Surviving Matchmaking: Thinking Inside the Box

It’s hard to remain level-headed when your Crystal Maiden teammate decides that first item Shadow Blade is the key to victory.

I’m not saying it’s a bad item on her and I’m not saying it’s not going to help the team in some way. What I am saying, however, is that it isn’t the item that would best help our team win the game. We needed her to be happy with the little gold she’d get from stack pulling the camps, getting us some nice little wards up and running, and maybe, if she’s on her best behavior, a bracer. But instead we received an especially hard right-clicking invisa-maiden who could drop her easily interruptible ultimate on an unsuspecting Lone Druid or Clockwerk. I’m not bitter.

Could we have won with her going that route? Most certainly, although our Phantom Lancer might have something to say about sharing pre-10 minute safe lane farm so Crystal Maiden can have a faster Shadow Blade, and I’d reckon it wouldn’t be positive. Has it happened that a CM is the key to a victory? Of course. That’s why it’s so difficult to refute these claims when that ‘scrub’ you’re grilling for doing something outside the norm uses them to justify himself. Except that these aren’t the questions that actually matter. What really counts in this team game (Fun Fact: There are 4 other people trying to accomplish the same goal as you) is what my team needs from me.

Like it or not, some heroes skill sets aren’t equipped to handle carrying a game. They just can’t do enough with acquired income to make it acceptable that they have gotten all of the gold. Heroes don’t have random roles made standard on them out of thin air, but rather they are used in the ways that best maximizes their upside without suffering from diminishing returns. Supports are given zero farm because they don’t need it to make their mark on the game, while carries are given it all because with each new item they get stronger and stronger without plateauing. And, unfortunately for Crystal Maiden, her plateau is early and severe.

"Oh no!  Now we have to buy dust to stop her ultimate!  Just call good game, it's over."

I can’t fault her for going for an unconventional first item. Wonky builds are the absolute best part of this game. DotA 2 is extraordinarily unique in the fact that, more often than not, these types of builds can actually be successful if implemented correctly. A Bristleback foregoing Quill Spray and his passive in order to maximize Nasal Goo and have the mana to accomplish it (via stats) is hilariously effective in a dual lane with a stun. A tri-lane farming Silencer can completely opt out of his 2 nukes to get more survivable and have more intelligence earlier on (glaives start to hit quite hard quite fast). A Dagon-rushing Pugna can one shot most supports if attained early enough. All of these peculiar builds work under the right circumstances.

The ‘right circumstances’. It just so happens that being the safe lane support for the strongest carry in the game wasn’t the correct time to try out that Shadow Blade build.

DotA is, in essence, about killing the other teams Ancient. That’s how you win. When you don’t kill the other teams Ancient and the other team kills yours, you lose. Losing sucks. So if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain (i.e. by doing the job that’s standard for your hero), people will likely focus their ire on you as the cause of failure. So you can’t be surprised when you do something unusual, and fail, that someone will start reading you the riot act, or report you for intentional feeding.

There are times when going Shadow Blade on Crystal Maiden could absolutely be the right decision. Like if she is pigeonholed into playing mid and has the only large scale AoE damage on the team in the form of her ultimate? Well, maybe Black King Bar would be better for that so that she’d get the full channel off. Or possibly if you need a roaming hero to help set up ganks for your less mobile farmers? Well, that would require devoting 3k gold for the option of ganking when a drum’s buildup might serve better for survivability and mobility. Hmm.

Maybe this was a bad example.

I’ll let you figure out the situation where Lothar’s Maiden is a good idea, but the takeaway is pretty clear. If you can set up the correct setting for a certain skill or item build, there is a distinct possibility something outside the box could work wonders. Yet without this setup, the variation comes across as an unnecessary deviation that will likely cause defeat. Run with a stack to make the unexpected more viable and don’t impose your experimentation on someone who just wants to play to win the game. Being forced to play a certain way is annoying, but forcing others to adapt to your crazy ideas is just as bad, if not worse, because it affects four other players. Although, if you can get people to be on board you really should try Dagon on Witch Doctor. Makes Maledict disgusting.