Dota > poolside barbecue party in Adventure Log [01]

Earlier today, I was supposed to attend my cousin’s poolside party at some resort. Last night, I had trouble deciding whether I should go or not. Ended up sleeping at 5 AM, so I didn’t go.

I thought about spending my Saturday at the internet cafe playing Dota, and that’s what I did. I thought Luther wouldn’t be around because he did say he had to hunt for an apartment, but there he was. We didn’t get to join parties at all because someone’s always in a match when the other is free. And anyway, he’s turning into a toxic player. I feel some sort of bias from him, but I might be imagining it. So it’s all good.

My in-game list of friends is deserted when I logged in. After a while, Allen logged on and we partied up. I was having second guesses partying up with Allen because I wanted to try out new things by myself, and couldn’t afford to babysit him. He proved me wrong. He could take care of himself, although he still makes mistakes from time to time. He bought Dagons for three matches straight, and I joked to him about it.

Best part about playing with Allen is that we can laugh at stuff, and he actually enjoys the game. Oh, Allen is a guy I met through one of my bot matches. Added him up, and now we play together.

I was looking forward to playing with Sir Satan (lol yes), another guy I met through matches. He’s ridiculously funny and keeps making jokes about offerings for Satan in capslock. He played support for me when I was Huskar, and he was just terrific. I want to play support for him to sometime to return the favor.

In one of our matches, we had an incredibly vocal teammate who kept calling our teammates noob in capslock. It was a Pudge. Pudge was kind of good, actually. But he kept calling our Lina and Drow (both are my friends) noob and it put Drow in a bad mood. I was getting annoyed because the behavior was ruining people’s game, so I retorted back with ‘don’t be like that because you’re not navi’. Na’Vi is one of the most famous Dota pro teams out there. I am not implying that you can flame when you’re pro, either, haha, but you get the point.

For some stupid reason, the Pudge had not called me out (I was Earthshaker). It actually made me feel good because he was not flaming me. That means he has not seen a bad play from me. Childish, yes. And I will take it as a compliment.

While I was roaming around, I found our Drow solo roshing. I knew she could do it by herself, but I wanted to show that I cared even though I don’t have much to offer. So I kept stunning Rosh whenever my totem was off cooldown. And when Roshan’s HP was quite low, I started getting out of the pit to continue roaming. And then Drow says that the Aegis was for me. I was really embarrassed when I picked it up.

Whether she did it out of generosity or not, I think it was a wise decision. I was Earthshaker who had to blink in the middle of the fight and deal damage. I didn’t have a Force Staff to escape with, nor do we communicate good enough for a well-timed follow up. So when a team fight happened, the Aegis really made a difference for me.

After that match, we queued up again. For some reason, Allen declined the match when the notification popped up, and he ended up in Low Priority.

Ah, low prio. How I’ve missed you. I once had to queue in low prio for 11 games straight. That’s kind of a big deal for me since I never really do normal matches. I’m not confident enough to test my mettle against other humans.

But when you get low prio games, you can’t get out unless you do a specified number of All Random normal matches. When you play ARNM, it’s usually guaranteed that your opponents are in low prio as well. People in ARNM aren’t as tryhard and it’s usually chaotic especially when you get a Hero you don’t really play.

Low prio showed me that normal matches are indeed a lot more fun that bot matches. Not to mention that we get to fight all kinds of heroes and weird combos and etc. So when Allen got thrown in low prio, I was kind of glad. I wanted to play in low prio again.

While waiting for which hero we will get, I told myself that whoever I will get, I will make it work. I got Broodmother. I got her once in ARDM, too, and won as her. I won again with this hero. I guess it really hurts the enemy’s economy when they are forced to buy sentries and dust.

But I guess I was really lucky. We had a good roster. Our team in Dire was Brood, CM, WD, Gyro, and OD. The Radiant had Bristle, AA, Lifestealer, Beastmaster, and Ursa. My teammates would just stack their AoE ults and the enemies die. Well, me, I focused on getting more spiders for pushing and picking off on those that are still alive after the barrage of skills thrown.

I like how I learned to realize when my enemy has warded me. It felt good to be able to tell, and dewarding has never been so satisfying. We went crazy and pushed hard down on mid, so that lane is filled with my web. When I got a Gem of True Sight, I liked finding their sentry wards and killing them one by one. I also like seeing our enemies bring dust because they could have spent the money on something else.

I know general things about Broodmother, but didn’t really know how to play her to her limits. I am proud that I have played her without following a guide. But of course, that just made my life harder, haha. I rushed a Soul Ring so I can spam my Q skill. But lo, I got a Skull Basher, for some reason. I just thought that her attack speed is okay, so maybe building a basher on her would give me some form of additional disgusting disable. After I got a Vlads for my spiders, I decided to get a Talisman of Evasion to make people miserable (I’m looking at you, Ursa), and eventually turn it into a Butterfly.

I feel like it was worth staying behind to play Dota than to attend that party. Even though my teammates weren’t physically there, the stuff we experienced together were real. We laughed together, saved the other’s life, helped each other out– and I think that kind of bonding is better than me lazily eating barbecue the whole day.