Death with Dignity

The journey of finding happiness with flawed success

Starting things is weird. This season was unlike any season I’ve ever played in.

The competition?

Fierce.

The drama?

Juicy.

The good times?

Endless.

I undercut myself earlier this season by detailing the vibes of this season for Entropy in an earlier piece, but nevertheless, the vibes were immaculate. Naratheen and I took it upon ourselves to build a team around good vibes after the previous season’s sour taste. And I got to say, we fucking nailed it. This has been, without a doubt, the most fulfilling season I’ve played, and that’s with getting 8th — a relative disappointing finish for a team that hit such highs together in the regular season.

To give context though, 8th place finish for a team most members of this community expected to barely make wild cards is a wild turn of events. Entropy didn’t win the title as I always hope my team does, but goddamnit if we didn’t make other teams rise to our level over the course of the regular season. On 7.29, no team could touch us — side note, it’s almost criminal that the league didn’t get to see us play Mozart and Sauce on 7.29, if the tournament had been on that patch, it would’ve been even more incredible dota. But alas, we were a team that was nerfed by a patch and a captain who’s depression got the best of him. Even with that being said, I wouldn’t take back anything from this season or forget even one moment. This was the pinnacle of what I want from a team of players, and more importantly a team of friends.

Naratheen

My man. Avery and I have been through it all. We’ve been kicking it since Cub Scouts. We went through high school as familiar, but not necessarily friends and oddly enough, 5 years removed, he’s one of my closest friends. We have been on this journey of trying to win MD2L together for several seasons now under our belt, and we keep doing the same thing: going on an absolute tear during the regular season having a good round one and then struggling to close out the tournament weekend. We’ve ran it back with four different rosters around us now and I have enjoyed all but one season of it. #NotAChance

Naratheen was terrific by all metrics this season. His carry Axe was a huge part of why we were miles above everyone the first 6 weeks into this season. Avery and I talked theory non-stop and really pushed each other to branch out and hone in on what makes things good and why. He had some real-life stuff take over the first half of the season, but we just kept going no matter what, and he sacrificed at lot to make time for us all to play. I fucked him over with scheduling several times and I heard about it, but it was rightfully fair.

This was a team and a season we wanted to make sure was a fun atmosphere and it was. Avery was a huge part of that, I know he did a lot of work behind the scenes to the other boys that I’ll never know about, but that’s what makes him the perfect lieutenant for a captain. Having him as my ace in the hole win condition and also the main confidant was what anchored me the last two seasons. It is something that was necessary and appreciated in droves.

I will not be playing with Nara next season, but I would play with him whenever and wherever. He’s my best friend of dota and it’s been a really rewarding run trying to build this thing together. I am proud of everything we went through so far, and I expect at some point in the future we’ll do a redux even if we say otherwise.

Sora

Sora is the flat out nicest dude I may have ever played dota with and having him try out for us was the best decision Avery and I made in building this team last off-season. Sora was a puzzle piece that gave us exactly what I wanted in my approach to drafting this season — I won’t explain what that is cause it’s state secrets sorry, “in the conversation for best drafter” isn’t about to leak the goods. Sora fit everything from a locker room stand point that we wanted: a chill adult who can talk dota without ego and be open minded to ideas.

Sora’s biggest issue this season was confidence. I think towards the end of the season he started to understand the belief we had in him as a player and he really asserted himself in games on tournament day. The Huskar game early on in the season was a turning point for me as a captain understanding what we were capable of as a team. His confidence was shot, and the four of us came together to pick him up, salvage the game and play the map the way we had to if we were to win. Sora ended up actually owning in fights later on and was a crucial part of us taking advantages of mistakes by PG.

Sora had laning issues at times in the season, but that was an issue that popped up for all of us as the season went on. Even when he felt uncomfortable with a lane, Sora was willing to just trust and follow Sam and I into any preposterously aggressive smoke. His performance on the Spirits was something I wish we had dipped into more. Teams just kept giving us good cheese games, and Sora can really play his cheese. His Meepo was something teams didn’t really prep for and we utilized it effectively during the regular season to get teams scrambling to fix their meepo issue with one pick left.

Playing with Sora when he was on cheese was always a joy because Sora is naturally pretty quiet, however when he plays cheese and has multiple units to control, he is insanely focused and as silent as he can be. To his credit, he dealt with the combination of Omar, Sam, and myself yelling at almost everything and maintained focus — featuring a few magical moments of him breaking to laugh at how hard it is to concentrate with us behaving like children.

I wish he could’ve become confident on Lina, but that’s basically my only regret regarding Sora. He was an amazing teammate and was really useful and open to brain storming theory, something I value as one of the biggest attributes needed from teammates to become a great team. I would play with Sora again any time, my only request would be that he watches There Will Be Blood first.

Mad Dog

Omar is my most successful teammate in my dota profile and a large part of that is because I just love playing with him. He has infectious energy that can lead to easy wins and also easy mini-throws. I would follow Omar into the dota equivalent of hell.

I believed in Omar to adapt to being an offlaner, and if we had a comeback player of the season award, Omar should’ve won in a fucking land slide. His Dark Seer was only behind Deesul’s and the Dark Seer/Earth Spirit combo absolutely dumpstered countless safe lanes. His Axe when teams began to finally hone in on carry axe, was electric to play with. He was our Ceb. Greedy, but so selfless at the same time. He knows the games he needs to carry, and when he needs to be the wild pit bull; abusing the under farmed carry relentlessly around the map.

His Nightstalker on tournament day was the first time since we played Zeus/Centaur that I felt entirely in-sync with Omar using two heroes to win a fight with my Lion at his side. His DK and Razor were amazing but also baited him into believing he was invincible. It was hilarious and almost, but not quite throwing. Between Omar and Sam, either of them could be anywhere doing some absurd move to try and annoy the other team and because we were so dominant out of lanes, it didn’t matter if it went poorly. We had the perfect system to have fun in large part due to how well Omar and Sam dominated their lanes.

I would team with Omar any time. Omar is one of the highest ceiling players you can get in this off-season. He will elevate your team chemistry and bring playmaking to any game. I will miss having 3 person conversations with him, myself, and my girl friend’s cat Oliver. Oliver is a shit head who jumps on my lap and then keyboard every single time to sit at my desk and Omar got front row seats to it last season.

Staples

The man, the myth, the legend, the Staples-God himself gave me and Avery another chance after the shit show of Entropy 1.0 and I’m so grateful he did. I feel like I wrote a novella about Sam last season, so I’ll try to keep this short, I fucking love Sam, he makes Dota so much easier to play while constantly making people laugh. Sam did so much for us this season, I can’t really over state it. This was his master piece as a teammate.

He was so incredibly active in his communication and problems he had shown the season before he address and actively led the team to reach his level. I wish I had taken the time to pick his brain about the draft the same way I did on 7.29, but more on that later, that’s a me issue.

Staples was our best player for the second season in a row, and he was quite literally walking circles around the oppositional support. His tournament day performance was on point and he did a tremendous job of figuring out how to mentally reset himself after a few tough to swallow losses. I wish we could’ve won him his second chip, but I’m proud of what we were able to do with him. I would run it back with Sam any day, I still wear the stacking crown, he’s gotta come take it back.

Spagheti Jesus

So I had a really weird season. I moved right at the beginning of the season from Iowa City to Ames in a move in large part to help my mental health which had deteriorated quite significantly during the pandemic and especially while in Iowa City. Ames provided good changes for my life, but I also changed positions to p5, something I’m still figuring out fully.

I feel like it’s been so long ago people forget that I played p3 for every season up until two weeks before the end of the regular season of Season 8. I moved to p4 to try and salvage the team in a 4 person role swap and I enjoyed it, but thought I was best served as a 5. I do think that’s true, but I didn’t hit my ceiling until I figured out how to lane effectively. Avery and I by week 3 devised a lane methodology that was uniquely effective for how we wanted to approach our win conditions.

That laning approach was forced into exile with the nerfing of key heros in our strategy pool and I was back from being value to being a horrendous laner who was actively costing our win condition good games. Staples gave me really great advice on how to approach the laning stage differently and things clicked for me. I significantly improved, but was still having to think so much about it that my ability to call the game as captain suffered. Without me actually being vocal, our team suffered a lot and I was aware of it at the time, but unsure of how to fix it as I was both fixing my own game.

This is ultimately my greatest flaw as a captain. When my game isn’t 100% solid, I can’t be the leader I have to be. There are many reasons why my game wasn’t 100% solid though. First off, my depression which had really been kept in check and at bay, ramped up in September to a degree that I’m still working through right now and seeking out therapy for. I stopped playing Dota all that regularly and only when stoned, was drunk or stoned all day on the weekends leading to low energy and competitiveness.

I felt overwhelmed by life in every aspect, relationship, job, dota team, aspirations, desires, etc… I tried my best to hide it from the team, and it’s the biggest part of why it’s taken me so long to write this fully. I didn’t want to burden those guys with my inner issues, but the realty is by me not addressing it properly, I did and I actively kept us from our ceiling as a team in my in-action. I am now accepting of that, but it sucked to know that as we were getting eliminated, I hadn’t actually done everything in my power to get us to the place I thought we could be which is top 3.

This feels like a very selfish piece now, but I also just need to get a lot off my chest. It’s cathartic for me to write, helps me properly process information — it’s like taking notes in class, but in this case, it’s my life.

I am doing better this week than I was last week, but I’ve still got a ways to go. It was honestly devastating to me when we lost, not because we lost, but because I knew that chapter of my life was over with those four dudes. I had so much fun with them and I’m gonna appreciate everything we did and the moments we had. Thank you all for putting up with me and my shit — also thanks matty for fixing my fucked up date on the calendar literally every week besides one.

Oh yeah, would I team with me? I don’t know, I can be an asshole but I do post good music of the week before every game, so yes?

So what’s next?

Um, I’m playing with Bobby and the crew. Entropy is on hiatus at the bare minimum. I’m too mentally exhausted to do that this season, and to be honest, this is probably going to be my last season as a player. Entropy was successful in creating great memories, even if we didn’t actually win anything.

Anyways, thanks for reading this if you did get here. I’m not posting a TLDR, someone else can do that and make fun of my sincerity since that’s popular for the resident sociopaths I guess, but peace and love to everyone in the MD2L community I’ll see you out there this season.