I want to start by saying, sorry to all my teammates and the enemy team for not showing up to the last official games we had. It was really a brain fart for me, was backing up for a college that week at work which smushed my brain dealing with her extra work. I ended up completely forgetting the game night. No point in giving more excuses, big fuck up on my end and I accept it. (Probably the biggest one since I fell asleep in semi finals with team Kimer on RD2L)
On a side note, my captain accused me of dodging the last games intentionally on his review which is a fair assumption after seeing me in a pub. I will say it out bluntly not sure how I can convince them in this case nor I'm trying to, I didn’t have a great time playing with this team but my intention was not to dodge the final series however didn’t feel fair ditching my friends in a ranked game and making them lose MMR either. (I kinda did that the previous week as well because I forgot we had officials(again))
Again sorry!
Now that is out of the way, I still want to talk about our team and how Ligbank portrayed us as a team, how I saw things from my perspective, how it felt playing in this team and of course about his player draft which he barely mentioned.
Before anything let’s start with the player draft. It felt like 3 div 2 players were dragged into div 1 because Ligbank dropped all his coins on Aurora. If we take the average of 3 players outside of Ligbank and Aurora we are ending up with a 5570 average MMR. If we compare it to the rest of the team's last 3 picks MMR average(5850) we end up being somewhat lower compared to them. This is also where I should mention our highest MMR player was playing an off-role which in my opinion drops his MMR drastically.
Let’s look at some numbers on Ligbanks Dotabuff;
According to his Dotabuff on the last 3 months of ranked solo queue games; he played only 18%(12 games) as safelane core. On top of that 8 of these games were Medusa picks which was banned against us every single game.
I do have to mention if we include his party games with all modes(ranked/unranked/lobby) his safelane core picks go up to 30%(still not that high but higher compared to the other version) of his games however he is clearly more comfortable playing support on his high ranked MMR games. I have played with 7k-8k core players and it didn’t feel like I was playing with one when I was playing with Ligbank.
Enough numbers let's talk about individual players;
Error(Jed)
Jed was super chill as a person, actually took negative feedback quite well in my opinion. Didn’t get mad or upset at it and damn he got quite a bit of negativity from Aurora, me and Ligbank. Was open on what he can and can’t play during drafts and stood his ground when some heroes tried to get forced on him which was great of him. Gameplay wise sadly Error dropped some balls. I will just say it, overall was just not great or average. His hero pool also doesn’t help his situation. But that can always be improved if he gets some new meta heroes under his wings on the new patch I am sure he will hit 6k in no time if he goes for it.
TammyB
Tammy felt like a quite similar player to me, gameplay wise + he is a way better person. He doesn’t talk much in-game, I am not sure how safe lane went for him and Ligbank since they would usually be quiet. Outside of the laning stage he looked lost on what to do to me. (same as me) Ligbank expected a lot of calls and comms from both of us which we didn’t really manage to do.
Outside of the game he is super chill was actually the one who reminded me about the finals. Again sorry Tammy specifically I couldn’t abandon my friends again after I fucked them over last week. I hope you can accept this apology.
Aurora
Lanes were always awkward for me and Aurora, and I couldn’t tell if they wanted to be aggressive or maybe I should’ve been the one calling out on what to do but I did feel a bit hesitant due to our MMR difference. I felt claustrophobic playing the game and the lane. Couldn’t tell if I was wanted there, if they wanted me to be aggressive or if I should be making stacks? Maybe if we played another game together things would fit in better, on our last game I think we communicated better. Temper wise Aurora lost it quite easily and it did affect me a lot. In game and between games talking down the farm on Jed was one of the biggest things that got to me. Also, the way that was worded after the games were quite poor. I do understand and appreciate comments that would help improve people but you can do it in a way without breaking them or making them hate you.
Ligbank
It is hard to comment on how Ligbank plays for me since he is 8k and 2k+ MMR above me. However, this won’t stop me from trying. On our games, it felt like he wanted to just farm which if you have your highest MMR player farming and the rest of the team trying to fight you can see how that wouldn’t work. We usually got our dicks handed to us and his contribution to us would be ‘’Guys make more calls’’ ‘’Roran you are not making any calls’’ after us dying in some forsaken place. This really didn’t help ingame to be honest at least for me. I have to mention I didn’t really hear him make any calls during his laning stage either. He has this idea of communication in his head and his team will play around with his drafts and know how to function together. Sorry to break it down for you but we didn’t. It's our first time playing together and the majority of us are 5k pub players. I am sure if we understood his perspective and came together better these drafts would work but they didn’t. Talking about the drafts, from my end I felt ignored during drafts which made me hesitant afterward during the game to make calls. (some of them were also ignored) I just didn’t feel like I understood what Ligbank wanted to do. Maybe if we had some more games in between or did some scrims we could’ve achieved what he envisioned. Considering everything I am still interested in trying another season with Ligbank at some point and try to understand what will make me a better player.
Some comments on Ligbanks Team Review
I tried to communicate with my lane partner and on the 2nd series, we somewhat managed this from my perspective at least for the early game. Maybe Aurora can comment on this as a passive side. I didn’t have a game plan I completely agree, I really didn’t know where our games were going I tried to get my team together for smokes a couple of times but that was about it. ‘’Why didn’t we do this’’ I didn’t notice myself doing that much but thanks for pointing that out will work on that.
You didn’t enjoy the season with me due to my messages outside of the games.
So this part I really didn’t understand. I did comment on our mid being underfarmed one time after aurora went ham maybe you are talking about that? Other than that I went back and looked at what I could’ve said that could’ve been taken as passive aggressive. One thing I saw was I said ‘’I will see you guys next Tuesday’’ after one of our series. This was me being upset about not doing anything between officials but I don’t think it's so severe? Sorry, if this bothered you. Either way please let me know if there is anything else that upset you.
I also read the part where you talked about how we could’ve prepared better and what you did to prepare which I appreciate you doing. I will try to focus on how a game could be won rather than what heroes I can play for sure. I never really brainstormed with anyone in a competitive environment before and I doubt most of our players did. If I play another season any time soon I will give that a shot for sure especially after watching the major. On a side note, I really didn’t have much to say about this patch on a competitive level because I wasn’t following any games since the last TI. I just ended up playing pubs and trying broken heroes which I mentioned what I felt strong with. I was really excited at the start of the season and looked forward to our scrims/replay viewings together. I wish we could’ve done more of those.
Closing Words
What Ligbank was trying to do was not really what I was used to from my previous RD2L seasons. He looked at 5 random players as a team and hoped they would put their weight in which not sure if I could’ve done or not? The time together was too short. Maybe if this was 4 years ago back when I was in uni this could be something I would be hyped about, but with my current state with a full-time job and some language courses on the side, it wasn’t the best and I lost hope once we started losing/breaking in-game. I signed in hoping I learn some new meta heroes and press some spells but what was offered was maybe a bit too much for me. Still, I think the way he did it could’ve been better for example if he gave the hypothetical convo. example early on I would’ve complied better. I really wasn’t understanding what he was expecting when he was saying oh I don’t want to know what heroes you want/no one writes anything about what we want to do in games. It is way more clear to me now maybe I am dumb.
All and all damn was a horrible season where I lost all hope quite early and obviously everyone could’ve done things better.
Some positive to take from this, even though it was after it was over I saw a lot of mistakes and things I can improve on thanks to Ligbanks season review. I appreciate him putting in the work and going the extra mile to create that so detailed. I would be happy to play with any of our 5k players in div 2, I am unsure about Aurora still was a bit awkward but we can always try again one day. It was a really shitty way for me to end the season by not showing up, again really sorry for that for the last time.
