posted by Vekus,
In just a few hours the upper bracket of the ESL One NY Qualifiers will continue as world Cloud9 take on se Alliance. Cloud9 come into the match off the back of a 1st place at GAME24 whilst Alliance are still without Akke. Can they secure a ticket without him?



We could start with a bit of history that the teams share, how Alliance was once eu No Tidehunter with EternalEnvy as one of their members, how they kicked him out and won The International 2013 afterwards, and Envy's journey building up his new team world Cloud9 to be one of the best teams in the world. But that story has been told one too many times. Instead, how about a good old fashioned head to head comparison?

Head to head - Toe to toe



Surprisingly enough, Alliance and Cloud9 didn't face each other as often as some might expect. Even if we go a while back to DreamHack Summer 2014 they only faced each other 11 times in official matches , seven of which were at Dreamhack.

Alliance seem to have the upper hand in the direct comparison, as they lead by a whopping 9-2 counting in DreamHack and 4-0 not doing so. Unfortunately, Alliance, as many other teams, restructured themselves after a rather poor performance at this year's International, with Cloud9 doing the same, as they got de Adrian 'FATA-' Trinks as their new midlaner.

The Immortal...
As of now, Alliance can still boast about their 100% success rate against Cloud9, compared to the 52,4% against all other teams.
This narrows this down to just one match, where both teams played each other with their new roster, in the SLTV StarSeries X Europe. Alliance managed to win the match rather convincingly, as they got their hands on both Naga Siren and Nature's Prophet that managed to outpush Cloud9's signature Drow+Visage combination. A comparison done on the sample of one match is of course not really optimal, so let's look into how the teams fare up in general.

Since the probable long-term addition of se Rasmus 'Chessie' Blomdin and dk Rasmus 'Misery' Filipsen, Alliance played a total of 21 games out of which they won 11, giving them a winrate of circa 52,4%, which is surprisingly low for a team that was on top of the scene just a couple of months ago. Granted, the team just reshuffled and the scene changes constantly, but still it looks like Alliance haven't found themselves as of yet. However, they are improving, as they managed to win 6 out of their last 10 games, which would give them a new winrate of 60%.

Cloud9 didn't change as much as a team, only swapping nl Weh Sing 'SingSing' Yuen for FATA, which also shows in their winrate. Being a very active team, Cloud9 played a total of 34 games after this years International together with FATA, out of which they emerged victorious in 19, resulting in a 55,9% winrate. Out of the last 10, they won 5, however this sample size might be a bit small.

Overall, and with Cloud9's recent match against eu Team Tinker in mind, Cloud9 seems to have the slight edge coming into the match, but at least Alliance are leading by 1-0 for now.


Once you go rat...



Alliance most definitely haven't lost their love for pushing strategies, as their predominantly picked heroes in the last month are Nature's Prophet(9), Razor(6), Jakiro(5) and Naga Siren(4) all of which with a very high success rate ranging from 66,67% (Prophet) to 100% (Naga). All in all, their drafting style is heavily influenced by 6.81 (wow what a surprise), but with a definite affinity to a more global, pushing orientated style. Lone Druid however receives no love, since he has not been picked up a single time since this years International.

The common treerat...
Both teams seem to rock the Nature's Prophet, as they succeed 2 out of 3 times with him. Tonight, they can fight out who is the better rat.
Cloud9 play a similar style, with Nature's Prophet being the second most picked hero (9 times) followed by Enigma(8), Death Prophet(7) and Razor(7). All of which with winrates around 70%. However, Cloud9 would not be Cloud9 if they wouldn't draft differently from time to time

Visage, a hero that isn't seen too often in the competitive scene anymore makes an appearance in their drafts with 5 picks and a 60% winrate. C9 also favours both Warlock(6) and Puck(6) but with rather suboptimal winrates of 33% and 50% respectively.
A hero that is doing very well in their drafts seems to be Beastmaster(5), with a winrate of 80%. Maybe we will see him more often in the future.


The Judas Kiss - Loda vs Envy



A good carry predominantly should have two skills: joining teamfights at the right time, and farming. Of course, in reality a lot more comes into play, such as which playstyle a team prefers, game length and what not, but just focus on these abilities for now.

We put the former team-mates head-to-head


EternalEnvy sure knows how to impress as a carry. In the matches he played with Cloud9's new roster, he managed an average of 5,3 - 4,4 - 8,9, which results in a KDA of 3,23 for those of you too lazy to calculate. Combined with a GPM of 533, an XPM of 503 and 282,7 average last hits per game, this surely is impressing. Loda seems to play rather midgame orientated, showing an average of 6,0 - 4,0 - 10,2, or a KDA of 4,05. This is fortified by the fact that he "only" averages a GPM of 480 and a XPM of 482, with an average of 263,4 last hits per game.

With the previous stats in mind, lets look at the type of hero they normally play. Envy's top three heroes are Naga Siren(5), Razor(3) and Tinker(3), all of which have good flash farming abilities and do their best work in the later stages of the game. Generally speaking, Envy seems to focus a lot more on hardcarries, as farmintensive heroes such as Drow, Void and Spectre.

Loda's choice of heroes seems to be way more midgame orientated, maybe because of Bulldog often playing a more farmintensive role. Despite a Naga Siren(3) and Razor(2) in the top 3, Loda also gets to play heroes such as Slark, Mirana or even Jakiro, focusing more on providing utility and midgame for his team.


Make sure to tune in for world Cloud9 versus se Alliance, broadcasted on joinDOTA Red tonight at 22.00 CEST.


This article was written by de Markus Fischer, joinDOTA's Senior Writer. Vekus started to follow Dota rather late, as he joined the community in 2012. From then on he tried to get a job in Esports and found it later at joinDOTA. Reallife is mostly spend at university trying to understand physics and running. Avid wearer of Bandanas.Location: Chemnitz, GermanyFollow him on @VekusDota.

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