There are only 3 days left until the ESEA Invite teams face each other at Dallas to compete for the Season 11 championship title. We managed to get some time with Mihaly's Flow scheduler Harbleu before he and his teammates head out to LAN. Mihaly's Flow finished the season at 15-1 and will start off the playoffs by facing Leviathan Gaming (formerly known as Quantic) on Saturday morning.

Check out the full interview here!

ruwin is aggressive, just not retardedly aggressive

I guess the terminology can be confusing in this case.
There's two types of aggressiveness, one typically seen with Scouts/Roamers, the other with Pockets/Demos.

Aggressive Scouts often go for high risk high reward plays instead of playing the percentages and going for the safest play.
Ruwin isn't really that kind of player. He's way too important for the team to go for risky plays a lot.

However, he plays aggressive in the way that pockets can play aggressive, i.e. using aggressive positioning, high-ground advantage, health advantage to push enemies back.

Justin, with his good aim and great mid-range damage, would actually play really well in the same role.
He obviously isn't as good as Ruwin and can't fill the other scout role as well as Shrugger does, so it makes sense that they didn't chose him.

Shouldn't all players be doing that (working advantages) regardless of whether they have a passive or aggressive playstyle? I think the classification refers more to how much of an advantage the player wants to have before he fully commits to a fight. An aggressive playstyle would mean committing on a small advantage (or even none if the player is trying to create the advantage).

What you're talking about with pocket aggression vs scout aggression i think is not really a different type of aggression, its just a different amount. Pockets can't really afford to be aggressive so when you say someone has the aggression of a pocket you're really just saying theyre not that aggressive...

I love seeing a link on here that isn't just a URL.

trogdc wrote:

Shouldn't all players be doing that (working advantages) regardless of whether they have a passive or aggressive playstyle? I think the classification refers more to how much of an advantage the player wants to have before he fully commits to a fight. An aggressive playstyle would mean committing on a small advantage (or even none if the player is trying to create the advantage).

What you're talking about with pocket aggression vs scout aggression i think is not really a different type of aggression, its just a different amount. Pockets can't really afford to be aggressive so when you say someone has the aggression of a pocket you're really just saying theyre not that aggressive...

Yes, you could make a scale of aggression and put all different roles on it.
And a pocket would obviously be less aggressive then an aggro scout.

However, what I was talking about in my post is that Ruwin is called aggressive, even though he doesn't take as many risks as a typical aggressive scout.

One type of aggression commits without much of an advantage and wants to take down a key target (medic/demo), the other type of aggression plays with a buff at the front of his team, trying to push the enemy back with good positioning/good spam.

Ruwin can do both, but his team is more successful when he does the latter.

trogdc wrote:

Shouldn't all players be doing that (working advantages) regardless of whether they have a passive or aggressive playstyle?

If someone had a full buff and was just sitting behind his team doing nothing I wouldn't say "oh he's a passive player" I'd say "wtf is he doing". What I'm saying is doing all that stuff is the minimum aggression you should have, and you say someone has an aggressive playstyle when they exert more than the minimum.

trogdc wrote:

If someone had a full buff and was just sitting behind his team doing nothing I wouldn't say "oh he's a passive player" I'd say "wtf is he doing". What I'm saying is doing all that stuff is the minimum aggression you should have, and you say someone has an aggressive playstyle when they exert more than the minimum.

A player doesn't just magically get a full buff. He has to want to be in a position to get it and use it. Some players stay back and don't take many heals. Other players play aggressive and take a lot more heals.
Neither is inherently good or bad, it's just a difference in play style and a team needs their player's styles to work well together to really be successful.
That's why some teams with good players win and other teams with good players don't.

alright I see what you're saying, although you don't necessarily need a full buff to work advantages

no "aggressive scout" in invite, with the possible exception of yz50, actually tries to get into 1v1s and overextend past the rest of his team, the importance of self-preservation at that level is just too high

on the flipside, no "passive scout" in invite baits his team and doesn't contribute enough damage to fights (whenever shrugger starts to, ruwin yells at him to stop :P)

I will suck all my youtube subscribers dicks (or clits) if FLOW wins.

will you suck clockworks dick if he tattoos your face on it first