Can someone summarize the main changes in the past year? Haven't watched since last year TI

Lets do this team secret team newbee TI final. Excitement is over 9000. I needed this distraction, so happy TI is here.

Cliffs: Everyone has an agham, which can now be upgraded to a buff for 2k gold. Roshan drops an agham buff or refresher on the 3rd rosh. Ogre multicast affects midas. Ogre multicast affects midas. Ogre multicast affects midas.

Nice. Are all heroes in captain mode? I saw techies was banned in a game so I guess he's in now. I guess I need to read up on the new heroes. So is the agh to buff thing not a nerf to alch? Also what are all the icons above the abilities and icons, just cosmetic stuff?

Does cheese drop on third rosh onward still? Or removed entirely for agh/refresh?

Aegis+Cheese drops on the 2nd. Alch is viable but not great, his talents are pretty solid. Noone really uses his ag buff in any serious games but it still exists. The primary build is the radiance then push/end but there is also a basher build that abuses an attack speed talent.

Everyone is in captains mode until they presumably announce new heros during TI. Rumor is there will be 2 heros, one available immediately after TI and another in december. Io was removed from captains mode for a long time but they nerfed him a number of times. The wisp ball explosion slow is now a talent at lvl 10 and they removed the agham buff talent.

I see ogre is picked in both secret and liquid game so the Midas thing is OP and not just a meme I take it?, It certainly seems like it would be OP as ****. Ogre not really an item dependent hero anyway

Think of it this way, he can run at you can get 2-3 assists in lanes and easily make a midas as the #4. From there making the agham is trival. After this if you don't need to make a pipe or mek, you make can a sheepstick that can MULTICAST. Fighting him early to stop him from making midas isn't even really a thing. Ogre's lane mate basically has to throw or Ogre's team has to lose 2+ lanes for him to not be able to build it. Even if he doesn't build it because whatever is better that game, he is still a solid hero most games and at worst a beefcake speedbump that stands in the way and solo wins a lane.

Ogre is OP because they have unreal base armor and HP regen imo. Also good spells and such. Alch is definitely really good, probably will be one of the most picked heroes.

Roshan 3rd death = aegis + cheese and either aghs or refresher, 4th death = all four items !

EZ Secret Alliance g1 !!!

holy **** that game 1 was absolutely insane

Lol @ Liquid getting 2-0d by the CCNC / Yawar Newbee squad. W33 is so trash. Why in the world did they kick Matu for him?

W33 could be a solid t2 carry in my opinion. Liquid kicked Matu because he looked like trash every game. He looked like trash every game because they sacced him every draft/laning phase for Miracle, which forced him to play shitty early game carries and made Matu's hero pool terrible. When they moved Matumba to mid he looked like total ass and that had to be the end if they were going to keep play Miracle in the safe lane so much. That said, w33 was not a good pick for their squad. They needed someone like Resolution or Ana who doesn't need a lot of lane support and is used to playing as a pick up member/mercenary/5th to a squad.

They kicked him because he is not a mid player and miracle has become the de facto pos 1 because the meta changed from mid being the de facto main man to it being the carry guy again (at least most of the time).

He only played green heroes /s. Obviously not, but he only played those beefy, anchor heroes who were hard to kill but couldnt take over the game, like veno, viper, razor a lot of the time. He was always playing to keep them in the game while miracle got farm, never taking over games himself because he didn't play those heroes or that tempo style.

That meant that it was no problem to let matu farm or go 10-0 as long as you shut down miracle, which isn't hard if that's all you have to do to win. With w33 they have someone who plays more classical tempo mid heroes, which means teams need to shut down both w33 and miracle to win. It gives them a whole new dimension, both drafting and playing-wise and make them less predictable and more difficult to play against. It's difficult to be the best team if your mid player doesn't play mid heroes.

LGD looking scary as usual. Felt like they weren't really motivated for the season so much this year after flunking the TI win (most evident by maybe taking a break). But if they're back in top form, I don't know who can beat them, nobody has the plot armor of OG this year. Obviously maybe Secret/Vici/maybe VP but I have a lot of faith in LGD, and secret did suck ass at epicenter.

I think Vici is either gonna finish below 6 or win the whole thing, they seem like they're either ahead of or behind the competition.

Mid pudge from infamous and jerax with the support invoker.

Thoughts on day 1:

Vici/secret/LGD look very strong.

Vici crushed their opponents, Secret were very pressured unexpectedly by Alliance and Newbee but still won, and then destroyed Liquid. LGD also looked a level above their opponents, the game they lost was because of a questionable draft.

Liquid looked really poor, bad drafting and they looked lost vs secret. feel like liquid can't win dota unless they outclass their opponents, because strategically and drafting wise they're not up to par.

EG underwhelming, they didn't play well and made many mistakes. They really need to step up their game for tomorrow when they play OG, RNG and VG.

Navi a positive surprise going even with OG and EG.

Still a lot of questionmarks, though. Mineski beat TNC who beat Keen who beat Mineski.

RNG go 1-3 but they played arguably the two hardest opponents, VP and VG, and could still end up being one of the strong teams. VP - VG gonna be very interesting.

EG is basically guaranteed lower bracket already :|

only way they dont is if they go like 3-1 ratio against teams like vp lgd or even OG

I know it's a meme but I really feel it's just totally **** and predictable drafting. I think EG's biggest problem is that Sumail and RTZ can't switch roles easily which makes drafting way harder. They used to try it and had some success but it became clear that Sumail was much weaker on the carry role than mid.

Guessing if they don't place top 5 this tournament that Sumail and RTZ will split up. Liquid.Sumail for next season? Would be cool... also Team Liquid totally should have tried to poach CCnC for their mid and not w33 LUL

Sumail is basically EG tho

id be less surprised if they jsut kick s4 and arteezy (keep the fly cr1t duo that played a ton together)

theyre definitely both underperforming a lot. And I like them both .

rtz himself seems super dependant on the meta to perform.

TB lycan and clinkz arent meta, so he sucks

OG-NiP game 1 is wild. ana plays Io carry. Hilarity ensues.

Wtf IO is carry hero now? lol, this TI has some new meta for sure

He's doing it again in game 2, which just started (LD mid for you)

OG really have an incredible understanding of dota and how to make the most obscene things look downright broken.

In the famous words of Johan notsil sundstein: anything can work.

RTZ rampage against VG. Pog