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One of TNC’s biggest criticisms up to this point at the KL major is that they aren’t able to close games (they often throw them). One simple way to fix this problem is to pick the hardest carry in the game: it’s hard to throw when you have a fat Spectre on your side.
Spectre, however, is not one of the hottest carries in the current meta. She has been picked only 9 times in the major so far with the unconvincing win rate of 44%.
Because of this, we found the 2nd game of the series (opendota) very strategically interesting and we definitely think there are a couple of valuable lessons to learn from it that we can use in our own pubs.
The
most surprising thing in this game was how TNC utilized Spect (who is out of
meta and an incredibly weak laner) to totally out-smart VG’s Axe pick (who is a
strong laner and a popular pick).
Axe is currently one of the hottest (even broken) picks because of the new back-creeping strategy with two Stout shields. Unlike the old trilanes, the current usual dual lanes are not strong enough to kick him out of lane when he is back-creeping. The enemy carry has to farm under tower, while the enemy lane support isn’t going to be able to punish the Axe on his own – after all, Axe has his own lane partner to help out.
This tactic guarantees that Axe will get amazing farm in the early game (he’ll farm all lane creeps + the closest jungle creeps), which will help him transition into a very tanky initiator and play-maker. The possibility to back-creep also makes Axe a more versatile pick than he once was – a support Axe with various farm priority is a viable alternative.
Spectre is one of the weakest laners in the game. This is a major reason why running her is quite risky versus strong dual lanes despite her amazing late game potential. At first glance, Axe seems like a terrifying lane opponent for Spect. TNC guessed right, however, that Axe would do the back-creeping strat. In this case, Spect wouldn’t have to worry about Axe’s harass. As a high-armor tanky AGI carry with decent right-click damage, Spect is a very good hero to take last hits under tower (with enough regen).
Axe, of course, had more farm than Spect. In this particular scenario, however, 90 creeps for Axe versus 50 for Spect is a win for Spect. She is a hero that doesn’t expect to win the lane and 50 creeps (with two bonus support kills) is actually a very decent laning stage for her. Even more importantly, in the mid game (especially with Radiance), Spect counters Axe very hard. Axe relies on his Blink initiation to have an impact, and facing the Haunt damage, Radiance burn, and Phoenix egg burn, makes it incredibly difficult for Axe to find good initiations. This makes his high net worth much less impactful.
In this case, this means “don’t default to back-creeping” for Axe. If Yang had chosen to focus on controlling the creep equilibrium when possible and harassing the Spect with Helix, maybe Gabbi would have gotten a much slower Radiance and VG would have had a better chance to win the game.
Gabbi’s choice to rush a naked (after Treads + Aquila) Radiance is also a great example of this rule. “The default” build in this game would be a more defensive item for Spect, e.g. Manta to be able to fight against LS more comfortably and dispel Open Wounds. This “default” build, however, expects Spect to have a bad laning stage and to have trouble surviving. Gabbi had a good early game and he recognized that he could get away with a greedier build (he died only once this game). Indeed, once he finished his Radiance on minute 20, the game was practically in the bag – he wiped VG in the next team fight very convincingly.
Getting to Radiance with only TPs and Aquila in your inventory is not an easy task – shaving seconds off your timing one way or another could make a huge difference. Gabbi did an admirable job farming as efficiently as possible while also playing actively whenever he had the opportunity:
On minute 7, he did his first Haunt rotation. He was on low health and mana because he was tanking creeps (and some harass) in lane. He TPed to base, recovered his resources, and immediately used Haunt to participate in a gank (successfully) but also to transport himself back to lane instantly – much faster than walking back top.
He used Dagger as much as he could to speed up his farm. Dagger is Spect’s only source of AoE damage, which makes it very valuable for flash farming. Equally importantly, it helps her get from camp to camp much faster by going over impassible terrain.
To sustain his mana, Gabbi used 19 (?!) Clarities over the course of the game, 6 of which before buying his Radiance.
The drawback of spamming your Dagger for farming is that even with Clarities you wouldn’t have full mana when you need it for a fight. Gabbi demonstrated one way to deal with this problem: when a fight started on minute 12, instead of committing to the fight right away, he TPed to base, ate a Mango, used Haunt and rejoined the fight.
Thank you for reading – I hope you enjoyed the content and found it useful. If you liked it you can check out our previous article about what we can learn from NiP's win over EG. Look forward to more articles like this one during the KLM.
If you’re interested in learning Spectre in-depth, we have a premium Spect guide created with the help of none other than Xcalibur – one of the best pos. 1 players and a huge pub star. The Spect guide is part of his hero guide bundle - Xcalibur's Book of Dota.
