The International 2017 | Grand Final | Newbee vs Liquid

Posted on August 14, 2017 by MOBA Expert

Good evening! It’s time for the decisive match of The International 2017. In a series of up to three wins, Team Liquid will compete against the Chinese NewBee – the winner will take home Aegis and the biggest prize fund in the history of e-sports, which is more than $ 10,000,000.

Newbee vs Liquid | 1st Map

Nature’s Prophet from MinD_ContRoL again abruptly starts the game on its signature hero, killing kpii on the Batrider! Immediately after this, team gathering at the mid lane, where Liquid manages to make two kills and kill the courier. The European team dominates the lanes, the score is 6 : 0. NewBee respond with a gank on the Troll Warlord (Miracle), but after losing three heroes on the bottom lane. Summing up the subtotals – after 10 minutes “Liquids” lead with 11: 2 score and with more than six thousand gold. Roshan is under protection, but the courier again dies.

The game is calmed down a bit, and then each time loses two heroes. Liquid killed the Bloodseeker (Moogy), took the tower and went to Roshan. NewBee do not have time to stop them and just lose three more heroes. Aegis helps the European five to increase the advantage. Nevertheless, it’s not easy for them to go to the high ground, they lose several heroes. But with the third attempt, Liquid manages to send several heroes to the tavern, destroy one side and switch to the second one. The Chinese Newbee are forced to surrender.

Newbee vs Liquid | 2nd Map

Ancient Apparition (KuroKy) turned out to be very far away, and Anti-Mage (Moogy) makes an important kill. By the third minute, NewBee are managed to make a kill on the each lane. Alchemist (Miracle) goes into the jungle, but he’s again overtaken by Queen of Pain (Sccc), and it’s 4 : 0. The Chinese dominate the whole map but do not so much overcome the opponents in gold only because of the Miracle on Alchemist. Liquid continues to make many mistakes and give away the initiative.

Newbee finally could manage to perform a kill of the Alchemist (Miracle), once again slowing down his farm. The other two Liquid’s heroes are very seriously behind their opponents. Nevertheless, they find it possible to gather up – for example, they managed to destroy the T2 at the top and Sand King (kaka). The NewBee released a little their grip on the Liquid’s head, and they use this opportunity to improve the situation.

However, the Chinese are still ahead – in the absence of Alchemist (Miracle), they manage to exchange one hero for three enemies. However, Liquid answers very cool, taking Roshan: NewBee did not have time to prepare for the fight and lost it, losing most of their heroes. Suddenly Alchemist (Miracle) became very strong and with two lives decides to go on the high ground.

The team from the Middle Kingdom as a result of several errors in the defense loses the side and three buybacks, but the fight at the base still conducts very unsuccessfully. Now Liquid wins 9000 gold. And now nobody can stop them – Alchemist (Miracle) comes on the second side, and Anti-Mage (Moogy) as a result remains without a buyback. NewBee forced to surrender.

Newbee vs Liquid | 3rd Map

Gh on Earthshaker changed lane, killed Sand King (kaka) and get gold for the first blood. NewBee perfectly act on the top line and capture the initial advantage. Death Prophet (Sccc) at the bottom takes the tower, Juggernaut (Miracle) responds by killing Centaur Warrunner (kpii). The game is very equal, but the Chinese’s advantage is their push potential. However, when they trying to take away the central t1 they lose two heroes.

Liquid beat off all enemies – once again after the loss of two heroes they manage not only to deff T2 in the top, but also to catch up with two enemies. Then there is a one-to-one exchange, but the “Liquids” themselves take the tower on top. At the 19th minute, Earthshaker (GH) made a mistake at the center – it’s not only two deaths, but also the opportunity for NewBee to kill Roshan. However, the embattled representatives of the Celestial Empire for some reason do not rush, which plays into the hands of the opponent.

Sand King (kaka) is acting controversially, – NewBee respond with a frag on Juggernaut (Miracle). Then follows the exchange of 1 in 1, the Chinese led 4 thousand on gold. The Chinese try to go to Roshan in a smoke and exchange it for T2, but Liquid guessed it and could break into the roshpit. Magnificent fight, minus four and Aegis – and immediately after that the European five takes t3 at the center.

Liquid returns to destroy T3 on the bot, but lose three heroes in exchange for one, although they are still leading five thousand on gold. At the next attack, they manage to kill two characters and to force them to buy back. The teams stand near Roshan in anticipation of the decisive battle. As a result, NewBee caught, but could not kill (there was only 100 hp) Juggernaut (Miracle) and paid for it – minus five.

The European team takes Roshan and going to take barracks. Another team fight – and the game is over. This is 3 : 0, the Kuro team wins the International 2017!

Dota 2 is losing players

Posted on July 30, 2017 by MOBA Expert

Despite the development of e-sports in general, new record sums of the prize fund of The International, the number of Dota 2 players is inexorably decreasing. Paying more attention to the commercial component of the game, the developers are less concerned about ordinary players, which could lead to a certain problem.

Dota 2 is Doomed?

According to the service SteamCharts for the last month, online in Dota 2 has decreased by more than 10%. This is the second largest outflow of players in the history of Dota 2 (the first occurred in September 2015). However, this trend began in March 2016, and since then the average number of players is getting smaller and smaller (see the chart above). If a year ago, on July 2016, the average online was more than 638 thousand players, today this figure does not reach even 500 thousand. The only white spot in the past year was the release of the Battle Pass to The International 2017, after which the online players again crawled down.

One of the main reasons for the slow (if not the reverse) development of Dota 2 is the complexity of the game process. In the latest updates, developers have made many changes that should facilitate the understanding of the game for beginners. Moreover, on the very The International 2017 Valve promise to make a separate stream for new Dota 2 players. But how are they going to keep the old audience?

Summing up

The sunset of this game was prophesied even before it was released, however, Dota 2 is still alive and popular, and the prize fund of the TI7 broke all records. But what if Valve will continue to lose players/profits?

Dota 2 – patch 7.06

Posted on May 18, 2017 by MOBA Expert

Dota 2 is rebalanced again in 7.06

Recently Valve surprised us with the new update. You can always check patch notes all by yourself at the special page on the official Dota 2 Blog, but here I will highlight all main changes of this New Dota 2.

New EXP gaining system

Now it is much more useful to deny your creeps because denied creeps now give 30% of EXP to you, and only 70% of EXP to the enemy. Yes, an enemy now will receive much more EXP, but in the end, you will gain level much faster. Looks like IceFrog is trying to teach players a deny mechanics, so they will use it much more often.

Only in one thing, I’m terrified, this new mechanic may lead to the new game mechanics exploit. I hope that Valve ready for this.

Roshan now have cheese earlier

Now Cheese lovers do not have to wait for the third Roshan – Cheese appears in the inventory of the stone monster on the second respawn. On the other hand, the team’s reward for the murder of Roshan has been reduced from 200 to 150, and Roshan slightly more quickly gaining armor.

Do not die

Dying is becoming more dangerous – now the time for buy back recharging is whole eight minutes. It is expected that this will partially solve the problem of endless matches; And on the other hand, players will have to use this opportunity even more cautiously.

Another change touched talents, that reduce the time of revival – all 42 of the are just removed from Dota 2. Replacements can not be called equivalent everywhere (there is hardly anything as attractive). Nevertheless, some of the proposals are very tempting. For example, the Beastmaster will be able to summon a second wild boar, Io will stun when using Tether, and Techies will receive 250 points of an additional damage.

Another patch another item changes

Valve love to completely change the items. This time, the recipes for Aether Lens, Force Staff, Rod of Atos and Urn of Shadows have been reworked. Developers also keep a course on the rejection of recipes (non-useable scrolls) – to get the Heart of Tarrasque or Mask of Madness now will require stats items instead of those scrolls.

Aghanim’s Scepter is now better

Aghanim’s Scepter is reworked by several heroes – by tradition, it seems as imbalanced as possible. We offer to look at some of them:

Dazzle: Shallow Grave becomes a spell working within a radius of 450
Medusa: Mystic Snake turns enemies into stone for 1 second + 0.2 per jump.
Magnus: Shockwave returns back, dealing damage and slowing enemies down by 60% for 2 seconds.
Bane: Brain Sap cooldown reduced to 1.5 seconds, the skill penetrates magic immunity

Some balance fixes

Several popular heroes of the latest patches were very strongly nerfed. So, Monkey King was nerfed incredibly strong – Wukong’s Command no longer gives bonus damage, and the Basher and Abyssal Blade effect do not work in the Ultimate. Among other changes, the points concerning Naga Siren are also highlighted. Song of the Siren is now less effective, and in general, the hero is much harder to use.

Alchemist will also become less popular – this character has lost some of the bonus from Greevil’s Greed, and Unstable Concoction can now be used less often. In fact, the two abilities have lost their power, and now it’s not so easy to return to the peak of the form as a new alchemist.

New Valve’s Favs

A few words about those who in the new patch should definitely become more popular. Shadow Shaman received 6 points of damage and talent on bonus snakes, and Bane will now be able to cast Brain Sap through BKB and looks stronger in terms of performance. Among the core characters, you should pay attention to the changes Brewmaster and the invisible Windranger.

IceFrog, plz staph

Remember what kind of reaction caused the jumping Earthshaker with Aghanim. It seems that sometimes IceFrog is able to come up with something that no player would have thought of. We present you several updates, which should be the basis for 7.06-dota.

Night Stalker: The ability Hunter in the Night gives a flying movement for 2 seconds;
Queen of Pain: Talent level 25 now gives +550 to the AoE range of Shadow Strike;
Warlock: Talent level 20 now allows you to turn a hero after his death into a burning golem;
Nature’s Prophet: Talent level 25 now gives no cooldown to Teleportation.
Wraith King: Talent level 25 now with Reincarnation you will automatically cast the Wraithfire Blast.

And this is only a small part of the whole update with nerfs and buffs, changes in creeps and buildings, and dozens of edits. It seems that Dota 2 will become surprisingly unusual and new – however, this happens almost after every big patch so everything is as usual.

Look at some my next articles about various Moba genre games:

Dota 2: The International

Posted on August 15, 2016October 17, 2016 by MOBA Expert

The International 2016

The International 2016 is the sixth annual edition of The International. The tournament will be hosted in Seattle; it is the third consecutive year that the Main Event takes place at KeyArena, an arena with a total seating capacity of over 17 thousand.

The format consists of an open qualifier from June 21^st to June 24^th, a main qualifier from June 25^th to June 28^th, a Wild Card qualifier on August 2^nd, the group stage from August 3^rd to August 5^th and the main event from August 8^th to August 13^th.

Open qualifier

The open qualifier consists of eight regional single-elimination tournaments, having two brackets for each region. The winners advance to the respective main qualifier.

Main qualifier

The main qualifier has four regional qualifiers. The winner advances directly to The International while the second through fifth place teams advance to the Regional Double-elimination Playoff Bracket. The winner of each regional playoff bracket will join the six directly invited teams in Seattle.

The third place teams advance to the Wild Card round which consists of a four team double-elimination bracket where the top two teams advance to the group stage and the bottom two teams are eliminated.

Group Stage

The group stage consists of two groups of eight teams. The teams play every other team in their group in a best of two and the top four teams in each group advances to the upper bracket of the main event while the bottom four advance to the lower bracket.

Main Event

The main event consists of sixteen teams playing in a double elimination format over six days. The first lower bracket game is best of one, while all other matches besides the Grand Finals are best of three. The Grand Finals are best of five.

Crew

The event is hosted by Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner, while the matches are analyzed by Dominik “Black^” Reitmeier, Charlie “Charlie” Young, Jacob “Maelk” Toft-Andersen and others. The matches are commentated by Annie “Anneedroid” LeClair, William “Blitz” Lee, Toby “TobiWan” Dawson, David “LD” Gorman, etc.

Teams

The invited teams are

OG, with n0tail, Miracle-, MoonMeander, Cr1t- and Fly,
Team Liquid with MATUMBAMAN, FATA-, MinD_ContRoL, JerAx and KuroKy,
Newbee with Hao, Mu, kpii, ChuaN and Kaka,
LGD Gaming with Agressif, Maybe, xiao8, Banana and MMY!,
MVP Pheonix with MP, QO, Forev, Febby and Dubu,
Natus Vincere with Ditya Ra, Dendi, GeneRaL, SoNNeikO and Artstyle.

The qualified teams are :

Evil Geniuses with Fear, SumaiL, UNiVeRsE, zai and ppd,
Wings Gaming with Shadow, bLink, Faith_bian, Innocence and iceice,
Team Secret with Arteezy, EternaLEnVy, BuLba, Puppey and pieliedie,
TnC Gaming with Raven, Kuku, Sam_H, eyyou and DeMoN,
Digital Chaos with Resolut1on, w33, Moo, Saksa and MiSeRy,
Vici Gaming Reborn with Zyf, Nono, Mikasa, fy and DDC,
Alliance with Loda, s4, AdmiralBulldog, Akke and EGM,
Fnatic with Mushi, MidOne, Ohaiyo, DJ and 343.

The wild card teams are

compLexity Gaming with Chessie, Limmp, swindlemelonzz, Zfreek and Handsken,
EHOME with iceiceice, old chicken, eLeVeN, LaNm and Fenrir,
Escape Gaming with Era, qojqva, KheZu, YapzOr and syndereN
Execration with Nando, Abed, RR, Tims and Kim0.

Prize

The prize pool consists of almost 20 million dollars. The first place earns 44% of the pool while the second place receives 16.5%, the third place receives 10.5% and the fourth place receives 7%.

Weekly Dota 2 News #2

Posted on August 9, 2016December 11, 2016 by MOBA Expert

Weekly Dota 2 News #2

Another Minor update

On the eve of the main part of The International developers released another minor update that contains several changes related to TI.

List of changes:

In the main menu, adds support for the Chinese translation
Small changes to the special effects that will take place on the stage during the match The International.

The Hateful Eight

Only eight characters were not selected or banned in The Internationale 2016.

With the exception of the Arc Warden, which is banned in Captain Mode, during the group stage were selected and already banned 102 hero. Let’s look at those left out in the cold:

Bloodseeker
Centaur Warrunner
Jakiro
Leshrac
Lina
Techies
Treant Protector
Visage

However, another character has been banned once, but never taken. His name Necrophos .

This list would be greater if the team would not have tried to implement some of the other characters. What came of it we’ll see below
Natus Vincere could not realize Omniknight against OG, Sniper has not helped Vici Gaming Reborn against the mighty men of
EHOME, Newbee lost with his Gyrocopter to Koreans from MVP Phoenix, but Nao still beat Team Secret with Spectre.

Facts gathered by users reddit:

Gyrocopter, Leshrac and Lina were the most popular characters on The International in 2015, and now they are on the bottom of the sea – Gyro was taken in this tournament just once and failed. Pdd could well afford to choose Treant Protector, S4 perfectly plays as Leshrac, and EGM famous with Jakiro. With the rest of the characters is not so smooth, but their appearance is quite possible.
From heroes, taken at least 10 times, Ursa, Assassin Nyx and Elder Titan – the owners of the biggest win rate – 80, 78 and 73 percent respectively.
Well, now for those who are at The International 2016 is loved and appreciated.

Here is the best characters in terms of KDA and GPM:

Weekly Dota 2 News #1

Posted on July 31, 2016October 17, 2016 by MOBA Expert

Weekly Dota 2 News #1

Welcome in this new rubrick i’ll try to inform about all important changes of Dota 2 per week. Lets start.

Legion Commander Prestige Item set and Quest Path

Today Gabe released an cool item for Legion Commander, that contains Prestige item and Quest path. It available to all Battle pass owners with 225 level. When you complete Quest Path you will receive an alternative look of Prestige item

You can look at this HERE

6.88b balance patch

Dota 2 has been updated to 6.88b version. Here you can find all changes:

Wiki

Weekend Sale – Battle Level Bundle

The International 2016 has begun and with it Valve decided to start a Sale.Only this weekend they sell Battle Level bundle only for 14.99$.

This Bundle contains 50 Battle Levels, 2x Immortal Treasure I, 2x Immortal Treasure II, and 2x Collector’s Cache

30 july Bugfixes

The developers have released another minor update for Dota 2, which aims to correct various errors, including those related to the Battle Cup and alerts.

Bug fixes:

Fixed an issue where players were unable to leave the group Battle Cup;
Fixed a bug due to which it was necessary to move the Battle Cup today.

Users Interface:

Removed the button “Publish the game“, which is designed for use by developers and turned into a public client by mistake;
Removed window UPDATE 6.88b, in its place added to the registration window for a collector’s version of the Champions Aegis;
Small interface improvements for viewing via Twitch games in virtual reality mode.

Notifications:

Added a new warning to the pop-up window, which refers to the transfer of the Battle Cup;
Notification of a global audience chat is now redirects to a page with details of the Compendium;
Added code for unreleased warning that during the early matches on the page directs the group stage of The International.

Some interesting articles: