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. 

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!”

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. :)