Dendi Storm Spirit, Kuroky Lina, Chuan Rubick :)

DotA gif of the week is a Winner’s Bracket Game between IG and Na’Vi back in Alienware 2013 with (drum roll please) Kuroky Lina! Also featuring Dendi Storm and Chuan Rubick. :)

This was an interesting match when it happened because Alienware was one of the last tournaments before The International 2013 and this game had the 2011TI Champions Na’Vi against 2012 TI Champions IG. Practice for TI 2013 Finals? Unfortunately for IG it was not.

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Personally this game was interesting for me because it’s the first game I watched that had Kuroky on Lina. I didn’t know what to expect - on one hand, she’s a hero that I never saw Kuroky play during his WC3 DotA days (and for a good reason – he played hard carry back then); on the other hand, Lina is actually listed as one of his signature heroes by virtue of having an 83% win rate on her over (a rather paltry) 12 games. I think that 12 games is too few to serve as a basis about whether a player is ‘good’ on a hero or not, so I definitely wanted to see how this game went down. 

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Dendimon Anti-Noobery Lesson of the Day: if you’re playing Puck, do not Dream Coil a Storm with enough mana for Ball Lightning. If he zips away from the coil he will not get stunned because he is invulnerable while using Ball Lightning.



Can I just say that Lumi was disappoint when 430 did this and he even asked if 430 usually plays Puck because “he didn’t seem to know the match-up as well as he should have”. :( 

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Kuroky gets Lumi’s seal of approval for this pair of LSA’s, which Lumi declares as “These LSA’s are just absolutely beautiful, Kuroky playing out of his mind right now!”




And how could you not agree? He caught Zhou’s Gyro and Faith’s Visage blind and basically strapped them to the dining table for Funn1k’s Alc, and later he made sure that 430’s Puck wasn’t going anywhere but down. (Additional credit where it's due - to Puppey's insane Chen micro.) All of that without taking a single kill for himself because – well aside from Lina having horrendous animation casting - all the gold and all the xp had to go to the carry. :(

Sometimes I wonder how easily or how not-so-easily Kuroky adjusted from playing position 1 to playing position 4/5 because seriously, how do you go from hogging every kill you can get your hands on to giving away kills even when they’re one mouse-click away? Hell, I would’ve said “Meh.” to Funn1k and Laguna’ed Gyro for the personal satisfaction of killing a carry.

Which basically explains why I am not a member of Na’Vi. :))

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My favourite part! :) This play from Chuan made for an awesome scene where two LSA’s hit virtually at the same time. 


Note that Lina LSA has a .5 second delay while Rubick LSA (or any other spell he steals) is cast instantly. The delay is the main reason why Lina is usually utilized as secondary and not primary or God forbid, lone stunner. As Lumi says, LSA is not a stun until you have a set-up and I agree, but I think that it’s not because the stun is hard to land. If I was able to teach myself how to adjust for that delay (I am a major NOOB), then anybody else can do it. I think it’s more of the fact that if your opponent has good enough prediction and reflexes (and in a tournament setting EVERYBODY has excellent prediction and reflexes) it’s relatively easy to dodge the stun. 

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So what did I think of Kuroky after watching this game? He was a good support player at the very least, and he seemed to have adjusted well to the role. He was usually on top of things during team fights and didn’t really do anything… er, questionable, as far as positioning and spell-cast timing went. There were a few team fights when I was wondering if maybe it would have been better if he focused on another hero, but then again I can never be entirely sure because as I said, I’m a noob.

All in all, Kuroky’s Lina was not as entertaining as his team mates’ (and by ‘not as entertaining’ I mean no crazy tower dives or ‘I don’t care if I have 800hp I will walk up to your team and make you eat a Laguna to the face’), but I’m pretty sure Puppey would absolutely take it over Dendi’s or XBOCT’s Lina for serious game.

Me, looks like there’s eleven more Kuroky Lina games I need to watch. :)




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Akke ‘Support’ Lina + Loda Carry Abbadon = :D

So I missed DotA gif of the Week for the last two weeks (ugh I am such a fail) but I’d like to think that I’m making up for it with this extra long post about one of the most freakin’ entertaining games I’ve watched lately, Alliance vs The Retry at WEplay 2013 group stages. I knew that PGG was in a good mood when he styled his team’s name as ‘The Rereretry’ so I expected the match to be all YOLO fun, but when s4 picked up Abbadon for Loda and I saw Akke kill steal the first kill for Alliance, I realized I was watching something special. :)

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You are now entering Akke Lina Kills land, and let me tell you what’s so special about this place: Akke is one of the most dedicated support players ever, and he rarely gets any shiny moments of kill glory because he selflessly gives as much as he possibly can to Loda, s4 and Bulldog. I mean, this is the guy who leveled Blood Lust over Fireblast and Ignite on Ogre Magi so Bulldog’s Spirit Bear could lop off Na’Vi heads at Game 3 of the TI3 finals. And as Draskyl said once, the reason why Lich doesn’t have legs is because “Akke sawed them off and gave them to his team.”

So when you see Akke take a legit kill for himself, that’s special.

And when you see Akke STEAL a kill for himself, that’s even more special. :))


Steal the first kill from your Solo Mid, why not?


He was just securing the kill because s4 was low and Loda didn't have Phase Boots yet. :)


The 'support' Lina steals -  I mean secures - the first three kills for Alliance. You know that this ain't your ordinary 4 position Lina, and this hell isn't your ordinary doto. :)

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Steal kill or not, seeing people get Laguna Blades off always makes me happy. I seriously think that it’s one of the coolest skills in the game and anybody who doesn't agree is just in denial.




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One of the three hundred sixty five reasons why I love Alliance is that as a team and as individual players, they know how to have fun during a game. Just look at Loda’s carry Abbadon.


I know that carries aren’t supposed to die for the initiator or supports, but he was in range for Aphotic Shield which could have saved s4’s Timbersaw without putting himself in a worse position, so I think he should’ve tried to help s4 out? Though earlier in the game Loda actually died trying to save EGM’s Wisp, which was not really in danger, so maybe he just felt like he’d already reached his martyrdom quota. :))


About five seconds later the entirety of TR decides that they want Bulldog’s Bounty Hunter’s ass, and again Aphotic Shield would’ve been great here, but nope, Loda decides that he’s a troll today. So after some half-assed effort to help he basically leaves Bulldog for dead. 


And die Bulldog does, so from the dead he and s4 ping away at Loda and his abandoning Abbadon.


You know who Loda does help ten seconds later? Akke! :) Because as Godz said in the cast, “His best buddy Akke, definitely worthy of a heal, but the rest of his team mates, no.” Aw, now I don’t know which bromance is better, Lokke or Pupoky.


It’s just too bad Akke still dies anyway. But hey, that’s his second dominating streak in less than fifteen minutes if I’m correct, so if anything he’s definitely having fun. :)

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Aside from steal killing and trolling your initiator and offlane farmer, you know what else is fun?


Tower diving! :) In a freakin’ pro game! (Well they were up against TR which is like a tier 2 team at best even though they have PGG… who most probably was drunk while all this was happening anyway. I’m just saying, make no mistake if they were up against NaVi or Fnatic in, say, a Dream Hack elimination match, I don’t think this would be happening.)


And what’s even more fun than tower diving? Fountain diving! And getting killed without getting the kill you came in there for! :))

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But you know what’s the most fun you can get out of a carry Abbadon? It’s getting Blink + SnY so you can do this.






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This post is all about Lina and Abaddon (actually, ever DotA gif of the week post is about Lina, haha!) but the thing is, I think s4 and EGM – especially EGM – did most of the hard work in this game and deserve the ultimate credit. Sure, Loda was the one who got the rampage, but I think it’s fair to say that s4 and EGM set him up pretty good for it. Bulldog was kinda lackluster and I’m not sure how relevant he was to the game if he was relevant at all, though maybe he just decided to chill since Akke and EGM were already on fire, one supporting hardcore and the other supporting half of the time while KS’ing to his heart’s content the other half. :))

As Lumi said, this is one of the best things about DotA - yes, money and winning definitely count, but at the end of the day the players just want to have fun and they still consider having fun as one of the most important things about a game. This match went on for over forty minutes and the final score was 68-37, but nobody from TR rage quit even if it was obvious that they were gonna lose ten minutes into the game and nobody from Alliance gloat-flamed about all the crazy throwing.

GG WP. Ultimately that's just what this game is. :)

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Last one, for real. This is part of the game chat log, and gaaahd, can I just say how adorable EGM is with that 'omg'? :)


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