Cover-Credits:
Recently OG Dota 2’s Captain Johan "N0tail" Sundstein was on OG’s first-ever self-produced podcast, “SIDE SHOP SHOW”, alongside OG CEO JMR Luna and OG’s Dota 2 coach Titouan "Sockshka" Merloz. They spoke a number of topics including OG’s win at TI9, how IO was broken for 7-8 years before they played it in the carry role at TI9 and the Dota 2 Pro Circuit.
It was a very insightful discussion which brought up a variety of interesting caveats, one of which is presented below
N0tail On How IO Was Broken For 7-8 Years Before OG Used It
N0tail stated that IO was the most broken hero in the history of the game and how he was surprised that no one else had used it in the many years prior to TI9.
“For TI9, we just theory crafted IO… We just talked about it and then we made it happen. On a personal level that made me feel so smart.
In all my years of competitive Heroes of Newerth and Dota 2, this was the most broken thing I’ve ever played: IO carry, the way we played it. I do believe that this has been possible for a whole 7-8 years in Dota 2, this carry IO doing this.”
Image via Gamepedia
When questioned on whether it would have been possible even without the Aghanim’s Scepter upgrading the IO’s Spirits ability to do a ridiculous amount of damage. N0tail stated:
“To me, it has nothing to do with the balls (referring to IO’s Spirits ability). The balls was of course a crazy aspect that made a lot of things come together, but IO was much different throughout patches. But the one thing that remained the same was that IO with items at a certain time when partnered with the right hero is a juggernaut.
You can’t stop it. It is an immovable object, there is no such thing as an unstoppable force versus this. Like it doesn’t exist, you can just kill the throne. I always believed in that and when I saw this early Heart on IO and a Troll who is just hitting buildings, they use five spells on the Troll who literally lost 2% of his HP, and then it was back up to a 100.This could have happened for 7 to 8 years.”
There were several other discussions about the Dota 2 Pro Circuit, how it should be structured and whether Valve should cap tournament prize pools in the SIDE SHOP SHOW Podcast.
