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Introduction
Hello there. I am a 2.9k MMR player and it’s been a couple of months since I last played. I’m a university student so I placed a greater emphasis on my studies than dota and next year I’ll be starting medical school hence probably no more dota until the holidays and breaks throughout my course. During this summer (Australia, southern hemisphere, opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere) my objective is to improve my gameplay and focus more on my mistakes and flaws in game to improve. In games I generally try to call the ganks, shots and when we should not fight or when we should. There are games people listen, or ignore. I would prefer if there were more players who debate against my choices as this would be more beneficial for myself and for the team as a whole. This blog will be dedicated to analysing my ranked games to the best of my knowledge and of course serve as a clowny reminder to everyone of what it is like here. Furthermore, I would like some harsh criticisms from anyone who is willing to read. This is intended to force myself to watch my replays and record my thoughts on how poorly I am playing. ***SCREENSHOTS LOW QUALITY. My computer is bad.***
Ranked Game 1: I am so bad as a support
All-pick phase with three heroes chosen and I think the team looks decent. However, I fear their witch doctor – faceless void combo so I acknowledge that in team fights, it is my duty to cast silence on the witch doctor if possible and nuke when I can. With gyrocopter & invoker, I feel we have okay team fight presence if invoker decides for a QW build for mid game. I do not feel gyrocopter can carry us to the late game against their sniper & faceless void, so I think we need to finish early and snowball from there.
Medusa pick. I don’t understand; this hero is late game heavy. And a centaur pick. What? Okay, so with this draft, in hindsight, I would probably run the invoker mid definitely, skywrath and gyrocopter are capable of supporting, centaur solo offlane, medusa hard carry tri-lane it. But unfortunately this is a 2.9k MMR game and no one ever listens to my suggestions. Oh well. The remainder of this blog will be focused entirely on my own gameplay and my mistakes, what I could do better and what I should be doing.
Gyrocopter safe lane, dual lane centaur with medusa. Oh well. What can I do is the question now. How can my in game impact potentially enable our team to snowball and farm way ahead of the other team. This is my job this game; to secure our carry’s farm, to gank and shut down whoever I can and to obviously serve as the poor 5th position support. I just want levels; I don’t think skywrath needs many items to function. A force staff later on will be nice and arcane boots to keep the push sustain for the team. I thought about a bottle but … we have to see how the game goes.
Observation: tidehunter has no items. Time to harass and chase him out of lane. I’m a skywrath mage with a nuke and gyrocopter can definitely zone him out. This was an easy lane that was automatically won if gyrocopter gets free farm and I get the pulls going. I think my ward positioning was not needed and was a big mistake. I should have anticipated the possibility of the enemy team tri-laning and gave both wards to the centaur in order to block their pull camp. Furthermore, my pulls were a bit mis-timed this game leading to inefficiencies. During the minutes where I could not pull because there was no spawn, I should have went to the jungle and focused on stacking 2 camps at once in dire. This is an unforgiveable mistake as a support player who has a ranged-carry like gyrocopter free in lane with free farm. I should have used this opportunity to stack a lot of camps and later on have the gyrocopter clear it with flak cannon to snowball his farm even harder. I will need to remember this in future games. Assistance with invoker mid – this is a crucial aspect of supporting I feel I could also improve on. I rarely do walk over to runes to secure it for my mid player. It’s a bad habit I’ve gotten into due to the fact that if I leave my core in lane, they generally are incapable of holding their own and die for playing too greedily. This is a risk I always bear in mind but when I’m playing with friends, this bad habit continues. This needs working on.
So this is my gank attempt mid. I understood the potential for wards in the river spawn, so I walked to the small camp of the dire, towards the medium and down into the steps directly into mid lane, I rotated towards the river where the ward couldn’t see me, and used my Concussive shot, followed by Arcane Bolts with Invoker’s cold snap. Now, the sniper got away with only 1 more auto attack. I think in hindsight, I should have taken the risk to dive and get the kill because I have boots, he does not. This gives me a distinct advantage when chasing and I failed to capitalise on this. Secondly, the clarity I had earlier in game was used; if I had saved in and planned this gank ahead of time (to a certain extent) I would have had another arcane bolt and that would have been a guaranteed kill given its low cooldown. Thirdly, I was arcane bolting creeps because I like gold; this greedy play hurt me in this gank. I think this play emphasises my need to utilise my down time more effectively and check the items on sniper; I did not do that and did not capitalise on my boots. Goddamnit. So to summarize this gank: WHY YOU SO PUSSY SKYWRATH?
Also, gloves of haste invoker – interesting.
Gyrocopter freefarm. 5 minutes in. 8 x 5 = 40. Missed 15 last hits. Oh and the catapults. Can’t forget Carty. I think I can say that a few were definitely lost because of my pulls. Nothing I can do here. What I should be doing is focusing my efforts at bot lane. That tri-lane is atrocious but at the same time lion and witch doctor with a void is scary. A centaur and medusa is weird.
Time to fuck up void. Lion player on the other team; clutch. He hexed centaur mid-animation of stun on void. Otherwise that void would have ate our nukes and died. Centaur followed up on my concussive shot onto the void. I felt this was a massive risky play given void can just leap out but this void did not do that. We got lucky that he was … not thinking. He lived thanks to the lion who remedied his crucial mistake otherwise he was a dead man.
A double kill. Clean. Thanks to invoker’s sunstrike, centaur’s stun, arcane bolts and medusa’s mystic snake. We needed this. A significant problem here is yes, gyrocopter is getting free farm but my instincts thought if medusa was up there instead of gyrocopter, this game would look better. Gyrocopter + centaur offlane would have been okay. Especially if I trilaned with them. But that’s in the past now, on to what I can do.
Net worth wise, we’re doing okay. I’m ahead of lion! That’s what happens with no pulls in a tri-lane!
This was the opportunity to kill sniper. Centaur invisibility with no wards on the map because they timed out. Problem: gyrocopter got jumped on by lion & tidehunter. Seriously, why was he even near them with 60% HP in the first place so I TPed up there and did nothing. He got away because lion fucked up and didn’t chain stun him. Tidehunter also fucked up and missed his ravage. Invoker dies mid because he walks towards sniper who just ultis and auto attacks him. Now, in hindsight, I should have said “Gyrocopter is dead” assuming tide just ravages him straight up and doesn’t miss. Even if I did TP in, it would be too late and he was too far from the T1; he was bloody near to the enemy T1. Secondly, I should have stayed mid, there was a potential successful gank with a slow, stun, cold snap etc. We just had to execute right. This was my mistake and my blunder that cost the invoker his life.
More problems: my down time was spent camping lanes. What I should be doing is STACK STACK STACK. I think it’s because I fear my cores will get dove on but obviously if I thought about the map more, it’s clear they should be fine. Another reason behind this is I want to kill the enemy to not only get my team farm but shut them down. I think the safer play would be to stack camps and enable our carries to snowball. Oh and a minor complaint: medusa, stop afking in your lane and learn to rotate to another lane to get farm. Take over the gyrocopter’s lane while he comes with us to kill things.
Successful smoke gank from centaur and I. Well, in hindsight I think this was overdoing it but oh well, he is finally dead. Medusa got killed bottom. I think what needed to happen here was medusa and gyrocopter rotated lanes. Gyrocopter has a midas now. Medusa is our ticket to late game but I don’t think we can even win this game given how far behind she is. She is nothing more than a walking creep on our team. Centaur and I have to roam as a pair and kill the other 2 lanes a lot so that space is created for the medusa. Or she just trades spots with gyrocopter; how hard can that be right?
Stacking ancients. A bit too late I suppose. But better than nothing. No stacks in our jungle; my mistake. I failed to do that.
Another smoke gank. Void broke it. We couldn’t find him as he timewalked out and their entire team was nearby. This is a big thing in my level of pubs; 5 man all the time mid game. So our smoke gank failed, and we’re fucked 3v5. Pretty much I can say that my timing was dumb. I had a feeling we could have gotten void in the jungle as he was on the map and definitely there, but I did not consider that all the other lanes were missing. Our medusa is at base not utilising this space; go safe lane and farm please. Copter is nearby but I don’t think this is a good idea.
This entire fight was a failure. I understood that tidehunter was going to ravage. Witch doctor was doing to kill us with his death ward and if void ultis us, we’re dead. Centaur needs to get the hell out. I silenced the tidehunter, we need to kill him immediately. But invoker decides to meatball the witch doctor. We did not coordinate in this fight; obviously we all died. Fun. My smoke gank was a mistake and I did not consider the variables in front of me. I think in hindsight the best outcome here was we trade 2 for 1. We did get the witch doctor. Nothing else I could have done here. Void is outfarming our gyrocopter. We did not shut down the void enough. This is where everything goes to hell.
The rest of the game is quite clear cut; we lose all team fights, we cannot get pick offs. I’m wasting time, not stacking, I can’t do much anymore and it was up to the team to carry. I tried my best to keep up with the vision we had with wards. Team doesn’t communicate or coordinate well. Medusa sits in one lane. All game. I end up 0 11 7 this game. I felt quite limited in what I could do but I think if I had stacked, pulled and made more effective smoke ganks, and rotated to the dying offlane, I could have made bigger impacts early game and enabled our team to snowball. Gyrocopter kept up with the void but medusa… well, you can’t really support someone who refuses to rotate to other lanes or even jungle and farm.
Summary
So this game came down to me controlling the early game. That was where skywrath mage shines the most. The list of things I should have done better are
1. More effective smoke ganks.
I need to consider the presence of heroes on the map, predict where they are, including non-targets, and execute. I need to communicate with the team for this, especially heroes like invoker and centaur with a blink. They’re the stuns or global presence I need for these ganks to work.
2. Early game pulling and efficiency in stacking.
I needed to stack. Suppose I stacked the large and medium camp near the T2 dire several times. Suppose it was a stacked 5 times each. That’s a bucketload of gold for the gyrocopter through the use of flak cannon. Average large camp is 124 gold. Multiply that by 5 and you have 620 gold. Medium camp on average is 102 gold. Multiply that by 5 and you have 510. Ancient stacking too. I did do that but too little too late. Idle time throughout the game is too much.
3. Warding
I think this game, if I thought a little harder and knew it was going to be a tri-lane, OR even said “potential is there” and played safer by giving the wards to the offlane, it would have been safer for them and they would not have died.
4. Rune control
Not doing it. Then again invoker didn’t even have a bottle. Weird. Should be doing it anyway. Double damage runes win games.
5. Team fighting
I just gave up at a certain point and tried to kill anything or anyone hence died a lot more than I needed to. I needed better positioning. I needed to be far back and wait for centaur to initiate then blow someone up with my ultimate. Instead I was in around the front or middle of the pack in team fights. I played like a suicide bomber.
6. Prioritize which lane needs the most help
Our offlane was dying. I did not do enough for it. I needed to be there more often and try make plays happen. Safe lane was fine. Mid was okay if the invoker had a bottle and rune controlled.
Interesting moments of the game
Oh yeah. I’m level 2. Gyrocopter has his Homing missile and Rocket Barrage. Tidehunter overextends and walks towards our small camp due to my pull; ward vision gave us this information. This was the perfect opportunity to kill him; a tide with no boots, a ring of health and a magic stick. Concussive shot into Homing missile and chase him leading to an easy kill. I’m pinging and saying go. Gyrocopter is jerking off in lane. It was not guaranteed but I think it was worth a try.
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Battle reports, I missed these from BW :3
The part where you list what yoiu need to do better is good for self reflection, though I think at 2.9k, EVERYTHING is execution, if you execute better you'll win (regardless of the laning for instance), so don't sweat the technical to-do's and just do your thing.
As a skywrath you can do a shitload of just running around and ganking, you can act very freely on the map as long as you've boots and 1-1-1 skill build at lvl 3, just focus on your own positioning in teamfights, which is REALLY important as a support like skywrath (how to get off all your spells without gtting caught in all the AOE? Stuff like that).
Also invoker usually doesnt buy bottle
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Match ID? What I (2.4kmmr) personally do is I pull at the XX:11-13 mark, then stack the big camp. If it's the rune spawn minute, I pull the camp towards the rune (Dire) as to contest the rune properly. It's pretty tough to do on the Radiant side though since going up to the bottom rune spot from the neutral camp will mess up the stacking. I'd normally get 2 camps with 3 stacks around the 10 minute mark if things aren't crazy and I need to run around smoked up and ganking somewhere.
Also, I think Invoker safelane with you at top and Gyro at mid would have been a bit better? I dunno, Gyro got nerfed after TI3.
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On November 23 2014 19:03 Iplaythings wrote: Battle reports, I missed these from BW :3
The part where you list what yoiu need to do better is good for self reflection, though I think at 2.9k, EVERYTHING is execution, if you execute better you'll win (regardless of the laning for instance), so don't sweat the technical to-do's and just do your thing.
As a skywrath you can do a shitload of just running around and ganking, you can act very freely on the map as long as you've boots and 1-1-1 skill build at lvl 3, just focus on your own positioning in teamfights, which is REALLY important as a support like skywrath (how to get off all your spells without gtting caught in all the AOE? Stuff like that).
Also invoker usually doesnt buy bottle
I see. I thought invoker needed more regen in that lane with the constant harass so I questioned it. I do feel with skywrath, I mix between 1 1 1 and 2 1. I feel the silence sometimes is needed (e.g. against void) but other times, I want more nuke damage. I think you are correct into saying I should have ran around more, especially to save my offlane.
On November 23 2014 19:31 SilverSkyLark wrote: Match ID? What I (2.4kmmr) personally do is I pull at the XX:11-13 mark, then stack the big camp. If it's the rune spawn minute, I pull the camp towards the rune (Dire) as to contest the rune properly. It's pretty tough to do on the Radiant side though since going up to the bottom rune spot from the neutral camp will mess up the stacking. I'd normally get 2 camps with 3 stacks around the 10 minute mark if things aren't crazy and I need to run around smoked up and ganking somewhere.
Also, I think Invoker safelane with you at top and Gyro at mid would have been a bit better? I dunno, Gyro got nerfed after TI3.
I think gyrocopter's missile spam is too damn strong at the moment and should be abused. Gyrocopter would do well against sniper I think if he utilises a bottle with homing missile and flak cannon to push the wave to rune control.
The match is http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1040975324.
Edit: I think you're right about execution. I watch singsing play pubs and do the most ridiculous things and gets away with it because his execution is superior to his opponents' execution.
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Battle reports are cool and you should feel cool. Thanks for the read
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On November 23 2014 20:22 Badjas wrote:Battle reports are cool and you should feel cool. Thanks for the read
Cheers. This is the first time I've done something like this and hope to try and get a few done a week.
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Wow battle reports... Major nostalgia right here.
I should do this for myself... I'm on a net -24 W/L over the past 2 months, I need to figure out why I keep losing =/
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It's a good read btw, invoker doesn't usually buy bottle... Also I think stacking ancients especially for medusa and gyro is never too late...the gold boost is so damn good for the carry
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You are the hero LD needs.
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Regarding smoke ganks; you want to consider the timing more carefully. You smoked during night-time with no night-vision heroes -> Smoke breaks potentially as you see them -> why even smoke besides dodging ward vision? If you need to smoke night-time you want to have a Slark or Luna etc to provide extended night-time vision or have the area warded when you move in In general day-time smokes work with much higher success rate.
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A number of the things you're blaming yourself sound a lot more like "this is why you pick two supports" than actually your fault. Like, there aren't enough stacks in your jungle? Man, imagine if you had two supports and one could have been zoning Tide while the other stacked... Your safelane Gyro got free farm but your offlane Medusa fell behind badly? Man, imagine if you'd had a decent support to help out each of them...
Not that looking for ways to improve your own play isn't a worthwhile thing to do, but don't be too hard on yourself .
Enjoyed the read.
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This is really cool to read, keep doing these! I really enjoyed your analysis and it felt you really did well to look into what was clearly not the happiest game for you (0-11) .
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On November 24 2014 16:22 Mosoball wrote:Regarding smoke ganks; you want to consider the timing more carefully. You smoked during night-time with no night-vision heroes -> Smoke breaks potentially as you see them -> why even smoke besides dodging ward vision? If you need to smoke night-time you want to have a Slark or Luna etc to provide extended night-time vision or have the area warded when you move in In general day-time smokes work with much higher success rate.
Yeah. I need to consider day time VS night time. This is a variable I really do not pay attention to often.
Edit:
On November 24 2014 17:08 ASoo wrote:A number of the things you're blaming yourself sound a lot more like "this is why you pick two supports" than actually your fault. Like, there aren't enough stacks in your jungle? Man, imagine if you had two supports and one could have been zoning Tide while the other stacked... Your safelane Gyro got free farm but your offlane Medusa fell behind badly? Man, imagine if you'd had a decent support to help out each of them... Not that looking for ways to improve your own play isn't a worthwhile thing to do, but don't be too hard on yourself . Enjoyed the read.
Yeah that's true but ultimately, I could have done all those things myself. It would have been nice to get another support but this is what 2.9k MMR looks like: horrible. If I was playing at a higher MMR then yeah, definitely more likely to have another support to do these things with me.
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This was a good read. Thanks for posting. I'm basically at your same MMR and I share all of your same frustration. If you catch the team is not coordinated I suggest not bothering with stacking. Just do your pulls and focus on helping your team dominate the lanes they are in by either zoning the offlaner (tide in this case) between pulls, gank mid, or switch lanes.
The reason I say don't bother stacking is no one is really paying attention to what other people are doing, so no one is going to utilize what you have done to make things more efficient for them. They are not going to play the game you want so you have to make the most of the game they are trying to play.
I've had plenty of games where I have triple stacked our jungle camps just to have an enemy hero walk in and eat it all as everyone lets it happen. The worst was a solo offlane windrunner that wandered in as a Sven and Shadow Shaman just farmed lane.
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I'm not sure what your goal was with the smoke gank in radiant jungle. At the time of the screenshot, two lanes are pushed in to your towers, your jungle is untouched, and Gyro is farming (dangerously) at radiant bot T1. You still have all your towers up and decent map control with two carries that can quickly farm stacks (as well as two heroes with midases). This is actually a really great position for your team to catch up in farm if you play passively (and get gyro to back). You know the radiant can only be farming jungle/ancients and their heroes are very good at counter-initiating. The only reason I would have smoked in that situation is if you knew they were in rosh and could get a huge multi hero stomp from centaur and even then you're hoping for a very clean teamfight before ravage or chrono can be used.
Granted I didn't watch the replay and I may be misreading the game state, but it seems that you're making a desperation play before it's necessary. When I was lower MMR and in some of my friend's games, so many games could have been won with patience and some safe farming.
Great write-up though, and I know the pain of playing solo support at low MMR. Other than that specific smoke, you made mostly good decisions and just need to work on execution.
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Nice read. One thing I'd like to point out is your starting item regen is not balanced correctly. On mana-hungry heroes like skywrath, I recommend not purchasing a salve and instead buying 3-4 clarities. Notice that 6.5 minutes into the game, you still have a salve, 2 tangoes, full hp, and only half mana. At 11 minutes, you have full hp, a salve, and 0 mana. Buying more clarities lets you stay active on the map longer in the early phase, which is where support skywrath is at his strongest. You missed the kill on the sniper mid because your item build was not good, not because you should have dove him. (diving someone as skywrath is so so so risky)
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Cool. I was planning to do the same sorta thing over the break, but life has gotten in the way.
If you are down for playing some games I also play on the australian server and would like to play with someone outside my group who uses TL. Pm me if your interested.
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On November 25 2014 08:55 xxpack09 wrote: Nice read. One thing I'd like to point out is your starting item regen is not balanced correctly. On mana-hungry heroes like skywrath, I recommend not purchasing a salve and instead buying 3-4 clarities. Notice that 6.5 minutes into the game, you still have a salve, 2 tangoes, full hp, and only half mana. At 11 minutes, you have full hp, a salve, and 0 mana. Buying more clarities lets you stay active on the map longer in the early phase, which is where support skywrath is at his strongest. You missed the kill on the sniper mid because your item build was not good, not because you should have dove him. (diving someone as skywrath is so so so risky)
Dang. That's one thing I missed. Cheers for pointing it out. I didn't think that I would be solo so yeah.
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Funny read! Thanks for the report. I think you have gotten some good advice already here, but if your goal is to raise your mmr, I dont know if the best thing is to balance out the team at this mmr lvl, i really would find a small pool of heroes that you expertise and win games with. If thats not too important for you, just keep doing what your doing and have fun with it. As for laning, i would have gone with trilane top (dusa carry, u and gyro support), invo mid and cent offlane. If u deny tide exp for a couple min, duse can kinda go 1v1 on him, just drain his mana with snake, and without anchor smash, he really isnt much of a problem. U and Gyro could have just roamed around and ganked, especially the sniper, he is so easy for u to kill. If ur successfull, u should have secured free farm on safelane, invo higher lvls in mid, with a underfarmed sniper due to deaths. Now just harrass and get pick offs on bot lane together with cent, easy with good ward vision maybe behind tower and behind trees on left side too see where they are.
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On November 26 2014 16:27 Atoissen wrote: Funny read! Thanks for the report. I think you have gotten some good advice already here, but if your goal is to raise your mmr, I dont know if the best thing is to balance out the team at this mmr lvl, i really would find a small pool of heroes that you expertise and win games with. If thats not too important for you, just keep doing what your doing and have fun with it. As for laning, i would have gone with trilane top (dusa carry, u and gyro support), invo mid and cent offlane. If u deny tide exp for a couple min, duse can kinda go 1v1 on him, just drain his mana with snake, and without anchor smash, he really isnt much of a problem. U and Gyro could have just roamed around and ganked, especially the sniper, he is so easy for u to kill. If ur successfull, u should have secured free farm on safelane, invo higher lvls in mid, with a underfarmed sniper due to deaths. Now just harrass and get pick offs on bot lane together with cent, easy with good ward vision maybe behind tower and behind trees on left side too see where they are.
I know T_T. But pubs man. People do not listen T_T.
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I wouldn't trilane on that MMR in single Queue... Most of the time it isn't much better than a dual lane. If you are playing with 4-5 mates, sure go for it, but whiteout it in my experience many people lack the experience to make it work. Most of the time its better to have a jungler that shows up in lane from time to time (Axe is good at this) or a roamer.
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On November 26 2014 23:22 Velr wrote: I wouldn't trilane on that MMR in single Queue... Most of the time it isn't much better than a dual lane. If you are playing with 4-5 mates, sure go for it, but whiteout it in my experience many people lack the experience to make it work. Most of the time its better to have a jungler that shows up in lane from time to time (Axe is good at this) or a roamer.
You are correct. People do not know how to time pulls, people sit there when there's no pulls and waste time (including myself obviously), and worse of all, when the offlaner overextends, people do not capitalise on the mistake to punish. What's even worse is your own offlane player does not understand that he is suppose to be zoned out by two people in certain matchups but proceeds to try and farm anyway to die repeatedly and proceed to ask for help in the early stages of the game.
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Damn I miss Battle Reports.
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