The TI13 playoff games tell a story of whether the side or the choice of the first pick has the most impact on professional games.
The International 2024 (TI13) saw 123 games played throughout the duration of the tournament. Of those, 72 games were from the group stage and seeding deciders, and 51 games were played as a part of the playoffs.
Long tournaments like The International often leave behind a trail of clues about the Dota 2 meta. In the same way, TI13 revealed of how professional teams view Dota 2 patch 7.37c. We already looked at the team and hero statistics for the TI13 group stage, the farm distribution of the top 8 teams as well as what the TI13 post event meta analysis revealed. But there are few things that slip through the cracks when looking at the game in general, and one of them is how the toss or the upper bracket advantage impacts professional Dota 2 games.
When a team wins the toss, it can either chose between Radiant or Dire, or they get to chose whether they want first pick or second pick. Whichever one they don’t choose, the opponents get to choose. Here is how the selection process happened at The International 2024.
Best of Three
Coin Toss.
- First Map: Coin Toss Winner chooses pick or side.
- Second Map: Coin Toss Loser chooses pick or side.
- Third Map (If Applicable): New Coin Toss. New Coin Toss Winner chooses pick or side.
Best of Five
- First Map: Upper Bracket Winner chooses pick or side.
- Second Map: Lower Bracket Winner chooses pick or side.
- Third Map: Upper Bracket Winner chooses pick or side.
- Fourth Map (If Applicable): Lower Bracket Winner chooses pick or side.
- Fifth Map (If Applicable): Coin Toss. Coin Toss Winner chooses pick or side.
Now, how does this impact the results? This can be determined by looking at the win rates for a side and a choice of pick. The data below shows the win rates for Radiant and first pick for the 51 playoff games from TI13, with data further parsed for the 22 games in the Royal Arena for the final three days of the event.
Just at first glance, a staggering difference can be seen! For all the playoff games, first pick had a massive advantage over second pick with a 58.8% win rate, which only increased to 63.6% for the arena games. What could possibly be the reason for this?
Now, the first thing that may strike the mind is that Dire is better than Radiant. That is not really the case. When a team chooses first pick, the opponent team more often than not chooses Radiant. So Radiant is more often than not stuck win second pick. According to datDota, from the 51 playoff games, Radiant had first pick in only 13 of the games, which is 33.33% of the games, meaning Dire had the first pick advantage in 66.67% of the playoff games. This was skewed even further in the arena games, with Radiant having first pick in only 3 of the 22 games (13.63%), which explains the further titling of the data away from Radiant in the arena games.
First Pick Advantage
But why is first pick so strong in the professional meta? For that, we will have to take a look at the ban-pick order in the Captains Mode of Dota 2.
The last update that was made to the ban-pick order in Captains Mode games was in Dota 2 patch 7.34, which was the patch on TI12 was played. For the first time, there is an uneven number of bans introduced for the two sides with the team with first pick getting three bans in the first phase while the team with second pick getting four bans. This is balanced in the second ban phase, where first pick gets two bans and second pick only has one.
(taken from Liquipedia Dota 2)
The image below provides a better visual idea of the bans and picks for the three phases. Let’s see what could make first pick so strong. Green represents first pick and Red represents second pick. Going ahead, that is how the teams will be addressed.
First Phase
The first phase bans typically focus on the strongest heroes of the meta. Seven of the strongest heroes of the game get banned.
The first big boost for the Green team is the actual first pick of the game. They get to choose the strongest of the remaining heroes, which often dictates the rest of the draft. The Red team usually ends up playing catchup.
Second Phase
In the second phase, Green gets two bans. At this time, both teams know each other’s first hero and the Green team gets to protect their pick with two bans, while the Red team only gets to protect their pick with one ban.
Now here’s what happens in the second pick phase – the Green team does not want its mid hero to get countered right away. Mid is a unique lane because the counters are a lot more black and white compared to the side lanes, owing to the fact that it is a 1v1 lane. So the Green team saves their mid pick till the last pick in second phase, which professional players will refer to as 18, based on the order in the draft. In all three games of the TI13 grand final between Team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators, the Green team picked their mid hero at 18. This is a very common trend, as you get to protect your mid hero with two bans right away.
Third Phase
The third phase for the Green team will always be protecting their mid hero. Why? Because the Red team will not pick their mid hero till the third phase. In all three games of the TI13 grand final, the Red team picked their mid hero at 24. So the Green team gets to narrow the field further, knowing who their mid hero would not like to face.
Now the Green team gets to pick at 23, but that pick is rarely from the same position that the Red team has at 24. So let’s say the Green team is picking a carry at 23, they know the two other heroes the carry will have to go up against. There’s no fear of 24 countering 23; at least not in the laning stage.
In the TI13 grand final, Team Liquid got first pick in two of the three games (Game 1 and Game 3) because of the upper bracket advantage. In Game 2, Team Liquid pulled off a great strategy to counter Gaimin Gladiators when they had first pick. Team Liquid left Naga Siren in the hero pool, knowing that it was not really a hero Gaimin Gladiators played (they had played it once before the grand final). Gaimin Gladiators were forced to pick Naga Siren, knowing that if they didn’t, Team Liquid would get their hands on it. Something to this effect was mentioned by Clinton “Fear” Loomis on the panel – leaving a one of the stronger heroes, which was banned in the first phase in most of the games, in the pool and forcing the opponents hand to pick either the hero they originally wanted, or the one that was surprisingly left unbanned. For reference, Naga Siren was banned in the first phase of 48 of the 51 playoff games (94.12%) at TI13. So having it available caught Gaimin Gladiators by a bit of surprise, potentially derailing the plan they had for their draft.
A part of this analysis is speculation, because each team looks at drafting differently. Players and coaches spend hours working on drafts. But through the thick of it, a pattern is observed, which possibly hints at why first pick, or the Green team, typically ends up having an advantage. It is clear that second pick, or the Red team, needs a buff of some sorts, which could be something as small as switching 17 and 18 or reducing a ban in the third phase. Considering it has been a while since the ban-pick order in Captains Mode was changed, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see something new in that department when Dota 2 patch 7.38 is eventually released. But till then, first pick will continue to be popular and dominant, at least when teams of similar skill are going up against each other.
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