S̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶i̶s̶t̶s̶ Everyone Baffled
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Cloud9, or any team led by Dota’s best theory-crafter EternaLEnVy himself, has always been infamously criticized because of their rather weird, yet effective, playstyle.
The first placers of the Americas qualifiers were put in a position where a win was desperately needed after ending their first group stage day at the bottom of their group. During the second day of The International 2017 group stage, however, Cloud9 did not only deliver a win against Virtus.pro, they did so with some baffling Dota 2 strategies.
EternaLEnVy orchestrated his draft by having the tandem of Drow Ranger and Medusa as its backbone. Expecting a 50-minute game, the CIS powerhouse countered Cloud9’s last pick Medusa with RAMZES666’s Anti-Mage. While the laning phase started like a normal one, the Cloud9 magic started when EE-sama, on his Drow Ranger, sported a quick buy of Hood of Defiance components.
In a lineup against Anti-Mage, Death Prophet, Dark Seer, Witch Doctor, and Earth Spirit, the Hood of Defiance into Pipe of Insight makes sense on just about any hero, but on Drow Ranger after a Force Staff? Must be EE.
Even more surprising was when he left lane partner Aui_2000’s Doom to initiate a smoke gank on the aforementioned Anti-Mage 10-minutes into the game. As the carry, EE is expected to just farm his lane but he left it prematurely and with an unconventional set of items to gank the opposing carry halfway across the map.
building Hood of Defiance into Pipe of Insight after a Force Staff as Drow Ranger was never an option. At least that was the case until EternaLEnVy left his lane for Aui_2000’s Doom to farm and smoke gank the fast-farming carry 10 minutes into the game. Ludicrous, so far, yes?
But then the unexpected rotation elicited so much of a reaction from the enemy side that the Aui that EE left in his lane was suddenly free to farm up a Shadow Blade. This singular item would prove to be instrumental in Cloud9’s shutting down of the pesky Anti-Mage thanks to the extra movement speed it provides on top of Doom’s Scorched Earth.
The final piece of Cloud9’s strategy was FATA-‘s early game Medusa. Medusa is traditionally a very late game hero but is specifically trumped by Anti-Mage once the game goes past 30 minutes. Now this isn’t the first time that Cloud9 (or, NP, back then) has run a Medusa that is built to impact the early game — they brought it out for their third place finish at The Manila Masters. But this time it was an even bigger key to their success.
Even though they still proceeded to lose the rest of their matches, that one win avoided a no-win bottom finish as they are at least tied with HellRaisers at a 1-7 win-loss record in the group stages so far. All hope, however, is still not lost as Cloud9 has four more games to fight in these group stages including a tie-breaker with the European hopefuls for the lower bracket. If you still believe in the magic of Cloud9, bEElieve a little longer.
For all we know, as this offbeat Medusa strat has shown, their recent slumps may still be all according to keikaku.
(“Keikaku” means plan.)
