6.65 First Impressions part 2! Who's in, who's out?

First of all, I would like all my readers to promote dota at World Cyber Games. Click the following link, register and leave a message for the WCG organizers to include dota in their tournaments all around the world. :)

http://www.wcg.com/6th/fun/eventzone/200912_want/want.asp

Now, resuming my comments on the new version 6.65, (first post - read first so you understand this one to the fullest) I feel we're gonna see a lot of forgotten faces in competitive scene. As I said in my last post, heroes with teleport based skills are to be seen more often but what I didn't realize at that point was that the new teleport mechanism applies only on teleport scrolls and not boots of travel! This does not decrease the importance of Pit Lord, Furion, Spectre and KotL here, but it does mean that the problem is not as big as it seemed to be. This also means boots of travel would be given far more importance than other boots.

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First Impressions of 6.65! A New Metagame?

The wait is finally over with an awesome update by Icefrog. (6.65 Changelog) The version came out with two major updates, one was the xp and gold change on creeps after destroying barracks and the other one was the reworked mechanics of Town Portal.

Both these changes indicate a clear green signal by Icefrog to push strategies. The benefits of destroying barracks are too good to ignore. What this means? The game has turned into a push competition, whoever pushes enemy rax first wins! The turtling era has been replaced by the push era (Yipeee!). Length of games will go down considerably. Pick a summoner,  an AoE whore, an AoE healer, a tower demolisher & a carry jungler and you're bound to have a great time crushing your opponents. The carry spends most of his time jungling while the rest of the team goes out pushing everything to the rax. You don't even need to care much once you push rax. Push a lane or two and then farm in jungle as hell coz the other team is losing experience and gold relatively as the game goes longer.

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XMas to come with 2 bangs! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! :D

Yes, It's Christmas ! Time to enjoy, wait for Santa Icefrog and get loads of gifts heroes maps updates surprises! It's also the time to show dotaters that you are beyond godlike! So play dota with all your friends, enemies & unknowns and show them Who's their Daddy? ;)

As I mentioned in my previous post,

"Icefrog's actually planning to surprise us with Christmas gifts

the wait is almost over as Icefrog has given his statement,

"All set now, thanks for everyone's input

and gift unpacking has already begun. Everyone was thinking there would 1 new hero in 6.65 but it turns out there are two of them! :D

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My predictions for 6.65

Well, 6.65 is to be released soon and I'm expecting quite a lot of changes in this version. Even though there's no assurance even one of the following changes would be seen but nevertheless, THESE SHOULD BE CHANGED. One should also note that what I'm writing are the expected changes while Icefrog's actually planning to surprise us with Christmas gifts. :P

Where will she fit in the 6.65 load-screen?

DISCLAIMER

The things mentioned in this post are just my predictions. Anything may or may not come true.

End the Turtling era

SMM'09 came as a nightmare for me and taught every pro in the world how to go 'win win' situation in the 6.64 era, defensively farming. Honestly, this turtling thing should come to an end and dota should become a more spectator friendly game. It is the best thing that can happen to this game currently. My best bet would be nerf of defensive/tanking items like Vanguard, Hood/Pipe, etc., solving the mass tp problem as stated by Kuroky and maybe a small vision nerf to observer wards.

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Heroes that kicked ass in 6.64!

As most of you would be aware, Icefrog has indicated release of v6.65 near around Christmas,

so I thought why not compile a list of heroes that hit the spotlight in the current scene? After all, this was one version where I can say we witnessed games of many unforeseen heroes, whatever be the reasons. Don't believe me? Let's have a look...

Heroes that dominated the scene

Vengeful Spirit

First pick of every game? At least in Europe she was. She proved useful in several different strats. Need a baby-sitter? Pick Venge. Need a tri-laner? Pick Venge. Need someone to enhance negative armor strats? Pick Venge. Forget about being a part of a strat, swap is game breaking even at later stages of the game. She was undoubtedly the most picked hero in this era.

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MYM vs BFB and Ganking

Kuroky shares his views. MUST READ!
MYM vs BFB and Ganking
Might be posting views on it later. or not. :P

Ben's Fuck Buddies: Puppey, Merlini & Kuroky unite!

BFB Logo

Puppey recently announced the making of his new team, Ben's Fuck Buddies (BFB) comprising of 7 big names in the Competitive DotA: Puppey, Merlini, Kuroky, Demon, Pajkatt, Fear & amartnt (more details). It looks like being a star and having a huge fan-base is a pre-requisite for this team. Looking at the list of players and the team's name, it is clear that they're gonna put up a lot of ganking-style gameplay which means highly entertaining matches for spectators. YaY! But can this clan meet the standards of a top level team? None of these 7 is a well known supporter and only time will tell if they mesh well with each other. As for now, they've already started playing together. You can watch their first tournament match as a team on Gosugamers.

Good luck to the newly born star studded team, hoping for some extreme action and thrilling games. :)
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Update

The team has changed name to Ben's Friendly Buddies and the pic above is their temporary logo. So... does this mean there are Ben's unfriendly buddies too? lolz.

SMM Grand National Dota Tournament '09 a summary...

As many of you must be aware, SMM'09 was the biggest offline tournament in the history of DotA, it is no wonder we got to witness some interesting and some surprising stuff in the world of Competitive DotA. Talking about the interesting stuff, the tournament was won by team FTD inspite of the presence of much more popular teams like Cybertime, Kingsurf, EHome, etc. But of course, the most unexpected development in the tournament was MYM getting out of the tourni in the qualifier rounds. This came as a big big surprise to the DotA population, how can the rank 1 team in Europe could not even pass the Qualifier Rounds? MYM leader Kuroky says he played with Asian teams during the practice matches and realised that turtle farming is a way more secure strategy than their usual ganking stuff in the current meta. In fact, he even said that their ganking strategy would not work against the Asians. This was also widely accepted by all the participating teams in the tournament. But then, MYM fail to execute a good turtling strategy, did some bad hero picking and ended up out of the tournament. It's no wonder the game deciding MYM's fate, MYM vs Ftz.Asia became the most discussed match of the tournament online (on GosuGamers).

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MYM Kuroky launches his own blog... Leaves MYM!

Kuroky made some important decisions after returning from Malaysia. He has decided to leave MYM and make his own team. Also, he's positive to write a weekly blog, The True Vision. He states in his blog... (I've highlighted his important statements)

"hey all!

I wanted to start a blog long time ago but thought I am too lazy for this, but for various reasons I decided to stop the lazyness and start writing some interesting stuff (hopefully :D).

The main reasons for starting a blog are my fans, who supported me so much through the years and gave me alot of motivation to keep on playing, the 2nd reason is SMM, where I wanna give some insight from me into this.

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