• Log InLog In
  • Register
  • Shop
Liquid`
TeamLiquid Liquipedia TLnet LiquidLegends
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Live Streams
  • Calendar
  • Liquipedia
  • Store
  • Heroes
  • Items
  • Store
  • Players
  • Teams
  • Recent Results
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
MDL Chengdu: Newly Minted Aspiration9Dota Summit 11 - Rising Up2Grudge Matches in Rotterdam: DreamLeague Preview6[TI9] Championship Sunday Recap21[TI9] Playoffs Day 5 Recap1
Community News
7.23c released15DreamLeague Leipzig Major: Qualifier Roundup1[Translation] No[o]ne talks patch 7.2327.23b released13Patch 7.23 gets its first tweeks20
Dota 2 General
General
T1 Roster Finalized 7.23c released Outlanders Update DreamLeague Leipzig Major: Qualifier Roundup Ex-Liquid roster announces new team "Nigma" OG's TI Winning Roster not at 2nd Major [Translation] No[o]ne talks patch 7.23 7.23b released
The Tavern
Official Off-Topic General Discussion Improving my game: any viable applications for it? Improving DotA Matchmaking
Tournaments
[Major] Dream League Leipzig Europe Qualifier [Major] Dream League Leipzig North American Qualifi [Major] Dream League Leipzig CIS Qualifier [Major] Dream League Leipzig SEA Qualifier [Major] Dream League Leipzig South America Qualifier
Players & Teams
Nigma Discussion Ninjas in Pyjamas Discussion Team Liquid Discussion Evil Geniuses Discussion Alliance Discussion TNC Predator Discussion Na`Vi Discussion Team Secret Discussion
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers [D]Outlanders and the support role Free Replay Analysis
Community
General
Ask and answer stupid questions here! US Politics Mega-thread If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting happened and people disagree on what to do The Big Programming Thread Trading/Investing Thread
Other Games
Tekken 7 - PC/PS4/Xone, June 2nd 2017 World of Warcraft Classic Path of Exile
Heroes of the Storm
Patch notes HotS: WP and Funny Moments Deathwing is the next new hero
Sports
2019 - 2020 Football Thread 2019 NFL and CFB Season NBA Season 2019-2020
Media & Entertainment
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker SPOILERS ALLOWED Series you have seen recently... Movie Discussion!
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Liquid Arcanon News [0]Paper TL Mafia Plays: Diplomacy
Blogs
Kotls broke
ahw
On being positive and forgiv…
Julmust

Website Feedback

Closed Threads

Discord Server


Active: 232 users

TI8 OpTic Gaming - The Green Wall

Forum Index > The International 2018
6 CommentsPost a Reply

TI8 OpTic Gaming - The Green Wall

July 28th, 2018 12:54 GMT
Text byjdc214

The Green Wall


Gameplay

Players

Liquipedia

Focus Mode
Turn off Focus Mode [x]

OpTic Gaming, the new team of old school players. Born out of the drama of PPD’s “retirement” from EG and year off around TI7, this team originally formed in September as the intentionally vague “The Dire” while shopping around with various organizations. Eventually OpTic and the Green Wall would win out and PPD was now leading an untested team into new waters. Would PPD be able to turn this team into a TI competitor in less than a year? Well, their initial run was a bit rocky and there was much to question about the team. PPD had been out of the game for a year and would take some time to get back into proper professional dota and drafting. Zai moved from his traditional position 4 to the offlane and while no one doubted his abilities as a player, there is always due concern when moving one of the best players in the world into a different role. Pajkatt and CCnC were also less proven choices. This would be CCnC’s first opportunity to play with tier 1 professional players and while Pajkatt has been around since TI1, he’s never had major success and missed out on the past 3 TI’s. The final slot started with Misery but ended up rotating a players through this role before hitting their stride with Neta “33” Shapira.

With 33 joining OpTic, things would improve, but once they swapped Zai back to primarily playing 4 they improved enough to contend for best team in NA. Thankfully for fans, this improvement came in time to help them become competitive in the Dota Pro Circuit. Oddly enough, because of how OpTic’s qualifier runs worked out, they have only played in one non-Major tournament since January (the StarLadder Invitational, which they won 3-1 over VGJ.S).

[image loading]



While their placings in these majors are a mixed bag, it’s important to note who they lost to in each tournament. They were taken down by VP three times, Liquid once, and TNC once (though the TNC loss shouldn’t be weighed too heavily since it was a best of 1 and TNC later beat Liquid in a best of 1 as well). It’s hard to complain too much about these losses considering how few teams actually can take down Liquid and VP, but the fact that OpTic didn’t take a single game in any of those series is concerning. Unfortunately that final loss to VP sealed OpTic’s DPC fate and forced them to play in the NA qualifiers.

OpTic would go into the qualifiers extremely confident that they would make it through, but reality is often rockier than expectations. While they would tie for top of their group with Complexity and VGJ.S, they would end up losing the tiebreaker and then dropping into the losers bracket of the playoffs, forcing them to fight for the third and final qualifier spot for TI. Luckily for them, OpTic would learn from their earlier surprise loss to Immortals and take down Immortals 2-0 for the final slot. Now that they qualified, what are OpTic looking for at TI? The players have performed well this year but it’s still vital that they make a strong run at TI because a weak showing in Vancouver will make the team unlikely to avoid a roster shuffle and the players will have lower value during the post-TI shuffle. Pajkatt, 33, and CCnC all need a strong performance to justify their slot on a championship-contending team. Zai is already well respected but is still pursuing his Aegis after years spent on NA’s best teams. PPD perhaps needs results the most as he has the highest expectations to try to meet. He has already cemented himself as the best captain in NA, having placed top 3 at 3 TI’s in a row (including winning TI5). Will the pre-TI break give OpTic enough time to figure out how to beat the top teams? Only time will tell.

Gameplay


OpTic has built a rather interesting team for themselves because of their versatility and ability to role swap. Pajkatt and CCnC have done an excellent job switching between playing space-making fighters and very flashy mids or hard carries. There have been many games throughout this season that OpTic have played in a very simple manner, creating space for Pajkatt to farm on cores like Morphling, Terrorblade, or Luna. On the other hand we’ve seen plenty of games where Pajkatt switches to heroes like Gyrocopter and Lifestealer to allow CCnC to shine in the mid lane using heroes like Templar Assassin or Huskar. An important part of this strategy is relying on 33 and Zai’s playmaking abilities to carry them through the early game and some of the mid game. This style contrasts to some other teams that like to run more tri-core lineups that either present each core as a farming threat or allow a team to scale much better into the late game. OpTic doesn’t care about that at all. They would much rather have 33 on heroes that can move around the map and fight, gank with the supports, or apply huge pressure to enemy lanes. You can see this most prominently in 33’s hero choices like Lycan, Visage, Nightstalker, or Beastmaster. Another advantage to this dual-core style is that you rarely have to worry about cores ending up starving for farm since your offlane is now playing a much more aggressive style. It’s important to note that even when 33 switches to playing less traditional offlaners, they’re often still filling a similar role to a more standard hero. Using Lycan as an example, he fills the same roles that OpTic would normally need from a Beastmaster. Both heroes are strong in dual lanes that can easily pressure towers without much help.

This kind of high-pressure style is what OpTic have found the most success with thus far. Their goal with cores that can shove waves and 33 on heroes that can split push is to create situations where they always come out ahead. You will regularly see OpTic take fights down a man while 33 or another core is split-pushing a lane, usually a tier 3 by the mid-game. This creates a situation where if OpTic win the fight, they are then much more likely to go high-ground and take barracks. However, even if they lose a fight, the enemy team is forced to deal with the splitpush already knocking on their door, weakening their enemies’ objective-taking ability. Oftentimes this will create enough space and waste enough time that OpTic are then able to put together a defense at their own highground

OpTic’s massive improvement this season when they picked up 33 and then switched him into position 3 shows how 33 has become the glue that holds the team together. 33 is arguably the rookie of the year for his performance on OpTic over the past several months. Unfortunately this has also created a situation where if 33 has a bad game then it can have a snowballing effect on OpTic’s performance because of how Zai often plays around 33 in the early and mid game. Even if the cores are doing alright early, the games where 33 struggles are almost always the ones OpTic loses. 33 and Zai have proven to be the two players most likely to play whatever hero is needed to win that particular game. This is vital because it gives PPD the most options possible when drafting and is shown in the fact that 33 and Zai have played 46 and 44 unique heroes respectively in this calendar year. That puts 33 and Zai as the two players with the most unique heroes in 2018. This hero variety draft advantage is vital because OpTic has made a mark for themselves as one of the best teams at cheesing with last picks with 33’s Broodmother being their favorite pick.

Players


Pajkatt
CC&C
33
Zai
PPD


Click the player images above for more information

Per Anders Olsson "Pajkatt" Lille

Notable heroes:

Pajkatt has been a strong, stable carry player in a time where carries often struggle greatly in lane because of the prominence of strong duo offlanes. Pajkatt himself is likely very happy with how this season has gone for him, considering many were surprised when he was picked as the carry of choice for this team. Don’t try to predict what Pajkatt will play too often as he is only a few heroes behind Zai and 33 in terms of variety. Pajkatt is actually the 2nd most versatile carry player in terms of unique heroes this year at 38, behind only N0tail. One of the biggest reasons Pajkatt has been such a reliable carry is his decision making about when to go into fights. You’ll rarely see him join his team when they are taking a poor fight. While this does lead OpTic to sometimes losing games where Pajkatt only has one or two deaths, they win far more games from him sticking to 0 deaths and never feeding his advantage away.

Quinn "CC&C" Callahan
Notable heroes:
CCnC has had a solid first year in high-level competitive Dota. While he has a preference for flashy and dominant mid heroes such as Puck, Shadow Fiend, or TA, he has made a switch for the sake of his team into playing more stable mid heroes. Often playing heroes like Death Prophet, Dragon Knight, and Razor, CCnC rarely misses out on what he needs from lane and is able to help snowball his team’s advantage into taking big objectives. While he might not have the same hero versatility as some of his teammates, CCnC is still able to perform well when lane swapping into the safelane, something that is vital for the team’s overall strategies with heroes like Broodmother.

Neta "33" Shapira
Notable heroes:
What can I say about 33 that hasn’t already been said. He joined OpTic and pushed the team up from a solid NA team into a Major competitor. He oftentimes makes item choices that seem strange but end up exceeding expectations. His hero variety is vital to OpTic not only because of his wide breadth of heroes but also the variety of styles that he is comfortable with. Whether he’s playing a splitpushing Lycan or Beastmaster, a ganking Queen of Pain or Night Stalker, or a teamfighting Phoenix or Brewmaster, 33 can crush anyone. Be ready for anything when it comes to 33. While he is likely to play his pushing heroes to fit into OpTic’s favorite strategy, that’s also exactly what OpTic wants you to think. They make great use of the strategic advantage that 33 gives during the draft, so be prepared to see 33 on any hero in any lane.

Ludwig "Zai" Wåhlberg
Notable heroes:
Zai, the legendary Swede, is one of the greatest supports to ever play the game. After switching into the competitive Dota scene with his former teammate PPD, Zai quickly became one of the most respected position 4 players in the world. Zai would struggle personally though, as he has been vocal about how he doesn’t find support fun and would prefer to play in the offlane. OpTic would originally try to make this work for Zai, but it’s hard to stick with a change when you know how good a player like Zai is on support. Thankfully though, 33 joined and Zai made the switch back to primarily playing 4. Zai also brings a lot to the team as one of the best Io players in the world, forcing opponents into always banning the hero. Zai has always been one of the cooler, more calm players and he knows that his captain PPD will always bear the burden of support to let Zai play to his full potential. In this sense Zai often plays more like a position 3 player while he let’s PPD take the role of 6.

Peter "PPD" Dager
Notable heroes:
Coming from HoN with Zai, PPD is hands down the greatest captain to ever come out of NA. Leading EG to three consecutive top-3 TI finishes is a feat rivaled only by Puppey at Na’Vi. Unlike Puppey though, PPD was effectively forced out of his own team when Sumail declared that he wouldn’t continue playing with PPD and the team chose to side with Sumail. The fact that PPD has managed to take a year off from professional Dota 2 and then return to create his own competitive team is nothing short of astounding. PPD is hailed as one of the greatest captains for good reason, having been one of the best drafters in the world. He was the mind behind EG’s TI5 win where they figured out that CDEC couldn’t play Leshrac, the strongest hero at the tournament by far. Always playing the sacrificial position six, PPD does whatever he thinks it will take to win, even if that means kicking a player less than a month after winning TI. Luckily for OpTic, TI’s large group stage and double elimination format favors PPD strongly. During his time at EG, it was rare to see them perform poorly in any double elimination tournament. It even became a theme of EG’s runs that they would make it to the winner’s bracket finals just so they could lose there and learn how to beat that team in the grand finals (seen most prominently at TI5 where they lost 0-2 to CDEC in the upper bracket finals before taking them down 3-1 in the grand finals). Will PPD be able to captain OpTic to another top 3 TI finish? It will be difficult with the likes of Liquid, VP, and LGD in the way, but only time will tell.



CREDITS
Writer: Jdc214
Editor: Sn0_Man
Graphics: Valve, Julmust, Exitiums


Facebook Twitter Reddit
WriterSteam: IceNine - Check out my twitch https://www.twitch.tv/iceninedota/
Yurie
Profile Joined August 2010
7560 Posts
July 28 2018 22:32 GMT
#2
This showing at Summit doesn't seem promising regarding what has happened during the lead up to TI.
meegrean
Profile Joined May 2008
Thailand1493 Posts
July 29 2018 07:17 GMT
#3
Optic saving strats for TI8!
Tactical feeding specialist
MetalMercury
Profile Joined January 2015
United States1127 Posts
July 29 2018 12:27 GMT
#4
I don't think this team is very good in the grand scheme of things; maybe they can surprise with a run to 5th / 6th but I don't see any way that they top out any higher than that, and they are probably gonna end up in the 9th-12th range imo.
goody153
Profile Joined April 2013
32990 Posts
July 29 2018 13:15 GMT
#5
I still think that Optic doesn't have the players to make it bigtime at TI.

I mean no offense to ccnc/33 (they seem to be the hot new talent of the team) but their star players somehow don't have that "edge" that other teams at TI have like Fnatic has DJ who literally sometimes singehandedly wins games, or the obvious ones miracle/miracle, ana(hey the dude looks even better playing safelane carry), the almost double 1 pos of VP(ramzes/noone) and LGD(ame/maybe), secret with Yapzhor/ace.

Their players that has the most potential to make plays don't have that flair(at least not yet for 33)

They play quite cohesively and coordinated tho. They also have a clear idea what to play and how.

While ppd did well on all his teams from TI there was a big difference. He had the players and the strongest grasp of the meta that time. Competition nowadays is alot tougher too.

I think at best probably top6-8 and should be around 9-16 place as expected
this is a quote
pajoondies
Profile Joined February 2014
United States103 Posts
August 01 2018 23:52 GMT
#6
I guess I wouldn't be surprised if they finish poorly (bottom 8) at TI, but I feel at least a top 8 coming and probably even a top 6. Regardless of his personality, I love PPD as a player (having rooted for him + EG, and having been an EG fan from the days of SC2 EG) and I expect him to have the team prepped and ready to go toe to toe with the best.
Jisira
Profile Joined October 2011
371 Posts
August 05 2018 19:40 GMT
#7
PPD is a captain that is good at realising how to utilise the power in the players. They let Neta do what he does, because he is just really good at doing it. Zai just helps him do crazy things. He takes the position 6, try to support Pajkatt in the best way possible whilst CCnC keeps growing every game in the mid lane, but sadly is often left ignored if not for a PPD gank or two.

They were cut off at #9 in the DPC, but took #3 in the NA qualifier. This feels symbolic for the team. They either get cut short (VP gatekeeping them over and over) or play out of their minds to make it to the big stage.

Now they get to play in Vancouver. How long can Captain Peter takes his crew? Pajkatt back at TI, what a world...

I feel like most teams have top 6 potential on their best days - but I'm not sure how far OpTic can go. Anything above 9-12th should be a victory for the boys in Green.
Please log in (you can use your steam or reddit account!) or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
No Live Events
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
Players
WagamamaTV2722
KheZu1446
canceldota762
Draskyl697
ixmike8851
Organizations
BeyondTheSummit256
EpulzeGaming143
DreamLeague102
[ Show 48 non-featured ]
Dota 2
• ybicanoooobov 10227
• JustCooman4451
• ggwpsnosite1508
• eskobartv1056
• qSnake1018
• MissClick_TV 1010
• lelisdota778
• Dragneel_FH639
• GunnarDotA2534
• local_butcher531
• uebermarginal486
• A1taOda 479
• RoccoDota454
• Gallarado777427
• Jendosinio322
• FroggedTV 302
• DotaTV247235
• Canko 227
• seucreysonreborn 226
• IceNice116 216
• MrDoublD185
• Beastqt 131
• PANAKOTTA129
• pop1tka128
• SammyboyGG111
• bo_white106
• ericking105
• Keemerah101
• ksushaaprel95
• JustLikeDejavu89
• jubeigaaaa85
• garter84
• Ya4To80
• lil_nickdota77
• r4atbek77
• lizZardDota277
• mandy_d0to69
• kuleshowadik66
• dydiktv65
• crystalmaytv65
• Zoretsheikh61
• Element_of_death55
• Reinessa53
• sayva22852
• s0undzz51
• V1ktor1yaaa50
• jordson50
• bafik50
Upcoming Events
No Upcoming Events
Liquipedia Results

Completed

2019 SEA Games
WESG 2019 East Europe

Ongoing

China Pro League S1
Asian Gold Occupation S8
Predator League MN Finals
LPL Pro S4
WESG 2019 South Asia
Asia Challenger League S4
Yabo Supreme Cup Qualifier
WESG 2019 Adriatic

Upcoming

DreamLeague S13
WePlay! Bukovel Minor
World Pro Invitational Singapore
Yabo Supreme Cup
IeSF 2019
WESG 2019 China Finals

Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Lip Comarella / SalonAlpin.
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2019 LiquidDota.com. All Rights Reserved.