Post by Galaxy on Jul 5, 2015 10:22:38 GMT 1
We said "They were just better" and that is true, they were in about all aspects, but do we know exactly in what they were better ? Nope. We would say ""teamfights" or "map mechanics" or "coördination" and while all of that is true, it is still to vague to learn something from. We should know concretely what they were better at, what we could improve in, so we really learn from it.
So here is my feedback after watching the replay, also including things we did well
1. The lineup at Sky Temple
Blue team ofc has a very mobile team w/ Brightwing and Falstad, they have pushing power from Sylvanas, Arthas as a cc tank and Khaelthas as ranged dps. Anti on Sylvanas is a level 1 Hero League player. Two other were 10+ so the chance this is a Team League team is very likely.
Normally you want to prevent an enemy team to get both Brightwing and Falstad I guess but during draft pick we didn't care at all about what our opponents would pick. We just had a match before in Battlefield of Eternity that worked so well and synergised so good in terms of composition, ult chaining and execution that we said "Hell lets try that again with the same players on the same heroes". So we picked up Ozymandias and Iothwen and went for the same idea which is Johanna initiates with her Fallen Sword into ETC's Moshpit into Butchers Furnace into Jaina's Blizzard/Cone/WaterElemental and you are talking about brutal damage.
But... it didn't work against this team, explanations later below.
So let's start.
1. Wrong lane assigment
The most mobile hero always goes bottom at the start of the game. The reason is at 1m30 top and mid temple start always first. So you want your heroes to be close, and if not, to get them there as fast as you can. Time matters. So blue team sent Brightwing to bot for that reason. She can just drop in anytime. But we started with Butcher/Jaina on bottom which was just because we didn't assign anyone really, once I saw that I said "One of you 2 should rotate to mid". And Butcher went to mid w/ me. But thats actually not good enough from my part.
Because if you think about it, who is the most mobile hero in our team ? Rehgar. So he should have been switched with Jaina, so Jaina can go top with ETC and Rehgar can solo lane bot against Brightwing. That would have also helped depush top because ETC and Rehgar can't do much against Falstads range covered by Arthas his cc, while a Jaina has range+cc, so she would have kept that lane equally matched.
This is not a big mistake we made. But it is a mistake with consequences as you will see in the next points.
2. Soaking not done properly during 1st temple phase
This was the position of both teams when 1st phase was about to start.
First question that always pops up at 1m15 is: "Which temple do we take?" and the answer should always depend on what the opponent does. And that is what both teams did, they waited to see the movement of the opponent to deduce which temple they are likely moving to. We saw opponents Falstad and Arthas moving towards mid, so we went top. Blue checked our movement to secure mid, both teams have a safe temple.
Look at the positions at 1m38.
Note that both teams soak 1 lane for xp. Top for red and bot for blue. However, blue is about to move Sylvanas to mid lane so they will soak 2 lanes during temple phase, so to counter that xp advantage they would gain from that, we send Johanna to mid to soak there as well. Situation at 1m53.
This is good play by both teams. Right ? In theory yes. In practice we messed up. Look again more closely at the minimap and pay attention to the different positioning red team has compared to blue. Red keeps ETC on top temple but 3 people are on top lane. However, which of those 3 are soaking top lane ?
The answer is: none.
Look at the blue/red dots of the minions top lane and where they are located. They are at the blue gate. Butcher seems closest but in the replay you can see he is guarding mid bush and not close enough towards the minions to soak.
Also this made me realise the concept of soaking is not just misunderstood in terms of range, but also in terms of speed and amount gained. Nobody is attacking the minions at top, which means you miss out and gaining xp faster eg in this case Jaina should have soaked top lane properly. I think people didn't think about it, and just though about the temple. This mistake cost us half a level. And it gets worse soon. This is the situation at 2m05.
Jaina took the watchpoint and Rehgar went to mid. But look at the minions at top which are now closer to the middle, Butcher is actually soaking there because he is in the bush very closeby. However Buthcer starts to rotate to mid... my guess would be because the temple phase is about to end, and mid was pushed, Jaina was focused, so a 4v3 push was about to happen from blue towards mid and Butcher wanted to help out to equalise the situation.
But look at the lanes. Top lane was completely left unattended during the whole temple phase which started at 1m30 and is now ending at 2m15. That is 45 seconds.
This is what happened in those 45 seconds: almost a full level behind.
Not only that but its also level 4 meaning blue has an extra talent:
Notice they went full-in damage here. Two Gathering Power's is a big pain. Especially since nor Khaelthas or Falstad died in the whole match. Sylvanas Envenom is now a pain over 10 seconds instead of 5 but its still a pain. And Destruction on Arthas is just again extra damage. Now I do check talents sometimes in game but I'm not good at it yet and because we were already overpowered I didn't even think about it, but if we would have thought about it, red team at this point should think ahead "They are going full damage, we might need to play safe and pick defensive talents in future to counter".
Thats just a small sidenote. The real cause of this is not just soaking misunderstood, but mostly no coordination which often happens by not realising what is happening. I was the shotcaller/leader btw so yes if you blame me it's fine
We made another soaking/communication mistake after that temple phase, blue soaked immediately, situation at 2m40:
Jaina had to tp back since she was low health. So either Johanna/Butcher should immediately rotate to bot to soak. It took 20s to get someone there which is to slow.
The small things add up.
2. Good job on bruiser camps
Blue made a mistake now and took bruisers at 3m30 while bot temple would spawn at 4m25 (thats half a minute to soon) + they left top unsoaked while doing it. We did much better since we sent Jaina and Rehgar to do it and kept soaking all lanes, also our timing was perfect.
3. Second temple phase team fighting
What's wrong in this picture?
Yep. ETC is still on top, while BW and Falstad can drop in on bot immediately. So its always going to be a 4v5 disadvantage for us. We can't engage that team fight and I did call rotate to bot several times in time.
I engaged a 4v3 situation that could turn into a 4v5 in any second. Still analysing how that fight went shows some interesting things.
Our vision when we engaged
Their vision when we engaged
Yep.. we missed checking bush and we just rush and that proved a big mistake. Their positioning is perfect and we do not play cautiously enough.
I'll show the damage numbers as well since they are add very interesting info on why we lose teamfights.
First, Khael'thas starts putting a Verdant Sphere Flamestrike on the 3 ppl behind Johanna while Sylvanas is about to focus Jaina:
Now look at the hero damage numbers after the flamestrike hit and Sylvanas hit her Q :
Khael'thas did 1k damage, Sylvanas did 500 damage and we ? Zero damage so far, Jaina and Butcher half health and rooted.
I'm not going to show each fragment of the fight. Its meant to show we are engaging wrong. Khael'thas is not focused. We dive in w/o doing burst damage fast. I feel that happens a lot in many matches I play. The role of a dps is very challenging but it is important they get a target called out asap and know how to burst it down. These are things we'd need to practice on.
This screenshot is taken after we were already losing the fight and Falstad flew in as well...
When I engaged, Khaelthas was hiding in the bushes on the left, and he threw a Flamestrike on the 3 behind me immediately. He also stuns and throws living bombs on Butcher which really really hurt. However, we also didn't callout and focused Sylvanas when we engaged, nor did we focus Khaelthas once he became visible. I literally see no abilities being used by Jaina at all in the beginning, but she does do the blizzard/cone combo on sylv/khael pretty soon after, however, butcher got so much bursted down Arthas is going in for the kill. Jaina has to run for her life and we have to leave bot temple.
Note that Butcher didn't even use any of his abilities. Het got cc'd y Khael and by Arthas ETC was still on mid on his way. This was lost beforehand.
Finally lets look at the damage numbers after Butcher died:
Our dps did 2.5k damage in that fight (Jaina using her W/E combo on Sylv/Khael) while their dps almost did 4.5k damage (Khael 2k, Sylvanas 1.2k, Falstad 1.1k).
What does this show ? That we need to practise:
That last point also striked me a lot. We would have had a much better position if we checked frostbolt bush first, focus Khael asap as a result, and have Butcher and Jaina stay above the temple while Johanna goes towards it with Rehgar between them, forcing them to either play safe and leave temple and move above it to focus our dps or play risky and stand ground.
They wiped 4 of us, Jaina survived and got zoned out, while Sylvanas immediately soaked bot lane while bot temple was occupied by the rest of their team.
Note: i'm not writing this as a critique or anything, just to share my thoughts and idea's and visualising things that makes us think and discuss
How a 5v4 fight still can get lost
We had the chance soon after to go in 5v4 on bot temple. Moshpit was ready while my ult got wasted before sadly but still interesting to see how we engaged .. and lost that fight.
This is how we started out:
Tank goes in first, albeit ETC (it should be Johanna) and we have vision on Brightwing.
Our damage numbers at that moment are:
We lost Jaina within a few seconds.
Why ? Because we did exactly the same mistake as before: we rushed in, Arthas applies Howling Blast root, Sylvanas Shadow Dagger on Jaina, Khaeltas Flamestrike on all people going down again and...
BOOM ! Jaina dead, Butcher + ETC half health and we didn't even start doing damage. ETC shortly after does a failed moshpit on the giants and gets focused down as well so we were from a 5v4 into a 3v4 situation in a matter of seconds.
Owned. But due to our own mistakes. These are the damage numbers at the end:
So their dps did 13k damage (Khael 6k, Sylvanas near 5k, Falstad 2k) while ours did 2.5k damage (Butcher since Jaina died instantly). This is a 5v4 situation we lost.
These are staggering numbers and it makes us think.
We went in that match thinking we can chain our ults and win fights but we got countered by not knowing the fundamentals about team fights.
Communication and patience and practice is key here. Positioning is very important to practice.
Look at what they did. Their dps positions themselves in bushes or backline. What did we do ? Our tanks go in first, while our backline dps gets destroyed from .. behind. Our dps has the perception of feeling safe because they are behind the tank but they tunnel vision and forget the other area's around them that makes them unsafe.
It has to do with map awareness and you need to practice it. I have the same problem and constantly tunnel vision as a tank as well. I try to remain calm and improve that which is not easy.
But we'll get there if we are aware of it and practice it
Hope this was usefull !
So here is my feedback after watching the replay, also including things we did well
1. The lineup at Sky Temple
Blue team ofc has a very mobile team w/ Brightwing and Falstad, they have pushing power from Sylvanas, Arthas as a cc tank and Khaelthas as ranged dps. Anti on Sylvanas is a level 1 Hero League player. Two other were 10+ so the chance this is a Team League team is very likely.
Normally you want to prevent an enemy team to get both Brightwing and Falstad I guess but during draft pick we didn't care at all about what our opponents would pick. We just had a match before in Battlefield of Eternity that worked so well and synergised so good in terms of composition, ult chaining and execution that we said "Hell lets try that again with the same players on the same heroes". So we picked up Ozymandias and Iothwen and went for the same idea which is Johanna initiates with her Fallen Sword into ETC's Moshpit into Butchers Furnace into Jaina's Blizzard/Cone/WaterElemental and you are talking about brutal damage.
But... it didn't work against this team, explanations later below.
So let's start.
1. Wrong lane assigment
The most mobile hero always goes bottom at the start of the game. The reason is at 1m30 top and mid temple start always first. So you want your heroes to be close, and if not, to get them there as fast as you can. Time matters. So blue team sent Brightwing to bot for that reason. She can just drop in anytime. But we started with Butcher/Jaina on bottom which was just because we didn't assign anyone really, once I saw that I said "One of you 2 should rotate to mid". And Butcher went to mid w/ me. But thats actually not good enough from my part.
Because if you think about it, who is the most mobile hero in our team ? Rehgar. So he should have been switched with Jaina, so Jaina can go top with ETC and Rehgar can solo lane bot against Brightwing. That would have also helped depush top because ETC and Rehgar can't do much against Falstads range covered by Arthas his cc, while a Jaina has range+cc, so she would have kept that lane equally matched.
This is not a big mistake we made. But it is a mistake with consequences as you will see in the next points.
2. Soaking not done properly during 1st temple phase
This was the position of both teams when 1st phase was about to start.
First question that always pops up at 1m15 is: "Which temple do we take?" and the answer should always depend on what the opponent does. And that is what both teams did, they waited to see the movement of the opponent to deduce which temple they are likely moving to. We saw opponents Falstad and Arthas moving towards mid, so we went top. Blue checked our movement to secure mid, both teams have a safe temple.
Look at the positions at 1m38.
Note that both teams soak 1 lane for xp. Top for red and bot for blue. However, blue is about to move Sylvanas to mid lane so they will soak 2 lanes during temple phase, so to counter that xp advantage they would gain from that, we send Johanna to mid to soak there as well. Situation at 1m53.
This is good play by both teams. Right ? In theory yes. In practice we messed up. Look again more closely at the minimap and pay attention to the different positioning red team has compared to blue. Red keeps ETC on top temple but 3 people are on top lane. However, which of those 3 are soaking top lane ?
The answer is: none.
Look at the blue/red dots of the minions top lane and where they are located. They are at the blue gate. Butcher seems closest but in the replay you can see he is guarding mid bush and not close enough towards the minions to soak.
Also this made me realise the concept of soaking is not just misunderstood in terms of range, but also in terms of speed and amount gained. Nobody is attacking the minions at top, which means you miss out and gaining xp faster eg in this case Jaina should have soaked top lane properly. I think people didn't think about it, and just though about the temple. This mistake cost us half a level. And it gets worse soon. This is the situation at 2m05.
Jaina took the watchpoint and Rehgar went to mid. But look at the minions at top which are now closer to the middle, Butcher is actually soaking there because he is in the bush very closeby. However Buthcer starts to rotate to mid... my guess would be because the temple phase is about to end, and mid was pushed, Jaina was focused, so a 4v3 push was about to happen from blue towards mid and Butcher wanted to help out to equalise the situation.
But look at the lanes. Top lane was completely left unattended during the whole temple phase which started at 1m30 and is now ending at 2m15. That is 45 seconds.
This is what happened in those 45 seconds: almost a full level behind.
Not only that but its also level 4 meaning blue has an extra talent:
Notice they went full-in damage here. Two Gathering Power's is a big pain. Especially since nor Khaelthas or Falstad died in the whole match. Sylvanas Envenom is now a pain over 10 seconds instead of 5 but its still a pain. And Destruction on Arthas is just again extra damage. Now I do check talents sometimes in game but I'm not good at it yet and because we were already overpowered I didn't even think about it, but if we would have thought about it, red team at this point should think ahead "They are going full damage, we might need to play safe and pick defensive talents in future to counter".
Thats just a small sidenote. The real cause of this is not just soaking misunderstood, but mostly no coordination which often happens by not realising what is happening. I was the shotcaller/leader btw so yes if you blame me it's fine
We made another soaking/communication mistake after that temple phase, blue soaked immediately, situation at 2m40:
Jaina had to tp back since she was low health. So either Johanna/Butcher should immediately rotate to bot to soak. It took 20s to get someone there which is to slow.
The small things add up.
2. Good job on bruiser camps
Blue made a mistake now and took bruisers at 3m30 while bot temple would spawn at 4m25 (thats half a minute to soon) + they left top unsoaked while doing it. We did much better since we sent Jaina and Rehgar to do it and kept soaking all lanes, also our timing was perfect.
3. Second temple phase team fighting
What's wrong in this picture?
Yep. ETC is still on top, while BW and Falstad can drop in on bot immediately. So its always going to be a 4v5 disadvantage for us. We can't engage that team fight and I did call rotate to bot several times in time.
I engaged a 4v3 situation that could turn into a 4v5 in any second. Still analysing how that fight went shows some interesting things.
Our vision when we engaged
Their vision when we engaged
Yep.. we missed checking bush and we just rush and that proved a big mistake. Their positioning is perfect and we do not play cautiously enough.
I'll show the damage numbers as well since they are add very interesting info on why we lose teamfights.
First, Khael'thas starts putting a Verdant Sphere Flamestrike on the 3 ppl behind Johanna while Sylvanas is about to focus Jaina:
Now look at the hero damage numbers after the flamestrike hit and Sylvanas hit her Q :
Khael'thas did 1k damage, Sylvanas did 500 damage and we ? Zero damage so far, Jaina and Butcher half health and rooted.
I'm not going to show each fragment of the fight. Its meant to show we are engaging wrong. Khael'thas is not focused. We dive in w/o doing burst damage fast. I feel that happens a lot in many matches I play. The role of a dps is very challenging but it is important they get a target called out asap and know how to burst it down. These are things we'd need to practice on.
This screenshot is taken after we were already losing the fight and Falstad flew in as well...
When I engaged, Khaelthas was hiding in the bushes on the left, and he threw a Flamestrike on the 3 behind me immediately. He also stuns and throws living bombs on Butcher which really really hurt. However, we also didn't callout and focused Sylvanas when we engaged, nor did we focus Khaelthas once he became visible. I literally see no abilities being used by Jaina at all in the beginning, but she does do the blizzard/cone combo on sylv/khael pretty soon after, however, butcher got so much bursted down Arthas is going in for the kill. Jaina has to run for her life and we have to leave bot temple.
Note that Butcher didn't even use any of his abilities. Het got cc'd y Khael and by Arthas ETC was still on mid on his way. This was lost beforehand.
Finally lets look at the damage numbers after Butcher died:
Our dps did 2.5k damage in that fight (Jaina using her W/E combo on Sylv/Khael) while their dps almost did 4.5k damage (Khael 2k, Sylvanas 1.2k, Falstad 1.1k).
What does this show ? That we need to practise:
- calling out asap the right target
- check bushes first (eg Jaina frostbolt) and not by face-checking ofc
- positioning squishies better
That last point also striked me a lot. We would have had a much better position if we checked frostbolt bush first, focus Khael asap as a result, and have Butcher and Jaina stay above the temple while Johanna goes towards it with Rehgar between them, forcing them to either play safe and leave temple and move above it to focus our dps or play risky and stand ground.
They wiped 4 of us, Jaina survived and got zoned out, while Sylvanas immediately soaked bot lane while bot temple was occupied by the rest of their team.
Note: i'm not writing this as a critique or anything, just to share my thoughts and idea's and visualising things that makes us think and discuss
How a 5v4 fight still can get lost
We had the chance soon after to go in 5v4 on bot temple. Moshpit was ready while my ult got wasted before sadly but still interesting to see how we engaged .. and lost that fight.
This is how we started out:
Tank goes in first, albeit ETC (it should be Johanna) and we have vision on Brightwing.
Our damage numbers at that moment are:
We lost Jaina within a few seconds.
Why ? Because we did exactly the same mistake as before: we rushed in, Arthas applies Howling Blast root, Sylvanas Shadow Dagger on Jaina, Khaeltas Flamestrike on all people going down again and...
BOOM ! Jaina dead, Butcher + ETC half health and we didn't even start doing damage. ETC shortly after does a failed moshpit on the giants and gets focused down as well so we were from a 5v4 into a 3v4 situation in a matter of seconds.
Owned. But due to our own mistakes. These are the damage numbers at the end:
So their dps did 13k damage (Khael 6k, Sylvanas near 5k, Falstad 2k) while ours did 2.5k damage (Butcher since Jaina died instantly). This is a 5v4 situation we lost.
These are staggering numbers and it makes us think.
We went in that match thinking we can chain our ults and win fights but we got countered by not knowing the fundamentals about team fights.
Communication and patience and practice is key here. Positioning is very important to practice.
Look at what they did. Their dps positions themselves in bushes or backline. What did we do ? Our tanks go in first, while our backline dps gets destroyed from .. behind. Our dps has the perception of feeling safe because they are behind the tank but they tunnel vision and forget the other area's around them that makes them unsafe.
It has to do with map awareness and you need to practice it. I have the same problem and constantly tunnel vision as a tank as well. I try to remain calm and improve that which is not easy.
But we'll get there if we are aware of it and practice it
Hope this was usefull !