yeah, maelk's retirement has been talked about for a while now. They will probably grab sexybamboe full time, his style is pretty picture perfect for the way eg likes to play anyhow (high risk, high risk..)

anyone here doing ixdl-o?

o is supposedly full of trash, from some i friends that have played it. Apparently not better than public matchmaking. I'd say try to get vouched directly into i if you can, if you can't then o maybe can be a decent way to get vouched.

my friends are full of themselves though, they think everything is trash. If you get better games than public mm then stick with it.

I spend more time watching dota than playing nowadays so queueing up for pub games is fine for me.

How does ixdl work?

Maelk out, bamboe in, Maelk now coach! Interesting, hope they win the qual.

Western qualifiers are going to be quite exciting. Should be plenty of teams with roughly equal skill. Mouz, EG, Empire, Rox.kis etc.

how long before dota 2 is big enough that we get a subforum?

Anyone think Skywrath Mage is a good counter to QoP mid? IMO yes, I'm really interested in this hero but not sure exactly how to win a lot of games with him yet. But his skill set is pretty good to go up against QoP mid.

skywrath unfortunately doesn't really win games. He can win mid, but this doesn't lead to winning the game as often as you'd like. He feels so low impact.

Yeah I'm not sure. His Arcane Bolt (?) Q is weird. I keep trying to use it like OD's orb, but the CD is too long and I get screwed.

He's a really interesting hero, hope he shows up at TI3 with some strats built around his skills.

In Dota 1 Arcane Bolt/the other ball of slowing goodness would get disjointed when a QoP blinks away. I'm not sure about Dota 2. If it does then they are probably around even.

Skywrath mage is very strong mid though. He destroys pretty much any mediocre laning stage solomid hero like pudge, storm spirit, tinker etc.

No idea. All I know is that if you play there you can't submit your replays to dotacinema (lol). Either way I saw this vid where most of the plays came from ixdl and god damn they seem really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbzqOz2IqqA

DAT PUCK.

Slowly Ayesee might actually be the best caster in dota. His game knowledge has really improved a lot and makes him quite enjoyable to listen to I would say.

His voice is dope as well and he doesn't talk over the analyst which is great.

he has a great voice but I hate his mic. LD made some upgrades a few weeks back and his mic is much smoother now.

I just got a windscreen for my mic and the difference is incredible. It cuts out all the background noise (high for me since my window is open nearby). I have a stand-alone mic, this probably wouldn't work for a headset.

Ayesee also needs a better computer for streaming. He's at 720p but the action is kind of blurry when the camera moves. I built my own computer for other purposes, but I can stream at 1080p 60fps no problem. These guys gotta up their game! And/or move to where they can get 100mbps connections

EG v Dignitas coming up live for Curse DotA 2 tournament baby!!! USA doto grudge match time, yissssssss.
http://www.twitch.tv/curseentertainment

fk it. in-game dota TV ticket is only $2. gonna try this out again, haven't bought a ticket since it first started.

I always buy tickets, I enjoy the free cam. But I guess I do it more to support the game than anything, because I often have to resort to watching the stream anyways (for casting between live games, and sometimes there is just some dotatv issue)

Man, I just tried this out and I really like it. I suggest every1 try it if they have console enabled and watch spectator mode in game: dota_camera_distance 1900

Zooms camera out way far out, but you can still use directed camera, or caster camera. Pretty cool so far, I'm gonna watch this whole tourney like this I think.

this ddos **** is insane. ugh.

Thanks for the tip grandma. I'll prolly buy my first ticket to watch zenith, orange, mufc and vici compete in a local tourney.

Navi put Dendi on him twice and he completely destroyed the other team, he just instagibs supports. He actually got first ban after that game by (lol) EG. He builds Atos on him so with the silence and the slow there is no way out.

skywrath himself gets instagibbed by many supports though. I don't expect to see him being picked in any high stakes games, although maybe he'll show up in few inconsequential/one-sided ti3 matches. He obviously has his strengths and can blow up almost any hero given the right conditions, but, well, let me just list some glaring weaknesses:

useless against bkb, is countered by silence, doesn't have any actual disable, no aoe for team fights, can't flash farm, will die instantly if initiated on, can neither defend nor siege base, low mobility, and he is both farm and level dependent (risky to use as a support)

But like drow or ursa, I think he's a hero that will probably do exceptionally well in those games in which he's picked.

I tried this support zeus build last night, and I think it's not bad at all:

lvl 7 arsenal = lvl 1 chain lightning, lvl 1 bolt, max static field, ulti. it's cool because you don't need much farm at all to do a lot, maxing static field gives your spells decent damage and keeping them at lvl 1 means you can spam as their mana costs are much cheaper at lvl 1. after lvl 7 i did max the other spells up as well, since the dmg is worth it and you'll have more mana later on.

i picked zeus to counter kunkka on the other team (kunkka often runs away from fights taking damage from his rum, hit him with zeus ult on his way back to fountain when he was very little hp). wanted to try out this build since it theoretically makes sense, and it worked alright in the game, we won (:

I play support zeus a lot. Standard build for me is to go for one each by level 3 and then maxed lightning bolt by level 7. After that I max static field and finally chain lightning last.

Early on enemies have lower health so static field won't hurt them as much compared to lightning bolt imo. 350 damage with a low cooldown is badass.

A long time ago SK or MYM was dominating everyone with their global strat which included a prophet, zeus and spectre. Some teams were saying the strat was 'unbeatable'. That was years back though. Funny that no competitive team uses zeus anymore.