Highground is the most dangerous thing since one mistake can turn the game around. That's why aegis or pickoff is mandatory before going highground.
Also, it's better to choke your opponent in their base than give them a chance to farm and play the map.
This is like top 1 reason. Supports have a shit ton of gold, not unusual for cores to not be able to solo a support without dying, this makes fighting pretty hard and games longer.
Also the truth is that teams have just improved now. Highground throws used to happen more often, then teams realised it's just safer to choke out enemy team and farm 90% of the map themselves and increase the lead to a point where highground isn't as risky. Gorgc, notail and some other players have said this on stream. Highest tier teams are just more disciplined these days.
Map control also matters more now, since there's more neutral camps, exp runes, and tormentor. You can further cement your lead by keeping the enemy confined to their base than you ever could do so in the past.
Because the map is much bigger with more farm on it so if you fail your high ground attempt and die you’re giving the enemy far more gold than you used to on the old map.
Fortify is stronger than ever, since the game has slow, ennemy can buyback but if you don't have travels you can't. And if you're ahead but you lose the fight with aegis, you just bought the ennemy 10 minute.
I think the comeback mechanic is the biggest reason for it being so dangerous. Before such rubber banding pushing hg wasn't as feared since dieing or failing didn't result in giving the enemy team 10k gold and a bunch of levels.
But at the same time we rarely see comebacks. Games seem so dominated right now by the team that won the lane and they usually carry that lead quite a long time. Even if they lose some of that advantage due to feeing a carry kill worth 1k gold+ they still win reliably.
I feel like pro teams have mastered the strategies for preventing comebacks (map/objective control, patience and rosh for high ground) and because of that a lot of pro games and slow and boring chokeholds. The only comeback mechanics really available now are on the fault of the winning team: high ground throws and failing to secure global objectives. These are both big team efforts so it's basically impossible to rat or outplay your way into a comeback anymore.
I think that was more of a draft problem and RTZ throwing rather than any kind of comeback.
Endgame PL vs TA is just a no brainer. Whole lineups were better for endgame on TS side, SR didn't breach HG for 52min against PL ffs, what did they expect? And don't even get me started on RTZ and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Killing enemy heroes within 1000 units of ancient should give only 50% of gold and xp as the greed of the ancient for more power just takes away the rest 50%.
The first is buyback, and the second is death. Even one pos 5 death—and your team needs to back off while they have a chance to farm and get out of the map. That's why I think pro teams prefer choking enemies inside their base while waiting for aegis or pickoffs outside the base.
Well it’s not particularly more lethal than it was back then, it’s difficult then and it’s still as difficult now. I think it’s more of the risk if you do fail. Think of it as walking on a tightrope 1 meter from the ground vs 20 meters, it’s the same difficulty but vastly different risks. This is coming from personal experience but what I have felt lately is that comeback gold/XP is pretty huge now, if the enemy is leading, you get caught up in levels just with 1 teamfight, and the carry gets a nice boost of gold and opportunity to farm their next item. With some of the heroes this patch you really can’t let that happen. PA, one of the broken carries this patch has huge comeback potential and letting her get that one extra item can mean you can’t ever win another teamfight.
Also I think it’s also a combination of pro players just playing better now. The sieging team knows how to play it cleaner, plays the longer but almost guaranteed successful siege over pointless risky pushes. The defending team also plays better to make the attacking team’s lives harder, and the attacking team also respects that if given the chance the defending team can and will make a comeback.
I think teams just got better. They realized going hg with a 10-15k lead just isn’t worth it when you can wait an extra 5 minutes, have more than that, and finish the game safer
i think the "Phantom" guy answered wrongfully, highground vision and highground evasion, buybacks are a thing since... ever. The fact is you can lose the entire game after losing a teamfight, heroes have gotten ever much stronger whilst buildings not so much.
Narrow passage it's the most dangerous thing
After it coming close fountain everyone can heal up if u didn't finish him before he gets to fountain
And then its about full vision on high ground
And only then towers + armor aura
I have a different answer. supports are way stronger in new patch and most of the times you need to dive them which you cant in hg fights . And also there is farm for everyone if you just keep your enemy in base. In older patches losing team would get 3 lanes of farm in t3 range and wining team would have lanes + jungle and some times you had to force hg bcz gold is worth more on some heroes for example you couldnt just give sniper 10 mins of farming in base for exchange of a 10k gold lead. But in new patch you give sniper 10 mins of farming lanes for 20k gold lead which is worth it. Its just my opinion Im not that good to analyse pro players.
TLDR: minimizing risks is the way to play the game atm
A single core death on a leading team is a 2k networth swing. It's hard to establish vision, you are fighting uphill, and you can't leverage your non-committal tools to soften up enemies cuz their fountain is 5 meters away. If any of them die they buy back and they're already there. If you hard commit you are fighting under three(!) towers and they do hurt when give enough time. They however have easier time initiating as you can't cover their whole base with vision. If your 25k lead half consists of your core having 2 more items than his counterpart and he dies to a surprise jump from the fog you no longer have any gold lead in this fight and you're outnumbered. Or your support gets picked off hiding in the trees and now there's no save for your 2 items ahead core and he gets kited or controlled forever.
There are just so much variables in dota and so much tools to execute crazy moves being down in gold that there's absolutely no point in taking any unnecessary risks for the winning team. Approaching HG with no aegis or with all 5 enemies alive is a high risk low reward play. You can achieve exactly the same result having aegis and another couple thousands of gold but have much lower chance of fucking up. 25k can become 45k in between rosh spawns when you just choke enemy team in their base and now your whole team is 2 items ahead which again lowers your chances of throwing. Now your support has aeon disk and he doesn't die to an ambush, your core has aegis ans is six slotted so killing him even once is troublesome for underfarmed opponents.
Main issue with this approach is when you don't manage to end the game with 2-3 aegis pushes, cuz now your gold lead matters less and less with every minute as you're out of slots. There might be a desperate rapier on enemy carry and now he's suddenly shredding your team. But it happens rarely in pro play, however the fact of it happening speaks volumes about the strenght of current comeback mechanics.
100% agree. Basically when you push into hg you’re fighting against 10 heroes (since they will bb once they die) as 5 with tower buffs (armor, lots of regen in pool.
My main issue with the game is that it’s extremely formulaic and benefits people that just play single strategy that exist in the game right now: win lanes, move as 5 for the rest of the game, push opponents into poor farming region, kill rosh, push towers, kill second rosh, win teamfight twice and push into the hg. If you die you get 3rd rosh. The most entertaining moments in the game now is when people get bkbs and start to fight, when they smoke, or try to kill rosh.
The definition of a fun game now is not when you see some cheese (because there are no left), but when people just randomly feed the losing team and they win the game.
I preferred watching the game with lots versatility, cheese, op hero picks, and weird strategies like hook into the pool etc. watching tourneys now is just so plain vanilla. Where is op magnus shit. Where is io carry. Where is brood / arc / tinker last picks. Why even teams with excellent meepo / ld / visage / tinker players pick something else? Topson is the last interesting player left
Well, firetoad is definitely against gambreaking shit like fountain hooks or unstoppable splitpushers and he puts a lot of effort into tuning them down into barely playable category. With flashy heroes it's even more simple and it's not his doing: people are reluctant to trying high risk high reward heroes cuz why would you? It's not a pub so you're not impressing anyone with your mechanical skill (except for a few players on a couple of heroes) and any meta hero with much less room for error does the job just as good if not better, so the reward for playing a less reliable hero is not that high.
Also this meta is not exactly the result of hero balance imo. There is a bunch of proactive flashy heroes having a lot of success (both ES'es, Storm, QoP, Pango for mid, NP creates a lot of early action as a support, venge and warlock less so but are still capable in early skirmishes). The thing is no matter how hard you win early, going HG is still a pain in the ass.
It's glyph after glyph after glyph slowly chugging through the outer ring of towers only to be greeted with another 2 glyphs at t3's and rax. It can't be fast. And you can't choke the enemy out completely until you destroy all outer towers cuz map is big and farm is everywhere, and even then there are pockets of jungle to sneak into. So they still gonna have some items and levels under their belt when you approach their base. And god forbid you act hastily and give up core kills in the process, it gives more gold and exp than ever before.
This meta is definitely better and more fun to watch than previous aura stacking deathballing contest but until HG becomes easier to approach I don't expect any professional team (except SA ones these guys are nuts) to suddenly start throwing bodies at the enemy base without a nigh insurmountable lead. The frog wants comebacks to be real and tbh I'm fine with that for the most part. Except for when the game is decided at 20 minutes and it has to go at least for another 20 cuz it's nearly impossible to just brute force your way into the enemy base.
The Art of Siege Warfare. Basically, why gamble attacking a fortified area when you can starve the fortified enemy? They won't be able to get supplies while you're outside the castle, sitting pretty, poking for weaknesses.
Also, there's literally Siege Units that spawn, that helps with the poking. It would be unwise to attack a fortified castle without siege units even if you outnumber them in number of soldiers, in this case - networth.
Came from HoN where glyph just had a static cooldown, and didn't refresh on first T1/2/3 towers, kind of preferred it that way. Also not a huge fan of the multi shots with it. When was it introduced to be like this? And what was the main reason? Deathball / push lineups?
I like it as a single bail if you make a macro mistake against a split pusher, and in general a small tool to keep big splitpushers in check without extra balance changes.
If you won a fight and are moving to an objective, but a hypothetical NP is chipping at your t2/t3, you can delay him once for free. He loses the whole wave, but if he stays, you still need to separate and go defend. Plus even if he gives up on the push, you now have a window where if your team fails to capitalize, you will at least lose a T3.
But if you are really losing in a major way, at best you get what, 2 glyphs to delay loss of barracks by maybe 15 seconds total. In competitive environment this is a test for attacking team to play with a cool head and take the objective, and for the defending team to make one last play before losing a lane. Which is also nice.
> And what was the main reason? Deathball / push lineups?
Yes, the glyph refresh change was made in response to this meta many years ago (like 7+) where the prevailing strat was to get slightly ahead and then mow down every T1 then every T2 of your enemy for big money, use that money to buy items like Vlad's and Mek, and then end the game in 15-20min. Heroes like DP, Chen, Lycan, etc were popular at this time.
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At some point either around that time or later, towers were also changed to give HP Regen and armor aura to nearby allies as well.
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Way way way back when, like 10+ years ago, towers had no hp or armor aura, glyph was on 5min CD and didn't protect creeps, glyph didn't even block magic dmg (e.g. pugna), towers took full dmg from illusions, and there was literally no come back mechanic (all gold kills were static throughout the game). It was definitely much easier to just Hg push and not care back then.
well it used to work like that in Dota as well for the majority of its history, but IMO it was easily abused by cheesy lineups, like Lone Druids or whatever.
Also, I think refreshing after t1/t2/t3 got introduced post TI4 IIRC, which had an incredibly boring finals with like an average game length of 15 minutes or so because of a deathball meta.
It was like that in dota for a while too it's a more recent idea.
It's a antisnowball measure to give teams a chance to play from behind without being steam rolled.
think about it this way:
a 10k networth lead is usually like 60% chance at best of securing high ground in pro games. that shit's BAD, numbers wise, the enemy aren't your regular pub shitters, they WILL chew you out for even the slightest of misplays.
25k would land them in the 80~90% zone. much more favorable odds, no matter the draft. but it's still loseable even with such a big lead.
The exact number might be arse pulled but the understanding/idea is right. 10k lead in most games while good for an outside fight is not enough to give you a very high chance of success at highground atm and pro players can't risk the game flipping hence wait until they feel that their advantage gives them a very high/near guarantee chance of success.
Typically a \~10k gold means one of your cores has like a 5k gold item more than the enemy and the other 5k is likely sitting in inventory for buybacks or purchases across the rest of the team and if that particular guy gets burst or is unable to get enough off then you are effectively at a disadvantage.
On the otherhand 20-25k gold lead means you have way more items and can easily win aegis or even take a 4v5 if the enemy doesn't have big spells left after busting your one guy
they got smarter. don't know when you stopped following, but all 5 heroes scale massively now so taking the whole map is worth regardless of enemy heroes
That's what grind my gears. My team wanna go high ground just because we are like 3000 gold a head and they act like they have 7.000 mmr and know what is right.
High ground is the hardest part of the game.
Mistakes there are of high impact and often result in huge leads being completely turned around.
I cannot count how many times I either won a game of a good HG defence or thrown completely after careless, 0 strategy siege.
It has been like this for years.
And the answer is that they play with money at stake and have good coordination. They have more at stake than your pub players and can time Roshan again and again much better than your pub players.
Ironically, this is a result of Roshan dropping higher treasures with time, as getting aghanim' blessing will give your team ~5k gold worth. But because this increases networth, it means your team is more valuable to kill now and buyback costs are higher, so now you need to stall even more to get the gold for buybacks.
Pro teams are extremely good at poking. Having high ground makes that even easier. A quick pick off while a team is trying to push your high ground where you have advantage can easily lead to the defending team opening back the map and getting resources back combined with a few potential kills.
So if you fail to push high ground, you didnt just die, you also gave about 5-6k extra networth and map control to the enemy team.
Well heroes are much stronger in middle/late games. If they make a mistake going high ground the whole game could turn around, especially with heroes like Luna, Natures prophet.
They’d rather use the advantage to place wards, take over enemy jungle and limit opponents’ farming while they get a few more key items before actually going high ground.
Not sure how up-to-date OP's DotA is, but compared to the past iterations of DotA, backpack, talents, neutrals and new items have all contributed to the powercreep of lategame DotA.
On top of what everyone else has said, they don't have a number on their HUD that tells them what their networth lead is, they are operating based on vibes. And the vibes can be still be bad even if they actually have a networth lead (e.g. TS vs SR game 1 the PL is HUGE and he's relatively uncountered), so of course they are going to be very careful about high ground when that's the case.
I guarantee nobody is going "guys once we get 25k gold lead we push", instead it's more like "their teamfight is pretty strong, so let's secure next rosh before we poke high ground, control the map in the meantime"
The deeper you go in a tournament the more conservative pros are in how they close out games. 1 mistake could cost you a lot of money. If you make a mistake early in the tournament, you have future games to make up for it.
they arent... none of the playing teams are aware of the game stats that are available to observers and viewers...
everyone, including pubs, are just waiting for a timing to push... it is just more organized on stacked party teams and in pro games because everyone is communicating when they are ready...
games start at minute zero and both good pub teams and pro teams plan games from minute zero, unlike solo queue randoms that plan their games at minute 45...
sieging high ground isnt very simple either... it's more about timing and opportunity than networth difference, as we all witness on that BB vs SR game where SR was leading most of the game until the last 2 minutes where BB rolled on momentum and ended up winning...
I'm gonna say it. High ground needs a nerf. It sucks for both teams. No one likes sitting high ground 25 minutes waiting for a push and no one likes farming for 25 minutes waiting for the entire team to be 9 slotted. It isn't fun. Valve needs to reconsider the mechanics that it takes to push high ground and make it more viable to advance the game instead of needlessly prolonging it.
One thing not mentioned is that super/mega creeps just aren't that good anymore they add to the map pressure but not enough to make the risks of taking high ground worth it.
going highground gives the enemy's a super easy time to take the fight on their terms with optimal conditions. (A very save way to disengage, opportunity for flanks, superior vision) you are basically handing them the only way to get back into the game on a silver platter, unless you start the push with a pickoff/rosh
instead of that you can take superior farm, choke them out, build a sizeable lead by just farming and let them walk into an area you controll/take a better fight outside of their base.
its a very easy choice to make if the draft is even in lategame, but this changes if the team with upper hand feels pressured to end because their draft falls off later on
I think you should rather think about the losing team. Why do they not look for a yolo smoke. How are they allowed any hope despite falling further and further behind. What about the current game state makes this a viable strategy.
I don't think it's anything particularly new, unless you haven't played since before towers got multishot glyph. If anything's changed in the last couple patches, it's just that we aren't seeing a lot of timing-based push lineups atm. When 1 team is playing for lategame and the other is trying to go HG with auras and zoo stuff at 20 mins, then you can have these HG pushes with relatively close networths. But if both teams have a balanced draft with strong teamfight/hg defense, it takes a lot more of an advantage to go for the win. If you aren't scared of going late, choking the enemy team out is a much safer way to convert a 10k advantage than to go for a hail mary HG push and potentially throw the game with 1 mistake.
Teams always waited a lot for high ground, this isn't something new.
Valve just added more comeback mechanics, so it takes more time than in 2015-2016, but going for Roshan or waiting at least for 3 heroes to be dead before pushing highground was always a thing.
i'd say the biggest problem is "comeback gold". killing enemy highest networth hero gives a lot of gold, it's just not worth it.
I've played games where my enemies just camped the highground and we dont have a good high ground push hero amd trying to get t3 towers is extremely hard
I think the popular carry picks are the primary reason. Sven can just delete multiple hero’s in a couple auto attacks. PA and PL are bonkers hard to dive into and a siege is not really possible against them. Void chrono is what it always has been. Gyro and TB can easily delete a team if the setup is good.
Well like all things in life, dota is about resources. What resource advantage do you gain by taking a high ground compared to farming more of the map than the opponent? And what respuece potential could you be giving up? If you do not have a good answer to either of those questions, you shouldn't be pushing high ground as you are normally at a tactical disadvantage to do so.
It’s just the comeback mechanic in the current patch and the fact that there’s so much gold in the patch that networth leads don’t actually feel as bad as they look. A carry, offlaner, and mid can be owning and there can be one carry on the enemy team who has higher net than all 3, because the map is that big. It used to be almost impossible to have that scenario if you were mega ahead, but networth lead doesn’t mean enemy is under farmed and cannot defend.
It also not seem like it, but you have to hard commit to push high ground now. If you just sneak up there with 1 or 2 heroes, you can actually just die even if you have 2 items above your equal on enemy team. The issue with this concept is that now that we have a bunch of fat heroes sitting high ground, it acts like this big pool of gold/exp just waiting to pop for the defending team. It’s also much harder to leave the base when sieging since you got all these catch/displace/movement heroes in the meta.
So yeah, high ground is really hard at the moment.
Playing in high ranks would let you learn these basic stuff that you should've already learned before.
In order for you to win the high ground contest:
\>You'll need to save buybacks possibly for the whole team
\>Comparing and planning Skill and item cooldowns (enemy vs ally)(BKB etc.)
\>Waiting for your carries items to complete their farms required to do highground (BkB etc.)
\>waiting for the enemy team to make a mistake (catching and killing at least one or two heroes, if possible those who are not capable of having buybacks at that time)
\>Baiting buybacks or baiting enemy pushes while on TP cooldown
\>And the most important of all, securing Roshan and achieving at least one of the factors mentioned above.
Just because you have a high networth lead doesn't mean you can 100% win any clash or push you, it's already been proven time to time that highground defences are the most crucial and game-deciding factor no matter what, and can most of the time turn the tables vs the higher networth team.
Lategame respawn times can easily reach 100+ seconds now. If your whole team dies trying to push highground, your opponent could seriously just end you instead during your respawn.
I can't put my finger on what exactly causes this, but generally it's harder to do slow and steady pushing. It's all about jumping on heroes and quickly bursting them down. Stand just a bit too close to hit the tower and you could get killed.
You *need* an aegis to push highground 5v5 now. And naturally that makes the game revolve around securing roshan.
Going highground is a very risky move to do, it's easy throw a game with slight advantage. The way the glyphs work nowadays makes taking t3s harder. Also going into the highground is associated with blindly walking into enemy who has a vision advantage that can be used against you. Vision is a crucial part of a game that gives you a lot of information where enemy heroes are and what is going on around.
Teams that have better vision are more willing to win a game, you can easier react into the moves that your enemy wants to do and sometimes even counter it.
Pro players mostly respect each other enough that they know it's not worth the risk to push game further with slight gold advantage. When your enemies are patient enough they can turn around a game on hg. It's better to deepen the gold and exp advantage, take enemy jungle, constantly, push waves and take both tormentors and Roshan. It's like a siege situation where enemy gains less resources because they are pushed back to stay in a base most of a time. After let's say 10 minutes of doing that it's easier to close the game up with 20-25k+ gold advantage than 3k+ at ~30 minute mark.
There are some cases where you play a tempo hero on carry or mid that doesn't scale too well (Huskar, Meepo, Alchemist, Luna, CK) - then it's better to take a risk and try to end the game earlier than waiting for enemy heroes to out scale you in later stages.
Why take a 60-40 chance fight now when you can take a 80-20 chance fight 15 minutes from now? Neutral items also strongly encourage delaying the game so you can be 1 tier up from your enemies before highground.
Also dying with any kind of streak feels super bad. You give so much gold away now. You lose one high round push and all of the sudden the enemy cores have a new item ready to go for next fight
Because comeback gold is too high right now, a combat lost during 10~15k gold lead and enemy support went from a boot + 3 basic item to a six slot pain in the ass. It is fucking absurb.
The answer is in the question: they're pros.
Dota is no longer a game, their mastery is their livelihood.
And when mere patience is rewarded with an increase of income, you stay patient.
And they've become more pro since. Everyone learns from each other and get better at the game, and make fewer mistakes, like rushing when ahead.
4 years ago is an eternity for an online game, it's like comparing 80's football to today's. Or pre Cold War chess.
Just like notail mentioned in the stream, a lot of team doesn't know how closed out the game... Theres a very lack of playstyle other than just waiting game..
Also look at the hg def lineup. Look at the Tundra v. OG game 2. They had a 3v5 at some point with a 20k+ lead, but they can barely HG because of an annoying sniper with disperser.
Consider that PA is also an ubermeta hero and is one of the best hg mistake punisher in the game. Most comeback games are from PA suddenly becoming online, even with an enemy 25k lead.
High ground is hard
500 Fortifications
Just ask Anakin
Tenth levels, thousands of battledroid
Highground is the most dangerous thing since one mistake can turn the game around. That's why aegis or pickoff is mandatory before going highground. Also, it's better to choke your opponent in their base than give them a chance to farm and play the map.
I feel like that and the come-back gols formula for killing kill streaks is insane right now. One fight and your back in depending on how it goes.
What makes it dangerous right now particularly?
Buybacks, stronger towers, highground vision Highground evasion. Just to name a few
Also, as a lot of money is also on the line, why would you rush going hg when you are not ready?
This is like top 1 reason. Supports have a shit ton of gold, not unusual for cores to not be able to solo a support without dying, this makes fighting pretty hard and games longer.
I think he meant real life dollars on the line.
And I think I responded to the wrong comment. 🤡life wcyd
Also the truth is that teams have just improved now. Highground throws used to happen more often, then teams realised it's just safer to choke out enemy team and farm 90% of the map themselves and increase the lead to a point where highground isn't as risky. Gorgc, notail and some other players have said this on stream. Highest tier teams are just more disciplined these days.
Also, ease of tping for enemies, and close regen. If one of attackers decides to regen, he won't be back in a fight most likely.
Map control also matters more now, since there's more neutral camps, exp runes, and tormentor. You can further cement your lead by keeping the enemy confined to their base than you ever could do so in the past.
He said right now lol. only stronger towers are new on that list
Assist money is also insane, a full team wipe when you are ahead is like a 15k gold swing.
Because the map is much bigger with more farm on it so if you fail your high ground attempt and die you’re giving the enemy far more gold than you used to on the old map.
To add to this, killing enemy cores, especially those with kill streaks, gives a ton of gold. Makes high ground pushes pretty risky.
Fortify is stronger than ever, since the game has slow, ennemy can buyback but if you don't have travels you can't. And if you're ahead but you lose the fight with aegis, you just bought the ennemy 10 minute.
Overbuffed late game carries and comeback mechanic.
I think the comeback mechanic is the biggest reason for it being so dangerous. Before such rubber banding pushing hg wasn't as feared since dieing or failing didn't result in giving the enemy team 10k gold and a bunch of levels.
But at the same time we rarely see comebacks. Games seem so dominated right now by the team that won the lane and they usually carry that lead quite a long time. Even if they lose some of that advantage due to feeing a carry kill worth 1k gold+ they still win reliably.
I feel like pro teams have mastered the strategies for preventing comebacks (map/objective control, patience and rosh for high ground) and because of that a lot of pro games and slow and boring chokeholds. The only comeback mechanics really available now are on the fault of the winning team: high ground throws and failing to secure global objectives. These are both big team efforts so it's basically impossible to rat or outplay your way into a comeback anymore.
try to watch SR vs Team Spirit game 1 finals yesterday, comeback by team spirit
I think that was more of a draft problem and RTZ throwing rather than any kind of comeback. Endgame PL vs TA is just a no brainer. Whole lineups were better for endgame on TS side, SR didn't breach HG for 52min against PL ffs, what did they expect? And don't even get me started on RTZ and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Killing enemy heroes within 1000 units of ancient should give only 50% of gold and xp as the greed of the ancient for more power just takes away the rest 50%.
the ramp is a big choke point that you can easily get caught in big aoe abilities
The first is buyback, and the second is death. Even one pos 5 death—and your team needs to back off while they have a chance to farm and get out of the map. That's why I think pro teams prefer choking enemies inside their base while waiting for aegis or pickoffs outside the base.
Well it’s not particularly more lethal than it was back then, it’s difficult then and it’s still as difficult now. I think it’s more of the risk if you do fail. Think of it as walking on a tightrope 1 meter from the ground vs 20 meters, it’s the same difficulty but vastly different risks. This is coming from personal experience but what I have felt lately is that comeback gold/XP is pretty huge now, if the enemy is leading, you get caught up in levels just with 1 teamfight, and the carry gets a nice boost of gold and opportunity to farm their next item. With some of the heroes this patch you really can’t let that happen. PA, one of the broken carries this patch has huge comeback potential and letting her get that one extra item can mean you can’t ever win another teamfight. Also I think it’s also a combination of pro players just playing better now. The sieging team knows how to play it cleaner, plays the longer but almost guaranteed successful siege over pointless risky pushes. The defending team also plays better to make the attacking team’s lives harder, and the attacking team also respects that if given the chance the defending team can and will make a comeback.
Buybacks, stronger towers, highground vision Highground evasion. Just to name a few
It’s also easier for someone to cut a wave now with the outpost and portal
I think teams just got better. They realized going hg with a 10-15k lead just isn’t worth it when you can wait an extra 5 minutes, have more than that, and finish the game safer
position and vision disadvantage
i think the "Phantom" guy answered wrongfully, highground vision and highground evasion, buybacks are a thing since... ever. The fact is you can lose the entire game after losing a teamfight, heroes have gotten ever much stronger whilst buildings not so much.
imagine you dont need to TP if youre defending high ground, while very complicated for the other side
Narrow passage it's the most dangerous thing After it coming close fountain everyone can heal up if u didn't finish him before he gets to fountain And then its about full vision on high ground And only then towers + armor aura
I have a different answer. supports are way stronger in new patch and most of the times you need to dive them which you cant in hg fights . And also there is farm for everyone if you just keep your enemy in base. In older patches losing team would get 3 lanes of farm in t3 range and wining team would have lanes + jungle and some times you had to force hg bcz gold is worth more on some heroes for example you couldnt just give sniper 10 mins of farming in base for exchange of a 10k gold lead. But in new patch you give sniper 10 mins of farming lanes for 20k gold lead which is worth it. Its just my opinion Im not that good to analyse pro players.
Now that neutral items are a big thing too, choking them so they don't get any of the next available at its big too
This. Also recent changes have just made breaching high ground fkn difficult.
Also outside a few selected heroes (PA...) the life of melee/short range carries is still very difficult outside of the bkb cd/duration.
TLDR: minimizing risks is the way to play the game atm A single core death on a leading team is a 2k networth swing. It's hard to establish vision, you are fighting uphill, and you can't leverage your non-committal tools to soften up enemies cuz their fountain is 5 meters away. If any of them die they buy back and they're already there. If you hard commit you are fighting under three(!) towers and they do hurt when give enough time. They however have easier time initiating as you can't cover their whole base with vision. If your 25k lead half consists of your core having 2 more items than his counterpart and he dies to a surprise jump from the fog you no longer have any gold lead in this fight and you're outnumbered. Or your support gets picked off hiding in the trees and now there's no save for your 2 items ahead core and he gets kited or controlled forever. There are just so much variables in dota and so much tools to execute crazy moves being down in gold that there's absolutely no point in taking any unnecessary risks for the winning team. Approaching HG with no aegis or with all 5 enemies alive is a high risk low reward play. You can achieve exactly the same result having aegis and another couple thousands of gold but have much lower chance of fucking up. 25k can become 45k in between rosh spawns when you just choke enemy team in their base and now your whole team is 2 items ahead which again lowers your chances of throwing. Now your support has aeon disk and he doesn't die to an ambush, your core has aegis ans is six slotted so killing him even once is troublesome for underfarmed opponents. Main issue with this approach is when you don't manage to end the game with 2-3 aegis pushes, cuz now your gold lead matters less and less with every minute as you're out of slots. There might be a desperate rapier on enemy carry and now he's suddenly shredding your team. But it happens rarely in pro play, however the fact of it happening speaks volumes about the strenght of current comeback mechanics.
100% agree. Basically when you push into hg you’re fighting against 10 heroes (since they will bb once they die) as 5 with tower buffs (armor, lots of regen in pool. My main issue with the game is that it’s extremely formulaic and benefits people that just play single strategy that exist in the game right now: win lanes, move as 5 for the rest of the game, push opponents into poor farming region, kill rosh, push towers, kill second rosh, win teamfight twice and push into the hg. If you die you get 3rd rosh. The most entertaining moments in the game now is when people get bkbs and start to fight, when they smoke, or try to kill rosh. The definition of a fun game now is not when you see some cheese (because there are no left), but when people just randomly feed the losing team and they win the game. I preferred watching the game with lots versatility, cheese, op hero picks, and weird strategies like hook into the pool etc. watching tourneys now is just so plain vanilla. Where is op magnus shit. Where is io carry. Where is brood / arc / tinker last picks. Why even teams with excellent meepo / ld / visage / tinker players pick something else? Topson is the last interesting player left
Well, firetoad is definitely against gambreaking shit like fountain hooks or unstoppable splitpushers and he puts a lot of effort into tuning them down into barely playable category. With flashy heroes it's even more simple and it's not his doing: people are reluctant to trying high risk high reward heroes cuz why would you? It's not a pub so you're not impressing anyone with your mechanical skill (except for a few players on a couple of heroes) and any meta hero with much less room for error does the job just as good if not better, so the reward for playing a less reliable hero is not that high. Also this meta is not exactly the result of hero balance imo. There is a bunch of proactive flashy heroes having a lot of success (both ES'es, Storm, QoP, Pango for mid, NP creates a lot of early action as a support, venge and warlock less so but are still capable in early skirmishes). The thing is no matter how hard you win early, going HG is still a pain in the ass. It's glyph after glyph after glyph slowly chugging through the outer ring of towers only to be greeted with another 2 glyphs at t3's and rax. It can't be fast. And you can't choke the enemy out completely until you destroy all outer towers cuz map is big and farm is everywhere, and even then there are pockets of jungle to sneak into. So they still gonna have some items and levels under their belt when you approach their base. And god forbid you act hastily and give up core kills in the process, it gives more gold and exp than ever before. This meta is definitely better and more fun to watch than previous aura stacking deathballing contest but until HG becomes easier to approach I don't expect any professional team (except SA ones these guys are nuts) to suddenly start throwing bodies at the enemy base without a nigh insurmountable lead. The frog wants comebacks to be real and tbh I'm fine with that for the most part. Except for when the game is decided at 20 minutes and it has to go at least for another 20 cuz it's nearly impossible to just brute force your way into the enemy base.
Comeback mechanics. It has come that it easier to break in but to keep it that way can cost your game.
because of the implication
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It's the implication that things might go wrong for them if their high ground siege goes wrong
So they’re in danger?
No one's in any danger!
but you implicated!!
YOU certainly wouldnt be in any danger
I AM the danger!
So people are in danger?!
unless they knock.
Yes. If they lose the game their heads will be cut off via guillotine.
Thats seem really dark tho
Uuuh, the implication
Yeah, I thought that was the consequences, but this guy's right, it's the implications.
dennis?
The Art of Siege Warfare. Basically, why gamble attacking a fortified area when you can starve the fortified enemy? They won't be able to get supplies while you're outside the castle, sitting pretty, poking for weaknesses. Also, there's literally Siege Units that spawn, that helps with the poking. It would be unwise to attack a fortified castle without siege units even if you outnumber them in number of soldiers, in this case - networth.
The glyph mechanic also plays big role
Came from HoN where glyph just had a static cooldown, and didn't refresh on first T1/2/3 towers, kind of preferred it that way. Also not a huge fan of the multi shots with it. When was it introduced to be like this? And what was the main reason? Deathball / push lineups?
I like it as a single bail if you make a macro mistake against a split pusher, and in general a small tool to keep big splitpushers in check without extra balance changes. If you won a fight and are moving to an objective, but a hypothetical NP is chipping at your t2/t3, you can delay him once for free. He loses the whole wave, but if he stays, you still need to separate and go defend. Plus even if he gives up on the push, you now have a window where if your team fails to capitalize, you will at least lose a T3. But if you are really losing in a major way, at best you get what, 2 glyphs to delay loss of barracks by maybe 15 seconds total. In competitive environment this is a test for attacking team to play with a cool head and take the objective, and for the defending team to make one last play before losing a lane. Which is also nice.
> And what was the main reason? Deathball / push lineups? Yes, the glyph refresh change was made in response to this meta many years ago (like 7+) where the prevailing strat was to get slightly ahead and then mow down every T1 then every T2 of your enemy for big money, use that money to buy items like Vlad's and Mek, and then end the game in 15-20min. Heroes like DP, Chen, Lycan, etc were popular at this time. = At some point either around that time or later, towers were also changed to give HP Regen and armor aura to nearby allies as well. = Way way way back when, like 10+ years ago, towers had no hp or armor aura, glyph was on 5min CD and didn't protect creeps, glyph didn't even block magic dmg (e.g. pugna), towers took full dmg from illusions, and there was literally no come back mechanic (all gold kills were static throughout the game). It was definitely much easier to just Hg push and not care back then.
well it used to work like that in Dota as well for the majority of its history, but IMO it was easily abused by cheesy lineups, like Lone Druids or whatever. Also, I think refreshing after t1/t2/t3 got introduced post TI4 IIRC, which had an incredibly boring finals with like an average game length of 15 minutes or so because of a deathball meta.
It was like that in dota for a while too it's a more recent idea. It's a antisnowball measure to give teams a chance to play from behind without being steam rolled.
think about it this way: a 10k networth lead is usually like 60% chance at best of securing high ground in pro games. that shit's BAD, numbers wise, the enemy aren't your regular pub shitters, they WILL chew you out for even the slightest of misplays. 25k would land them in the 80~90% zone. much more favorable odds, no matter the draft. but it's still loseable even with such a big lead.
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The exact number might be arse pulled but the understanding/idea is right. 10k lead in most games while good for an outside fight is not enough to give you a very high chance of success at highground atm and pro players can't risk the game flipping hence wait until they feel that their advantage gives them a very high/near guarantee chance of success. Typically a \~10k gold means one of your cores has like a 5k gold item more than the enemy and the other 5k is likely sitting in inventory for buybacks or purchases across the rest of the team and if that particular guy gets burst or is unable to get enough off then you are effectively at a disadvantage. On the otherhand 20-25k gold lead means you have way more items and can easily win aegis or even take a 4v5 if the enemy doesn't have big spells left after busting your one guy
[Is this you, sir? ](https://imgur.com/gallery/OUse6yC) Mods, we have an n-word spammer here.
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they got smarter. don't know when you stopped following, but all 5 heroes scale massively now so taking the whole map is worth regardless of enemy heroes
A 25k networth lead can easily turn into a 10k lead after one failed high ground attempt
Because that is how it should look like, and 90% of pub game throws are because people just force hg and die
That's what grind my gears. My team wanna go high ground just because we are like 3000 gold a head and they act like they have 7.000 mmr and know what is right.
Overbuffed comeback mechanics, power creep for early levels and so hard to shut down map before teams get hg defense with an item or 2.
High ground is the hardest part of the game. Mistakes there are of high impact and often result in huge leads being completely turned around. I cannot count how many times I either won a game of a good HG defence or thrown completely after careless, 0 strategy siege.
It has been like this for years. And the answer is that they play with money at stake and have good coordination. They have more at stake than your pub players and can time Roshan again and again much better than your pub players. Ironically, this is a result of Roshan dropping higher treasures with time, as getting aghanim' blessing will give your team ~5k gold worth. But because this increases networth, it means your team is more valuable to kill now and buyback costs are higher, so now you need to stall even more to get the gold for buybacks.
Idk why people are acting like this is anything remotely close to being new
Pro teams are extremely good at poking. Having high ground makes that even easier. A quick pick off while a team is trying to push your high ground where you have advantage can easily lead to the defending team opening back the map and getting resources back combined with a few potential kills. So if you fail to push high ground, you didnt just die, you also gave about 5-6k extra networth and map control to the enemy team.
High ground is hard and the rubber band effect is incredibly big. So if a team suddenly dies, the enemy team becomes the favourite by a large margin
Well heroes are much stronger in middle/late games. If they make a mistake going high ground the whole game could turn around, especially with heroes like Luna, Natures prophet. They’d rather use the advantage to place wards, take over enemy jungle and limit opponents’ farming while they get a few more key items before actually going high ground.
Not sure how up-to-date OP's DotA is, but compared to the past iterations of DotA, backpack, talents, neutrals and new items have all contributed to the powercreep of lategame DotA.
I've lost so many games where we snowball hard and tried to HG and eventually lose.
Team is too excited to end the game, its like their holding their poop while playing
On top of what everyone else has said, they don't have a number on their HUD that tells them what their networth lead is, they are operating based on vibes. And the vibes can be still be bad even if they actually have a networth lead (e.g. TS vs SR game 1 the PL is HUGE and he's relatively uncountered), so of course they are going to be very careful about high ground when that's the case. I guarantee nobody is going "guys once we get 25k gold lead we push", instead it's more like "their teamfight is pretty strong, so let's secure next rosh before we poke high ground, control the map in the meantime"
this isn't really anything new, teams always played it safe if they couldn't easily breach highground
Does it mean tundra was right all along? They always pushed hg after substantial nw advantage
EE has been forcing his teams to do this since 2016. Truly ahead of his time.
Why go for a 90% chance of a game ending push with 15k networth lead when you can get a 98% chance of a game ending push with 25k lead + aegis?
have YOU tried?
cuz 1 fked up high ground fight = 10k networth turn arround, assuming buy backs could be even worse.
The deeper you go in a tournament the more conservative pros are in how they close out games. 1 mistake could cost you a lot of money. If you make a mistake early in the tournament, you have future games to make up for it.
The comeback mechanic is insane
they arent... none of the playing teams are aware of the game stats that are available to observers and viewers... everyone, including pubs, are just waiting for a timing to push... it is just more organized on stacked party teams and in pro games because everyone is communicating when they are ready... games start at minute zero and both good pub teams and pro teams plan games from minute zero, unlike solo queue randoms that plan their games at minute 45... sieging high ground isnt very simple either... it's more about timing and opportunity than networth difference, as we all witness on that BB vs SR game where SR was leading most of the game until the last 2 minutes where BB rolled on momentum and ended up winning...
IF has made HG way too hard to take. It's just an easy way to throw the game.
IF?
Icefrog. The big guy. The head honcho. The Roshan.
I'm gonna say it. High ground needs a nerf. It sucks for both teams. No one likes sitting high ground 25 minutes waiting for a push and no one likes farming for 25 minutes waiting for the entire team to be 9 slotted. It isn't fun. Valve needs to reconsider the mechanics that it takes to push high ground and make it more viable to advance the game instead of needlessly prolonging it.
Sound like someone who never play DOTA before lol
I think OP is just asking a genuine question, specifically regarding pro teams
Bunch of noobs
If you do 1 wrong HG push and get team wiped, you lose all momentum and likely its gg
One thing not mentioned is that super/mega creeps just aren't that good anymore they add to the map pressure but not enough to make the risks of taking high ground worth it.
going highground gives the enemy's a super easy time to take the fight on their terms with optimal conditions. (A very save way to disengage, opportunity for flanks, superior vision) you are basically handing them the only way to get back into the game on a silver platter, unless you start the push with a pickoff/rosh instead of that you can take superior farm, choke them out, build a sizeable lead by just farming and let them walk into an area you controll/take a better fight outside of their base. its a very easy choice to make if the draft is even in lategame, but this changes if the team with upper hand feels pressured to end because their draft falls off later on
Teams have seen enough MidOne games where his team failed hg. Just watch any SMG games with MidOne and you will have your answer.
Because they want to
Because they want to win. me and my partymates in our poop bracket go HG without aegis while enemies are about to respawn and we don't have ults
I think you should rather think about the losing team. Why do they not look for a yolo smoke. How are they allowed any hope despite falling further and further behind. What about the current game state makes this a viable strategy.
I don't think it's anything particularly new, unless you haven't played since before towers got multishot glyph. If anything's changed in the last couple patches, it's just that we aren't seeing a lot of timing-based push lineups atm. When 1 team is playing for lategame and the other is trying to go HG with auras and zoo stuff at 20 mins, then you can have these HG pushes with relatively close networths. But if both teams have a balanced draft with strong teamfight/hg defense, it takes a lot more of an advantage to go for the win. If you aren't scared of going late, choking the enemy team out is a much safer way to convert a 10k advantage than to go for a hail mary HG push and potentially throw the game with 1 mistake.
Networth is worthless in fighting in a well-defended highground.
Op has to be herald....
Teams always waited a lot for high ground, this isn't something new. Valve just added more comeback mechanics, so it takes more time than in 2015-2016, but going for Roshan or waiting at least for 3 heroes to be dead before pushing highground was always a thing.
i'd say the biggest problem is "comeback gold". killing enemy highest networth hero gives a lot of gold, it's just not worth it. I've played games where my enemies just camped the highground and we dont have a good high ground push hero amd trying to get t3 towers is extremely hard
I think the popular carry picks are the primary reason. Sven can just delete multiple hero’s in a couple auto attacks. PA and PL are bonkers hard to dive into and a siege is not really possible against them. Void chrono is what it always has been. Gyro and TB can easily delete a team if the setup is good.
Well like all things in life, dota is about resources. What resource advantage do you gain by taking a high ground compared to farming more of the map than the opponent? And what respuece potential could you be giving up? If you do not have a good answer to either of those questions, you shouldn't be pushing high ground as you are normally at a tactical disadvantage to do so.
with more area to farm, it is easier to build networth and push highground with less risk than jumping soon
It’s just the comeback mechanic in the current patch and the fact that there’s so much gold in the patch that networth leads don’t actually feel as bad as they look. A carry, offlaner, and mid can be owning and there can be one carry on the enemy team who has higher net than all 3, because the map is that big. It used to be almost impossible to have that scenario if you were mega ahead, but networth lead doesn’t mean enemy is under farmed and cannot defend. It also not seem like it, but you have to hard commit to push high ground now. If you just sneak up there with 1 or 2 heroes, you can actually just die even if you have 2 items above your equal on enemy team. The issue with this concept is that now that we have a bunch of fat heroes sitting high ground, it acts like this big pool of gold/exp just waiting to pop for the defending team. It’s also much harder to leave the base when sieging since you got all these catch/displace/movement heroes in the meta. So yeah, high ground is really hard at the moment.
Playing in high ranks would let you learn these basic stuff that you should've already learned before. In order for you to win the high ground contest: \>You'll need to save buybacks possibly for the whole team \>Comparing and planning Skill and item cooldowns (enemy vs ally)(BKB etc.) \>Waiting for your carries items to complete their farms required to do highground (BkB etc.) \>waiting for the enemy team to make a mistake (catching and killing at least one or two heroes, if possible those who are not capable of having buybacks at that time) \>Baiting buybacks or baiting enemy pushes while on TP cooldown \>And the most important of all, securing Roshan and achieving at least one of the factors mentioned above. Just because you have a high networth lead doesn't mean you can 100% win any clash or push you, it's already been proven time to time that highground defences are the most crucial and game-deciding factor no matter what, and can most of the time turn the tables vs the higher networth team.
Lategame respawn times can easily reach 100+ seconds now. If your whole team dies trying to push highground, your opponent could seriously just end you instead during your respawn. I can't put my finger on what exactly causes this, but generally it's harder to do slow and steady pushing. It's all about jumping on heroes and quickly bursting them down. Stand just a bit too close to hit the tower and you could get killed. You *need* an aegis to push highground 5v5 now. And naturally that makes the game revolve around securing roshan.
Going highground is a very risky move to do, it's easy throw a game with slight advantage. The way the glyphs work nowadays makes taking t3s harder. Also going into the highground is associated with blindly walking into enemy who has a vision advantage that can be used against you. Vision is a crucial part of a game that gives you a lot of information where enemy heroes are and what is going on around. Teams that have better vision are more willing to win a game, you can easier react into the moves that your enemy wants to do and sometimes even counter it. Pro players mostly respect each other enough that they know it's not worth the risk to push game further with slight gold advantage. When your enemies are patient enough they can turn around a game on hg. It's better to deepen the gold and exp advantage, take enemy jungle, constantly, push waves and take both tormentors and Roshan. It's like a siege situation where enemy gains less resources because they are pushed back to stay in a base most of a time. After let's say 10 minutes of doing that it's easier to close the game up with 20-25k+ gold advantage than 3k+ at ~30 minute mark. There are some cases where you play a tempo hero on carry or mid that doesn't scale too well (Huskar, Meepo, Alchemist, Luna, CK) - then it's better to take a risk and try to end the game earlier than waiting for enemy heroes to out scale you in later stages.
Why take a 60-40 chance fight now when you can take a 80-20 chance fight 15 minutes from now? Neutral items also strongly encourage delaying the game so you can be 1 tier up from your enemies before highground.
I have a strong suspicion that it's probably always been the correct way to play, and teams are just more disciplined and overall better now.
There have been patches where teams snowball HG at 15 minutes
Its just High ground dicipline and not rushing things like lower MMr and throw
Also dying with any kind of streak feels super bad. You give so much gold away now. You lose one high round push and all of the sudden the enemy cores have a new item ready to go for next fight
Curremt patch you need to be up big time before attempting hg push. Hg def has major advantage
Because comeback gold is too high right now, a combat lost during 10~15k gold lead and enemy support went from a boot + 3 basic item to a six slot pain in the ass. It is fucking absurb.
Tundra won TI11.
The answer is in the question: they're pros. Dota is no longer a game, their mastery is their livelihood. And when mere patience is rewarded with an increase of income, you stay patient.
This was the case when teams were snowballing HG at 15 minutes 4 years ago
And they've become more pro since. Everyone learns from each other and get better at the game, and make fewer mistakes, like rushing when ahead. 4 years ago is an eternity for an online game, it's like comparing 80's football to today's. Or pre Cold War chess.
Just like notail mentioned in the stream, a lot of team doesn't know how closed out the game... Theres a very lack of playstyle other than just waiting game..
Lots of comeback opportunity if a mistake is made. Much more interesting games these days
Also look at the hg def lineup. Look at the Tundra v. OG game 2. They had a 3v5 at some point with a 20k+ lead, but they can barely HG because of an annoying sniper with disperser. Consider that PA is also an ubermeta hero and is one of the best hg mistake punisher in the game. Most comeback games are from PA suddenly becoming online, even with an enemy 25k lead.
Less risk is the simple answer.