Player Draft Retrospective

For want of blogboy content, I’ll look back at my player draft this season.

I went into the draft intending to first pick the best off-laner available. (I intended to play mid.) I think the off-lane role is too important: It’s the hardest role in the game, requiring familiarity with the most match-ups, and ability to react to unfamiliar situations. It requires a player to get “something out of nothing.” A deficiency in the off-lane throws the whole team into imbalance. It’s like a floor that’s not level, or a chair that wobbles, or one of Treebeard’s structural disasters. (I cannot regret more, the off-laners who abandon from 0:00 to jungle “because they get more that way”).

So I was just going to take the best-offlaner once it got to me. This was just after TI, and 7mad had just won with an impressionable mek-Timbersaw. When it was my turn and Lilith the Timbersaw main was available, well; it was a match made in heaven. Although we never utilized the mek-Timbersaw (I’d still like to use this, to be honest), our cleanest wins this season were with Lilith Timbersaw and an aggro-trilane.

Speaking of tri-lanes, right from the beginning I intended to use tri-lanes as a dominant part of my strategy, which is also why I insisted on first picking a strong off-laner. I have always preferred tri-lanes to dual-lanes. I won’t go into my laning theories, but I will note that almost every time we aggro tri-laned, the opponent responded by matching our tri-lane with three heroes. (I don’t necessarily agree with their response, though).

I also wanted the option to sacrifice my off-laner, but this ended up not being a comfortable move. (I’ll ask again, where are the off-laners who can be sac’d!!)

All-in-all, I took two lessons away from my first pick strategy this season. First, I think the teams with more even mmr distributions tended to fare better. (Or more specifically, teams with a truer tri-core threat). Next season, I’ll think about first-picking a slightly lower-mmr player. Second, rather than auto-taking the strongest first pick available, I should still look at value for mmr.

I still think I like prioritizing the off-laner pick. But on the other hand, with everyone else prioritizing mids and carries, if no one grabs the stronger off-laners, it might create opportunities for other captains in the draft. That considered, I don’t think the block-picking meta is worth agonizing over when you’re 1 captain out of 38. It would require more captains thinking game-theoretically.