King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 21 – Koth Game 20 — Mint V JJ

This tournament is sponsored by Rectron, powered by Twilight Gaming and run by eGamer

This has been written in the opinion of Lemon Grass.

This is a post-game article of the latest King of the Hill DotA game between Mint Gaming and JJ.Dota on the 29th of September 2009

Mint

VS

JJ

The Draft

In the drafts we see jj eliming heroes that miNt uses particularly well in the past namely; chen bambi and clock followed by one “imba hero” elim (tc). miNt is seen eliming two heroes that we simply hate playing against (tide and viper) followed by another two “imba hero” bans. miNt dominated the picks having a very all rounded strat. Plenty gang, plenty AoE, plenty carry, and plenty push, enough support, not too many farming intensive heroes. miNt’s lanes were extremely strong (ill get back to this later). The strat is an early-mid game one, but still can manage late game. JJ chose a VERY item intensive strat (aka rice aka turtle). Four out of the five heroes are all item dependant (this means that the heroes are reliant on getting expensive items – required to farm a lot.) So their strat is considered a late game one. JJ relied on the Avernus and NA to ward (which really nerfed the NA). JJ’s lanes were not very strong, the only gang they had was NA and they lacked AoE with undying being their only push. Overall miNt won the draft and took great advantage of this from the word go.

I have the replay of the first part of the game, up to where jj..notouchthis dropped. I will include it here.

The Lanes

Top: POTM (LeMoN-GrAsS) vs Undying (sAidy)

Mid: Darkseer (MrAsSmAn) vs Sniper (freez) + NA (Machine)

Bot: Syllabear (Waz_maC) vs Morph (Blizzy) + Avernus (Sixis)

Roam: ES (kspr) + CM (sLoJ)

As you can see from the lanes, sentinel had stronger lanes overall. Top and middle had constant gangs from the two roamers which resulted in many kills and huge amount of pressure. Waz_maC solo’s bottom without problem (one of the beauties of Syllabear is that it can solo against almost any lane). Although very little pressure was put on him (only one gang from the NA which did not result in a kill). The action of this game happens mid and top. Having two heroes dedicated to roaming creates a huge amount of pressure on the other team. Having to provide vision of more than just the river. miNt had a very aggressive strat but at the same time it allowed for the Syllabear, Potm and even the DS to farm. This is a perfect combination. miNt took advantage of jj’s lack of early game dominance from the word go.

First Blood

First blood top is a perfect example of the two roamers making a huge impact on the game. The first gang top occurs when the undying attempts to claim a creep kill, before he knows it, he is blocked and frozen shortly after. One his last attempt to escape, he finds him self smacked in the face with a dangerous arrow of death. (lol). This early gang is one of the many that the es and cm controlled. This game can play as a great example for anyone who is keen to see how roam. They communicated very well, the skill of kspr’s es and experience of sLoJ led to a deadly combination. These gangs were made possible with very good counter warding.

Throughout the game, the only hero on JJ’s side that was not being ganged and was managing to farm decently was Blizzy’s Morph. He managed to pick up a large amount of kills, and farmed quite a lot. He would capitalize on the contrasting movement speeds of miNts heroes – Syllabear and DS would chase very far and the CM and POTM would try to as well, only to be picked off by the Morphling. So with morph being miNts only fear, we pushed hard. The combination of Syllabear (with images) POTM and DS wall, towers dropped extremely fast. JJ’s lack of AoE prevented them from stopping our pushes. Before JJ knew it, we had raxed. The POTM farmed

Throughout this game there are large amounts of individual skill shown. This is a game to watch.

GG