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Cake day: September 7th, 2023

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  • Beautiful Game 3 between GG and Tundra. I always feel like GG’s strategies are very fragile, but they proved that it’s more resilient than I thought. A really nice demonstration of how they can still push their early game advantages late and win, and overall, their map movements lategame looked amazing. I’ve also been very impressed with how Quinn has been playing. He does so much for them in all of their teamfights.

    I’ll be cheering for GG in the final, but can’t be upset with whoever wins. All 10 of them deserve it so much.



  • CIS is still pretty good in my opinion. BetBoom exceeded my expectations, and if they had an easier draw, I think they would have made top 6. They did look pretty terrible against Falcons though. And Spirit had a pretty good season overall - they did win a few tournaments if I’m not mistaken. They just looked like they didn’t understand the meta all that well. I also wonder if they have been a bit spoiled by success, and maybe lost their drive to win to some extent. 1W didn’t look that bad either to be honest.

    But agreed on the other regions. It really sucks because it just doesn’t feel like Dota is a global game anymore, sadly.





  • I think that series was more about whether GG showed up than anything else. Nouns played well, and showed that they can be top teams if those teams don’t play at their best. But when they do, they still get outplayed. Gaimin showed a lot more discipline and respect in game 2 to even up the series, and then it seemed like they broke them in game 3.

    Nouns are still a good team, and I think with experience, they can continue to improve and place well in tournaments. Fly looks like he’s doing a good job captaining them, and they are playing very well as a unit (which is what I think plagued NA teams the most historically). But still, they have a lot of work to do before they can beat the best teams in the world (assuming they give them the respect they deserve).







  • It will be interesting to see how facets affect drafting. I think it will make drafts a lot more interesting to watch because it will be harder for teams to make predictions and counter-pick accordingly.

    Also, I’ve only gone through a small fraction of the patch notes, but has status resistance been completely removed from the game now?


  • Nice post! I didn’t get to watch too much, but in the few Lifestealer games that I saw, he looked very strong. I wonder why he wasn’t picked up more. Sven looked very overrated in my opinion - a pick rate that was not very deserving given his winrate. Luna was also picked a lot in the carry role and looked pretty solid.

    I’d also say that Falcons’ ability to win came mostly down to how efficiently they were able to farm the map. Skiter got a lot of farm pretty much every game and carried them very reliably. A huge part of the reason why they lost so few games in my opinion.

    Also, it was pretty surprising how unsuccessful Gaimin Gladiators were. Pretty much all of their core heroes have been nerfed very hard in the latest patches, so it’s not too surprising, but it looks like they’re going to have to take some time to figure out some new drafts/strategies to adapt to the current meta.



  • Have participated in a few sports at the amateur level. Nowhere near the level of these guys - they’re the best in the world at what they do and I could barely rank in the top 500 of the collegiate levels in my country. And I couldn’t take it. I quit after just about 3 years of university level competition and never once thought about even trying at the open levels.

    Here’s the worst part: if you’re a spectator, all you think about is the tournament results. Nobody ever thinks about the preparation. The fact that you have to grind for so much time in practice, always asking yourself if it’s enough and whether you’re able to keep pace with the competition, let alone move up the ranks. Always asking yourself if you need to do even more.

    So I have no idea how people compete at this level and how they manage to keep it up for so long. And how they learn to cope with the defeats, not let it get them down, and to keep coming back after. Just getting back into that preparation mode with no guarantee whether it’ll ever pay off. Just think about that again - you can work so fucking hard and bust your ass off, and still have no idea if you’ll even qualify for the next tournament let alone do even better.

    Mad respect for all of these pros, especially when they have such long and storied careers as Zai. No matter what their results are, it takes a crazy amount of strength to do what these people do.