A lot can be said about a Dota 2 team based on how they distribute their farm. Here, we take a deep dive and look at that data for the top 8 teams at TI12.
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The beauty of Dota 2 is that each meta brings with it a different way to play the game, and not every team thinks of it in the same way. Teams tend to have their own unique playstyles, which leads to different hero choices and strategies.
It is a similar case with The International 2023 (TI12). The top 8 teams have been finalized, and when their farm distribution is analyzed on the basis of gold per minute (GPM) and last hits, it tells a very interesting story about every team. The farm distribution is shown below. The reason GPM as well as last hits are taken into account is that there is a distinction. The last hits only take into consideration the farm allotment that a player is given, whereas GPM also considers things like kills and assists and Hand of Midas purchases. In most cases, the trends are similar for both tables. All the data has been obtained from datDota.
Right off the bat, the first observation is that the offlane has more farm priority than the mid lane. This was the case for Tundra Esports last year at TI11, but that was a specific to them. This year, that seems to be a more common trend, although it isn’t the case for all of the top 8 teams. The meta is such that the mid lane has more play making heroes like Earth Spirit and Quas Wex Invoker, whereas the offlane has secondary carries like Bristleback, Weaver and Wraith King. The games tend to go long on Dota 2 patch 7.34d, and as the timer ticks on, the offlaners end up accruing more gold with their farming abilities. Here’s a look at the top 10 most played heroes by the offlaners of the remaining (top 8) teams at TI10. The only ‘traditional’ offlaners in there are Brewmaster, Centaur and Tidehunter; maybe add Primal Beast to that mix as well. But most of the offlane hero pool can farm quite well – especially Spirit Breaker and Dazzle, who can even be seen topping the net worth charts.
(taken from datDota)
That is the similarity between the top 8 teams. But what about the differences? Let’s start with one of the favorites at TI12 – Team Spirit. They have the highest farm priority for their offlaner of all eight teams, which isn’t a surprise as Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov is a beast when it comes to farming. That takes away farm from the mid and the position 4 heroes, which is evident as Miroslaw “Mira” Kalpakov has the lowest farm amongst soft supports. It isn’t just Collapse that takes his farm, it is also Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov, who often plays Enchantress as the safe lane support and eventually transitions into a core. In this team, it is Denis “Larl” Sigitov and Mira who sacrifice their farm. But hey, it seems to work well for them!
Azure Ray are the exact opposite of that! Xu “fy” Linsen is the soft support with the highest farm priority amongst position 4 supports from the top 8 teams. In his case, he is pretty much flirting with the line of soft support and soft core, but it’s all okay if that helps fy God to make plays around the map. The sacrificial players in this case, are the offlaner Shenyi “Chalice” Yang and hard support Jiang “天命” An, who have the lowest farm priority in their positions. It kind of reflects in their playstyle as well, as Azure Ray have lost both games with Chalice on Bristleback, but have secured wins on less farm dependent offlaners like Dark Seer and Phoenix.
nouns are a curious case, where a huge chunk of the farm priority is directed towards Hector “K1” Rodriguez. We saw this in their 2-0 win against TSM, where K1 farmed for the majority of the games with Naga Siren and Phantom Lancer. His Phantom Lancer in game 2 was so engrossed in farming, that he had a score of 0/3/0 until the 46th minute! But in the end, he did lead nouns to victory. This can work when you have a very efficient farmer like K1 who can put it to good use, but the downside is, if he gets shut down like he did in their 0-2 loss to Azure Ray, the team doesn’t have too many answers to the situation. The sacrificial player in this case is their mid player, Nico “Gunnar” Lopez, who is excellent on tempo controlling heroes like Earth Spirit and Ogre Magi.
Gaimin Gladiators have the most even farm distribution across all three of their cores, and this is something they have done throughout the season. It is one of the things that makes it difficult to play against them, because even if one of the cores is shut down, the other two can step up to pick up the slack.
Although the games are a bit long, the meta around Dota 2 patch 7.34d is a fascinating one as it makes for varied strategies and isn’t one where teams traverse the same line of thought to see who can do it better. It will be fascinating to see if the top 8 teams have come up with even more unique strategies in the last break at TI12 when the finals weekend begins on the 27th of October.
