my kills (8)
first blood (not me)
Roshan (both, mine)
fort falls
A familiar shape
The Sniper rematch
Half of my deaths this game came from one hero. I’ve written this sentence before.
Seven of my fourteen deaths belong to Sniper — 11:41, 16:41, 19:53, 33:41, 46:36, 50:50, and 67:52, spread across nearly the entire game rather than one bad window. It’s the same shape as the Lina game that started this blog: exactly half the deaths, one hero, the whole match. The difference this time is I got some of it back — three kills on that same Sniper, at 24:14, 62:24, and 71:13, the last one four minutes before the game actually ended.
Leshrac got two of his three inside thirty-one seconds of each other at 62:04 and 62:35 — the same minute I killed Sniper and Viper both, for what it’s worth. Minute 62 was busy.
The whole match, briefly
Seventy-three minutes of trading
Seventy-three minutes is a long game by any measure, and it earned the length. Radiant opened the structural exchanges by taking two of our tier-ones by 19:44; we answered with four of theirs inside the next eleven minutes. A long lull followed until Radiant found their footing again from 43:56 to 53:16, taking our mid barracks in the process — the low point of the game from our side.
the turn
From 59:25 onward, it was almost entirely us: three more Radiant towers, every remaining set of barracks, both tier-fours (losing one of our own in the middle of it, at 68:43, and not particularly caring), and the fort at 71:25. Twelve minutes to close out a match that had gone back and forth for the previous hour.
We also never lost Roshan the whole game — Clinkz took the first one at 55:17, Sand King the second at 65:36. Whatever else was going wrong at various points, the map’s biggest neutral objective stayed ours both times it mattered.
My final line
33 assists in a 73-minute game is a lot of fights to be present for without it showing up in the kill column. The real story of the win, though, is Sand King’s night: 25/10/38 with 88.7% teamfight participation, the highest fight-presence number in this match by a wide margin. Three Dire players finished with more assists than kills; one had the highest kill count in the match. Different games get won different ways.
Same nemesis, longer game, better ending. Take the wins the format gives you.
Full scoreboard
| Player | Hero | Result | K | D | A | Lvl | LH/DN | GPM | XPM | Hero Dmg | Dmg Taken | Fight% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YZNIKLP25 | Viper | Loss | 13 | 16 | 20 | 29 | 104/5 | 340 | 783 | 106,397 | 111,144 | 54% |
| Ради нёё… | Lion | Loss | 8 | 16 | 27 | 29 | 72/4 | 287 | 834 | 32,673 | 42,320 | 57% |
| skyscraper_smok | Leshrac | Loss | 14 | 15 | 25 | 30 | 372/18 | 588 | 877 | 157,655 | 112,206 | 64% |
| LordofWill | Dazzle | Loss | 2 | 15 | 23 | 28 | 130/6 | 228 | 682 | 34,668 | 55,505 | 41% |
| seibisse | Sniper | Loss | 22 | 10 | 18 | 30 | 388/6 | 607 | 877 | 131,655 | 110,889 | 66% |
| tuhsehtllehpu (me) | Bristleback | Win | 8 | 13 | 33 | 29 | 81/3 | 329 | 845 | 43,309 | 77,266 | 58% |
| bob72922 | Shadow Demon | Win | 13 | 9 | 36 | 29 | 98/6 | 317 | 791 | 22,799 | 39,948 | 69% |
| vivo | Sand King | Win | 25 | 10 | 38 | 30 | 348/7 | 598 | 877 | 125,488 | 91,078 | 89% |
| Alkatraz | Clinkz | Win | 8 | 18 | 19 | 27 | 161/5 | 428 | 659 | 36,767 | 61,044 | 37% |
| iamarash | Monkey King | Win | 15 | 11 | 22 | 28 | 181/0 | 401 | 764 | 53,986 | 43,997 | 52% |
Reconstructed from the match replay with dotabuff/manta · combat log + entity snapshot analysis. Match 8676703838 · 10 players · 73:26 · Dire victory.