Good day,
I felt like mentioning some very important things that were left out in WED team review. I’ll put all of it in a format of random notices, facts and general overview of the players.
- Me. Grimjaw. I started as a midlaner, transitioned to 1 as Syrphx has mentioned. I agree that we most likely should have in flexible roles and decide who goes mid/safe mid-draft to have the most success in our games. Syrphx definitely plays some heroes much better than I do and giving up on our flex (for some reason) was a definite mistake.
- Syrphx. As he mentions in his season review, he wasn’t planning on and didn’t want to play with us this season as he had other plans on teammates. But drafts are always a big wildcard.
This showed a little in our games and definitely had impact. Throughout the season, we only had 1 scrim (if I recall correctly) and in that scrim Syrphx was the first to give up. I don’t think that saying ‘this is over/it’s just a scrim/gg’ is a good team environment. Not trying in games after showing up is such a waste of time. But this wasn’t just a Syrphx issue. He also could focus on his game and what he could have done more, instead of his teammates. As a drafter and an assigned captain by Barg, he did not take other responsibilities that come with the role, which include guidance, listening to others’ opinions and not giving up mid-game.Again, I’ve got some thoughts I wanted to express, pardon me for not being consistent in my scribbles. - Regutitard. A cool and funny person. Has his ideas about the game, they are often good. We started the season picking him Techies/Wyvern etc for offlane and it worked to great success. We tried Underlord once and it was the most underwhelming Underlord performance I’ve felt in a game. We then picked it for him in our first game of playoffs and it was the same underwhelming experience even tho I was very vocal about not picking Underlord and giving Regu something he does actually play. Don’t get me wrong, Regu is a great player, but Pitlord is not his hero. It’s difficult to play such heroes for such players sometimes and to have impact. I would put this on the drafter, not on the player.
Talking about the drafts. Me, friendly guy and Regu ended up on the same team for the draft cup and Harbinger managed to utilize us really well with his drafts, in retrospect, I find our drafts slightly one-dimensional, exploitable, etc. But that’s also because we put Syrphx to midlane, a role he wasn’t 100% comfortable in and of course we’ve got other players and their limitations. The next draft cup I had the pleasure of playing with Zakke and Neox, our drafts were super unconventional. Peculiar even. But they worked. Experience with Zakke showed me a lot more than any of our WED games/drafts. Again, I’m not putting blame on anyone, it’s no secret that Zakke is a very experienced player and knows what he’s doing, I’m just sharing my thoughts on the team in retrospect.
Coming back to Regu, although he’s funny and pleasant to play with, he also had moments of mald when he would call preemptive gg’s, would basically give up before the game even finished.This could have been addressed in multiple ways, but it really wasn’t and I’m not supervisor to tell people things. - BartyG. Good player with good knowledge what to do in games. Our captain. However, I wouldn’t want to call him one as he basically drafted 4 players together, did not do too much scouting (it’s not the responsibility of his, I get it) and didn’t put too much effort into arranging practices, etc. Syrphx was the one doing the drafting for heroes as well, which was greatly influenced by Barg’s opinion. Still, having played with a number of people in the league, I wouldn’t consider him a captain. He knows what he’s doing in-game, but as the highest ranking player, doesn’t direct the team in one way or another. That doesn’t make him a bad or unpleasant player, however, it’s just he doesn’t do what captains usually do. Barg’s Pango and Void Spirit were game-winning. He’d come out as a true offlaner in terms of farm midgame. However, neither him, nor Regu played actual offlane, which means that we couldn’t pick heroes like Slardar, Mars, whatever the hero and with Sand King banned every game, we ended up not having offlane, basically two 3.5 unconventional heroes.
- Friendly guy is a friendly guy and a god. Plays ok, could people more in lane. Doesn’t matter, definitely not the reason we lost, nor can be accountable for any responsibility within the team.
Random thoughts:
We shouldn’t have role-swapped 100%, should have kept it flexible, it’s definitely on me for not bringing that up.
We did not have a real offlaner, but that was not the reason we lost, we could have kept picking actual Regu’s heroes, however, Techies and other heroes were untouched after the first few games, even though we ended up winning them really hard.
Basically, we had a winning formula, we knew what to do, but that was never explored again and our drafts went from good to worse as time went on.
We experienced way too many moments of malding for no reason, gave up a lot of games for no reason and that influenced our next games.
We didn’t have an actual drafter, our drafts weren’t bad most of the time, but sometimes they just weren’t good enough to win. My heroes were also picked very early in the draft and it’s a legit strategy when I play meta heroes like Void or Drow, but then the rest of the draft has to be contributing to the first picks so that the whole thing compensates one another. We did not have that in our games and we picked Regu heroes he does not play, nor the ones I saw us having success with. And this happened after I expressed my concerns multiple times.
Most of our games were winnable, but sometimes people would give up too soon, tilt or we missed direction in our games because we didn’t have an actual captain personality.
All in all, I don’t blame anyone in particular for our losses, the only thing I would like to say is: whoever you end up playing with, try playing, because it shows when the team is not trying enough and that by itself can be demotivating. I wouldn’t say it affected me, but it definitely affected other players.