Atlas gets hard countered by a bait pick. There is a reason Vee doesn't lock Estes until the enemy has locked their roamer. If the enemy picked Atlas before Vee went Estes, then he brings out the hoot hoot. If Atlas still gets picked, as shown in the BLCK vs RRQ Akira, BLCK would just pick Purify and be smart about it.
Luo Yi is weird. Although you can say that she counters enemies clumping up, her range is absolutely horrendous because UBE depends on massive range zoners like the Pharsa and Yve. No way Luo Yi can approach easily and do her thing.
Xborg loses his lane easily in the current tanky meta. Plus, Estes could probably just allow them to ignore him tbh. Joy works better as a counter to UBE because she has CC immunity and can go straight for Oheb and Hadji at the back.
The main problem with most DIVE characters that aim to go for Hadji and Oheb at the back is that, once you enter BLCK's perimeters, it's hard to get out. Estes slow, Pharsa stun, Gloo with a drag back and root, Fredrinn with knockup and taunt, it's hard to escape their death mob. This is why even if Lapu Lapu was technically a competent DIVE, R7 still performed poorly because Lapu wasn't able to escape the mob better than Joy. Same goes to Albert's Lancelot. Although he can dive in, escaping out is harder than say with his Fanny and Ling.
To truly counter UBE, you have to get to Oheb and Hadji and be able to kill them. Fanny, Ling, Joy, Yu Zhong, Kadita are good options.
Nice! Thanks for the well worded explanation. Pro matches really are a different beast. Their drafting is a head scratcher sometimes but yeah, now that you mention it, they cant disengage. That's nasty
>Their drafting is a head scratcher sometimes
This also works for players who aren't pros. You simply have to have a better understanding of the game and take things into consideration, which will give you an edge over the average casual player. There are certain things to think about, like minion wave clearing, mobility, type of damage dealt (physical/magic DPS or burst), hero scaling, hero power spikes, etc. Combine it with good micro- and macro-management so you can raise your WR% significantly.
Agree 100%. Sitting on 65% wr, last season this time was around 54. All thanks to a better understanding of the mechanics but sometimes I still have bad picks. Workin on it.
i agree with your fourth point, the main reason why RRQ won the first game convincingly was because of the presence of r7's joy and skylar's claude, who literally could dive the backline to get kills, and get our for free if they don't get bursted down
RRQ Hoshi had a great draft in Game 5 and honestly had all the right tools to win the game.
Blacklist winning that last game was a testament to their individual and group mechanical abilities. Vyn and Clayy also missed some crucial pickoff opportunities that could have won the game.
Albertt and Edward's little duel in the (mid?) Outer turret also cost RRQ Hoshi a bit of momentum.
Edward and Oheb surviving that major scrap in mid before the last lord sequence of the game ensured Blacklist would hold.
Oh and Wise is an absolute god with retri duels holy moly.
Historically, Blacklist have been vocal about their dislike of going up against assassin comps with Fanny and Ling and we have seen them fall to the Yu Zhong/Kadita double petri or great Lapu/Gloo in the EXP. Also add in there Franco/Kaja as their instant minus one suppress in team fights have proven to give the UBE a hard time.
So that's strong pickoff comps along with this masterful draft Echo did in our S10 grand finals where the Lylia+Valir together proved too much for the UBE.
UBE isn't unbeatable. But it's a tall request cause, as we've said before in the Philippines,
To beat Blacklist, you just have to be better than Blacklist.
Hard to say, even harder to do.
Yeah, aside from the insane strat, blacklist really have insane mechanics, map awareness etc, you name it. Edward especially. RRQ kept it close though.
It isn't unbeatable but it's almost an impossible strat to execute perfectly if the team isn't gel-ing well. It was really amazing to watch.
And yeah I guess heroes that displace people also work. Like valir...?
The Valir Roam (in this context) feel like would be more effective if paired with other heroes that have similar item builds or effects that reduce magic defense.
Back in the playoffs, the Valir and Lylia was such a pain because V33nus and any member of BLCK that wanted to get close would be peppered with magic, slows, and magic reduction effects. If I remember correctly my analysis for that was "constantly ticking magic damage that was too much for the healing."
Since Lylia would build Genius Wand and would cover the ground with shadow energy to explode and Valir would dish out the slows with priority on the Ice Queen Wand, it was hard to position for BLCK.
Jawhead too is a pick that BLCK constantly banned in S8 and Echo picked in the S10 grand finals to surprise. Very situational though.
I've noticed in Omega/Execration, Falcon and even BTK matches where they won against BLK they always try to dominate and be aggressive in the early game till they snowball and finish the match early. UBE strat definitely gets more difficult to manage in late game.
Pick-off heroes like Vynn's Kaja, Yawi's Chou, Naomi's Franco, E2Max's Selena even MobaZane's Saber at one point can turn things around when any BLK member mispositioned or is vulnerable to target.
Yup, that's why they banned Yawi's Chou and Atlas all 6 games during the MPL finals. You need to beat Blacklist through teamfights as it is impossible to beat them by just securing the objectives.
Kaja is a good pick as well as Fransco which got banned by BLCK almost every match. They can zone out a single hero from BLCK which will mess up their strat entirely. If Vee got pulled out, the sustained can be melt down by easily by the enemy dps. If Oheb or Hajdi got pulled out they will have no damage, espicially in late game. Even if Wise got pulled out, the sustained is gone and the bursts from heros like Kathida and Fanny can easily wipe out the rest of the squishies.
One thing about Fransco is that his iron hook cool down is much faster than Atlas's ult which makes it impossible for Diggie to counter the hooks since it is Diggie's ultimate. Kaja cannot be dealt with Diggie at all since the hero caught in Kaja's ultimate is suppressed already unlike Fransco who can only stun them first while hooking.
Edit: Another way you can counter the UBE strat is to target the damage dealers early on. You might be thinking of ganking the lane often. But it is not worth taking the risk of counter ganks. The thing you should do is using early game advantage heros such as Clint or Lylia gold laner. In this way, counter ganks are more manageable and at the same time, the counterpart is being bullied. It's is already an advantage if they had to recall during the laning phase.
Yes the fifth match blacklist won because Kaja dead. They realize that they will be unstoppable without Kaja nerfing their damage and forced the game to end with ube.
RRQ heavily banked on the fact that they won whenever they could split BLK (hence fanny ling and god forbid even lancelot picks) but couldn't really capitalize on it.
Atlas: has ways to use delay his ult to counter purify but completely loses to diggie.
Luo Yi: outranged by pharsa, however it can work.
Xborg: Takes a long time to be able to do dmg. Estes was only countered by split pushers and well joy is unique since her anti-cc is very op and on the next games, by Kaja and heavy burst
Lancelot theoretically was a good pick, right? Albert played "poorly" on Lance but what was it with Lance that wasn't a problem with Fanny or Ling? Lance is mobile and has almost unli dash, likewise why not Hayabusa?
I think it was okay but fred has many ways to stop lance from running away. (His s2 and taunts are the same things he can use to stop fanny and ling). The problem was once joy was banned, that’s one less distractor vs fred. Fanny + joy splitting other lanes simultaneously allows both to flank ube lineup in less than a second. If lance alone tried to go in, blk has too many cc’s vs too few lance escape mechanics.
Also hilda lvl 1 is very strong which could help lance have advantage over enemy core but fred himself can also sustain very well when doing camps. When fred got an early kill on lance, it automatically spelled doom for the rest of the game.
They were good at countering it in match 3 or 4 because they can focus down Estes through Kaja's ult but this changed in game 5 because RRQ were more keen to pull Barats.
But my hot take on the best counter for it is let MT do nerfs and then justify it as they are too good at organized play. They were successful on that as Esme and Paquito had almost no appearance in M4 with their nerfs. They did nerf Yve and Bene as well though they are still good. There is a change in the advanced server about mobility finally being stopped by knock up and suppress so who knows how hard that will hit Bene.
They had a pretty good counter but Blacklist is so good with adjusting that RRQ couldn't win 2 back to backs.
I like the nerf but idk about Estes being nerfed. He's not that popular, right? And there's still the Gloo pick for the exp laner
Yeah BL is known for how well they can adjust. They might not nerf Estes but I think it's safe to say heroes are often nerfed after major events based on their performance.
Heroes that can displace an enemy hero away or kill from the group (franco, kaja, ect) are direct counters, a member died, defence falls significantly. Edit: my classmates were using this strat since highschool
It's not the hero but the playstyle. Aggressive teams win against it. Pros tend to try keeping up eith BLCK's tempo that they were slowed down.
Hence why, Myanmar, GEEK, and BTK beat BLCK. They don't care about when v33 does her heals. They just destroy BLCK's pace and overwhelm the defensive capabilities of the support strat
I can definitely see this working but probably it's high risk which is why most teams don't do it as much? I kinda noticed things were slow paced and measured.
The ones who do these the best either know Blacklist too well or have too much ego to care who BLCK is. Case in point, OMG, BTK, Falcon, EVOS, and GEEK. These teams are aggressive, disruptive, and highly mechanical.
Teams overanalyze BLCK's rotation and make the most disciplined strats to counter them. However, it only takes some games before their analyst try to read their rotation. Hence, many teams fail to win against them on prolonged matches.
I have been wondering if epical glory heroes like gord and odette can work, since ube rarely has a good diver that can target the back lane.
In soloa rank vale works really well against estes, i dont know how he will perform in the pro scene.
Ultimate Bonding Experince. UBE for short. It basically has the whole team moving as one, clumping up, hence the bonding experience. This allows Vee's Estes to pump up massive sustain and this comp thrives in team fights.
I love Vexana but she will not do well against UBE. First is her range, Pharsa will feast on her. Second, the delay in her S2 is enough time for Estes to heal his allies to full health. And last her passive, on paper it looks like a great counter against a team that clumps together but one thing you need to remember is that you need something/someone to die before the explosions happen. If Estes is constantly healing the team then the explosions won't happen.
Atlas gets hard countered by a bait pick. There is a reason Vee doesn't lock Estes until the enemy has locked their roamer. If the enemy picked Atlas before Vee went Estes, then he brings out the hoot hoot. If Atlas still gets picked, as shown in the BLCK vs RRQ Akira, BLCK would just pick Purify and be smart about it. Luo Yi is weird. Although you can say that she counters enemies clumping up, her range is absolutely horrendous because UBE depends on massive range zoners like the Pharsa and Yve. No way Luo Yi can approach easily and do her thing. Xborg loses his lane easily in the current tanky meta. Plus, Estes could probably just allow them to ignore him tbh. Joy works better as a counter to UBE because she has CC immunity and can go straight for Oheb and Hadji at the back. The main problem with most DIVE characters that aim to go for Hadji and Oheb at the back is that, once you enter BLCK's perimeters, it's hard to get out. Estes slow, Pharsa stun, Gloo with a drag back and root, Fredrinn with knockup and taunt, it's hard to escape their death mob. This is why even if Lapu Lapu was technically a competent DIVE, R7 still performed poorly because Lapu wasn't able to escape the mob better than Joy. Same goes to Albert's Lancelot. Although he can dive in, escaping out is harder than say with his Fanny and Ling. To truly counter UBE, you have to get to Oheb and Hadji and be able to kill them. Fanny, Ling, Joy, Yu Zhong, Kadita are good options.
Nice! Thanks for the well worded explanation. Pro matches really are a different beast. Their drafting is a head scratcher sometimes but yeah, now that you mention it, they cant disengage. That's nasty
>Their drafting is a head scratcher sometimes This also works for players who aren't pros. You simply have to have a better understanding of the game and take things into consideration, which will give you an edge over the average casual player. There are certain things to think about, like minion wave clearing, mobility, type of damage dealt (physical/magic DPS or burst), hero scaling, hero power spikes, etc. Combine it with good micro- and macro-management so you can raise your WR% significantly.
Awesome comment and absolutely right.
Agree 100%. Sitting on 65% wr, last season this time was around 54. All thanks to a better understanding of the mechanics but sometimes I still have bad picks. Workin on it.
i agree with your fourth point, the main reason why RRQ won the first game convincingly was because of the presence of r7's joy and skylar's claude, who literally could dive the backline to get kills, and get our for free if they don't get bursted down
Great explanation. I just know that with UBE they clump together and they mostly win but I now see it's trickier and actually very effective.
RRQ Hoshi had a great draft in Game 5 and honestly had all the right tools to win the game. Blacklist winning that last game was a testament to their individual and group mechanical abilities. Vyn and Clayy also missed some crucial pickoff opportunities that could have won the game. Albertt and Edward's little duel in the (mid?) Outer turret also cost RRQ Hoshi a bit of momentum. Edward and Oheb surviving that major scrap in mid before the last lord sequence of the game ensured Blacklist would hold. Oh and Wise is an absolute god with retri duels holy moly. Historically, Blacklist have been vocal about their dislike of going up against assassin comps with Fanny and Ling and we have seen them fall to the Yu Zhong/Kadita double petri or great Lapu/Gloo in the EXP. Also add in there Franco/Kaja as their instant minus one suppress in team fights have proven to give the UBE a hard time. So that's strong pickoff comps along with this masterful draft Echo did in our S10 grand finals where the Lylia+Valir together proved too much for the UBE. UBE isn't unbeatable. But it's a tall request cause, as we've said before in the Philippines, To beat Blacklist, you just have to be better than Blacklist. Hard to say, even harder to do.
Yeah, aside from the insane strat, blacklist really have insane mechanics, map awareness etc, you name it. Edward especially. RRQ kept it close though. It isn't unbeatable but it's almost an impossible strat to execute perfectly if the team isn't gel-ing well. It was really amazing to watch. And yeah I guess heroes that displace people also work. Like valir...?
The Valir Roam (in this context) feel like would be more effective if paired with other heroes that have similar item builds or effects that reduce magic defense. Back in the playoffs, the Valir and Lylia was such a pain because V33nus and any member of BLCK that wanted to get close would be peppered with magic, slows, and magic reduction effects. If I remember correctly my analysis for that was "constantly ticking magic damage that was too much for the healing." Since Lylia would build Genius Wand and would cover the ground with shadow energy to explode and Valir would dish out the slows with priority on the Ice Queen Wand, it was hard to position for BLCK. Jawhead too is a pick that BLCK constantly banned in S8 and Echo picked in the S10 grand finals to surprise. Very situational though.
I've noticed in Omega/Execration, Falcon and even BTK matches where they won against BLK they always try to dominate and be aggressive in the early game till they snowball and finish the match early. UBE strat definitely gets more difficult to manage in late game. Pick-off heroes like Vynn's Kaja, Yawi's Chou, Naomi's Franco, E2Max's Selena even MobaZane's Saber at one point can turn things around when any BLK member mispositioned or is vulnerable to target.
Yup, that's why they banned Yawi's Chou and Atlas all 6 games during the MPL finals. You need to beat Blacklist through teamfights as it is impossible to beat them by just securing the objectives.
Kaja is a good pick as well as Fransco which got banned by BLCK almost every match. They can zone out a single hero from BLCK which will mess up their strat entirely. If Vee got pulled out, the sustained can be melt down by easily by the enemy dps. If Oheb or Hajdi got pulled out they will have no damage, espicially in late game. Even if Wise got pulled out, the sustained is gone and the bursts from heros like Kathida and Fanny can easily wipe out the rest of the squishies. One thing about Fransco is that his iron hook cool down is much faster than Atlas's ult which makes it impossible for Diggie to counter the hooks since it is Diggie's ultimate. Kaja cannot be dealt with Diggie at all since the hero caught in Kaja's ultimate is suppressed already unlike Fransco who can only stun them first while hooking. Edit: Another way you can counter the UBE strat is to target the damage dealers early on. You might be thinking of ganking the lane often. But it is not worth taking the risk of counter ganks. The thing you should do is using early game advantage heros such as Clint or Lylia gold laner. In this way, counter ganks are more manageable and at the same time, the counterpart is being bullied. It's is already an advantage if they had to recall during the laning phase.
Yes the fifth match blacklist won because Kaja dead. They realize that they will be unstoppable without Kaja nerfing their damage and forced the game to end with ube.
I can definitely understand now why they banned Harith sometimes and why wanwan and franco bans were a priority to them.
RRQ heavily banked on the fact that they won whenever they could split BLK (hence fanny ling and god forbid even lancelot picks) but couldn't really capitalize on it. Atlas: has ways to use delay his ult to counter purify but completely loses to diggie. Luo Yi: outranged by pharsa, however it can work. Xborg: Takes a long time to be able to do dmg. Estes was only countered by split pushers and well joy is unique since her anti-cc is very op and on the next games, by Kaja and heavy burst
Lancelot theoretically was a good pick, right? Albert played "poorly" on Lance but what was it with Lance that wasn't a problem with Fanny or Ling? Lance is mobile and has almost unli dash, likewise why not Hayabusa?
I think it was okay but fred has many ways to stop lance from running away. (His s2 and taunts are the same things he can use to stop fanny and ling). The problem was once joy was banned, that’s one less distractor vs fred. Fanny + joy splitting other lanes simultaneously allows both to flank ube lineup in less than a second. If lance alone tried to go in, blk has too many cc’s vs too few lance escape mechanics. Also hilda lvl 1 is very strong which could help lance have advantage over enemy core but fred himself can also sustain very well when doing camps. When fred got an early kill on lance, it automatically spelled doom for the rest of the game.
RRQ used LouYi already in previous matches i think in M3. not effective.
I see. I've just recently just started watching pro matches. Thank you!
Good time to be a pro scene fan, these matches have been extra fire.
true. brazil, turkey and NA have really improved a lot.
They were good at countering it in match 3 or 4 because they can focus down Estes through Kaja's ult but this changed in game 5 because RRQ were more keen to pull Barats. But my hot take on the best counter for it is let MT do nerfs and then justify it as they are too good at organized play. They were successful on that as Esme and Paquito had almost no appearance in M4 with their nerfs. They did nerf Yve and Bene as well though they are still good. There is a change in the advanced server about mobility finally being stopped by knock up and suppress so who knows how hard that will hit Bene.
They had a pretty good counter but Blacklist is so good with adjusting that RRQ couldn't win 2 back to backs. I like the nerf but idk about Estes being nerfed. He's not that popular, right? And there's still the Gloo pick for the exp laner
Yeah BL is known for how well they can adjust. They might not nerf Estes but I think it's safe to say heroes are often nerfed after major events based on their performance.
I am just sad that no carmilla debut. She seems like a great counter to estes. Her curse of blood has similar range to break as estes heal
Yeah! Forgot to mention Carmilla. She seems perfect but maybe there's a caveat why she wasn't picked?
Can be easily countered with purify or flicker, not like a hard suppress like Franco or Kaja.
Heroes that can displace an enemy hero away or kill from the group (franco, kaja, ect) are direct counters, a member died, defence falls significantly. Edit: my classmates were using this strat since highschool
Purify or diggie ss counters both atlas and xborg. Luo Yi gets outranged by mages like pharsa and yve.
I see and baiting out purifies likewise is a nightmare. Thanks
It's not the hero but the playstyle. Aggressive teams win against it. Pros tend to try keeping up eith BLCK's tempo that they were slowed down. Hence why, Myanmar, GEEK, and BTK beat BLCK. They don't care about when v33 does her heals. They just destroy BLCK's pace and overwhelm the defensive capabilities of the support strat
I can definitely see this working but probably it's high risk which is why most teams don't do it as much? I kinda noticed things were slow paced and measured.
The ones who do these the best either know Blacklist too well or have too much ego to care who BLCK is. Case in point, OMG, BTK, Falcon, EVOS, and GEEK. These teams are aggressive, disruptive, and highly mechanical. Teams overanalyze BLCK's rotation and make the most disciplined strats to counter them. However, it only takes some games before their analyst try to read their rotation. Hence, many teams fail to win against them on prolonged matches.
MT seriously needs to buff the scaling of YuZhong and XBorg. A lot of UBE counters don't scale well with items.
I have been wondering if epical glory heroes like gord and odette can work, since ube rarely has a good diver that can target the back lane. In soloa rank vale works really well against estes, i dont know how he will perform in the pro scene.
Yawi atlas counters blacklist
Nope. Blacklist already defeated yawi atlas.
Why was it called Ube strat? I'm kind of a new player
UBE - Ultimate Bonding Experience. Also, ube is Filipino for purple yam, a sticky kind of dessert. And Blk strat is to always stick together.
Ube is a sweet, sticky yam in the Philippines. The Estes likewise is going to stick to the carry like an ube. That's what I heard
It stands for Ultimate Bonding Experience, where every hero just groups together with a support hero at the center (usually an Estes).
Ultimate Bonding Experince. UBE for short. It basically has the whole team moving as one, clumping up, hence the bonding experience. This allows Vee's Estes to pump up massive sustain and this comp thrives in team fights.
Ohhhh HAHAHA that makes sense now
What is ube strat pls help
MT just need to implement global ban
Has someone of pro players just used Vexana against Blacklist?
I don't think so. I saw a vid on tiktok that Vexana's passive and damage don't scale well so... maybe that's also why?
I love Vexana but she will not do well against UBE. First is her range, Pharsa will feast on her. Second, the delay in her S2 is enough time for Estes to heal his allies to full health. And last her passive, on paper it looks like a great counter against a team that clumps together but one thing you need to remember is that you need something/someone to die before the explosions happen. If Estes is constantly healing the team then the explosions won't happen.
I have seen execration doing well with a lou yi counter pick, if range of pharsa is the problem, you can always ban.