If you don’t agree, you should make some content yourself.

董卓 Dǒng Zhuó – Smack
Usurper and tyrant, later assassinated by his adopted son, Lü Bu.

呂布 Lǚ Bù – Treebeard
A mighty warrior known for his fickle behavior.

貂蟬 Diāo Chán – GSKW
Lü Bu’s lover, one of the four great beauties of ancient China. Gachi seems to have some admirers lately, and he also goes around entertaining various teams.

曹操 Cáo Cāo – Skater
The main villain, with many virtues to go along with his ruthlessness (which some consider a positive quality anyway). If you ask the question ‘who is the main villain of pst-sun?’, and you also want someone with military abilities and an idiosyncratic value system, the answer that came to my mind was Skater.

劉備 Liú Bèi – 109
109 assigned himself Cao Cao, but I think he is more fitting for Liu Bei. Despite the facade he shows rd2l, I suspect 109 is actually humane at heart. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei are blood brothers, but I didn’t restrict myself for purposes of this post.

關羽 Guān Yǔ – AwfulWaffLE
Guan Yu is best known for his fierce loyalty, even repaying a kindness owed to Cao Cao, enemy of Liu Bei. Guan Yu has been apotheosized in Chinese culture.

張飛 Zhāng Fēi – A2K
Reckless, undisciplined, fighter, lover of intoxication?

孫堅 Sūn Jiān – PooNaNi
The elder patriarch of the Sun family. “Although he controlled neither many troops nor much land, Sun Jian’s personal bravery and resourcefulness were feared by Dong Zhuo.”

孫策 Sūn Cè – Ultragunner
The elder Sun son. The Sun clan is portrayed as very loving and wholesome towards each other. Brothers help each other, etc.

孫權 Sūn Quán – logical
The younger Sun son, a child prodigy.

Sun clan – the Indian diaspora

魯肅 Lǔ Sù – hanmingzyy
Sun Quan’s wise adviser.

HappyHobo with a Shotgun
Points for a smooth movie reference, but the movie sounds awful. Is this a self-doxx? I think HappyHobo uses the same name every season, so negative points for that. 7/10

The Dogcatchers™

I’m not sure what the reference is. Urban dictionary gives
1. A metaphor in political prose for the lowest possible and least-regarded elected office or politician thereof.
2. A dude who has a penchant for screwing ugly chicks… especially when he gets drunk.
3. A Dog Catcher is someone who attracts and is attracted to women of a homely nature. Usually these women (also referred to as ‘dogs’) are quite desperate for any attention from the opposite sex…
Points for the non-standard character, points for a name with a nice ring. Points for the counter-cultural undertones. By the way, anyone else think Give up dude is an amusing mix of soft, anime-watching, gym-going, outcast, tough-guy? GUD sexually harassing gachi was the funniest, most awkward thing in ‘tober ’19. 8/10

Friendly Doomcow Team
An extra point for the friendly-doom juxtaposition, it rolls nicely off the tongue. An extra point because DoomCow and Zoompa have cool icons. Otherwise, kind of uninspired. 6/10

Robot Training
Concise and imbued with meaning, but otherwise not that exciting. 5/10

Madeline Fan Club
Madeline? Madeleine!. 2/10

The ROOT Gaming Advantage
One point for an attempt at a reference. 2/10

Ducks Under Influence
Decent team logo. Point for self-referencing (duckie). Cringe-sounding in the classic rd2l way, neutral. 6/10

Kool Flux Clan
A logo attempt was made. The pun doesn’t really work for me. 3/10

3 Inches of Bliss
I’ll give a generous 3 points to the 3 inches. 3/10

MAN I WISH I WAS AS LUCKY AS THIS TEAM
A point for the all-caps swagger and long name. 3/10

Photon, rebranded as JUDGY CROWS
I don’t get it, and I don’t care. 1/10

Dartboard Draft
Point for the alliteration, point for the reference. (By the way, what was the original source of drafted with a dartboard?) 6/10

Blatant and Egregious Admin Rigging
Confess your sins. 4/10

Beauty Beyond the Madness
Point for the initialism use. 3/10

Wahshank Redemption
Nice logo. Overrated movie. 6/10

Fus Roh Woof
Cute points. 5/10

Floop + 4 Thumbs
I don’t get it. Logo is a hot mess, but in an artistic way. 3/10

Burradoggit
1/10

Caterpillar Funeral
Complete with lore text. Surreal in the avant-garde way. 5/10

Goons
1/10

Orca Ninjas
Something your 10 year old brother came up with. 2/10

SAND
The logo is offensive somehow. 1/10

Polywhores
By the later part of the season, the name feels old and weary. Logo saves us from our weariness. 5/10

OwO
Anyone really want to know which servers got aeos banned from discord? I think the name was reused. 2/10

No silencer
No more no _hero name_ team names. 1/10

Gorilla Mindset
Points for the introspection. Logo’s been done before, but it’s nostalgic. 5/10

ALL MID PLAYERS WHAT HAPPENED???
meh. 2/10

we’ll show you hero puddle
I like it to be honest. Judge’s prerogative. 7/10

Daddy Issues Inc.
Everyone loves daddy issues. 3/10

Road to 0-16
A new twist on the roads to, and a nice effort on the logo. Some self-deprecation to boot. 6/10

ǝʞɐɔ ƃoɥǝƃpǝɥ
Hedgehog cake, REDDIT POE LEAGUE? Either way. 1/10

The Davai Five
Average rd2l name, average score? 4/10

Plump Peaches in Prancing Penguins
I don’t think it makes sense..? but at least it’s fun. 5/10

Ninjuice Turtles
What. 3/10

ooh ooh aahh aah monkey 🙂
Someone’s fetish? 2/10

Blue Dream-Team
A point for the rhyme? 2/10

Wrath of the Khans
Is this supposed to be Björn? 5/10

Smells Like Team Spirit
Worst team in the division, but top tier team name. 8/10

Best team names: StarEnd 2.0’s Smells Like Team Spirit; Give up dude’s The Dogcatchers™.
Honorable mentions: Happyhobo with a Shotgun; we’ll show you hero puddle

Worst team names: Photon, Burradoggit, Goons, SAND, No silencer

In which I talk a little bit about each team.

Dogcatchers™ (Give up dude); 7-1
I vaguely remember 109 from in-houses years ago. My impression, accurate or not, was that he was an eli, ryrk, kc, et al. associate. Everyone in that group back then was kind of remarkable and unremarkable in the same ways. Those who were around will know what I mean.

People only talk about 109 on this team… but that’s where the team’s mmr is. He’s last picking his hero every game. He’s supposed to be winning and having an impact. What’s more notable is that the side-lanes, both of them, are stepping up too. But anyone who’s played with some of the players shouldn’t be too shocked by that fact.

Friendly Doomcow Team (DoomCow33); 6-2
I’ve now met Halfcast~ and Zoompa in person. This team has their mmr distributed evenly with everyone being value.

MGHappyhobo (MGHappyhobo); 6-2
I think Legion is a solid player. I heard they got a rigged free agent.

Kool Flux Clan (FlyingNightmare™); 6-2
I thought Stang was going to mid? It was a ruse. I don’t think this team has been tested much yet. My one minute analysis is that you should spend all your bans on FN, and however they want to lane after that, let them have at it.

Blatant and Egregious Admin Rigging (Clare ❤ Teresa); 5-3
I think this team might have the highest friendship factor of all the teams.

Fus Roh Woof (Sharingan); 5-3
Neku is a nice guy, who likes to laugh. I hope his team is enjoyable. I think they should at least make playoffs comfortably. (By the way, I think half off all teams making playoffs is silly.)

fuck skatre (skaterx7); 5-3
From a psychological, robot-understanding standpoint, I would love to have more insight into how skater thinks. Every time I ask him something in an attempt to glean information, he just says “no” or something.

I’ll use this spot to say that I don’t particularly respect players who can only play a single position (they usually don’t even play it well). How much less so players who can only play a few heroes in that position. This comment isn’t directed at this team, I just thought of it at this time.

The ROOT Gaming Advantage (deadprez); 5-3
deadprez owns every game? bloodninja has missed two of four weeks. secret strat? 😛

Floop + 4 Thumbs (Predict); 5-3
Zoompa, Itachi and I met Predict in the afternoon before this week’s matches. I heard from the horse’s mouth that Predict is actually doing the drafting. So presumably he’s responsible for getting run over by Burrahobbit broodmother.

Burradoggit (Burrahobbit); 5-3
hope everyone can make up.. for content’s sake.. and for bay area meetup’s sake. 🙂

CRAP (CRAP); 5-3
Kabobrocks notable for being on Finite’s short whitelist of party stackers. I suspect Finite only plays with no-stress gamers so Kabobrocks is probably chill.

Ducks Under Influence (UltraGunner); 5-3
True story.. when I first played with Duckie in Prohibit stacks.. I wasn’t sure if girl or squeaker 😉 ❤ This is a compliment by the way.

SAND (steven); 5-3
emu

MAPPO (MAPPO); 4-4
The fact is, if you want people to say you are good, you need to let other people say it. If you say it yourself, peoples’ egos will be offended. How few people are fair and just, and even those who try to be may not have the discernment to attain it. The good people can tell who is good, and as for the rest… better to try not to care. Suggested reading: How To Win Friends and Influence People.

Maybe I’ll do a part two, but probably not.

1. UltraGunner
   UltraGunner’s team seems brimming with confidence, and FierySnake is ignited and motivated. (By the way, didn’t he use to misspell it as “firey?”)
2. Jabinskiz
   Staylin is the most sand-bagged player in PST-Sun. ‘Nuff said.
3. BBTM
   I think it’s a good idea for players to try to learn all positions, even if you specialize in one. Learning carry especially makes sense as a high mmr support player in rd2l.
4. MAPPO
   To be honest, itachi seems nice, and the people who flame him (mockingly or not) are not known as the nicest people. Makes you wonder. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAebYQgy4n4 )
5. skaterx7
   Pretty sure skater is angry and plotting against everyone.
6. Polo5885
   Wasn’t this Polo like 3k or something a couple years ago? Big boy now :O
7. BoX
   With the departure of some young guns (bullies) from PST-S, and my partial return to form, I think I’m an above-average mid-laner in this rd2l again. Rejoice.
8. MGHappyhobo
   My week 1 opponent. Their carry, “Legion”, seems solid.
9. CRAP
   Early indications are that CRAP’s tri-core isn’t strong enough. I also see some, in my opinion, reverse-drafting tendencies.
10. DoomCow33
    Lookin’ good, keep it up. Support centaur, potentially interesting.
11. FatSloth
12. velvelvel
13. spidez
    I don’t think week 0 was ticketed.
14. mid or courier adventure
    Week 0 wasn’t ticketed, and they 0-2’d to spidez. All-in-all, I still think the players on this team are more on the side of “good” than “bad”.
15. clueless
16. Clare ❤ Teresa
    Some players have had alarmingly high death counts.
17. TheMantis
18. JIVEE
19. steven
    Think it’s a pub-style team.
20. Give up dude
21. aeos
    My old friend Phantasmal ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR1tGp5EJVY ), against my advice, didn’t finish calibrating before the draft. By the time he did calibrate, he ended up 200 mmr below his sheet mmr, which is what happened to me last season. Unless this team can unite around anime-watching, they should be happy to be a middling team.
22. Burrahobbit
    Bonus buff for bromance factor.
23. Charles the Baboon
24. K[A]livunkka
25. JonSquid
26. Sharingan
    I was debating between Bury and the player I eventually picked. Two roads diverged, and sorry I could not travel both. 30 seconds is not enough by the way.
27. bsvhsvj
    Friendship is the consolation prize.
28. deadprez
    I often like to make a distinction between “bad good players” and “good bad players”. This team probably has a nice mix of both. %)
29. Khillasaurus
    Bambino is trying to carry from the 4 position, but I don’t think you can have two out of three “core” positions be weak.
30. Lemonardo
31. Jenny Death
32. seven thirty
33. Maximus
    My week 0 opponent.
34. StarEnd 2.0
35. FlyingNightmare™
36. StonedSpirit
    I advocate taking all the other talents on Warlock. 😦

Not rated: Lucky and PrinceMeerkat92

I’ve had people, who thought they were friendly with me, become upset with me for ranking them lowly. Please be aware that I typically do my rankings algorithmically. So it may not have factored in your sandbagger(s), and if you’re ranked lowly it doesn’t mean I don’t like you.

Inversely, if you’re ranked highly, it could just be due to my ranking method. For example, people seem to think first pick Bambino (Khillasaurus) is a giant mistake.

1. CRAP
2. Lucky
3. Khillasaurus
4. Jabinskiz
5. mid or courier adventure
6. Clare ❤ Teresa
7. PrinceMeerkat92
8. Burrahobbit
9. UltraGunner
10. DoomCow33
11. aeos
12. velvelvel
13. BoX
14. skaterx7
15. MGHappyhobo
16. deadprez
17. StonedSpirit
18. steven
19. clueless
20. Charles the Baboon
21. JIVEE
22. Sharingan
23. BBTM
24. Lemonardo
25. Polo5885
26. TheMantis
27. StarEnd 2.0
28. bsvhsvj
29. FatSloth
30. Jenny Death
31. MAPPO
32. FlyingNightmare™
33. seven thirty
34. Give up dude
35. Maximus
36. JonSquid
37. ♂K[A]livunkka♂
38. spidez

Suppose there are two captains of equal skill, A and B, drafting two players each from four players, 1 2 3 and 4. 1 is the strongest and 4 is the weakest.

Clearly, the equitable way to divide the players is 1 with 4, and 2 with 3. But A and B decide to use a two-round EU draft. A will go first.

Here are the possible scenarios:

A picks 1. B will take 2 and 3.
A picks 2. B will take 3, then 1. A has made an error.
A picks 3. B will take 1 then have 4 left over, or 4 then 1. B will not take 2, because A will take 1.
A picks 4. B will take 1, and then be happy with either 2 or 3. A has made an error.

What if we made 4 a ‘booby prize’, such that also having 1 cannot compensate? Then A must pick 3 first. B will then have no way of winning the draft.

Let’s extend the draft to three captains, A B and C, choosing from six players, 1 2 3 4 5 and 6. Again, 1 is the best, and 6 will be a booby prize.

Suppose A chooses 1. B and C will end with 2 and 5, and 3 and 4, and A will be left with 6.

A wisens up and chooses 5, B chooses 4, and C is stuck with 6 and 1. A will then get 2, for 5+2=7, and B gets 4+3=7.

Suppose A still chooses 5, but B is clueless and chooses 1. C will now choose 2, since 1 is assured of getting 6. In the 2nd round, A gets 3, for 5+3=8, and C gets 4 for 2+4=6. C has gained from B’s cluelessness, and A has suffered. A could avoid this by starting with 4 instead of 5.

If everyone acts rationally, A will choose 4, B will choose 5, and C will be stuck with 6.

I debated between posting this now or waiting until after the draft. I figured I’d do a service to my readers and post it before. It will make draft-watching this Sunday more interesting.

I purposefully kept this analysis somewhat superficial to make it more accessible, but it should be clear that there are some theoretical problems with EU drafting.

Including captains, there are 190 players with an average draft-mmr of 3845.

The draft-mmr distribution looks like this:

The above graph includes the captains. Here’s without:

As there are four picks per team, it can be illuminating to think of the draft pool in four quartiles. Other than at the highest and lowest mmrs, the mmr distribution is quite linear. I leave it to the readers to draw their conclusions.

Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KjJ3bMQH66ODTKRkIpqdkWQmFD9JqWUk8Hj8VHM_ftA/edit?usp=sharing

Out of 14 trials, ABBABAAB was better 5 times, ABBAABBA was better 9 times.

Method:

Used PST-Sun sign-up player pool. I believe that gives a typical mmr distribution. For each trial, randomized mmr order, and used the first 8 entries as a draft pool.

Conclusion and comments:

ABBAABBA is better than ABBABAAB in typical cases. These schoolyard formats are not good at making balanced teams. Real matchmaking, with ratings that update, is preferred. If “hidden mmr” is accurate (no smurfs or anti-value players), balanced shuffle should produce much fairer teams than schoolyard drafts.

1. Initiating vs. counter-initiating.

Some abilities are especially suited to counter-initiating after the team-fight has already begun. Here’s my tip for Warlock players: You have one job–to counter-initiate with your golem in a team-fight. Don’t use golem in a pick-off. Don’t initiate with golem. Don’t cast a bunch of other spells and run out of mana. Don’t even fatal bonds first (but I won’t argue with a good player who chooses to; I don’t). Just wait for the enemy to start team-fighting, and then you chaotic offering on top of the fight.

Usually this means you are waiting for the enemy initiator (Axe, Void, Sven) to commit, and then you cast ultimate on top. Tidehunter ravage, Phoenix sunray, and Winter Wyvern curse are other heroes with similar ideas.

Back when Badman had his 5 minutes of Spectre fame, it was interesting to study his play. He was very active and fought a lot, but he never used haunt to gank or pick-off. Haunt was reserved for team fights.

Think about your purpose in a fight, and the purpose of each of your abilities. Think about the order in which abilities should be used.

2. Front-line vs. back-line.

Think about who you are going to target in a team-fight. Playing a carry like Storm or Spectre, you are frequently going to target the squishy back-line. If you are a Beastmaster or Winter Wyvern, you’re probably looking to ultimate a BKB’d core in the late game. These things should be thought about in advance, before the time comes.

Usually, deciding who to target is a blurrier decision. Often you just focus whoever is in front of you, or out of position, or whoever your team is going on.

If your enemy has a Wraith King, you probably shouldn’t be targeting him first at all. Non-burstable tanks or aegis carriers are also poor initial targets.

Also think about who is trying to jump you! If you are the squishy back-line, watch your positioning. Don’t get excited the moment a fight starts and jump in front.. there are still people looking to gib you. Try not to clump and share AoE spells that weren’t even targeting you.

The skillful player anticipates things ahead of time.

The theme of this post is thinking strategically about the larger picture. Even if you disagree with how I play, at least you will have to think about your own strategy.

1. While you are doing things, your enemy is also doing things. This obvious observation is nevertheless thought about by a minority of Dota players.

If you abandon the off-lane to jungle because you will get more farm that way, you aren’t only changing the situation for yourself. The enemy safe-lane is now free farming. The enemy supports are now free to chain-pull for their own development, or harass your mid-lane and safe-lane. Even if you are left alone in your jungle, your team may not have gained from your decision. It’s usually preferable for you to contest the off-lane and suffer for awhile.

Let’s say you are a support and decide to farm a midas, so that at 40 minutes into the game you will have items. Disregarding the resources you have drained from your team, has it occurred to you that all the while, your opponent is farming too? Maybe a better way to secure the late game is by focusing on securing the early game.

2. Farm distribution should be done strategically. During the laning phase there’s no issue; the three “cores” take the farm. But what about after the laning phase? What about when there’s a creep wave at a tower, who gets it? It surely should not be decided by whoever is greediest and teleports first.

The 1,2,3,4,5 numbers we use to denote roles originally referred to farm priority. 1 would be your late game hard carry, who got first dibs on the best farm. Sometimes your 1 would be your mid-laner. It’s not because a hero laned mid that he is the 2; it is his rank in the carry hierarchy.

My point is, farm distribution should be determined according to strategy. It should not be a free-for-all.

Sometimes a support will be close to an important blink dagger, and you’ll give him a lane to farm. It just means you temporarily prioritized his farm.

If you watch some high level games, sometimes you will see supports use spells to weaken a wave for the cores. If you watch some low level games, often you will see the opposite!

If you watch a pro-level tinker, notice how he will leave farm for his teammates, especially his carry. Lesser tinkers (even divine/immortal level) will instead farm everything available, with a preference for the safest farm!

3. Lane direction. Generally, if you want space on the map to do things, you need to first ‘fix’ your lanes so that they are pushing away from you. If you smoke when there are creep waves knocking at your base, you are fooling only the dimmest opponents. If you do successfully catch someone, you won’t have an objective to take anyway. Smokes should generally facilitate objective taking.

4. Economy of movement. This is something that separates different skill levels, but is rarely credited. If you watch a low level carry farm, there’s probably a lot of pausing between camps and waves. A high level player has his whole farm pattern mapped out smoothly. Smokes in pro games are typically prepared in advance, with a clear plan in mind. In RD2L, it might take 20 seconds to bring a smoke out and organize the team, and it’s a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-you-catch-someone-to-win-the-game smoke. When smoking without a real objective (such as a tower push), I think RD2L teams lose more in opportunity cost than they gain by smoking.