First game evaluation

Both bans were pretty standard on both sides. Not a lot seemed to have changed compared to .48b, however, what at first seemed as if a pointless ban on Omniknight turns out it was a decent ban, if you look at the 2nd game that is.

Pick wise, I thought that MYM totally had it the first game based on picks, looking back though, I realize that everything they were planning to do relied on initiating on the opponents and getting everything off, in practice, with the stuns and slows it was really hard to initiate on them. Overall I felt like Mouz had a better balance in their team, slows, stuns AOE, they had it everything, I didn’t realize that at first, but when I saw it into action though, the synergy in their team was less obvious then it was for MYM, but it was very effective. I do want to give MYM props for trying out such a teamwork intensive strategy, and if they can pull it off flawlessly it would’ve been awesome, but if one thing is certain in DotA is that you can’t predict how the battles are gonna go – relying on team battles only turned out to be MYM’s biggest downfall. Mouz won the mockdraft for this game in my opinion.

Second game evaluation

Again we are dealing with standard bans, MYM banned Beast Master after the first game which was probably a very good choice. Just like in the first game, neither team bothered to ban or any of the new powerhouses like Puck or Dark Seer, but considering neither team picked them I guess that makes sense.

The picks this game were a lot more interesting, both teams were taking their time for the picks and you can see there were strategic masterminds at work. Omniknight was a vital pick, not only did they give MYM a form if initiation even though their team had no real inniating heroes (Viper running around with repel), it also gave them the beyond powerful GA which really turned the tides in battles. Still though, Mouz did a very good job at trying to counter the strategy, they had inniation with Pudge, Siren to deal with both Repel and GA (sleep!) and a very good balance between lategame and early game. In the end, it was mostly that MYM had very good positioning during team battles and that Mouz was lacking instant damage to deal with Omniknight. Giving this game to MYM their drafting was really good but Mouz definitely did a good job at trying to counter MYM’s strategy.