Here's another commentary from me. I'll call things as I see them. For this game, I've decided to follow jaws8you's play style primarily. Here's the setup on each team. Cow has qot and choose BOTF, a mana pot, plus monks + lv1 shield. Jaws has ub, gets banded armor + scalemail + lv1 spit - jaws doesn't choose a favor item until 1:30 seconds in when he goes botf. They are up against ba294 playing as ub that chose botf, scalemail and banded armor and atma as tb, starting with 0 items period (he goes botf at 2min 24 seconds)... ok... there's the setup. Now that i have that, I'm starting the replay over and watching jaws from here on out.
cow shields jaws immediately. As i mentioned, jaws has banded and scalemail+spit, but has not choose a favor yet. He lanes on the health flag and has a monk to support him. He's laning with ub and easily captures the hp flag. He spams spits at every opportunity on ba and is out of mana as of 1min 14 second. At 1:20, he goads ba into spitting on him again near ba's tower and then chases for a moment somewhat pointlessly. This causes him to lose about 1k hp and scores him no additional damage on ba. He pulls back for a moment the goes Botf to compensate and the monk does the rest. I glance at the map and see that atma and cow are just trading flags atm.
back on jaws - at 1 min 45 sec - he has 3118 hp and ba has 1200. Ba is just hanging about to farm creeps and jaws moves towards him for a spit anytime he gets close enough. Jaws is lv3 now with a point in spit, ooze, and 1 point held back. Pretty standard stuff atm. At 2:01, jaws spits to harass when he's 120 xp away from lv 4 and more damaging spit. prob should have waited a little longer... but low % chance of a kill, so it doesn't really matter. he's dominating hp flag and will continue to until ba shops (which he's apparently doing). Jaws gets the tower down to 3650/5600 but takes a good amount of damage from creeps/tower/ba who just ported back in and gets a spit off. This should result in him giving up the hp flag... his monk died in the process as well. he's only got 1200 gold now at 2:31 and he decides to go back to they crystal to heal. jaws buys tower regen, scaled helm, and 1 port. Jaws and cow have a slight lead in ws at 3min because jaws held hp earlier (ws 744 v 675).
at 3:34 - jaws takes hp flag as its been left unattended without a fight. He finally hits level 4 and another point in spit and ooze, then starts back to work o the tower (i notice that atma and ba do not have tower regen yet (3:41). hmm.. jaws just leaves hp flag with full hp/mana to cap mid (cow is just sitting on mana flag) - not sure why cow didn't go, but ok. atma and ba get tower regen around 4min. jaws hits lv5 at 4:17 and gets grasp. He's back on hp flag, recapping and working on tower again. ba ports in after jaws gets the tower down to 647hp. jaws has to flee again. he took an extra 600 worth of damage because he didn't turn his ooze off immediately. ba is recapping hp flag at 4:50 - jaws has 1903 hp, 825 mana and a monk. ba is full hp (3890 and about to get hp flag). jaws tries to hang around near hp flag, but ba chases him off... jaws backs way up with 1100 gold. ba gets a spit off that drops him to 800 hp. jaws keeps running back out to ba like he is going to fight. ba takes some extra tower damage as a result, but keeps hp and is at 3400/4473 hp. jaws is back to base with 1254 gold. jaws buys a sigil + another port... then ports to the hp side tower which ba started to down. ba locks hp flag and leaves (in short, he holds the flag, but will give up the tower. Jaws drops the tower at 6:20. atma is in pursuit though. jaws is on the run with atma spiking damage. cow comes to assist and shields jaws.
Good moment to fast foward to:
At 6:38, cow and jaws hit ws3. atma is fighting on a locked hp flag against qot + a weakened jaws. cow pops ground spike. jaws lands a spit. atma is down to 1784/3990 hp. atma stays mostly focused on jaws (who is down to 1043). jaws is cautiously letting qot stay up close so he doesn't get nuked while he is slightly out of range. ba has started to port in. Oooo. it was a fake. Atma was unfortunately the only one that believed it. after the fake, ba immediately starts porting in again because of what happens now. jaws moves in and grasps and both cow and jaws spam damage. atma cast a combat hp the second he is free, but its not going to be enough. ba starts to spam damage on jaws. jaws sigils. atma dies. jaws is still getting tore up, but cow gives him a shield and then ba pulls out.
Now, its 7:07 - cow and jaws control all 3 middle flags. cow locks hp and they both go back to shop. Both teams are ws 3 (7:24) cow/jaws are leading in ws 1950 v 1743. Cow gets currency 1. Jaws buys unbreakable boots and another sigil and another tp. his kit at 7:33 is banded armor, scalemail, scaled helm, unbreakable, 2 ports, and a sigil. His ability build (at lv6) is 2 lvs of spit, 2 lvs of ooze, 1 lv of grasp, and 1 lv of inner beast. at 8:38, he hits 7 and gets 1 more lv of spit.
Between 8min and 9min, jaws uses up both of his ports. once to aid cow v atma. a second time to port across the map to keep the hp flag. he ALMOST gets ba, but not quite.
another interesting fight took place around 10 mins in.
Jaws is still hurting from chasing ub and trying to get a kill off. he leaves hp flag and is probably looking to go back to base to heal up or just to get a shield and a new monk from cow. atma heads to hp flag to cap. ba sees cow near mid and spits on him. jaw's hp is pretty low at this point (like 2000 before the spit). Cow shields jaws and they both 2v1 ub. ba does enough damage to jaws that he's running back to base. Right at this moment, while the spit effect was still on jaws, atma takes the hp flag and drops jaws down to 70hp or so. Jaws sigils at the last second... if he hadn't been paying attention precisely then (he was almost back to his crystal), he would have died. Speaking of dying... cow kills ub when he's trying to port away from mid with ground spikes. I notice that i don't think i've seen ba use a sigil once. i might be wrong.
Jaws is back shopping at 10:24 - he buys nimoth and another sigil. At 11:14, jaws takes on the mana side tower unopposed. He sees atma on the hp flag and decides to port in (jaws was at about 100 mana and 4k hp). atma does not appreciate this. after taking a spit, atma starts to unload and chase jaws as he runs away. Cow decides to port in to try to get atma now, but atma is pretty fast. jaws runs back to base, so I'm done watching that fight for now...
at 12:07, jaws sells his scaled helm and picks up vlemish, a lock, and another port. they still have a slight advantage in ws 3329 v 2876. cow has 2 kills and that's all the action. you can tell at this point in the game that cow and jaws are feeling pretty good.
The next battle happens around 13:10, but isn't that interesting. at 14:23, jaws caps the gold flag... he tries to lock way past when he could pull it off, gets interrupted and takes quite a bit of damage (2837/5669) hp. he exchanges spits one more time with ub, then runs off... cow ports in to fight ba, but ba runs off too. I noticed that atma grabbed and locked cows/jaws gold flag while that was going on.
At 14:57, jaws shops again. he sells scalemail for hauberk of life, picks up 2 locks and 1 more port. At 15:08, jaws hits lv 10 and gets a 4th level of spit (at 8/9 he got one more level of inner beast/ooze 3). Jaws goes to middle to fight tb, but atma and ba push him out while cow is sitting on the hp flag. instead of healing up, jaws goes to his gold flag and recaps it... atma shows up and whoops on jaws a little forcing him to sigil. cow shows up pushes atma away.. at this point, atma and ba control all of the middle flags, but cow and jaws still have ws 4721 v 3975.
at 16:46, jaws heals up, buys another sigil and another tp. I see ba use a sigil at 16:59... so, maybe he's been using them all along... maybe not.
Another battle takes place at 17:20 or so.
jaws makes a bit of a mistake here resulting in his death. jaws fights tb at mid for a moment (i think ba was there, but perhaps i'm remembering this wrong after a quick break). anyway, atma continues to spam damage on jaws even though cow has shown up. jaws gets down to about 1200 hp with atma still hitting him. He should have popped his sigil much earlier. Atma pops a sigil, jaws gets nuked and killed, presumably right as he was casting his sigil... anyway, even though it was 2 v 1 at this point, pop your sigil early - especially when you are fighting someone who can nuke for 1050... probably best to be on the safe side.
At 18:28 (ws 7 (5149)), jaws comes back to life. he ports to their 1 remaining middle flag (mana), and chases atma off.
At 21:15, cow/jaws hit ws8. at 23:17, cow gets dark priest. at 23:39, cow gets another kill on ba with some help from jaws. at 25:20, cow and jaws by angels and cats. (ws 7200 v 6248). Atma is lv 14 with 1 kill 1 death. ba is lv 11, 0 kills 2 deaths. jaws is lv12, 0 kills 1 death. cow is lv 13, 3 kills 0 deaths.
At 26:06, atma and ba make a pretty huge mistake. They let jaws just waltz in and cap and lock their left portal. no one attempted to port in or come until after he had capped the flag. hmm... cow and jaws didn't seem to want to try to hold the left portal and opted to give it back to them in exchange for flag control.
Right around the same time, atma and ba bought priest/angel/cats. At 27:18, jaws gets blacksmith 1.
ok - so the most entertaining battle of the game takes place right around 28min 20 seconds.
Cow is getting spammed by both ub and tb pretty much nonstop from ba/atma's cooldown flag. cow is spamming shields and sigiled. jaws is there spitting and supporting, but they aren't going to letup until they get cow. they chase cow, hitting him all the way for about 15-20 seconds. ba either isn't paying attention to his hp or is simply focused on trying to kill cow that he dies himself. cow escapes and is quickly back to full hp(at one point down to like 80 hp) and tb tries to leave. Atma is almost out of there when his sigil wears off and a spit from jaws finishes him off... ok...
so right now - it is 29:10 seconds. jaws/cow are ws 10. Both players on the other team are dead. Atma, in what may have been a game saving move, managed to get a lock off on the portal before he died. anyway, jaws is back at base with 6700 gold. he buys giants, a lock. he has NO SIGIL. this will end badly for him methinks. at 30:23 sec, jaws gets hp flag back... wastes about 5 extra seconds walking past it for some reason, but he gets it then goes for the port. atma ports in immediately. jaws spits and then backs down... then comes back... atma locks the left port now to keep jaws out. jaws captures and locks the gold flag and heads back to base and rebuys sigil/lock/tps. at this point, the giants are fighting creeps right by the valor flag... the middle will be going down soon.
at 31:50, atma relocks left port even though no one is there yet. atma and jaws fight it out for a bit while jaws waits for the lock to come off... but me thinks jaws took quite a bit more damage than he expected. jaws will have to leave soon. both portals have been locked by atma and ba in defense.
at this point, cow and jaws give up pushing the ports for a moment... real bad call imo... and try to push mid. better imo to keep at the ports and let your giants do the damage while they are busy either fighting on a port or locking.
time marches on. at 34:30 or so, jaws takes a shot solo at the left port. this results in both ba and atma nuking him alot. Cow comes in to try to help, but either jaws doesn't have a sigil or he already used it. So, jaws gets killed. This puts cow in a bad position. cow has to run... atma goes for the left port and gets it. 35:35, atma locks the port.... things appear to fall apart now... cow and jaws still hold the cd flag on the right side and could easily port to try to get their portal to compensate. jaws goes to fight the creep wave on the locked portal in their base... cow ports to the cd flag and tries to get their portal flag. cow gets it capped 25% and both atma and ba show up... so, if, and its a big if, jaws had come, they would have half capped the flag to be sure, and might have been able to fight them long enough to lock it out... not sure why jaws chose to sit on the locked portal at this point. the portal comes unlocked and atma ports in... relocks it and runs out... cow and jaws again fixate on killing atma, which causes ba to port in... to assist. This means that either one of them could have given up pursuit and ported over to the cooldown flag that they still owned and at the very least, half cap the port... if both jaws and cow ported, they would have a 100% chance of getting the portal and locking it. Anyway, atma escapes, but then comes back to help ba. This results in atma getting nuked and dying (somewhere in all this, atma/ba bought giants). ok... ba gets a lock off... both cow and jaws have tps. NOW - both of them port to the right side and try to take the portal. They get it!
atma comes back to life and relocks cow/jaws port.
... ... I have very little explanation for what happens next.
38 min - jaws does some quick shopping... gets ports/sigils/tps... ba is sitting on the portal in ba/atmas base, waiting for the lock to come off. jaws ports in with full hp, etc. jaws lands some hits, but gets tore up pretty bad... he gets grasped and has like 2500 hp... he's down to 2000 hp... grasp drops off of him... 1500 hp... time to cast a sigil then relock the portal... he doesn't... he appears to just stand there and aa. he can't be interrupted at this point... he could sigil lock.. sigil run (bad idea)... or stand and die. Watch it and let me know what you think... this should be the end of them. He appeared to choose to stand and die.
Game ends at 42:51.
Ok - so what stood out. Exceptional play from both atma and cow. Atma was REDICULOUS with port locking and map awareness. He made many smart, tactical decisions during the game imo. He made sure cow and jaws weren't going to be getting ports back often. Cow with an unkillable qot, getting spammed by ub and tb was nuts. He played excellent early/mid/early late. Thats about the time the difference in character selection really showed.
What was bad - ba particularly stood out to me as having tunnel vision a few times. He'd get so focused on someone with low hp that he'd either overpursue or forget to cast sigils. He gave up quite a few kills precisely because of that. Jaws's battle at the end where he got killed and didn't relock the portal... UGH! That pretty much ended any chance of a win. I was sitting watching the replay yelling FUGG!!!! when it happened... they had worked really hard to get a that port and only held it for like 50 seconds... in hindsight, I guess cow should have gone with jaws to make sure they held it, but I still kinda think he should have been able to sigil and lock without issue.
Great game though, guys.
This post has been edited by pacov: May 7 2010, 00:36 AM
Here's another commentary from me. I'll call things as I see them. For this game, I've decided to follow jaws8you's play style primarily. Here's the setup on each team. Cow has qot and choose BOTF, a mana pot, plus monks + lv1 shield. Jaws has ub, gets banded armor + scalemail + lv1 spit - jaws doesn't choose a favor item until 1:30 seconds in when he goes botf. They are up against ba294 playing as ub that chose botf, scalemail and banded armor and atma as tb, starting with 0 items period (he goes botf at 2min 24 seconds)... ok... there's the setup. Now that i have that, I'm starting the replay over and watching jaws from here on out.
cow shields jaws immediately. As i mentioned, jaws has banded and scalemail+spit, but has not choose a favor yet. He lanes on the health flag and has a monk to support him. He's laning with ub and easily captures the hp flag. He spams spits at every opportunity on ba and is out of mana as of 1min 14 second. At 1:20, he goads ba into spitting on him again near ba's tower and then chases for a moment somewhat pointlessly. This causes him to lose about 1k hp and scores him no additional damage on ba. He pulls back for a moment the goes Botf to compensate and the monk does the rest. I glance at the map and see that atma and cow are just trading flags atm.
back on jaws - at 1 min 45 sec - he has 3118 hp and ba has 1200. Ba is just hanging about to farm creeps and jaws moves towards him for a spit anytime he gets close enough. Jaws is lv3 now with a point in spit, ooze, and 1 point held back. Pretty standard stuff atm. At 2:01, jaws spits to harass when he's 120 xp away from lv 4 and more damaging spit. prob should have waited a little longer... but low % chance of a kill, so it doesn't really matter. he's dominating hp flag and will continue to until ba shops (which he's apparently doing). Jaws gets the tower down to 3650/5600 but takes a good amount of damage from creeps/tower/ba who just ported back in and gets a spit off. This should result in him giving up the hp flag... his monk died in the process as well. he's only got 1200 gold now at 2:31 and he decides to go back to they crystal to heal. jaws buys tower regen, scaled helm, and 1 port. Jaws and cow have a slight lead in ws at 3min because jaws held hp earlier (ws 744 v 675).
at 3:34 - jaws takes hp flag as its been left unattended without a fight. He finally hits level 4 and another point in spit and ooze, then starts back to work o the tower (i notice that atma and ba do not have tower regen yet (3:41). hmm.. jaws just leaves hp flag with full hp/mana to cap mid (cow is just sitting on mana flag) - not sure why cow didn't go, but ok. atma and ba get tower regen around 4min. jaws hits lv5 at 4:17 and gets grasp. He's back on hp flag, recapping and working on tower again. ba ports in after jaws gets the tower down to 647hp. jaws has to flee again. he took an extra 600 worth of damage because he didn't turn his ooze off immediately. ba is recapping hp flag at 4:50 - jaws has 1903 hp, 825 mana and a monk. ba is full hp (3890 and about to get hp flag). jaws tries to hang around near hp flag, but ba chases him off... jaws backs way up with 1100 gold. ba gets a spit off that drops him to 800 hp. jaws keeps running back out to ba like he is going to fight. ba takes some extra tower damage as a result, but keeps hp and is at 3400/4473 hp. jaws is back to base with 1254 gold. jaws buys a sigil + another port... then ports to the hp side tower which ba started to down. ba locks hp flag and leaves (in short, he holds the flag, but will give up the tower. Jaws drops the tower at 6:20. atma is in pursuit though. jaws is on the run with atma spiking damage. cow comes to assist and shields jaws.
Good moment to fast foward to:
At 6:38, cow and jaws hit ws3. atma is fighting on a locked hp flag against qot + a weakened jaws. cow pops ground spike. jaws lands a spit. atma is down to 1784/3990 hp. atma stays mostly focused on jaws (who is down to 1043). jaws is cautiously letting qot stay up close so he doesn't get nuked while he is slightly out of range. ba has started to port in. Oooo. it was a fake. Atma was unfortunately the only one that believed it. after the fake, ba immediately starts porting in again because of what happens now. jaws moves in and grasps and both cow and jaws spam damage. atma cast a combat hp the second he is free, but its not going to be enough. ba starts to spam damage on jaws. jaws sigils. atma dies. jaws is still getting tore up, but cow gives him a shield and then ba pulls out.
Now, its 7:07 - cow and jaws control all 3 middle flags. cow locks hp and they both go back to shop. Both teams are ws 3 (7:24) cow/jaws are leading in ws 1950 v 1743. Cow gets currency 1. Jaws buys unbreakable boots and another sigil and another tp. his kit at 7:33 is banded armor, scalemail, scaled helm, unbreakable, 2 ports, and a sigil. His ability build (at lv6) is 2 lvs of spit, 2 lvs of ooze, 1 lv of grasp, and 1 lv of inner beast. at 8:38, he hits 7 and gets 1 more lv of spit.
Between 8min and 9min, jaws uses up both of his ports. once to aid cow v atma. a second time to port across the map to keep the hp flag. he ALMOST gets ba, but not quite.
another interesting fight took place around 10 mins in.
Jaws is still hurting from chasing ub and trying to get a kill off. he leaves hp flag and is probably looking to go back to base to heal up or just to get a shield and a new monk from cow. atma heads to hp flag to cap. ba sees cow near mid and spits on him. jaw's hp is pretty low at this point (like 2000 before the spit). Cow shields jaws and they both 2v1 ub. ba does enough damage to jaws that he's running back to base. Right at this moment, while the spit effect was still on jaws, atma takes the hp flag and drops jaws down to 70hp or so. Jaws sigils at the last second... if he hadn't been paying attention precisely then (he was almost back to his crystal), he would have died. Speaking of dying... cow kills ub when he's trying to port away from mid with ground spikes. I notice that i don't think i've seen ba use a sigil once. i might be wrong.
Jaws is back shopping at 10:24 - he buys nimoth and another sigil. At 11:14, jaws takes on the mana side tower unopposed. He sees atma on the hp flag and decides to port in (jaws was at about 100 mana and 4k hp). atma does not appreciate this. after taking a spit, atma starts to unload and chase jaws as he runs away. Cow decides to port in to try to get atma now, but atma is pretty fast. jaws runs back to base, so I'm done watching that fight for now...
at 12:07, jaws sells his scaled helm and picks up vlemish, a lock, and another port. they still have a slight advantage in ws 3329 v 2876. cow has 2 kills and that's all the action. you can tell at this point in the game that cow and jaws are feeling pretty good.
The next battle happens around 13:10, but isn't that interesting. at 14:23, jaws caps the gold flag... he tries to lock way past when he could pull it off, gets interrupted and takes quite a bit of damage (2837/5669) hp. he exchanges spits one more time with ub, then runs off... cow ports in to fight ba, but ba runs off too. I noticed that atma grabbed and locked cows/jaws gold flag while that was going on.
At 14:57, jaws shops again. he sells scalemail for hauberk of life, picks up 2 locks and 1 more port. At 15:08, jaws hits lv 10 and gets a 4th level of spit (at 8/9 he got one more level of inner beast/ooze 3). Jaws goes to middle to fight tb, but atma and ba push him out while cow is sitting on the hp flag. instead of healing up, jaws goes to his gold flag and recaps it... atma shows up and whoops on jaws a little forcing him to sigil. cow shows up pushes atma away.. at this point, atma and ba control all of the middle flags, but cow and jaws still have ws 4721 v 3975.
at 16:46, jaws heals up, buys another sigil and another tp. I see ba use a sigil at 16:59... so, maybe he's been using them all along... maybe not.
Another battle takes place at 17:20 or so.
jaws makes a bit of a mistake here resulting in his death. jaws fights tb at mid for a moment (i think ba was there, but perhaps i'm remembering this wrong after a quick break). anyway, atma continues to spam damage on jaws even though cow has shown up. jaws gets down to about 1200 hp with atma still hitting him. He should have popped his sigil much earlier. Atma pops a sigil, jaws gets nuked and killed, presumably right as he was casting his sigil... anyway, even though it was 2 v 1 at this point, pop your sigil early - especially when you are fighting someone who can nuke for 1050... probably best to be on the safe side.
At 18:28 (ws 7 (5149)), jaws comes back to life. he ports to their 1 remaining middle flag (mana), and chases atma off.
At 21:15, cow/jaws hit ws8. at 23:17, cow gets dark priest. at 23:39, cow gets another kill on ba with some help from jaws. at 25:20, cow and jaws by angels and cats. (ws 7200 v 6248). Atma is lv 14 with 1 kill 1 death. ba is lv 11, 0 kills 2 deaths. jaws is lv12, 0 kills 1 death. cow is lv 13, 3 kills 0 deaths.
At 26:06, atma and ba make a pretty huge mistake. They let jaws just waltz in and cap and lock their left portal. no one attempted to port in or come until after he had capped the flag. hmm... cow and jaws didn't seem to want to try to hold the left portal and opted to give it back to them in exchange for flag control.
Right around the same time, atma and ba bought priest/angel/cats. At 27:18, jaws gets blacksmith 1.
ok - so the most entertaining battle of the game takes place right around 28min 20 seconds.
Cow is getting spammed by both ub and tb pretty much nonstop from ba/atma's cooldown flag. cow is spamming shields and sigiled. jaws is there spitting and supporting, but they aren't going to letup until they get cow. they chase cow, hitting him all the way for about 15-20 seconds. ba either isn't paying attention to his hp or is simply focused on trying to kill cow that he dies himself. cow escapes and is quickly back to full hp(at one point down to like 80 hp) and tb tries to leave. Atma is almost out of there when his sigil wears off and a spit from jaws finishes him off... ok...
so right now - it is 29:10 seconds. jaws/cow are ws 10. Both players on the other team are dead. Atma, in what may have been a game saving move, managed to get a lock off on the portal before he died. anyway, jaws is back at base with 6700 gold. he buys giants, a lock. he has NO SIGIL. this will end badly for him methinks. at 30:23 sec, jaws gets hp flag back... wastes about 5 extra seconds walking past it for some reason, but he gets it then goes for the port. atma ports in immediately. jaws spits and then backs down... then comes back... atma locks the left port now to keep jaws out. jaws captures and locks the gold flag and heads back to base and rebuys sigil/lock/tps. at this point, the giants are fighting creeps right by the valor flag... the middle will be going down soon.
at 31:50, atma relocks left port even though no one is there yet. atma and jaws fight it out for a bit while jaws waits for the lock to come off... but me thinks jaws took quite a bit more damage than he expected. jaws will have to leave soon. both portals have been locked by atma and ba in defense.
at this point, cow and jaws give up pushing the ports for a moment... real bad call imo... and try to push mid. better imo to keep at the ports and let your giants do the damage while they are busy either fighting on a port or locking.
time marches on. at 34:30 or so, jaws takes a shot solo at the left port. this results in both ba and atma nuking him alot. Cow comes in to try to help, but either jaws doesn't have a sigil or he already used it. So, jaws gets killed. This puts cow in a bad position. cow has to run... atma goes for the left port and gets it. 35:35, atma locks the port.... things appear to fall apart now... cow and jaws still hold the cd flag on the right side and could easily port to try to get their portal to compensate. jaws goes to fight the creep wave on the locked portal in their base... cow ports to the cd flag and tries to get their portal flag. cow gets it capped 25% and both atma and ba show up... so, if, and its a big if, jaws had come, they would have half capped the flag to be sure, and might have been able to fight them long enough to lock it out... not sure why jaws chose to sit on the locked portal at this point. the portal comes unlocked and atma ports in... relocks it and runs out... cow and jaws again fixate on killing atma, which causes ba to port in... to assist. This means that either one of them could have given up pursuit and ported over to the cooldown flag that they still owned and at the very least, half cap the port... if both jaws and cow ported, they would have a 100% chance of getting the portal and locking it. Anyway, atma escapes, but then comes back to help ba. This results in atma getting nuked and dying (somewhere in all this, atma/ba bought giants). ok... ba gets a lock off... both cow and jaws have tps. NOW - both of them port to the right side and try to take the portal. They get it!
atma comes back to life and relocks cow/jaws port.
... ... I have very little explanation for what happens next.
38 min - jaws does some quick shopping... gets ports/sigils/tps... ba is sitting on the portal in ba/atmas base, waiting for the lock to come off. jaws ports in with full hp, etc. jaws lands some hits, but gets tore up pretty bad... he gets grasped and has like 2500 hp... he's down to 2000 hp... grasp drops off of him... 1500 hp... time to cast a sigil then relock the portal... he doesn't... he appears to just stand there and aa. he can't be interrupted at this point... he could sigil lock.. sigil run (bad idea)... or stand and die. Watch it and let me know what you think... this should be the end of them. He appeared to choose to stand and die.
Game ends at 42:51.
Ok - so what stood out. Exceptional play from both atma and cow. Atma was REDICULOUS with port locking and map awareness. He made many smart, tactical decisions during the game imo. He made sure cow and jaws weren't going to be getting ports back often. Cow with an unkillable qot, getting spammed by ub and tb was nuts. He played excellent early/mid/early late. Thats about the time the difference in character selection really showed.
What was bad - ba particularly stood out to me as having tunnel vision a few times. He'd get so focused on someone with low hp that he'd either overpursue or forget to cast sigils. He gave up quite a few kills precisely because of that. Jaws's battle at the end where he got killed and didn't relock the portal... UGH! That pretty much ended any chance of a win. I was sitting watching the replay yelling FUGG!!!! when it happened... they had worked really hard to get a that port and only held it for like 50 seconds... in hindsight, I guess cow should have gone with jaws to make sure they held it, but I still kinda think he should have been able to sigil and lock without issue.
Great game though, guys.
'
Wow thanks! that must have taken a while to write Yeah Atma was excellent on that game. He kept their portals locked without getting killed and got cita upgrades in timely manner. I missed on few ganks because I did not have a sigil until mid/late games. We strategied this game with Cur2 (and planned to stay back til geared up) so I needed to shop for gears instead of sigil. So without a sigil, I had no choice but to move forward and hit with atma when my hp was low (cow/jaws were low as well) hoping for atma to take at least one of them down.
I dont think you noticed this (since you were viewing under jaws), but I made a HUGE mistake at one point by grasping Cow (with 2000hp/1500hp after grasp) too early. Cow immediately ported out after the grasp and as a result we missed a gank in mid game. Like you said, I got so focused on killing a low hp QoT that I used up our only stun and let the QoT port out. So I understand why Jaws made a similar mistake around our port when he died....when things get intense, things get greyed out lol.
This post has been edited by ba294: May 7 2010, 01:58 AM
Pacov provided a decent enough commentary... here's my additions as to how Cow / Jaws easily won but gave it up. Also very long.
Jaws and Cow spend a ridiculous amount of gold on meaningless ports. Before endgame, I counted 10 pointless tp's and 3 completely avoidable sigils. One example, early in the game, Jaws ports over to the mana flag to try and get a kill on TB, but TB just runs away. Jaws is full health and mana with a qot next to him and a TB that went back to base. Sounds like a great time to burn through the tower there, which would have been a successful port. Intead, he turns around and goes to mid. Loss of 250g and wasted opportunity. This happens all throughout the game until ~20 min in.
Jaws and Cow have their portal and have cats on the field and both towers next to it are gone. They keep that portal and the game is over. Instead, Jaws lolligags around, spits on a random tower at mid and takes xp flag. Still, they are looking fine, up on kills, up on war rank by 1000. The thing killing Jaws the whole game is that he won't give up 400 hp to get 10% speed to catch and kill TB instead of porting in, and then watching TB simply outrun him. They also decide to push mana side when they already have fort side completely cleared.
Ba and Atma make a mistake of fighting a long drawn out encounter when UB has no helm to sustain such endeavors. One helm for Ba and the game would be dramatically different (he chased QoT who was @ 2000 hp and already sigiled but had 0 mana to spit / grasp, so he watches as QoT drops to 17 hp because he refused to drop 400 hp and get a helm. After this, TB makes 2 mistakes. 1) he turns around to fireball beast which did nothing to the beast with 3-4k hp and a recent sigil and allowed the beast to reach him to spit. 2.) Instead of porting back, which his CD was up for a port, he walks to his flag and locks it then dies. A port back to base and then running out to it will save it no matter what, you know the beast was on a sigil and had to go back.
Jaws STILL doesn't have speed, but has 6700 gold while running back to base. This is an excellent time to defer giants to your teammate (who has 3k gold and can sell if the other team gets giants) and pick up j-treads. J-treads easily would have won the game by running back and forth from portal to valor to other portal while QoT controls rest of map and is wherever you aren't. Very easy to slip up on the other team at that point, and it provides your team with complete control. Instead he still has no speed to escape or catch anything. But hey, they are 4 kills up and have giants now. They can still afford to make mistakes. 33 min into game, they have giants beating down the middle @ valor flag, all side towers cleared, gold / cd flag locked and every flag but enemy portals / valor.
Here the game falls into oblivion. Cow has 6900 gold (remember previously when Jaws could have got J-treads and Cow could have saved? Enemy team still doesn't have giants, would have been fine, and Jaws wouldn't have been kited @ enemy portal by TB). He could buy Jaws or himself J-treads and end the game with relative ease. Instead, they push valor, where Jaws continually walks way out and then back in, only to get raped each time. After he's sufficiently low on mana and 2/3 health, he decides it's a great time to port over to their gold flag and go for a portal. I can't stress enough how J-treads would have allowed him to walk over there, run out when they port in, and then port to the cd flag and go for the other portal. Anyway, he dies to 2 of them. Cow had 2 decisions. 1) Port to shield UB (completely useless since Ba is full on mana to save grasp for tele interrupt and both enemies are faster thanks to fire aura and NO SPEED ITEMS FOR JAWS) or 2) Run to their other portal and distract 1 of them so Jaws might not die or else allow Jaws to be sacraficed in order to get a portal). He chooses option 1, watches Jaws die, and then watches Atma cap his portal. Again, he walks to opposite portal the 2nd he sees Jaws port to gold. Watch Jaws die while he caps portal, then still has a teleport to defend his portal with 2 towers there and giants pouring out. On top of that, he ran the wrong way from TB when he could have ran straight to his portal and locked it. Shortly later, they kill tb. However, they both double port to enemy cd flag instead of Jaws going back to base to heal and then get his port back (beast was on tp and cd cooldown and back to base right after tb died). They are up 4 kills and 4 assists. They get enemy portal and concede their own but it's not a good trade off. Beast may have made the port over to his own portal and fended off qot (I saw it que up, don't know if it would have made it), but with all the towers gone on Cow / Jaws portal lane and giants beating on the citadel, getting your own portal back is a bigger priority regardless. Jaws dies without sigiling at their portal and loses it along with any last hopes of coming back (their cit is already @ 22k when this happens, even if he gets the lock off, it's pretty much a lost cause).
Edit: Other note: Ba / Atma make the strangest cit upgrade choices. FS 2, FP 1/2, and GY 1. 4400g that would have been better spent on other things.
This post has been edited by RAWRRRR: May 7 2010, 03:47 AM
Jaws STILL doesn't have speed, but has 6700 gold while running back to base. This is an excellent time to defer giants to your teammate (who has 3k gold and can sell if the other team gets giants) and pick up j-treads. J-treads easily would have won the game by running back and forth from portal to valor to other portal while QoT controls rest of map and is wherever you aren't.
You make some excellent points, rawrrrr. My field of view was mostly limited by following jaws, but I do think you pick out some very strong points. LATELATE game, qot became the character that couldn't win any 1v1 imo... any decision to make jaws stronger/faster, would probably have been for the best. I think you make an excellent point about picking up journeyman's treads. That really would have counterd atma's speed.
I also tend to agree that jaws/cow had plenty of opportunities to put this one away, but mistakes happen.
Even if you drop the one major issue I called out on jaws (eg what if jaws sigiled and locked that port), there was no guarantee that they'd have won the game. I think you might be right rawrrrr - if they locked that flag AND jaws had journeymans - its a different game.
All the same - still congrats to ba and atma. I hope you guys go far. From what I've seen, this is the most exciting match of the tournament to date.
From what I saw I don't think jaws expected that he was going to have to port to keep the portal. Atma and Ba's giants had a clear path to the citadel and for some reason cow ported left to try to get the other portal and then jaws was like oh shit and he ported to lock the portal they had. Doesn't excuse his failure in locking it since cow made it back to defend the citadel for a bit. However if I were beast there I would've assumed cow was porting to re-cap it while I defended the citadel and attempted to get our portal back. Also cow putting 10k into armory upgrades right after Atma took their portal for the first time is almost as bad as if he would have freely gave up a portal in order to capture the valor flag.
This post has been edited by McShane87: May 7 2010, 06:24 AM
Out of the thousands of games I've played, this has to be the best one.
Great play by both sides