We are five days away from The International 3 and we think it is good for the folks to know the competing teams a little better, merely not your love and feelings for the team but purely quantitative data. We pulled the drafts from their games from the 4th of June, the first day of 6.78 patch, until today and from there, we analyzed team patterns and their tendency to run certain heroes.

This article will be the second part of a five-series article highlighting teams' playstyle.
 

  1. Europe
  2. South East Asia
  3. Wildcards
  4. North America
  5. China


Today, we present to you Neolution.Orange, Invasion-MUFC and Zenith, the best of South East Asian Dota.

We also took enemy ban % against X team ban % to really highlight the sort of respect ban these teams were facing. The higher the % difference, the higher the % these heroes got respect banned. High numbers also mean how scared the opponents are against these heroes when facing a particular team.

The International 3 Coverage Hub It's the holy grail of The International 3 coverage!  

Neolution.Orange

Neolution.Orange at G-1 League. Photo by GosuGamers.

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PicksHeroesPicks % Sand King37.3 Windrunner32.0 Nyx Assassin25.3 Dark Seer24.0 Visage22.7 Shadow Demon21.3 Chen21.3 Gyrocopter21.3 Lifestealer18.7 Alchemist17.3 BansHeroesEnemy ban %Orange's ban &Difference in % Outworld42.79.333.4 Windrunner33.34.029.3 Sand King18.7018.7 Puck18.62.715.9 Lone Druid17.34.013.3

Weaver

20.09.310.7 Queen of Pain16.05.310.7 Gyrocopter17.36.710.6 Visage32.025.36.7 Magnus12.05.36.7

First, let's look at what Neolution.Orange have in store. NeoES.Orange have always been famous for picking non-main stream heroes such as Sand King and Windrunner, which they play to absolute perfection. As portrayed on the left table, Sand King and Windrunner were almost always picked if they were not previously banned by the opponents. Despite Net's excellent play on the Sand King in the past few weeks, Sand King was only banned 18.7% of the time (to much surprise) and Orange had every intention of picking the hero during the second drafting phase, making it their top pick in the past two months.

Besides that, teams seem to have a lot of fear for Mushi's Outworld Devourer, respect banning the hero 33.4% of the time. In fact, many teams are so uncomfortable with Mushi soloing mid that Puck and Queen of Pain also made it into the top 10 ban list. Due to this, Orange always run role rotation, switching Ohaiyo to solo mid and most recently Ky.xY to carry while Mushi is back on solo mid. This often confuses opponents and Orange's tendency to swap heroes after the picking phase makes it problematic to decide lanes as well.

From the tables above, we can also see that Orange always get to pick their favourite the 3-position and 4-position heroes because teams tend to ban the solo mid heroes to limit Orange's star player Mushi. Besides, Mushi and Ohaiyo's versatility to run the mid lane or safe lane is constantly abused to confuse enemies. Orange usually pick Gyrocopter, Lifestealer and the Alchemist as their carry but all three only combine to a total of 57.3%. The majority of the other 42.7% goes to carry and semi-carry heroes like Nature's Prophet (17.3%), Lone Druid (14.7%),  Anti-Mage  (9.3%) and Weaver(13.3%), basically heroes that are able to split push.

 

Zenith

Zenith finishing first in Flash Dota 2 League.

PicksHeroesPicks % Dark Seer46.9 Rubick46.9 Alchemist43.8 Lifestealer43.8 Io43.8 Visage40.6 Weaver37.5 Shadow Demon31.3 Outworld31.3 Prophet31.3 BansHeroesEnemy ban %Zenith's ban &Difference in % Dark Seer37.515.621.9 Razor15.73.112.6 Batrider53.240.612.6 Slark12.5012.5 Treant12.53.19.4

Tinker

15.66.39.3 Queen of Pain9.43.16.3 Lifestealer21.915.66.3 Io12.56.36.2 Enchantress2518.86.2 Naga Siren and Enigma omitted for too little games played

Zenith is the very definition of a black duck when it comes to drafting their heroes. However, their tendency to pick unorthodox heroes such as Invoker has slowed down in the past couple weeks. Zenith have very high tendency to pick Dark Seer very early in the drafting phase followed by Rubick (46.9%) and carry heroes Alchemist (43.8%) and Lifestealer (43.8%). The high percentage on both the Alchemist and Lifestealer indicates that Zenith likes to run a dual core line-up or sometimes tri-core with survival supports such as Dark Seer and Io (43.8%). Zenith's top five picks are able to be aggressive and push down some towers but may not recover as fast if they lose their early game.

In any case, looking over to the ban table you can see what makes Zenith that special of a team. The mindset of them running weird heroes are still intact in their opponents' head and most teams will waste their bans on heroes like Razor, Treant, Tinker, and Slark which allows Zenith to get into a more comfortable position from the get-go. In contrary to popular beliefs that Zenith love their Tinker and Razor, Razor has only been picked up 21.9% of the time while Tinker saw action in 12.5% of their games. The opponents' low number of bans against specific heroes (apart from Batrider) means Zenith's players are extremely versatile and are able to play a wide range of heroes if needed. To conclude this, Zenith's mentality is, "You can't ban them all".

Off-the-table: Weird enough, Keeper of the Light is only picked 6.3% of the time when the team has such greedy line-up, and not preparing to counter possible early pushes may cost them games.

 

Invasion-MUFC

Invasion-MUFC competing in local Asian Gaming League. Photo by GosuGamers

PicksHeroesPicks % Dark Seer46.9 Prophet46.9 Shadow Demon43.8 Dragon Knight43.8 Lina43.8 Rubick40.6 Alchemist37.5 Lifestealer31.3 Queen of Pain31.3 Visage31.3 BansHeroesEnemy ban %MUFC's ban &Difference in % Anti-Mage24.16.917.2 Chen24.16.917.2 Enchantress17.2017.2 Storm Spirit13.8013.8 Visage41.427.613.8

Rubick

20.710.310.4 Lina10.3010.3 Batrider48.344.83.5 Dragon Knight17.213.83.4 Nyx Assassin3127.63.4

The data collected for MUFC only included 29 games and many heroes were omitted from the analysis due to insufficient data. These heroes include

Faceless Void, Slark, Spectre, Tinker, Tiny, Bounty Hunter, Templar Assassin, Juggernaut, Luna, Sven

The stats speak for itself and MUFC do pick Dark Seer a whole lot, a staggering 46.9% while even more surprising, the hero did not even make top 10 opponent bans. We cannot pinpoint exactly why this is happening but it can be attributed to MUFC's underperformance in the past few weeks leading to The International 3.

It is to no one's surprise that MUFC valued Shadow Demon (43.8%) and Lina (43.8%) very highly because WinteR and ling, MUFC's two support players, love to roam to help out the mid lane. MUFC's mid lane is most possibly the bane of the team. As observed from the pick table above, MUFC run solo mid Dragon Knight 43.8% of the time while another big portion is taken by Queen of Pain at 31.3%. This means MUFC only picked up a wide range of solo mid heroes such as Templar Assassin, Puck and many more 24.5% of the time, and the lack of practice on different sets of heroes may run them into a wall.

Looking at the ban table, it is no surprise to see Anti-Mage being the top ban due to MUFC's tendency to split push. MUFC's tendency to run split push strategies is further emphasized by the high % opponent ban on Chen, Enchantress and Visage. Judging from the amount of top ten picks that made it into the top ten bans, we can easily assume that the opponents MUFC were facing have to a large extent figured out their playstyle. In order to get a chance to win, the Malaysians really need to expand their limited hero pool.