(Very Late) S1 Fluffy Hat Team Review
I only realized a few hours ago that I never made one of these despite making it to the finals of Fluffy Hat. So here is my very late review of my Fluffy Hat team from last season.
As a whole, my draft of players worked as I expected it to. I had a few unexpected turns in the draft, but I’m really satisfied with how it went. I’ll touch on some specific points down in the specific player sections, but I think everyone played their role well. The one thing that we failed on as a team that is (mostly) on me is practice as a team. After week 2/3 I have a tendency as a captain to not seek out any scrims. To be fair, most other captains also follow this as well, but I also only attempted to have us pub once or twice. A lot of this is from my reserved nature as a person, but with FHDL and other leagues constantly needing captains, I often end up doing it anyway. So most weeks we had a few shaky moments despite being an overall very skilled team compared to the average since we haven’t played with each other in a week, with the exception of when I would do 1 am queues with FJ.
Greg really offered everything I wanted in a carry. A decent-sized hero pool, competently able to farm, and knows when he is strong. Compared to most carries, he also showed up to more fights with TPs which usually results in cleanup kills that doesn’t always happen with someone like Yumi who will instead push the lanes hard and get the maximum amount of farm. Both styles are good but it definitely feels good to the rest of the team when your questionable dive ends up getting the carry a double kill.
FJ is an interesting character. He is a certified gamer and has a lot of meta-knowledge in terms of hero picks and how to play the map, but he never dedicates himself to 1 role. I’ve been on a team with him in 3 different roles now, and every time he plays well, but in a unique way. He is never your traditional carry or mid or position 5, but he knows the limits of his hero. This enabled some interesting strategies that not many other teams explored, such as the rise of Wyvern mid which was only done by a couple of other teams last season.
Me as a player played satisfactorily. I might be being hard on myself but I feel like there were a few games where I just played horribly when I didn’t need to (we don't talk about 0–10 timbersaw). My big flaws as a player come out sometimes, but when I controlled them I was easily the best 3 player in the league. This next season, I am going to make the goal for myself to play greedier so that instead of being a glorified support, I’m an actual 3rd core. My playstyle is usually extremely aggressive at the cost of having only ~50 more cs than my supports, and I think that I need to dial it down a little bit and play a bit more for myself.
Boxes is a fun guy to play with as I’ve been on multiple teams with him. Despite him playing some of the lowest lane impact 4s like shaker, pudge, and windranger, my heroes compliment his well, and we can usually get some kills out of the lane and we make it to the point where his quirky 4s are now online and roaming the map, killing people everywhere. Boxes is a value support if you are able to play around his unique hero pool!
Jbay was my unexpected pick. I didn’t initially have him under my position 5 category, and I was quickly running out of options for p5s that I wanted to play with. I noticed Jbay was getting overshadowed a bit and checked out his profile, and I realize he also plays P5, and quickly snatched him up. Best decision. Jbay was a gamer and really knew how to play some powerful heroes that most midrange players don't play like enchantress and ET. Some of his wyvern play was game winning, his willow frequently solo killed cores on random portions of the map, and his vision game was great as well. He is playing lowers this season and I’m sure he will be the best pick in lower div.
Do I think we could’ve won against clare in the finals? … Maybe. It’s rough, phantom and reedy are a near-perfect 1–2 combo, and none of the rest of Clare’s team really drops the ball. Elem is rusty but plays perfectly satisfactory, and Clare and Korgoth were 2 of the few supports I deliberately had to ban heroes against. If I wasn’t so arrogant with gyro and just banned it, I think we could’ve won game 3, but I also think Clare playing the 4 gyro is the reason we got a game win in the first place. Clare really outdrafted me, and his eons of RD2L experience showed.
As a final note: I might try to make content for this FHDL season. It will largely depend on how busy I get in the next few weeks. What kind of content do you want? Weekly review like clare but different? Hero stats like Roar but different? Something new entirely? Let me know if you have ideas. Similar to Clare it would be focused on upper div but still have something for lower div.
