From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

In the post-match debriefing, as usual, everyone first gave each other a round of compliments to gain enough emotional value before starting to reflect on the problems.

I feel that our current wins are mostly due to our carry player putting in a lot of pressure. We can continue this strategy in future drafts by protecting our carry player.

Lao Fang summarized the characteristics of the team's winning games based on the past few days of training.

However, this approach definitely won't work indefinitely. After a few more training sessions, our opponents will surely target our point guard position. We still need some other systems that can win games.

Lao Fang spoke seriously, saying that he had encountered this situation many times in his career. A team that relies on only one core player to win a game will quickly develop a path dependency, and once the opponent discovers this dependency, it will have devastating consequences.

Wang Chunyu, behind the screen, nodded silently. He knew that this would inevitably lead to being targeted in the future, but sometimes when a team can only win with the help of one person, it is difficult to take the risk of choosing other types of lineups. Fortunately, they were not playing professionally at the moment, so there was not much external pressure.

[Simply put, we brothers have to step up our game, right? I got diffed again today, you guys might not believe it, but give me a few more days, I feel like I'm about to break through.]

Gu Ran once again stepped up to take the blame. This time, he was outmatched by the enemy mid laner and only won because of the carry player's efforts. Although he won, he must recognize his own problems.

He currently has 12900 MMR and will soon break the 13000 mark.

[Xiao Gu has been practicing really hard lately, and he's almost reached 13,000 ranks already. I trust Xiao Gu, and that's it.]

We also have some coordination issues in the offlane. We plan to find time to play ranked games together in the next few days to practice laning and improve our synergy.

Lu Chen and Jiang Xia are also actively making changes.

Although the post-match review atmosphere was good, they didn't win a single game in the following days of training matches. At the end of the online training matches, their team score was 2-5, ranking second to last among the eight teams.

We lost three games in a row, and the ways we lost were all pretty much the same. All the opponents had to do was focus on our carry. Once we gained an advantage in the mid lane, we would push XS's lane to kill him, and the side laners would also use their teleportation portals to fight.

XS was suppressed and needed to be fed, but lacked rhythm in the mid-game, so he could only get beaten up.

The team's internal review revealed that everyone understood the situation quite well, so there was no need to say much. However, the number of inflammatory comments in the live stream kept increasing.

Of these five people, XS did a lot of work and no one criticized him; Lao Fang, who was in position five, didn't have a live stream; Lu Chen, who was in position three, rarely streamed; and although Jiang Xia, who was in position four, did stream, he wasn't very popular, and as a minor player, he generally didn't get much attention.

Therefore, Gu Ran is under the most pressure. In the past few days, he has truly experienced what it means to go from heaven to hell. During the Pokémon event, the live stream was full of praise for him, but now the live stream is mostly filled with criticism of him. The moderators can only ban some of the more offensive ones, but the overall atmosphere is getting worse and worse.

Fortunately, Gu Ran has a good mentality, and he is very good at finding people who are worse off than him—such as Brother Diao. Brother Diao's team is also 2-5, losing more than winning. He reviews the games on live stream every day, and occasionally he has a bad game. At least the atmosphere in Gu Ran's team is not bad.

That's how competitions are; there are winners and losers. When you win, people praise you, and when you lose, people criticize you.

Under pressure, Gu Ran finally reached rank 13100 before the start of the first round-robin tournament. And perhaps because he was holding his breath, he has been gradually increasing the frequency of his "overclocking" usage in the past few days. He has successfully used overclocking multiple times in a single match. As long as the usage time is kept within one minute each time, the side effects will not be particularly noticeable.

On the tenth day of the Immortal Cup, the group stage officially began.

On the first day, Gu Ran's team faced Chao Ge's team. The two teams had a record of 0-2 in training matches.

Chao Ge's team has a 5-2 record in training matches, making them a solid seed for the winners' bracket. Their team has a 90% support rate on the Perfect World eSports app, and the pre-match comments are overwhelmingly in favor of Gu Ran's team, who have no chance whatsoever.

[Beat their mid laner to a pulp, just keep XS's carry position down.]

[It doesn't feel like there's any suspense.]

Viewers in the comments section can all see the problems with Gu Ran's team.

Inside Gu Ran's live stream.

The number of VIPs was a paltry three thousand, but the viewers who were still watching were mostly die-hard fans, and the atmosphere in the live stream was actually better than a few days ago.

The match begins, entering the ban/pick phase.

Gu Ran's team immediately picked Treant Protector, while Maybe picked Lumberjack, a tree-cutting expert, to counter it.

"Oh, this Treant Protector seems to be a new hero for the Dire side. I've never seen them play this hero in scrims. Is it some kind of secret weapon?"

Commentator Jia expressed his doubts.

Gu Ran then picked Templar Assassin to counter the opponent's Timbersaw, while the opposing team picked the popular 15-man combo of Shadow Fiend and Clockwerk.

Let me try Invoker this game. I want to try out a late-game strong hero since there are no lane bullies available.

[Sure, I'd like to try Doom too. We picked Maokai this time to strengthen our early-game defense. Let's try a late-game composition.]

Old Fang adopted the suggestion of his second and third positions, picking Doom and Invoker, while the opponent picked Little Y for the fourth position to add another control ability.

If you're considering late-game potential, you could give me Rubick.

In his final move, Jiang Xia chose the Archmage at his own request, while the opposing team picked the mid-lane Tidehunter, a hero that is very good against Invoker in lane and can be paired with Shadow Fiend for double armor reduction.

This is the same old strategy used against Gu Ran's team—pick a counter hero in the mid lane and dominate them, then spread the damage to the other two lanes.

The lineup is finalized: our team is Dire, with Templar Assassin in position 1, Invoker in position 2, Doom in position 3, Rubick in position 4, and Treant Protector in position 5.

The opposing team is Radiant. Position 1: Shadow Fiend, Position 2: Tidehunter, Position 3: Timbersaw, Position 4: Shadow Shaman, Position 5: Clockwerk.

[This time, we'll use smoke to go this way, place wards, and see if we can catch someone on the other side trying to come alone to farm the gold rune.]

Lu Chen's Doomsday Messenger, along with two other heroes, drew a line on the map that led directly to the high ground in the main jungle area to the right of the Radiant's second mid-lane tower. Gu Ran's Invoker was positioned defensively under his own mid-lane tower.

After selecting the view, the three waited quietly. Soon, they saw the Clockwork Technician on the other side swaggering over.

Old Fang went up to the tree and threw a punch that created a binding effect, but the Clockwork Technician immediately learned the level 1 Energy Gear and drew a circle on the spot to imprison himself. Then he started bowling towards Rubick and Doom, forcing the two to reposition, and the plan to kill them failed.

After consuming the gold rune, Lao Fang's tree was about to return to the top lane via the bottom right portal, but he had only been sitting in the portal for a second when he saw Clockwerk approaching, seemingly preparing to use his Power Gear to knock him away. So he had to stop the countdown. At this point, Clockwerk didn't use any skills and just stood there watching him, preparing to use Power Gear to interrupt Lao Fang when he was halfway through the portal's countdown.

"The two support players in the bottom lane are stuck."

"Haha, this big tree looks like it's been caught on something."

The commentators also noticed the two brothers in the bottom lane looking at each other, which looked quite interesting.

The tree then walked down into the woods. After a while, its innate skill triggered, and it entered stealth mode. Clockwerk saw that the creep wave was coming, and if it didn't go over soon, its carry Shadow Fiend would be facing two opponents. So it had no choice but to let the tree sit there and went back to the creep wave itself.

Anyway, the Dire's carry has been disgusted by the fact that the Treant Protector has been hanging for so long - during the time the Treant Protector is not there, XS' Templar Assassin will face a 1v2 situation.