I was really unsure about this team at the start of the season. I’ve had previous experiences with Kimer and Kuro. Kimer is always great outside of Dota and with Kuro… I had the expression we didn’t like each other much last time we played, so I was surprised when he drafted me. Of course two new first-time teammates Mango and Dino.
We started the season thinking I would play 4 and Kimer would be 5 but after a couple of lost games and me feeling more comfortable playing 5 heroes of the patch we switched roles and it ended up working out great. We were picking pudge as a joke/semi-serious when we could. It even got 1st stage banned in certain games with Kimers signature pos 4 Veno. Had great fun in each series but there was always an underlying emotion/feeling I would get when we were close to losing. I wouldn’t say we were toxic towards each other at any point however we lost our cool at times especially in final games I will get to that later. To sum it up we only lost our 1st series and finals this season. Unfortunately, we couldn't win but with the way we played in finals, it was not deserved.
Roran — Pos 5
I will get myself out of the way quickly. I tried my best on shot-calling this time and I am satisfied with that department. I ofc have mechanically a lot to improve on but for the first time while writing a team review I didn’t hate the way I performed. (minus last game)
Kimer — Pos 4
Playing with Kimer this time was quite a different experience. Last time we played he would have these aggressive nyx/spirit breaker heroes and would make kills happen on the map. This season it felt like Kimer was more of a space creator/guy who tanks the deaths while being in a weird place on the map. I am not sure if it was good but it did create space usually on his veno/bounty. He was usually good with following calls we could’ve played some more together throughout the season but man was too busy playing Minecraft what can you do. Always fun to have him around nontheless even if he is not the best player he is a great company.
RageDino — Pos 3
We started laning together with Ragedino at the start of the season and I was quite worried about how it was going to turn out since our playstyles were quite different. He was more into taking it slow while my goal usually is to dive towers at lvl 2 and pressure the enemy safe lane and make sure they get nothing. This however got solved after we swapped lanes with Kimer and their playstyle was working out great together. From what I understood and looked a couple of times Kimer would keep the enemy pos 5 in random places in the jungle where Dino would be 1v1 against the enemy carry. This really worked for us. Dino would have a decent amount of farm early on usually and do big things on his kunkka. His initiations and hero pool could use some work but overall was pleasant to play with, friendly dude. I am sure again if we practiced a bit more would’ve worked out better. (I will stop writing this for each player we did no practice throughout the season and since we were upper bracket winners we had 2 weeks breaks before we played again with each other before finals and a 1-week break before that)
PraiseTheMangology — Pos 2
Mango was playing off role and did amazing for an off role player in mid lane. He should consider changing to full-time mid. He was a bit too aggressive at the start of the season with weird dives but he actually improved a lot when it comes to that part of his gameplay. I think he can use some more self-confidence when it comes to laning but not diving kind just to pressure the enemy. He did fall asleep on one of our series and made us panic quite a bit so that's some minus points. Also, he was a bit short-tempered he did not break until the finals but I can’t blame him dealing with Kuro is quite hard and pressure was on us after shit-talking on discord for weeks about how this team would win the finals. (Spoiler: We did not) Overall super cool guy, created the artwork for the team also.
Kuroame — Pos 1
Kuro is a good carry player. Seems to have taken his ‘’friend’’ Xela’s ego quite a bit which is not great. It was fun laning together and he did do good in general as a carry. However, he lacked communication and we disagreed on calls on some occasions. I wish he was a bit more humble and knew when to shut up. He doesn’t understand that he needs to let go of things and stop talking about them during/between games but at least it was better this time compared to the last time we played together. Almost managed to break Mango after game 2 on finals, I am not sure he notices this, I am writing it here so maybe he can have some more self-control next time. (For a note I did agree with his point but him being right was not the issue we needed to just focus on the next game rather than talking about random shit that happened last game) It is easy to forget Kuro is a 19yo young dude. He has time to grow and I guess nothing wrong with being a bit cocky from time to time. But we honestly lost finals because he randomly started using terms like ‘’sheeesh’’ during the games and we all had to mute him.
Finals/Last word
Here is another team I am in where we were individually higher skilled than most of our opponents but coming together was hard. This season was like going sailing with your friends but there is a hole on the ship. It was great fun but we sank at the end because no one bothered to fix the hole due to being too busy doing random bs. Our draft at g2 of the finals was the most random shit we picked for both cores so far. We never played with those heroes before in a team environment, and it showed. People didn’t know what other heroes did. (for example, team was scared to gangbang timber early on even though we had an aa and he would just be dead with every ult) On g3 we had a more teamfight oriented comfortable lineup which worked early on but we were super unorganized and kept on wasting too many ults for kills. We ended up not taking towers after winning fights. Especially Kuro diving while pushing high ground and chronoing people without a proper warning/me going in to try to bait people and getting euled with phoenix dive lost the game at the end. Really a shame not winning this season after being this close to it but like I said we didn’t deserve it with our performance in the finals.
Shit happens the journey was still quite fun and I would be happy to play with these boys again any time. Congrats to the dodgy-dan team on their victory and since they got their first-ever victory ever clearly, I hope they can be a bit more humble next time they win if it ever happens.
