From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

At 29 minutes and 30 seconds into the game, the Dire team grouped up to attack the enemy's second turret in the bottom lane.

[I can see the enemy Shadow Fiend farming in the top lane with the ward, and I can see the positions of Clockwerk and Shadow Shaman on the mid lane high ground. I also have a Slardar on my side, and the enemy only has a Timbersaw in the bottom lane. We can move as soon as we see him.]

In the voice channel, Lao Fang's voice was very calm. He had spotted the location of the Tidehunter while hiding in the woods next to the ruins of the enemy's mid-lane tower, and immediately commanded his teammates to launch an attack.

Jiangxia's Rubick and Lu Chen's Doom used Smoke of Deceit to circle around from the Radiant's main jungle to behind the second tower. Upon seeing Timbersaw, they immediately used a jump attack (telekinesis). Doom followed up with a Yama's Blade. Timbersaw tried to retreat with a Chain Saw, but Gu Ran's Rapid Cooling interrupted his attack, leaving him standing still and being focused down and killed by the four players.

Meanwhile, in the mid lane, Lao Fang's Tree was spotted by the newly purchased Gem of the Sea, and a Magic Crystal Smash plus a few auto-attacks took down the Tree.

[I've been spotted. The enemy might use a fog bomb to come over. Be careful!]

After receiving the information, Gu Ran immediately activated Ghost Walk. With a ward and three or four traps in his own main jungle, he had excellent vision and decided to try to break the enemy's fog of war.

Overclocking is enabled again.

I'm going to try and break through the fog. Keep an eye on my position!

After Gu Ran finished speaking, he walked towards the enemy's main jungle area. When he reached the observer position, he suddenly saw a blurry image in front of him - it was a humanoid figure that had activated the Deceptive Fog!

At the same time, all four Radiant players were slowed by Ghost Walk, and Clockwerk placed a Control Ward in time. However, it was precisely this slight time difference in placing the Control Ward—

"Tonarus' Claw!"

"Tarak's Fallen Fire!"

"Bruvent's Powerless Sound Wave!"

As Gu Ran chanted rapidly, a hurricane swept the four people away. When they landed, they saw three large meteorites falling from the sky, followed by a purple shockwave. The two "soy sauce" guys were unlucky; one of them was standing on the trajectory of a meteorite and was crushed to death.

Lu Chen's Doom reacted quickly, activating Black King Bar (BKB) as soon as the opponent landed, then used Blink Dagger to enter the fray and immediately used Doom on the Tidehunter. Shadow Fiend activated BKB in time to deal damage to Doom after landing.

Lu Chen underestimated Shadow Fiend's damage output. He directly engaged Shadow Fiend in a duel. By the time Templar Assassin jumped in to follow up with damage, Doom was already on the verge of death. After killing Doom, Shadow Fiend immediately teleported back to the spot. Even Templar Assassin's full burst damage couldn't kill Shadow Fiend within the teleport time, leaving him with low health and forcing him to teleport back home.

The Tidehunter was caught by Rubick's Blink Dagger as he arrived later, and the team fight ended with a 3-for-1 trade, giving the Dire side a huge advantage.

After this team fight, the Dire team seized the opportunity to control the Aegis of the Immortal, and then continued to expand their advantage with the Aegis, ultimately winning the game.

"Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!"

"It has to be Carl, guys!"

"I really gave it my all this time!"

The long-lost joyful atmosphere filled Gu Ran's live stream room, with the number of VIPs returning to the 15,000 mark, and various gifts flooding the screen.

After all, in the training matches so far, Gu Ran either wins by doing nothing or drags the team down, making it really difficult for the audience to send him gifts. This time, he received a lot of gifts.

"Quick cut! Quick cut! Quick cut!"

The chat was filled with excitement, and at the request of the viewers, Gu Ran was also eager to join Chao Ge's live stream to enjoy the show with everyone.

The atmosphere in the live stream was completely different; the most frequent comment was a picture of a toilet accompanied by "Flush, flush, flush, flush."

Some of the IDs even looked quite familiar, and Gu Ran saw Sen Ge's ID flash by in the comments.

Over here, Chao Ge is reviewing the game with his teammates to see how they lost:

[It's not that my Tidehunter completely destroyed that enemy Invoker's head in the early game; look at our net worth after the laning phase, I'm slightly ahead by 1500 gold. What more do you want from me?]

"I was so fat in the early stages..."

"His IQ dropped significantly in the middle of his life."

"Reliant on vision, reliant on team fights, only knows how to farm but doesn't know how to gank, and relies on discipline."

The comments section was filled with all sorts of insults, some of which were quite insightful, but most were just random rants to vent emotions.

[Didn't you say we weren't ganking? In the mid-game, I kept telling everyone to use smoke and carry me. I'm strong, but what do I do if I can't get kills? The enemy has good vision, so you can't expect a mid-laner like me to go and place wards, can you?]

"Only good at picking on the weak and attacking others."

"You can't catch anyone and you just blame the support for vision. Your fish is not even as good as the mid-laner's. The top laner has fed several times."

The barrage of comments was intense, but since today was only the first match of the round-robin tournament, it was just an appetizer. It wasn't yet time to directly criticize the streamer to the point of breaking his temper or forcing him to quit the stream. After receiving the message from his teammates that the replay was about to begin, Gu Ran switched to a video to show his viewers and then went to Tencent Meeting to start the replay himself.

[Guys, you guys are awesome! Your macro play was great today. You didn't force any unnecessary team fights in the mid-game, which was crucial in preventing the enemy from snowballing. And more importantly, this game wasn't entirely won by our carry, which adds another tactic to our strategy pool.]

Lao Fang was very excited, and he gave a lot of instructions in the early and mid-game today.

[I feel that Lao Fang and Jiang Xia did a great job with vision control today. Plus, we had TA's traps, so we were able to stay in a defensive position and avoid team fights in the mid-game. We could see the enemy's position and then go to another lane to push. If the enemy pushed the tower, we had Maokai and Tree Armor, which is why we were able to have such a smooth early game.]

Gu Ran watched the opponent's replay and, combined with his own feelings, summarized the formula for this victory.

[Actually, we also need to thank our captain Xiaoman for this match. She has been working on the vision positioning model for each team for the past week, using AI to detect the spots they like to place wards. Today, I counter-warded based on the spots the opponents like to place wards, and the success rate was indeed very high. We also discussed the spots we needed to place today before the match.]

[Wow, the whole line is full!] *4

[Vision is incredibly crucial in this version. The expanded map means that one or two team fights are unlikely to completely determine the outcome of the entire game. Instead, with good vision and well-controlled minion waves, we can always find opportunities to gank the enemy, accumulate an advantage by outnumbering them, and push high ground without needing to wipe them out in one push. Instead, we can maintain vision, let them farm on the high ground, control Roshan generation by generation, until the economic gap is large enough to finally take them down.]

Gu Ran continued to share his thoughts, which were actually the result of discussions and summaries he and Su Xiaoman had made while watching games together recently.

[So we can consider this more in our future drafts. Maokai's strength as a support lies in his ability to protect his own turrets, and his tree ward skill makes it easy to place vision. He can also become invisible and place wards deep inside enemy territory. Maokai really did a lot this game.]

Seeing everyone's enthusiasm, Su Xiaoman couldn't help but join the discussion as well.

Of course, it all started with the laning phase. Our ability to hold our own in the early game was largely due to that kill on Shadow Fiend in the bot lane. Normally, their Orianna and Shadow Fiend would have a good chance against our Rubick and Fiddlesticks, but after that fight, we put a lot of pressure on their bot lane.

Jiang Xia reviewed the start of the game.

[I really had a lot of fun playing Doom this game. I got Radiance very early, and with good vision, I could keep farming until I got Aghanim's Scepter, at which point the enemy team was doomed.]

Lu Chen nodded in agreement.

Regardless of the version, laning is always fundamental. If you lose in lane, the game's pace will be drastically different, and you might get snowballed and taken down by the opponent. However, when drafting your team composition, try to avoid overly aggressive compositions that rely solely on lane dominance to push. This version feels too unpredictable, and unless you have a truly overwhelming strength, you need to consider late-game potential, split-pushing ability, and vision control when making your choices.

At the end of the meeting, Lao Fang gave a summary.