetively began split pushing the sidelanes even before it looked like Secret might push. LaNm also played his role superbly as usual, not only scouting Secret out but also distracting them. Three times he pulled them away from either an ideal farm situation or a scary push merely to chase down a lowly Bounty Hunter. Secret tried to ignore the sidelane pressure from the EHOME cores and force high ground, but they were forced back by spam from the Wyvern, Bounty, and Phoenix. With the major threat avoided, EHOME forced a decisive fight seconds after the aegis expired. Now Secret had to resort to their usually successful plan b, but this is where the EHOME draft kicked in.The main problem EHOME presented Secret with was the Bounty+Storm combination. The presence and movement of these heroes severely limited Secret's ability to aggresively farm the way they normally would. Arteezy was forced into blowing his early BKB charges at bad timings, and other Secret heroes either died or forced their entire team to group up to protect them. In the past, Secret comprehended and accurately predicted time and again how opponents would react to certain situations, and here EHOME understood the same for Secret. Over half a dozen times this game, Cty and LaNm would force Secret to group; instead of forcing a fight, they would simply walk away and let the rest of their team farm ahead with little risk.This fight is only possible because EHOME already divined exactly how Secret would move. From EHOME's vision, they see s4 farming bottom and Arteezy/Puppey middle. After a double raze, Arteezy retreats out of sight while Puppey remains. Ordinarily, no team would make this jump onto Puppey out of fear that Secret's other 3 heroes would be standing right behind Puppey. This is one of the many techniques that allowed Secret to pull ahead in farm. They'd feint grouping up, and then exploit the enemy's likely reaction (avoiding the "obvious" bait) by instead farming everywhere. EHOME apparently guessed Secret's plan, for Cty charged right ahead and got a very important kill on Puppey. Secret felt compelled to fight given the proximity of the rest of their heroes, but this only led to disaster. Everyone raved about the Song of Ice and Fire (Wyvern and Phoenix) that won the fight, but this was only possible because Puppey's crucial Dazzle was already dead before the real fight began.This looks like an ordinary situation in a Secret game. Uncertain of their opponent's intentions, Secret groups up and farms their jungle/safelane together. As soon as Roshan is killed, Arteezy immediately heads top to force EHOME back to defend while his team retreats to farm elsewhere. EHOME knows the script, and doesn't let it happen. LaNm scouts out Arteezy's initial TP, while a dominated Wildkin also reveals Zai's position. Even though Zai is given a glimmer cape buff to protect him, Cty predicts his invis movements and makes a mad jump directly on top of him and gets the kill, pulling EHOME further ahead. Throughout the game, they repeatedly make ganks of this nature, slaying a hero that Secret thought was safe and taking further control of the map. This particular kill on Zai allows EHOME to quickly push out the lanes and ward up safely. From this ascendant position, EHOME forces Secret into a decisive fight midlane, where EHOME win the game.The most revealing part about this game was not the Secret draft being unable to lockdown Storm after his Linken's Sphere purchase, nor the teamfight power of EHOME. It was the fact that EHOME engineered a 10k gold lead without a teamfight. Before TI, that never happened. If Secret lost, it was because they got outganked in laning phase (VG) or lost a couple key fights when outdrafted (EG, Empire). Nobody outfarmed Secret- it was just not possible. That's why this is not just some fluke game, but a result of deeply understanding Secret's play. The Storm/Bounty combo was absolutely instrumental for this type of map dominance, but what would happen when Secret banned it?The second Secret system that won them MDL and ESL Frankfurt sets out straight from the start to spread out the map and dominate on farm. Rather than electing to hit a specific timing, Secret would force the enemy into making rash attacks by split pushing and farming on every hero. The resulting lane pressure would make ganks obvious and allow Secret to gain a gold lead without fighting. That way, even if some teamfights went poorly, they would still win anyway. In general Secret would draft s4 a tanky, robust hero who could defend towers, Zai an intiator, and Puppey/Kuro defensive farming supports. Though it typically featured their signature Puppey KotL, here Secret opted for a Dazzle/Witch Doctor combo.In their last meeting at the MarsTV LAN, Secret pulled ahead of EHOME early on by simply outfarming them around the map. EHOME saw this and naturally smoked up to take back some control of the map, but as with so many Secret's games, their aggression turned into disaster.Now it was time for revenge. From the beginning of the draft, Secret showed that they would use this strategy, first picking shadow Fiend and Anti-Mage. Furthermore, they denied the tools EHOME used to control the last game, banning the Wyvern and Bounty Hunter while making Storm a very risky pick against an Anti-Mage/Dazzle. In place of the Storm/Bounty combo EHOME used to control the map with last game, they drafted a highly unusual TA/Nightstalker duo. It may have seemed crazy at the time, but this was the same LaNm who crushed EG's dominant Tinker/Void/Beastmaster strat at TI4 by drafting 5 blink dagger heroes, including a support Juggernaut.There were two primary advantages to Secret's global farming system. The first was that the lane pressure they put out made it difficult for opponents to group up to curb the farming. Anytime Secret would get the initiative, their foe's ganks would look very obvious because they wouldn't be on the map defending their towers. Thus, Secret could take many key teamfights with a natural defensive edge. Secret would intersperse these periods of farm with well-timed ganks that further took control of the map. In the end, Secret would reach the ludicrous farming levels that only the old DK has matched: 25-26 creeps a minute, when most teams are happy to average 20-22. Yet in both these games, Secret farmed less than EHOME.The result of Secret's global farming was that it engendered more farming opportunities. The more the opponent had to react to deep lane pressure, the more Secret could farm elsewhere. Oftentimes, Secret games would look like 2010 Chinese farmfests for the first 20-30 minutes, with less than 4-5 kills a minute combined between the two teams.Prior to this moment, Arteezy just forced EHOME's heroes top lane to handle his split push there, and he knows their positioning due to Secret's trademark deep radiant ward. With the Gyrocopter middle, this creates a safety net for Secret to farm their jungle and lets Arteezy kill the enemy ancients. With TP's being forced to top lane, EHOME simply can't threaten anywhere else fast enough. That is the usual story, and why Arteezy and Secret always get insane amounts of farm.Instead of falling into Secret's trap, EHOME shows themselves top lane and then their supports and offlaner make an immediate dash towards the ancients before Arteezy even heads that way. In summary, a typically successful Arteezy movement was expertly countered.Thanks to the movements of the LaNm Night Stalker, Secret was having some trouble establishing map control. Their solution was to send Arteezy to push up the offlane to force a reaction, and then be ready to creep cut or gank if needed. As EHOME would be compelled to react to Arteezy in force - he could likely kill a lone hero coming back to defend - this reaction would open up other areas of the map for Secret to farm. In their last meeting against EHOME 2 months ago, Secret executed this plan perfectly to make an amazing comeback from a dire situation. ==anchor to "the 6.84 paradox" section of of "team secret kings of ti strategy"What I just described is, at its core, a split push philosophy. What is special about Secret's version is their precise execution and understanding of the opposing team's psychology. Their split push is far more flexible than the rigid 1-3-1 formation Alliance used in TI3, with Secret heroes frequently grouping up at odd times while splitting up into 5 solo farmers at other times.This is a vintage Secret maneuver. Arteezy darts into a dangerously deep position that is awkward for the enemy to react to but also psychologically forces teleports. Who wants to let a hero casually farm behind your T2? Meanwhile, Puppey farms an exposed sidelane and s4 pushes up to the river middle with Zai and Kuroky also in farming elsewhere. It is this type of spread farming at just the right times that gave Secret such an advantage over other teams at MDL and ESL. Secret beautifully understood the psychology of other teams and moved in such a way that they could farm safely over a wide area in otherwise exposed positions.Yet much to their suprise, their usual movements left them vulnerable here because EHOME was ready for them. LaNm hunts down Puppey, who sees the gank coming thanks to s4's dominated scouting creep. He thinks he is safe to tp out in the trees, but then suddenly gets vacuumed into his death by rOtK. In the past, these deaths by Secret's supports were completely okay, because it would give the enemy little gold and make the rest of the map safe for their team to farm.EHOME, however, understood the trap other teams fell into against Secret, and sent the minimum number of heroes to assassinate at each location. Simultaneously, Cty camps in wait of s4, then as soon as Zyf can tp they both kill s4 seconds after Puppey dies. All of a sudden, Secret has completely lost control of the map and fallen way behind in gold/xp income, something that has never happened so far in 6.84. The last piece of the puzzle was the fact that EHOME had still held onto the mid and bottom T1 towers, thanks to their good early game movements which kept Secret from properly split pushing those towers.As EHOME succeeded on gank after gank and kept taking away the map from Secret, Secret repeatedly reached into their toolbelt to pull out variations of the same patterns they had won with previously. But somehow, every time, EHOME could read the future.With EHOME having revealed themselves mid and retreated, Arteezy remains top creep cutting, trying to pull EHOME back and make space for his team. EHOME does react and show themselves top, but before they do this, the rest of the team smokes up and goes for mid. The division of labor is perfect: LaNm covers Zyf top in case Arteezy decides to creep cut again, while the rest of EHOME goes middle towards empty space. But 15 seconds later, their prescience is rewarded by a Shadow Fiend showing up to party.A little of EHOME's roughness leaks through here, as Cty and DDC remained too long, perhaps not anticipating Arteezy's early return. Still, the fact that they could see the opportunity mid 20 seconds in advance was astonishing. In previous tournaments, Secret's heroes were always just a little spread out too much when covering each other, but nobody could punish that until EHOME.The main question about the final fight must be "Where is s4?" The answer to this lies in Secret seeing Cty's Templar Assassin farming out the bottom lane, in addition to ddc and Zyf in the radiant secret shop, all in no position for a 5v5 fight. As a result Secret seems to let down their guard even after Arteezy gets jumped by the other four EHOME heroes, not fully grasping how quickly EHOME will concentrate. Zai saves Arteezy but he goes right back in, and s4 arrives late. Arteezy's attempt at assassinating a Rubick turns into his own dieback thanks to a stolen Axe Call and TA blink, while the rest of his team is easily cleaned up. In short, EHOME finally did in 6.84 what VG succeeded so well with in 6.82 and 6.83, showing that it is indeed possible to dominate the map aggressively.It's easy to think after this series, and many have, that "Secret is overrated," "They threw," "Arteezy just had a bad game," or "s4 sucks." But nobody was saying any of Secret's players sucked 2 months ago when Arteezy's Leshrac went 1/7/1 after 20 minutes against iG, because Secret's vastly superior paradigm and map movement won anyway. Back then it was "Arteezy such a gifted player" or "Secret has so much individual skill, what a dream team!" Yet it was the same brilliant play by Secret each time. It's just that before they were using a brand new, innovative system, and now it has been exposed over two tournaments. Just because Secret set the standard for TI5 doesn't mean they'll retain the strategic edge they have previously enjoyed within TI5.It is clear that EHOME had done their homework and studied Secret in depth pre-TI. Not only did they recognize what Secret were trying to do, they had heroes preempetively in position to exploit it, something truly remarkable. EHOME showed that Secret is very mortal when they no longer possess a strategic advantage. If Secret want to win TI5 as comfortably as the previous tournaments, they need to reveal a hidden card and not rest on their laurels.The main event trend towards offensive map movements dominating a global farming lineup is not limited to Ehome either. Quite a few teams have tried to copy Secret's map movements and farm priority, and it appears Ehome was not the only team who researched how to exploit the spread out defensive farming posture. Unlike LGD who allowed Empire to farm up the map in game 3 despite being behind 3-19 at 15 minutes, Cdec expertly closed out an advantageous game against c9. When c9 normally gets behind, they are very successful at splitting up the map and dragging things out forever, like in EternalEnvy's famous rapier Antimage game during the group stage. That did not happen against Cdec Though LGD is more individually skilled and disciplined, the two scariest Chinese teams might actually be the underdogs: Ehome and Cdec, who most people predicted would finish outside the top 10.When ganks like this happen, it looks simple, almost inevitable, but it is definitely not. The contrast is easily observed by watching a multitude of other c9, Secret, or EG games in the past where they have denied their opponents any gank opportunities because their farming was just one step ahead. Like Ehome, Cdec perfectly balanced their own growth with shutting down c9, and had all the right movements.In addition to superior map movements by the Chinese teams, the other reason for this ability to control space offensively is due to the favored heroes of TI5. Now Bone7 did get humorously solo-killed here by a 5 position Winter Wyvern, but it is striking that Cdec solo killed 2 heroes while also simultaneously initiating on the rest of c9 mid. Heroes like Bounty Hunter, Storm, and core Lina, who were not favored for other reasons a month or two ago, now dominate the landscape, and they allow hero movements of just 1-2 to easily ambush a team that tries to spread out around the map too much.The pre-TI5 strategic battlefield was dominated by Secret who spread out, farmed on their supports all across the map at the right times, and made a rapid defense -> offense switch to catch opponents who let their guard down. Now at the main event, the Chinese teams have refined their aggressive movements to balance pickoffs with keeping ahead on farm while keeping their foes in the dark. Ordinarily c9 is used to dragging out games forever with split push, but CDEC got a string of unbroken pickoffs while still keeping up their farm. Ehome not only shut down Secret's farm, limiting their cs/min to unheard of levels, but also kept their own up as well. It's not every day, well, ever, that you see a Templar Assassin with plenty of ancients ahead of an Arteezy Antimage on cs at 30 minutes. Now the question is, how will teams adapt mid-tournament to these new innovations? Writer