Welcome to part 2 of our TI9 Meta Recap analytical series where we’ll focus on the developments of Day 2, which brought a lot of awesome and surprising games. (If you missed out part 1, you can check it out here: TI9 Meta Day 1.)

To sum-up, day two was the day of:

• Comfort picks > meta picks: This showcases that the game is in a great state of balance and the meta doesn’t force teams to play heroes and strategies just because they are imba.
• Creativity: gimmicky, cheesy but unexpected combos seem to be viable on the highest level of competitive Dota.

Finally, we cannot end this section without mentioning the sensation story of day 2:

Lifestealer might have been the most consistent performer, but pos. 1 IO was by far the most interesting and creative thing that happened! (More on that below).

Above: the standings after TI9 Group Stage: Day 2

In day one I mentioned that overly-creative strats aren’t doing particularly well in comparison to stable drafts. On day 2, however, creativity is back with a vengeance and a lot of teams showcased that you can definitely win by doing something unexpected.

The key, however, is how you implement it. The creativity that teams managed to use successfully on day 2 consisted of unexpected use of heroes and hero interactions. The drafts themselves, however, were very well-rounded and had all major components of a stable strategy, making the game-plan much simpler and the execution – easier, despite the curveball.

To illustrate:

The sensation of the day was OG’s successful use of pos. 1 Io (played by Ana) in two consecutive games in their series vs NiP.

Game 1:

Game 2:

The strategy with Pos. 1 IO is as follows:

1. You play him in a strong dual-lane the same way as you would if he was a support. E.g. in both games OG combined him with Treant or Elder Titan. Both heroes benefit from the Tether MS and regen to trade favorably with their lane opponents. Another good option would be Ogre, etc.
2. You get Aghs and Maelstrom and focus on farming. You can always join fights with your ultimate: you play a bit like a Spectre would in the early-mid game.
3. Your first fight timing is Aghanim's + the lvl15 talent, and if the enemy team is weak you can break the base as 5.
4. You get Heart, which is a big power spike. You are able to provide a lot of sustain and tankiness not only for yourself but for your other core. If Io was a support, the enemy team would usually try to nuke him down quickly and deal with his carry later. With Io as a carry with Heart, however, bursting him down is not an option, which makes the combo of him + his partner much stronger. They are both extremely fast and extremely tanky, and they deal good damage. They lack only control, which is something your other heroes need to provide.
5. You use this timing to win the game. If you don’t manage to, however, you have another power-spike on lvl25 – the additional attacks when you are Tethered increase your teams single-target DPS a great deal and help with pushing objectives (even split-pushing) a great deal. Notice that in both drafts the partner core played by Topson is a hero that can attack objectives very fast – WR or Troll.

Notice, however, that OG doesn’t simply rely on this surprising hero usage to win them the game. Their drafts are very well-rounded. The other core is a hero with carry potential, and the pos. 3 hero provides good team-fight initiation and control. The supports are strong laners with good team-fight potential coming from one (ET, Treant) and save mechanics from the other (SD).

Another very creative and interesting interaction was used by EG to pull off a surprise victory against VG. They used Morph with Aghanim’s + Dark Willow. When Morph uses his ultimate on the Willow, he receives the Aghanim’s effect of Shadow Realm – he is able to right-clock without leaving Shadow Realm, dealing a lot of bonus magic damage and gaining huge range. This is absolutely amazing with Morph’s very fast attacks speed and high damage and is useful not only to nuke down heroes in fights but also to siege the enemy base from a safe distance.

Notice that like OG, despite having a very creative hero interaction, EG have a solid and pretty standard draft. They have a traditional farming hard carry, an active frontline semi-carry on pos. 2, a fight initiator with AoE control in the offlane, and two strong lane-supports with additional team-fight damage and control.

Na’Vi pulled-off another big upset in the tournament by beating VP 2-0. The way they did it is also very interesting. They didn’t utilize some kind of crazy strategy to catch VP by surprise. Instead, they drafted some of their signature heroes (in fact, they drafted pretty much the same team two times in a row) and simply outplayed VP to claim the victory.

Game 1:

Game 2:

They played so well individually and as a team, that it is very likely teams will respect-ban e.g. Zayac’s Earth Spirit in the future.

The fact that Na’Vi managed to pull-off those two victories speaks very well for the state of the game balance and the meta. Na’Vi were able to win convincingly using their “favorite” heroes without having to stick to the popular meta picks religiously, which implies that the top meta picks aren’t imba and certainly aren’t the only viable way to play the game.

(i.e. we > LoL :|)

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