Prof team - DK - China - Dreamteam

The official team of DK as of right now is:
DK new lineup confirmed - BurNIng, Mushi, iceiceice, LaNm, MMY!

And whaaat a team.. That is a magnificent line up! Lets hope they can coorporate!

Vici gaming - DK duo - Prof team

Super and Rotk, former DK players, joined VG as solo and offlane players. Today VG will debut in V Games Dota 2 Tournament againt Mono. VG official Weibo said it is a tentative lineup, and it may be changed in the future. On 4th September VG's Dota 2 training camp will be moved to Shanghai. Hope they have great performance!



VG had three talented young players Cty, Fy and Xtt. But the failure in TI3 East Qualifiers intensified contradiction and ZSMJ was changed to supporter. Before TI3, Xtt left VG to join Rstars. The other day, Cty announced to fall out by personal factors. In the meantime, ZSMJ retired again and were very likely to become VG’s coach.

VG New roster:
VG.TuTu(carry)
VG.Super(solo)
VG.rotK(offlane)
VG.Fenrir(Supporter)
VG.Fy(Supporter)

Zhou - Proffesional teams

This is his QQ Weibo 今年状态不是很好，ig俱乐部换掉我也是理所当然的。希望俱乐部以后好好运营，曾经的队友们也好好加油吧。接下来我也会证明自己曾经7登loding图靠的不是偶然，27个冠军靠的不是运气。 I wasn’t in good state this year and I think it’s a matter of course that IG changed me. I hope IG will have a great future and my teammate keep fighting. I will prove that it is not incidental that I appeared DOTA1 loading screen seven times and got 27 championships. 

So he actually left IG - impatience i say..

This is part of a series I’m writing on the earliest part of DotA - the lane phase. How you control your lane and the creeps within is a vital part of playing a good game. Matches can be won and lost in the first few minutes, and learning how to maneuver around the creep wave to beat your enemies out of the lane can make all the difference in the world.

To begin thinking about harassing enemies in DotA, we need to make sure we understand lane control to begin with. The most important part of the early game to try to control is where the creep wave rests.


When the creeps clash at the beginning of the game, it can be assumed that both sides will die at the same time and the lane will be empty until a new wave of creeps arrives. Of course, DotA is not a perfectly balanced game and there is a bit of randomness to creep damage which will naturally result in the creep wave moving over time. Still, let’s assume it is perfectly balanced and move on.

As you last hit creeps to acquire gold, you will cause the enemy creeps to die sooner than allied creeps, causing the creep wave to gravitate toward the enemy tower and into more dangerous territory. In order to avoid this, you must cause damage to your own creeps. The simplest method I use for remembering this is to “count” the hits i give out and try to stay zero-sum. Every time I hit enemy creeps to last hit, I add one (starting at zero) to my imaginary counter in my head, and attempt to hit my own creeps at some point so I can subtract one and get back to zero. Of course, this can get much more difficult as your lane gets more and more players in it, and enemies will be attempting the very same thing. While the creeps are near your tower, your enemies will be actively attempting to do more damage to their own creeps than yours to cause the creep wave to move toward their tower and a safer area for them to fight in.

This is where harassment comes in. Not only would it be nice to simply force your opponents out of your lane (or kill them), it would be silly to simply allow them to affect the creep wave any way they want. The reason this guide was written was to help teach people the right and wrong ways to harass your opponent. Too often do I see, even at very high skill levels, players simply attacking their enemies and ignoring all consequences. While cutting your enemies’ health down a few bars might make you feel like you are in control of and winning your lane, you can actually do more damage to yourself in the process.

The easiest and most common form of harassing enemies is simply attacking them. You do damage to your enemies and force them to react, typically by backing off so they don’t take more and more damage. However, if you force attack your enemy in close proximity to computer AI controlled units (say, the creep wave), they will also respond to your attacks and defend their hero. This ends up looking something like this:


While it might seem innocent enough at first, this kind of play is very damaging to yourself and your team. While the Dire creeps chase my Rubick around, they are not doing damage to my creeps. Of course, my creeps are still doing damage to them. The end result is that the enemy creeps will die before mine do, inevitably pushing the creep wave toward Slark’s tower and allowing him safer access to experience and gold. Make the mistake of attacking the enemy like this too much and you can very quickly push the creep wave all the way to their tower, like I did in as little as thirty seconds:


Naturally, while the creep wave is under Slark’s tower, it is virtually impossible for me to stop him from last hitting and getting experience. If I made this method of harassment a pattern, he would easily get levels from this lane and even some measure of gold. The enemy hero getting some gold and experience in a lane is not a game breaker, of course. However, many heroes who solo the the offlane (where their creeps naturally clash farthest from their tower) are considered a success if they simply get a few levels, as they are only reliant on their spells to be useful to their team during the middle stages of the game. Big choices for this position are heroes such as Bounty Hunter, Puck, or Magnus. While you might not be able to cut their experience out entirely, you can severely decrease it by keeping them away from the creep wave with proper harassing. Furthermore, keeping the creep wave near your tower will enable you to prevent the enemy from last hitting for gold and will also keep you and your potential lane partner safer from enemy ganks.

In order to effectively harass enemies, you should aim to damage your enemy without causing aggression from the enemy creeps. Typically, the easiest way to accomplish this is to click on the enemy hero from outside the range of creeps aggro (roughly the range of the ranged creep) and to use spells that don’t do area of effect damage. After you do some damage and the enemy retreats, you can continue attacking the creeps and maintaining control of the wave. This method will look something like this:

image

image

Even in the second clip I get the attention of the closest enemy creep from my second attack, which I would consider a mistake any day. Fortunately, the creep was already close enough to death that this didn’t affect the placement of the creep wave, as an insignificant amount of damage to my creeps was lost. In the end, I am able to do damage to Slark while keeping the balance of the creep wave intact and, therefore, keeping the creep wave close to my tower.

This is just a quick example. In an actual game, the practice gets much more difficult. Typical lanes have more than two people in them, and this can easily work in your favor or against you. For example, if you focus on harassing without affecting the creep wave, you can push the enemy away while your partner focuses on keeping control of the creeps. However, people often get so wrapped up in attacking the enemy that they ignore their affect on the creeps.

This guide is meant to remind players that control of the creep wave is very important, never get lazy and push the creep wave to the enemy tower unnecessarily. Skilled players will allow you to harass them and push the creep wave to where they can safely farm. In some cases, players have been known to intentionally die to cause the creep wave to come to their tower where they can safely farm. Always be aware of the consequences of your actions!

If you can master harassing the enemy while also keeping control of the creep wave, you will be well on your way to dominating the early phase of DotA. Not only is lane control important, but preventing your enemy from ever getting gold or levels can cripple them for much of the rest of the game. However, become too aggressive and lazy with your control and you are in for an unpleasant surprise when the enemy you thought you were beating up crushes you under his high-leveled, well-equipped fist.

http://dotastrategies.tumblr.com/post/60044683358/dota2-early-game-harassing

RotK to VG

http://fj2.sgamer.com/attachments/forum/201308/31/155908na4qom5jmolrjalb.png

from chinese sgamer forum, apparently dai almost certain if not 99%confirmed that rotk going to vg.

also, rotk posted a weibo today saying he's reporting tomorrow to a famaliar place, he is widely speculated to be in shanghai, and thats where he played for WE back in the days of 2011, hence famaliar place.

vg is moving their gaming house to shanghai on sept 4, so all coming together.

rotk also said good luck to 2former teammates, and was very displeased and distant with burning. so people are speculating super is also going to vg with him. good luck to dai and 357.

possible vg lineup

fy super rotk fenrir 5th tutu or 820?

fire away and discuss!

Vici Gaming

Vici Gaming now on Facebook.

They will announce they're coming players in a couple of weeks..

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vici-Gaming/513729982040748

Prof team Empire - Vanskor

Vanskor joins team Empire

http://www.team-empire.org/news/1414/

From Dignitrash to KP

Aui_2000 switched teams - prof:

Virtus Pro - roster update

-  Артур «Goblak» Костенко (капитан) 
-  Ярослав «NS» Кузнецов 
-  Дмитрий «LighTofHeaveN» Куприянов 
-  Роман «Resolut1on» Фоминок 
-  Сергей «God» Брагин 

Golden Joystick Award

Vote for DotA2 for Best Online Game and Steam for Best Platform in the 31st Golden Joystick Awards!

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/joystick/homepage.php

ACE Alliance’s King makes statement

Ever since Chinese teams’ losses at TI3, and even before that, fans and insiders alike have blamed the Association for Chinese Esports for vaious failures and draconic restrictions in Chinese Dota. Finally, earlier today, ACE’s top person, King, made a personal statement and response.

An interesting bit near the end is that ACE League will be inviting the top 3 at TI3 for a 3-month stay in China. The rest of the piece is very thorough and interesting. Give it a read and see what you think…

Source: http://p.t.qq.com/longweibo/index.php?lid=4260234213311849153

“Regarding ACE, I want to share some of my sentiments”

Recently, due to Chinese teams’ losses at TI3, the ACE Alliance has as a result been put on a spotlight. I hadn’t responded or explained anything until now, the reason being that these losses haven’t been easy to accept for anyone. Chinese teams failed to achieve good results, the Dota-ACE Alliance (the ACE Alliance has a D-ACE and an L-ACE, for Dota and LoL respectively) must also bear responsibility. With the spotlight now on myself and ACE, this could actually be a good thing for players and Dota 2 clubs, because in this process, we can make gradual steps towards more stability, and continue our work in the future. Here, I want to talk some of my own thoughts as well as share some realities.

Everyone has been questioning my devotion to esports. I can tell you all right now, since I helped form the Lion team in 1999, and then with YolinY, then to WE, it’s been 14 years. Perhaps the current me does not have that same kind of fervent love for esports as many other people, yet esports has already seeped into my blood itself, and so my relation with esports is a more personal, intimate one. So, compared to many esports fanatics, I might see things more objectively and logically. Even though when I’m chatting with friends, I might joke that if I’d gone to work in online games (like MMOs) or some other industry, I’d be better off right now. But I am clear on this fact: without esports I am nothing, or it could be said that I had always, from the start, planned on making this my life’s work, because I like to relate with fellow games, I enjoy collaborating with fellow gaming people. Because we’re all the same, straightforward, without ulterior motives, so please, I ask everyone to not doubt my passion for esports. It is merely a difference in opinion in many things, and thus people have a different starting point in discussions, so let me explain things point by point below.

First of all, I want to talk about the format and structure of D-ACE (Dota ACE Alliance).

1. D-ACE exists without any governmental backing. Its leadership consists of representatives selected via vote by all member clubs, and all major decisions are also determined by way of votes. For example, my role as leader of ACE comes by way of being selected by voting.

I was selected unanimously, and I appreciate the trust everyone has placed in me. Even though, before taking the position, I knew there would be many difficulties, I was determined to not let everyone down.

After coming into the position, my first challenge was addressing the poaching of players between clubs — if this issue was addressed inappropriately, I ran the risk of insulting the clubs. The second question here was, when it is players themselves organizing and forming their own ideal rosters, and ACE comes in and places barriers, then the players can become annoyed with us. Thirdly, events and tournaments at the time were relatively random and non-standardized, with many events not paying for travel and accommodations, delaying prize payments, etc — in handling this issue, I needed to be wary of offending event organizers. Fourth, for the fans’ point of view, the alliance equals an organization that holds power, and the word ‘power’ often in the current climate is equated with negative meanings, because a common sentiment has formed in which any organization with power is bullying others, and thus, any mistake from ACE causes widespread dissent.

Overall, at the time I had these and many more concerns. Everyone knew that the position was one with lots of challenges and little reward, and people around me all advised me to not take the role, they all said to me that I shouldn’t risk my years of esports reputation on such a position. After all, such a role has influences over the interests of many, many, people, and they could all come out and critique you at any time. I understood these things at the time.

Then why did I still take the role up, knowing all this?

In 2003-2004, I went with the team overseas for competition, and we achieved pretty good results. Foreign media wanted to interview me, and they asked me, “You guys actually have computers and internet in China? How much effort did it take to get that set up for you guys?” Back then, it would seem that foreign ideas of China were still stuck in the past, so my thought was that, by competing in esports events, we could not only achieve results and win titles, but also prove to the world that China is growing and developing, and that at least in terms of computers and internet, we aren’t lacking.

I found that esports was very popular amongst young people overseas, and at the same time those who misunderstood China the most were also young people, so I wanted to show them through our hard work that China can compete, and is excellent in esports. So, my dream at the time was to help the team take a world championship title, and prove to the world that we Chinese can do it. In the heyday of Warcraft 3, we achieved quite a few world titles, and many foreign competitors visited China in order to participate in events here. We had many large events broadcasted to the world, and we showed to the West that esports is strong in China, and it is popular. I was very proud then, because to be able to find so much glory, and help those around me gain recognition across the globe, this meant that I had also achieved my own dream. I should be satisfied.

After we had gotten so many world championship titles, I made a plan. From Beijing, to Shenzhen, to Guangzhou, to Chengdu, and many more places, I went and visited businesses and companies, hoping that they would sponsor us, recognize us. Even though I had lots of numbers and statistics to back myself up, that esports as an industry outstripped many other realms that they traditionally sponsored, that it provided greater returns, I was still rejected. Their response was that esports was not highly recognized throughout mainstream society, and that they were not willing to take this risk. I was young and headstrong at the time, and this was a big hit to me.

From these two examples, I began to realize, even though we’d taken some world titles, our industry was still not mature, and thus we had been losing out on many things of value. At the club level in Chinese esports, there lacked a standardized set of regulations for the market, and so all outsiders could see was that it was a mess, and thus frighten away potential investors, regardless of how much potential the market may have.

So, what could be done to standardize things? How to achieve mainstream acceptance for esports? This became my new goal.

Thus, even though I knew that taking my role at ACE would mean lots of sacrifice for little personal gain, that I would potentially make many enemies, and that there was the possibility of even ruining my reputation within, I still went straight in to do it.

It’s been nearly two years now, and I swear that every single action I’ve taken while with the alliance, I can answer for to my own conscience, and I can answer for to esports as a whole.

Next, allow me to address some issues one by one.

I have always felt that, in this industry, people who can talk far outnumber people who can actually do things. In fact, esports truly lacks people who can really do things. So in 2007, I closed down my personal blog, and it’s been some six years since then where I haven’t written anything — my writing might be awkward in places, I hope everyone can be understanding.

Regarding the most-debated ACE club tier system, and prize pool regulations

Around April and May of this year, ACE held a very important meeting. This meeting had not only club managers present, every club also sent a player representative to participate. At the meeting, I explained the current situation with Dota 2 to all of the managers and players. In this we talked about the lack of events, future events and their timing, and I went around and collected all of their opinions. At the time, some players said that China currently lacks tournaments — top tier teams can achieve top three at these events, they still have TI3 where top 8 is in the money, so top tier teams, relative to lower teams, still have prize money to earn. The lower tier teams, thus, have a lot less room to work with, since there’s a lack of events and those few events that exist will largely be dominated by the top tier teams, meaning that basically for many lower tier teams, all they had was their salaries. They were very concerned over the possibility of players at smaller clubs simply retiring and leaving the scene, especially because the Chinese Dota 2 scene currently lacks new talent. The threat of a growing gap in Chinese Dota was present, even the threat of a few clubs disbanding, things which would negatively impact the overall scene. At the time, we confirmed four different large events: 2 DSLs, and 2 ACE Leagues, so based on this, we determined that we should try to allow the smaller clubs to participate in more of the smaller events. This was how we came upon the club tier system, as well as the prize pool regulations, but we did not announce this publicly at the time.

A month later, we held a second meeting with managers and player representatives. The players felt that, prior to TI3, it would be best if they had more events in which to practice and prepare. We considered the reality at the time, and recognized that there indeed should not have been restrictions on events for teams, so we canceled that rule. This is why we saw these teams at Alienware, ECL, and NEST. I feel that the previous rule was a mistake by the alliance, one which D-ACE should take main responsibility for. We failed to consider what the teams and players needed most, and then we failed to communicate the change with the public afterwards, and thus caused a lot of commotion.

Why the tier system?

Locked in events for this year are: DSL (500k RMB for champions), ACE League (1m RMB for champions), and TI3 (1m USD for champions). Due to time restrictions, there will only be one iteration of the ACE League this year. Next year, there will be two each of DSL and ACE League, and what this means is that there will be a total of at least four events with half-million RMB prizes throughout the year, with another International in between.

As these events are improved upon and polished, we will also continuously re-evaluate the tier system involved.

1. Due to the fact that the aforementioned events (ACE and DSL) are all top-heavy prizepools, with top 3 getting most of the money, we must consider the smaller clubs. Thus, we think we should leave a reasonable amount of smaller events to them, in order to make sure the industry as a whole grows.

2. To our sponsors, having a tier system is more fair.

For example, a sponsor puts out 1 million RMB to hold an event, and they see that in the daytime the teams and players are playing in their big money event, yet later in the evening they’re playing in small prize online matches, then the result can only be one of two things. The first is that this sponsor decides to lower future investments, they will feel that the players’ aren’t worth as much. If they can invest 100k and get the same players, then why pay more? The second possibility is that the sponsor feels deceived, and completely pulls out of future inviestments. Of course, there’s a third option in which the sponsor continues on as if nothing has happened, and in this case then it is due to either the event is very profitable for them, or that they are directly involved with the game, as the game’s developers or such.

So, when determining tiers for teams and events, we must consider the long term, we must consider the industry’s growth as a whole. Should be focus on quality or quantity? Where is the balance? These have been things that we’ve been considering lately. As for what events top teams should partake in, we will continue to hold monthly meetings with club managers and player representatives, and come to conclusions collectively.

The lessons from TI3 are deep and extremely important. Many people concluded that, in order to win big titles, there must be enough events and matches normally. Of course, I have no way of countering this point of view, because after all, results are what speak loudest, and we lost. Indeed, we lacked events, this is the truth. But here, I want to say, from March to June of this year, D-ACE did not reject or refuse any Dota 2 event. Instead, D-ACE has worked to facilitate scheduling and timings for various large events.

Dota 2 Chinese servers are not fully open to the public yet, and many sponsors are still observing the situation.

At the end of last year, I think I may have been the only one who had a plan in hand and was out and about searching for sponsors for large Dota 2 tournaments. Even still, I was met with plenty of closed doors. Luckily, I still managed to get a large sponsor in the form of a real estate company, and I thought that this would bring me some appreciation, yet in the end I’ve been accused of taking money from Tencent in exchange for putting Dota 2 down, I feel pretty sad about that.

Regarding clubs, players, and contracts

When the ACE Alliance was formed, contracts between players and clubs were not guaranteed.

It was very possible for a club to bring up a new talent, grow them, and then have the player poached away once the player showed some results. If this becomes the norm, then no club would risk training newcomers anymore, a club’s investors would lack any kind of protection, and players would lack any kind of security. After the alliance was formed, much was done regarding malicious poaching of players by way of contract regulations, and nowadays there is hardly any poaching going on. This year, before TI3, the alliance specifically went to each club and had them each pay a deposit – 50k RMB per team. As deposits, the money is only temporarily with ACE, and if the clubs need the money back, then it is still theirs. This was in order to prevent, post-TI3, clubs disbanding and not paying players, or to address the potential of clubs kicking players without following their contracts. In doing so, the purpose was to at least guarantee the short term interests of the players.

Regarding the recent drama over players leaving teams, and players being replaced, I feel that the base reason is that competition prizes still far outweigh the salaries of players, and thus the players’ desire to build stronger teams to compete internationally is very normal. At the same time, this can cause rifts to form between players and between players and their clubs. This shows that there still lacks a systematic approach to things, an approach in which events and clubs work closely together. It also reflects that the clubs themselves haven’t unlocked the full potential of the market, they haven’t fully released their business potential. Players cannot possibly compete on their own, they must rely on their teammates as well as support staff behind the scenes of the club. Esports consists of many parts, and we must take into account the even growth of all its parts, and not only focus on any single part, because doing so will only bring failure.

In an interview in the past, I said, even if esports gets on mainstream television, this may not be a good thing for esports presently. Because things are still too disorganized, we aren’t ready yet. At least from my point of view, things are still all over the place at the club level. If the product itself is lacking, then no matter how much promotion you do for it is useless, maybe even negative. I think that clubs currently are still too non-standardized, and in the eyes of those who work in traditional industries professionally, they would laugh. So in order to have clubs become more standardized, to fully develop their market potential, these are things that we esports people must work towards.

Regarding WE.Dota

Ever since WE formed a Dota team, we’ve been developing fresh talent for the scene. No matter what else is said, WE has not done anything to harm Dota. Even if you think WE has not contributed to Dota, there still hasn’t been anything WE has done to harm it. As for why WE does not have a Dota portion any more, there are two reasons. First, after taking on the ACE role, I have lacked the time and energy to manage another Dota team, and so the management was lacking, the team’s results thus suffered, and so on. Second, Dota 1 is transitioning to Dota 2, and at the time, Dota 2 still lacked an official Chinese partner, there was no sponsor that was willing to sponsor our Dota 2 team. Without a sponsor, for a club such as WE that does not have any rich people propping it up, we couldn’t do it, so we regretfully let the Dota 2 team go.

Regarding myself, LoL, and Dota 2

One of the main points that I’m being flamed on right now is actually the fact that WE has no Dota 2 team, yet has an LoL team that has achieved some results in the past. This is the point that I most want to address, yet I’m least happy to talk about, because I’ve always felt that those who play games are all part of one big family, and had never previously considered the relations between games.

At the beginning of this year, I was reminded that I should be cautious regarding my role and place, that I should be wary of doing something that would bring negativity to myself. I was too naive at the time regarding this, I thought that as long as I concentrated on doing my best, people would understand, and within the alliance itself, I thought that if I had no Dota 2 team of my own, I’d be more able to objectively handle things.

Yet, before TI3, there was an incident in which doubt was casted upon ACE due to my own background with LoL, and I realized that things weren’t so simple anymore. In order to clear the doubts, I decided that I would no longer be directly involved with Dota 2 event decisions, that I must find someone whose club managed a Dota 2 team. Thus, I shifted my focus towards standardizing club and player regulations.

Once I got an ACE office in Shanghai at the beginning of the year, basically whenever I haven’t been away on business, if I was in Shanghai then I’d be in the office dealing with alliance things. Regardless if a club had matters of great or small import, I’d handle them as soon as possible, I never once dodged an issue or put things off.

In actuality, I do feel a bit ashamed in the amount of time and effort I’ve been able to put into my own club. To this day, I do not know where the new WE and PE team house is, because it’s been around eight months since I last visited, and back then they hadn’t moved yet. So here I want to apologize to these kids who are playing for their dreams, you’re all excellent, and I haven’t been much help to you guys. Yet it is what I have agreed to do that has brought upon you all a lot of trouble and pressure. I also want to thank Sky and Zax at WE for their support, for understanding my dreams, and for helping share the load of a lot of the club’s duties.

I’ve said so much, and everyone can see, ACE’s development hasn’t been all that smooth. We are all a bunch of esports lovers and fans, and without any governmental support, without any investment money to work with, without even sponsors’ support at times. We’ve met a lot of strong opposition and challenges, and I know, the alliance’s many regulations have been less than perfect, and cannot even be compared with the level that traditional sports has achieved, cannot even be compared with KeSPA. For the clubs’ survival, though, ACE must go on.

Here I also want to tell everyone D-ACE’s plans for the upcoming future. First, we will standardize club management as well as player regulations, then establish a D-ACE website upon which we will publicize these things. We will establish a system from which amateur players will be discovered, and given chances to grow, and thus promote Dota 2 in amateur player realms. In this first iteration of this, over 200 teams participated, and we selected two of the best teams and invited them to Shanghai, where they had the chance to play and train with professionals, and we worked on helping them find sponsorship. We will collaborate with colleges and universities in holding LAN events on campuses, and have professional players interact at these events with collegiate players in order to promote esports on campuses. We will establish offline training and bootcamp facilities, and provide every member club these types of facilities, where each Chinese team can gather to train before large events. Our ACE League will also invite the top 3 foreign teams at this year’s TI3, and if accepted, these teams will come to China and train and compete against Chinese teams for a period of three months. During the competition, we will hold promotional events for players to interact with the public, and thus promote esports to society.

Perhaps as I’m writing this, clubs around China are still undergoing a big shakeup of which even I do not know. Perhaps many fellow professionals are still laughing at the alliance. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said all the things I have. Esports as an industry is still one that needs everyone’s help and support collectively. In the past few years, it is perhaps the club development aspect that has held the rest of it back, but those of us that work on the club level really do hope that we can quickly standardize and professionalize things. Of course in this we need the understanding and support of all kinds of esports personalities and people — it isn’t time to laugh and marvel at the mess. The once-a-year million dollar International, perhaps our losses there still weigh heavy, but we need to start on a clean slate. Whether we go and build a dream team or we focus on steady growth of the industry as a whole, and thus win based on a stable foundation, and thus prove ourselves through our wins to all of society… this is a question that is worthy of consideration for every esports person.

Virtus Pro - proffesional team - Roster update:

Virtus Pro!

 Yaroslav "NS" Kuznetsov

 Sergei "Smile" Revin

 Dmitry "Lost" Kupriyanov

 Arthur "Goblak" Kostenko

 Sergey "Gud" Bragin

Dota 2 Update - August 28th, 2013

GAMEPLAY
- Fixed recasting a higher level of Enfeeble only refreshing the existing duration without upgrade the stats
- Fixed Epicenter not slowing attack speed by 10

VISUAL
- Fixed Timbersaw's body blade not rendering properly.
- You will no longer see other player's -commands (like -ping).
- adjusted cloth settings for Witchdoctor and Lion

SPECTATING
- Added experimental Player Perspective Directed mode. Turn on by selecting player perspective and setting dota_spectator_directed_player_perspective to 1.

AUDIO
- Add audio for cheese usage.
- Fix FoW interactions on QoP and AM blink.

MAC/LINUX
- We now do not use Adobe Flash to play videos, but HTML5 video tags. This should fix a crash with Adobe Flash 11.7 on Mac.
- Add support for querying Gnome Settings for proxy settings for embedded webpages.
- Fixed crash-on-startup on Mac that could occur with certain game controllers.

IME
- Fix for Korean IME chat bug where two ENTER presses were required after entering Korean characters.

UI
- Fix for store banners showing up in the TODAY tab when the FIND MATCH button is clicked.

ECONOMY
- Lockless Luckbox: Replaced Lone Druid item 'Skull of Xahryx' (head slot) with 'Form of the Onyx Grove' (true form).

Virtus Pro - Empire

LoH leaves Empire..
LoH joins Virtus Pro

http://www.virtuspro.org/news/dota2/lightofheaven-stanovitsya-igrokom-virtuspro/#axzz2dIE6Iomh

Mushi's own words

Yes, it's true. I am going to China soon. This decision didn't come very easy, but sometimes, you need to make hard decisions to get to where you want to be. Just know that I am parting with Orange amicably and my reasons for leaving are purely personal.

A lot of people are asking about which Chinese team I am joining, but really, that's not important. No matter where I go, I will still be carrying the Malaysian flag. And no matter what team I join, I will still be the Mushi that you all know. My target is still the same: bring a good game to all the fans around the world. 

I believe Orange without me is still Orange, for as long as the other 4 players still believe in each other as we did back in TI3. So, regardless of who replaces me, they will still achieve a lot in the future.

I would like to thank Orange, Neolution, and all our sponsors for always supporting us in all our endeavors. 

To my Orange teammates, I believe you all can go far even without me. 

To my true fans, I hope that you all will continue to support me, even though I am no longer a part of Orange.

Finally, to all the aspiring gamers out there, believe that nothing is impossible. Don't give up until you get what you want and you are where you want to be."" -Mushi

ORANGE ESPORTS ANNOUNCES THE DEPARTURE OF MUSHI TO CHINA

Today at a meet the media session at the Orange HQ in Wangsa Maju, Orange eSports have announced that the star and darling of the international and local Dota 2 community, Mushi will be leaving for greener pastures in China. The announcement follows their incredible third place finish in the international 3. Mushi has said that he wants to go to China to further his abilities and skills in hopes that he can improve even more. There has been no exact team confirmed but the MD of Orange eSports has said that they are in talks with several Chinese teams. We believe that DK may be the most likely choice. What do you think?

Fantasy Team Rewards - The International 3

Fantasy Team Rewards

For those of you that took part in the Compendium Fantasy team for this year’s International will be awarded with an item chest depending on how successful your team was.

The contents of the boxes has yet to be revealed and will most likely be delivered in the next week or two.

Seer’s Bounty

“From clouded visions come just rewards.”

Diviner’s Bounty

“Through strong intuition have such potent rewards been found.”

Augur’s Bounty

“The virtues of wisdom yield precious rewards.”

Prophet’s Bounty

“By uncanny insight were such wondrous rewards revealed.”

Old metagame. Back in the day

The first widely used competitive map of DotA was version 5.84b (later patched to c and d by a third party for fast load and a few bug fixes) which was used for a very long time as Icefrog worked on the new six series of DotA. One of the most prominent leagues in North America at this time was IGS. In this era, there was some of the most imbalanced shit ever such as Stealth Assassin who had permanent invisibility starting at level 3, 3x crits, blink, and a non channeling deathward. Medusa had a ridiculous mana shield and split shot making her one of the best carrys and Voidwalker had a GLOBAL stun that lasted 5 seconds on EVERY enemy hero which was commonly coupled with refresher. These heroes were picked EVERY GAME.

CALeague Season 1 started in mid 2005 using version 6.27b in which game play was teampick once on Sentinel and on Scourge with All Pick being the tie breaker. Sentinel game play heavily revolved around pushing with heroes like Keeper of the Light when he had global teleporting wisps (p0c [FAG / APEX / JMC / MYM] had a famous KotL) Chen, etc coupled with mekansm which every hero would get to chain heal. Scourge game play revolved around AoE stuns and damage to kill summons and heroes but they were heavily disadvantaged as the mekansm heals would negate the damage. If a team won on Scourge, they pretty much had the match won.

CALeague Season 2 used version 6.32b in which we started to see the famous silencer or sniper vs lich, clinkz, or viper in mid lane. coL.ezy popularized clinkz solo mid with the zero cooldown fire arrow orb walk rape. Divine Rapier + Aegis of the Immortal (3 charges, they used to have 4 in a previous version) were the main items that carrys got and every support hero would rush Aegis's. It was common for heroes to carry two Aegis which were undroppable. Viper was pretty much unstoppable in this version, coL.Jollyjoker popularized blink dagger Lich which was also pretty much unstoppable. Sentinel was at a heavy disadvantage this version. Famous matchups of Mike[P]'s Silencer vs JMC.Merlini's Lich or coL.ezy's Clinkz and any mix of these received huge threads on the old dota-allstars forums. They were the best solo-ers of the time. Somewhere in here or the next version, Bristleback gets popularized by Team Pandemic's SwissBeatZ.

Pandemic's Miraclechipmunk popularizes Spectre in version 6.33.

CALeague Season 3 used version 6.37 which still used teampick. Sentinel once again received favor from Icefrog getting the notorious 4 out of 5 strategy. Twin Headed Dragon, Chen, Syllabear, Vengeful Spirit, and Beastmaster. The strategy was said that you can pick any four of these heroes plus ANYTHING else, it would be pretty much impossible to lose if you knew what you were doing. Scourge's answer to the strategy? I don't think there was one. I think Check 6 came up with this strategy of buying Aegis recipes on chicken and selling them when you die to get enough gold to buy back and they beat verGe, the then top team in some tournament. Then Icefrog said no and now you can't sell items from chicken. The absolute NOTORIOUS FUCK UP of this era can be seen here. Husssaler will never live this down. He still gets shit about it today. I heard Eddie (winter_wish) stole his girlfriend.

Somewhere around here Icefrog changes how denies work. Previously, denies gave ZERO xp so it limited the hero viability pool to mostly ranged heroes as melee heroes are obviously disadvantaged in their ability to farm/deny/harass in a lane. So Icefrog made it so denies gave MORE experience to melee heroes than a normal creep kill and that ranged heroes would still receive at least half of the experience. Thus, even though melee heroes were still disadvantaged to ranged heroes in farm/deny/harass, they could at least level up.

Version 6.41 Trilanes are starting to get popular which usually always included Lich because of his deny skill or some variation of a triple stun lane. The famous MYM.Merlini's Zeus verse trilane clip that has been talked about for years.

CALeague pretty much dies down as there are tournaments and other leagues with actual cash prizes such as Farm 4 Fame and MYM Prime Defending which was the absolute top tier tournament to play in every 4 months. MYM Prime Defending 5 and 6 used version 6.43b which now had -challenge mode with 3 bans a team and alternating draft mode picks. This was the era of SK Gaming's global strat. Zeus, Spectre, and Furion were picked every game along with two support / gankers. Icefrog removed Aegis of the Immortal as a recipe item and changed Roshan to drop it instead.

MYM Prime Defending 7, 8, and 9 used version 6.48b which some consider the highlight of DotA history. The insane rivalry between MYM and Virtus Pro was absolutely brain shattering and nerd "break your spine in three places Christopher Reeves style" chilling. coL.Jollyjoker might have revolutionized Lich with blink dagger, but Third_Child revolutionized DotA by getting blink dagger on EVERY hero. Everyone started getting blink dagger on every hero and Virtus Pro and MYM absolutely dominated every team they played with their mandigo sized dick rapings. Every team that played them left with bloody and torn vaginas with no rape kits, hospitals or police around to report the rape to except tournament admins. This era focused on lane dominance with lanes such as Sandking Lina or Leshrac Sven or any combo of the two and EXTREME ganking. MYM.Merlini popularizes jungle Beastmaster in this version. Magnus, Shadowfiend, Warlock, Queen of Pain, Earthshaker, and Priestess of the Moon also are extremely popular. Please watch this and this. You are literally watching history.

MYM Prime Defending 10 and 11 used version 6.52e which heavily nerfed blink dagger. You could no longer use blink dagger if you were damaged by an enemy hero in the last 5 seconds. Four hero bans become the standard for league and tournament games. Terrorblade and Luna became extremely popular. The game changed from extreme ganking to more of a farm fest. Watch this. For the first time, Asian, North and South American, and European teams gather in a LAN setting for ESWC 2008. The Asians absolutely dominate showing that their passive turtling play is the best for this version. Zenith wins using Luna while Kingsurf used Terrorblade. Article. Asia shows the world how important Lion is.

SMM 09 Stuff I'll add later. Version 6.63b. Basically Kuroky is a faggot and used MYM to go to SMM but lose in group stages so he quits the team. Poker Idols shows the world that they can compete with Asia by beating City Hunter, the then favorite for the tournament.

Version 6.64 Icefrog finally recognizes the problem of buying back and reworks the formula to be more expensive as the game goes on.

Version 6.67c, the tournament to watch was ESWC 2010. Two years has passed since the previous ESWC. Have the non Asian teams learned anything new to beat the invincible Asians? Nope. The rest of the world tries to use Morphling with Ethereal Blade which is a devastating combo but EHOME stomps everyone including DTS (now NaVi). EHOME shows the world again why Lion is so important and that Doom should always be banned if you don't have first pick. EHOME uses an item build timing push strategy with mass teleport scroll/boots of travel support.

Some other info below:

Version 6.50b Crystal Maiden's Brilliance Aura becomes global and is too good to pass up.

Version 6.59d Team EG's JohnnyUtah and Fear rape face with Naix and stay on top for a long time winning Farm 4 Fame. Demon popularizes Clockwerk. Kingsurf.Int is also very good during this era.

Some versions later, Kunkka gets phased in and out,

Version 6.65 Alchemist Unstable Concoction becomes gay as shit coupled with this infinite life regeneration ultimate and bonus gold passive, he get's picked a lot. Necrolyte's aura is rape and get's picked to counter Alchemist's gay as shit life regeneration ultimate.

Version 6.68c changes -CM mode draft style to 3 bans 3 picks 2 bans 2 picks.

DotA 2 Gamescon 2011. Only 46 heroes are available in the pool. You can't really say anything about the metagame with only half the hero pool.

Also, Broodmother somewhere in there. Great last pick surprise if the enemy team has little AoE.

Dota Meta Games - Changes in strat and items throughout time

Its interesting to see how the game constantly evolve from version to version of dota. Here is kind of a deja vu back in time. Its fun to think about how much the game constantly changes, just because of small changes.

Nuke heavy - QoP, Zeus, and other int nukers were heavily favored. This was back in the very early days of competitive dota.

Blink Dagger / Gank heavy - Back in the days where there was no 3 second CD on blink dagger after being damaged. 6.3X to early 4X ish. (Approximately the same time as above)

Hard-carries, 4protect1, trilane heavy - More conservative playstyles emerged following nerfs to Blink Dagger and various other changes. Some notable carries of this period not seen often today are Kunkka, Doombringer, and Terrorblade. Notable supports include vengeful spirit (aura), crystal maiden, Visage (extremely good in trilanes), and Earthshaker. These were also the glory days of Shadow Fiend. (Late 4X - 6.5X)

Hard Carries, 4Protect1 - Similar to above, but some heavy nerfs to doombringer (0 armor) made him fall out of favor and kunkka became unused in favor of more reliable carries. Medusa was popular during this period. Spectre enjoyed some amount of play following the success of global strat by Loda's Team_Team. Venge was still picked fairly often although a lot less useful (stun rescaled, wave no longer cancels consumables). (late 6.5X, early 6.6X)

Push heavy / teamfight centric - This phase came about in later 6.6x to now. You can subdivide this into multiple distinct phases (as done in the original post) but this is the general description. In my mind the turning point for the push heavy strat began when DTS, led by Artstyle, placed 3rd in WDC in Wuhan, China with heavy push strats against various heavily favored 4protect1 hard carry farming Chinese teams.

Some interesting notes on stable heroes:

Windrunner and Venomancer come to mind as the most stable heroes that were consistently popular through the ages and had very little changes through the versions.

Item change the metagame.. Several times - 

A couple of things I initially neglected to touch on

• In the early days push strats (or PUSHING in general) were extremely difficult because of the TP mechanism.

Using a TP scroll on a tower would cause it to gain a metric craptonne of armour while your TP is channeling. What players would do to defend against a push is to team TP into the tower 1 at a time and cancel it at the last second. This was effectively a 10 second glyph that stopped most pushes cold in their tracks.

This was effectively solved when new TP mechanisms were worked in (I forget the version).

• 5 minute buyback cooldowns

This was a big change to the game. I saw a lot of complaints about Chinese farming dota in TI2 but you have to realize this is already severely toned down. Before the introduction buyback cooldowns 2 hour Chinese farm fests were not uncommon (more like it was the norm) as both teams would try to save for buybacks and refuse to engage without the money. I vividly remember a Chinese storm player singlehandedly repelling an enemy push by buying back 3 times when they were breaching high ground (was it YYF? I forget who exactly.)

• The introduction of smoke of deceit

The introduction of smoke of deceit made ganking-centric strats actually viable again. Pro players already have excellent map awareness and coupled with the omnipresence of wards ganking was not viable for quite a while.

You may still gank and you may still succeed, but (credit to SCLegend for mentioning this) as 2009 proved with his multiple carry strats - the payoff you gain from a successful gank was less than the extra farm the enemy carry would have gained from a free lane.

One way around this was shown by Artstyle-led DTS (and later, Na'Vi) who began to engage deep in enemy territory so each successful gank would translate into a tower, which saw some moderate success.

The recent gold buff to hero kills has already begun to shift the meta back in gank-heavy favour.

i49 starts today

For those of you wanting to support the advance of U.K. Dota 2 or simply looking for something to idle away your weekend with, the biggest Gaming Festival in the U.K. is taking place this weekend and they are featuring their first ever Dota 2 competition with a prizepool, which will kick off in about two hours time. So welcome, to Insomnia 49.

Have fun

Daily fun pic!

Know the feel in matches. Always carry a tp.

SIGNED:

Dota 2 - Unreleased heroes

Progress Table

A quick glance progress table:

Hero	Concept Art	Hero Portrait	Ability Icons	Ability Strings	Hero Textures	Hero Particles	Minimap Icon	Subtitles
Abyssal Underlord
Legion Commander
Techies

Im really looking forward to playing the ultra fun techies. And Pit Lord (Abyssal) - Oh.. The opportunities :)