A recent Dota 2 update has blunted the highly-rated 16-year-old's secret weapon, so the Evil Geniuses star must now learn to adapt his game
On 17 January, 16-year-old Sumail Hassan Syed sent the below tweet.
Icefrog has no idea about what hes doing with dota right now
— Sumail (@SumaaaaiL) January 17, 2016
At first glance, it should be nothing to concern ourselves with.
Angry and grammatically-suspicious messages are posted on Twitter every day, after all.
What made plenty of people sit up and take notice was the fact that Sumail is in fact ‘Suma1L’, the Pakistani teenager who took the eSports world by storm in 2015.
This was the kid who played an integral part in the successes of Dota 2 team Evil Geniuses in winning The International 5 to become the youngest gamer in history to surpass $1m in eSports earnings.
Currently sat fifth in the overall monetary world rankings with a total worth of $1,742,076 – he is generally considered to be one of the luminaries on the scene.
And if there’s one thing we know for certain, it is that he really doesn’t like the 6.86 patch recently released for Dota 2.
The 6.86 – and a tweaked 6.86c – update was finally released on 20 January, but the content had been subject of much speculation and unsubstantiated rumour beforehand.
When released, it was named ‘The Balance of Power’ update, and so it proved.
Leaving aside the usual bug fixes, the biggest changes made to the so-called ‘meta’ – the overall balance and structure of the game – has been with hero abilities and laning.
As with many online games, there will always be advantages to be gained if you look hard enough.
There are plenty of eSports pros – in Dota 2 and elsewhere – who will be disgruntled if a successful tactic they had becomes weakened or invalidated.
As a mid for Evil Geniuses, one of Sumail’s main tactics was to accumulate a ton of gold and XP by creating a large farm gap in the middle lane, and then snowballing it with his team throughout the game.
As a result, his reaction to the new adjustments that have limited his ability to do this has been dismissed as merely a tantrum.
As one commentator put it, “he has to win mid instead of just clearing jungle stacks”.
The 6.86 update moved the locations of the jungle spawn boxes, meaning that they are now far harder to get to for middle lane heroes, particularly on the radiant side.
New-and-improved auras now punish the common strategy of catching up from bad laning early on, in turn making killing stacks more time-consuming.
And, let’s not forget, in the world of Dota 2, time equals money and XP.
The biggest blow to Sumail, however, was the continued nerfing of his signature hero, Storm Spirit.
The previous Dota 2 update – 6.85 – had already reduced Storm’s total zip and vision distance, as well as increasing the mana cost, especially for Remnant.
Overall, the biggest tweaks meant that the hero required very strict mana management, drastically reducing his effectiveness from the early laning phase advantage onwards – nerfed, in other words.
If that wasn’t enough, the 6.86 patch further removed the ability to stack efficiently in the jungle, giving Storm Spirit a further, albeit indirect, nerfing.
So what happens when your favourite hero and favourite tactic gets weakened by a new change to the ‘meta’?
If we accept that it was done along with plenty of other changes to try and provide a better-rounded and fairer playscape for both pros and fans alike, then you have two choices.
Either you can adapt, as many teams do, and practise and until you develop a killer new style.
Or you can complain about it.
Sumail tweeted this reaction five days ago:
I have never been this mad at dota, THanks for the sick patch icEFROAGASD
— Sumail (@SumaaaaiL) January 23, 2016
I guess that answers which option he has decided to take.
Still, it hasn’t stopped Evil Geniuses from being 3/1 favourites for the upcoming Shanghai Masters.
