US Paralympic High Dive Team Review
Buncha fuckin cowardly POSITIVE team reviews this season, time to fix that. As usual, I drafted people I knew this season, because I dislike randoms. The upside of this is that I (mostly) knew what I was getting into. The downside is that I drafted an aggressively washed up team, who collectively played less Dota than I did. All good lads for sure, but we definitely had some issues that are worth discussing.
Self Review First:
Tried to play 4 this season. That part generally went alright, but the problem was that I had to put a lot more mental energy into figuring out how my hero worked and couldn’t spend as much time as I normally do corralling the retards. Not entirely my fault, this team’s big retard energy was probably too much for me to manage even in peak form (though I drafted it, so I guess it’s still my fault).
Definitely lost a lot of games by picking myself heroes that tried to enable the team (they didn’t), or they seemed good for the game (they weren’t usually), or they were just fun (they were, but we still lost anyways). I don’t really know what kind of hero I was supposed to be picking myself to actually win us the game. When I picked Shaker, I had good timings but limited lane impact, so none of my cores came out ahead (and I got randomly flamed by Eli for giving him a free lane?)
When I picked 4 Sniper and put Doomcow on life tilt, he just disappeared into the jungle and the lane didn’t matter much at the end of the day anyways. I felt like at 12 minutes our team collectively was in just as shitty of a spot, but I was a Sniper instead of a Shaker with a Blink. I dunno, if anyone actually good can tell me how to backpack 4k core players, hit me up.
Washed Tier: Beached whale
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Lucas:
I picked Lucas because I didn’t want to pick anyone in the pool left in the high 4k range and I knew he could hoover up a large chunk of the map if given the right opportunity. He was also a pub spammer, so I figured this was a good chance to get some new blood in to make up for the 3 boomers I would inevitably pick afterwards. Unfortunately, he lost a bunch of pubs and pretty much quit Dota mid season, so that plan failed about as spectacularly as everything else.
Lucas was good to play with, since he was the only teammate I had that didn’t immediately quit discord after we lost, and he legitimately seems to want to improve. He has a bit of a problem with focusing on a specific issue he perceives in game and complaining about it, even if it’s something that happened like 10 minutes ago and couldn’t possibly matter anymore. Not really an issue for me personally, I can vibe with most people + am very capable of telling him to shut up if he goes on for too long, but it caused some issues with other people on the team definitely not named Scrub.
The worst part of playing with Lucas is that he is very confident in his ability to play a large variety of heroes, but when it comes down to the wire in draft and I need him to give me a hero, he rarely had an answer (this was a recurring issue this season with most of my players). I think the only time he was 100% confident was when he told me to pick him Huskar, during which I had an unfortunate case of temporary deafness, and he ended up with Kunkka instead.
Overall, good experience. He brought out my inner griefer, would play with again.
Washed Tier: Soggy kelp
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Crub:
Scrub is reasonably functional at Dota in general, and he’d been spamming a lot of mid, so I saw a good opportunity to secure myself another vacuum cleaner core player + achieve a longtime badmin goal of mine, which was to adjust a player down and then immediately pick them. I was fairly confident my wrangling ability could manage any issues that came up in game as a result of having Scrub + Lucas on the same team. I was woefully unprepared for this — Scrub takes it as a personal offense if he has to interact with anyone that acts like an animal. As far as he’s concerned, he’s the only animal allowed in the room.
I should have realized that Scrub was just picking Clinkz and KOTL, specifically because he didn’t have to actually play mid when he picked them. A patch came around, both got shot immediately, and suddenly he was out of heroes. He spent the rest of his short-lived season complaining about losing lane every game as Clinkz, complaining about every hero that he had to play against that dumped on Clinkz (all of them, apparently), complaining when I tried to suggest anything that wasn’t Clinkz, and (naturally) complaining about Lucas. We tried a role swap, which did not go over well, since Clinkz is even less playable offlane than it is mid. This is about the point in the season where Scrub also quit Dota, more or less. Not having a great time overall and not willing to role swap, he retired early.
Washed Tier: Crude oil tanker blown off course by Hurricane Lucas
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Phoenix:
Phoenix was my flex core, originally intended to play a sort of sacrifical 1, as I expected Lucas/Scrub to eat up most of the farm. This worked for a bit, but it was pretty hit or miss. Sometimes I picked him safelane Tide to absorb our opponents’ best player and we owned. Sometimes I just randomly picked him Pango and forgot to ban Bloodseeker (this happened like 3 times, I am not good at drafting). Once Scrub retired and he became a more permanent traditional 1, he fell into a similar issue that the others had, where he didn’t have any hero he was confident enough on to pick early, but didn’t seem to really have any great ideas on what to pick late either. He also had moderate tilt issues. Probably played the most Dota out of the original squad, but started playing way more Dota AFTER we disbanded, which isn’t really much better.
Washed Tier: Unfortunate soul dragged out to sea by a riptide
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Narte:
Narte is a saint — the saint of not playing Dota. This isn’t a complaint, I knew what I was getting into when I picked him. He was my emotional anchor, and he did a great job all season. Very chill lad. Only real downside is he started the season with furry fever, despite playing almost no Hoodwink games (which led to a near loss as he spent about half the game learning how the ult worked), and ended the season insisting on playing 5 QoP, which went about as well as you’d expect. 10/10 last pick though, would pick again. Need some way to stop the enemy team from banning CM, though.
Washed Tier: The entire fucking beach
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Phantom:
Phantom was my Scrub replacement, since Lucas wanted to try playing mid. Between forfeits, missing one week, and his late arrival, he didn’t get a lot of action, but he made a great effort. Hard to really evaluate his play, since he only joined around the time we had a bunch of undeserved wins and lost to actual decent teams (or he’s just why we lost, who knows).
Washed Tier: Not washed but I wish he was so we had an excuse
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Overall, I had a pretty good time, but I don’t think a number of people on the team did, judging from the DMs I got all season. I’ll take responsibility for that, since A. I put too many chimps in the same cage and B. we probably would have won more games if I wasn’t ass.
That’s all I got, if I go for more than 10 bucks next season you better be prepared for 3 months of this:
