I'm not entirely sure we watch the same C9...

 

Bone7 is hugely inconsistent and has directly cost them some games, but when he's on the ball he can be an amazing player.
When they replaced him with RTZ for MLG Columbus, their line up was as strong as it's ever been, probably for the same reason Aui and EE are usually instrumental to all their wins. C9 excels at shuffling their lanes and farming priorities. EE either starts mid from the beginning, or ditches his safelane at 10 minutes to let Aui farm, leaving Sing to rotate and create space, picking up whatever scraps he can. PLD and Bone7 in essence both become position 5 heroes (usually after boner has picked up one key item from offlane or jungle stacks).
RTZ worked so well with them because he is much more efficient in his farming than anyone else on the team, and Sing is a LOT better at playing item starved than bone is. MLG was like the perfect storm for them with the heavy Midas meta, where everyone but Sing picked up one every game to feed the greed.

I'm kinda worried though, because DK has shown they can play the same style with much better mechanics. Unless Drow/Visage get through every game, I dunno if C9 can beat them, and DK has some of the best drafting I've seen.

 

Have you seen how awful his void is?

Anyways, I expect that Newbee should beat Titan, and have a pretty chance against Navi today.

 

I don't entirely disagree about bone7. He is a pretty inconsistent player, although he is capable of taking over a game on a good day. I entirely disagree about aui and ee. EE is imo, the worst player on that team by far. Game 1 vs LGD yesterday was a classic example of EE at his finest.

They were defending highground vs the LGD deathball, ee walks up on his doom to devour a creep, gets jumped by 5 people. They save him by a clutch skywrath silence and wasting rhasta wards, LGD disengages, and ee fucking does it again 3 minutes later (and dies).

Then there was that rosh fight, which speaks for itself I think. Enigma jumped in and got a black hole on 5 meepos, the razor ults, and EE dooms the razor instead of cancelling the black hole. Ended up not mattering, but that decision making....

 

Oh Na'Vi...

I am disapointed, but I can't say I'm suprised. They never seem to play well until they face elimination.

 

What a crushing. It's okay, they'll use the next few days and come back!

 

http://store.steampowered.com/news/13929/

The finals are airing on ESPN3, and a finals preview will be on ESPN2 Sunday night as well. Pretty huge news.

 

Vici is crushing and I'm rooting for them. I was very sad to see DK lose to them though...

 

Yeah, basically everything turned out exactly how I didn't want it too.

Gotta root for VG in the finals though, they deserve this win. EG must be hating life right now.

 

Let's get this show on the road. Games should be good.

 

Great comeback by Newbee after the first match but I wonder what ViCi had planned for in the other matches because it clearly didn´t work.

 

I didn't like the finals much this time around. I'm not exactly sure how. Maybe because I watched a lot of game and there wasn't anything new during the finals? Always Doom, NP, Brew and Skywrath being picked. But either way, when I watched the TI3 finals I was on the edge of my seat. Monday, bah. The finalist didn't even try until their ancients was under assault, they just gg before even losing a T3. Disappointing.

 

Lots of people had similar complaints, but the finals were actually extremely close. Game 2 swung on 1 hp and 1 mana on Panda. If that ult doesn't go off, the entire game would have changed, and VG would have had a significant lead at that point.

I honestly don't mind the early GGs. The game is over, why keep playing? It's not fun to watch at that point, it's not fun to play, so why drag it out?

Also, there is a but of a rose-tinted glasses effect going on with the TI3 finals because of how epic that game 5 was. The first few games were awful. Veno/Venge+1 trilane ring any bells?

 

It wasn't the games that people minded, as much as the teams imo.

I honestly had no interest in Newbee or VG. Even if just one of the western teams got into the finals... Or DK...

 

EG vs DK. The perfect final.

 

I think if nothing else, the final showed us just how far two top tier supports can take a team. Fy/Fenrir and Banana/Sansheng are both in contention for top support duo in the world. Fy/Fenrir in particular will flat out win the game for VG half the time.

I would say those two along with the EG and DK support teams are the best out there, and you could argue for ages on how to rank them. For what it's worth, iceiceice said in an interview that Fy/Zai would be his pick of two supports if he had the option.

 

The reason supports are carrying the team is because this patch punishes early mistakes very very harshly. So, if supports get any early advantage, it's very hard for the other team. I feel that it should be patched so that mistakes are not so costly... because lots of mistakes are forced by crap like haste rune and stuff like that...

 

I like playing support and having a similar GPM to the carry or mid, very very satisfying. - And not because of farming or whatever, It's great having higher kills/assists than last hits.

That said, those games are very few lately, my MMR has been tanking down to 3600 from 4000+.

 

http://www.dota2.com/international/announcement/

TI5 invites going up. Let the hype train begin. Also, for the first time we get a truly open qualifier, which should be a lot of fun. Anyone else looking forward to this event?

 

Yep i'm pretty pumped. I'm rooting for EG what about everyone else?