TNC pro team (an all Filipino DotA team) just recently played in the PGL Bucharest major, one of the big DotA tournaments happening right now. Unfortuantely, They were eliminated by VG.J thunder (a chinese team whose part owner is the nba player Jeremy Lin.) in a best of 3 match with VG.J thunder winning 2 games to 1. Many Filipino fans were saddened by the teams early exit from the playoffs.
I am watching their games this past month and noticed some things and opportunities that the team has and today I will do a breakdown of these things.
Disclaimer: This are all self studied information with a little help from the internet. This may not be 100% correct. Hopefully if by any chance that TNC read this that it can help them in their future matches.
Before I discuss what I think are the opportunities for TNC, Let me tackle on their strengths. TNC excels very much on their early game prowess with their 2 support (tims and kuku) roaming around the map and ganking or ambushing other players to gain extra gold for their cores. they thrive on this strategy which gives space for their cores to farm and obtain needed items to win the game.
TNC also has a very good team fight coordination. They time their abilities and spells properly which leaves the other teams devasted and heavily damaged
Also recently they improved their mid-clash decision making. they now acquired the instinct on when to back out of a fight or when to go all out.
Let's get down to business. As much as TNC has their strong points there are also things that needs to be worked out.
TNC's strength is also their weakness. TNC's game play is to disrupt the enemy team's core heroes early in the game to give space to their own core heroes. If the same is done to them and the enemy is successful, TNC's chances of winning goes down by a large margin. Their game style is highly dependent on their cores that if their cores don't have enough farm, the team just crumbles down.
This is a picture of Raven's networth stats per minutes basis on the 1st game(above, won game) and 3rd game (below, lost game) of their series between VG.J thunder.
notice how Raven's networth scale when they are winning and they are losing? on the losing part his networth has not scaled a lot compared to that when they are winning. what does this imply? Once TNC's early game is disastrous or not good, Their cores are having a hard time getting back to the game. If only they could get a little help from their other members which leads us to our 2nd point
Offlane issue. many has been criticizing Sam.h as an incompetent offlaner for the team which I find ridiculous. Sam.h is the perfect offlane for their strategy. But Sam.H needs to step up his game. In the event that your cores are being harassed and your supports are having a hard time helping your cores, i believe that it is the offlaner's job to take over the game and create space for them. Sam.H has an issue with this mainly because his gameplay is more of a utility/initiator offlane and not a fighting/damaging offlane. It's like playing with 3 supports and 2 cores which is not good all the time. I watched Sam.H played some core offlane heroes like axe, sand king, and the likes and so far I haven't seen TNC lose a game when sam.H plays that way. Maybe he is not just comfortable with that hero. who knows?
One-dimensional strategy. As what i have said earlier. TNC is heavily reliant on their early game ganking strategy. The problem is when it fails, They have little to none Plan B or C. Yes, they say "do what u do best" or "why fix it when it is not broken" but when you do it repetitively then its easy for other teams to read what you want to do. That maybe the reason why TNC is having problems against teams in the SEA region. they have a low winning rate against mineski, which is their SEA rival. in fact out of 11 best of three games that they played since the start of 2018 where they won game 1, TNC lost 5 game 2s of that series. meaning that if TNC won game 1 in a best of three series, they have a 45% chance to lose the next game . which is quite high considering that the team just got a win. Adding additional plays to TNC's playbook would be a great help to them
And there goes my insights. Sorry if it took time for me to blog again since I have been busy the past weeks. Again this are only all my takes. if you have your own opinions feel free to drop it down and let's have a healthy discussion
Also if u want me to cover something about gaming related things just comment down and I will do my best to cater your requests.
I am also planning to stream in the near future so do not forget to follow, upvote and resteem . It will be a BIG help for me to fund my streaming gear. Thanks and Happy reading!!
