Ashen/Devil of Paradise/Aleks:
Not to be confused with 4leks, Ashen is a pretty reliable carry player. I think he improved quite a bit through out the season, but his decision making needs a bit of work. Early on in the season, there were some item choice issues that probably lost us the game, and in our final playoff games choosing to Troll ult into a Monkey King ring was probably kind of game losing, but I had fun playing with this dude. Like everyone else on my team, he’s a swell dude.
There were many games where Aleks became an inevitability. We’d stick him on heroes like TB or Troll, and it was just a matter of time before he’d run out of the jungle and get a rampage or some shit. If you need a carry player in the second round, don’t hesitate to pick this guy.
Kisses:
Kisses was swapped off-role after the first couple weeks, which I mention in the next section(which I wrote first), meaning he was playing 3.
Honestly, I only had 2 problems with Kisses. One was his abysmally tiny 3 pool. It felt like the two heroes I could trust to pick him were Puck if it remained unbanned, and his legendary Dark Seer which did incredible work for us in a couple series. Again, this is just due to the role switch, so I can’t really complain. The other issue was sometimes being on the wrong side of the map to de-push lanes instead of being where we needed him, but that’s mostly a communication issue on the whole team’s side, and not 100% on him.
This guy is one of the absolute most greedy players I’ve played with. Some times it works incredibly, and he pops off, and other times we have a Puck with a Witchblade and no other initiation.
Grab Kisses during draft if you need a 3 or a 4. He’ll become a menace in RD2L, especially if he can expand his 3 hero pool with 2 or 3 more heroes.
Neku:
Neku was our team captain, and although he didn’t take to that role too much in-game, he happily handled all the other mundane captain duties such as scheduling and whatnot. I was fine to draft and shot-call in game, so it worked out nicely since I hate doing that shit.
Neku was in kind of a weird position after draft. He’s primarily a 5 player, but due to the MMR distribution of the team, and the fact that Kisses is 4 player, it made a lot of sense for Neku to play 3 for us. We found out pretty quickly in our first couple games that this wasn’t working out for us though, and so we swapped Neku to 4 and Kisses to 3, and this is where we started to see much more success and cohesion as a team.
I can’t critique Neku too much, since as mentioned he was playing off role. His 4 hero pool is pretty tiny obviously, but I think with a bit of practice and experimentation, Neku could become a solid 4 player. He’s an incredibly nice guy, and I had a blast playing with him.
New Couch Day:
I have 0 clue what this name is supposed to mean but Couch owns. Good attitude, listens to others, and will gladly play his Jakiro or Grimstroke every single goddamn game. For an Archon 5 player, my guy is very value. If he practices his laning or has a talkative carry that will tell him what to do, you’ll see great things from him. Like when he solo killed the enemy Immortal carry with Ice path.
Not much to say about Couch. Like everyone else, he’s a nice dude and easy to get along with. An extremely value pick up at his medal.
Conclusions:
This is the furthest I’ve made it into RD2L on any team, not that I’ve played as many seasons as a lot of other players. Everyone on STOP THE COUNT was agreeable, and the energy we had when we were popping off and winning games was fantastic. Even when we’re losing, these guys kept a great attitude and gave it their all. I don’t think there was a single moment of tilt all season.
I’m proud of each and every one of these guys for performing as well as they did, especially due to the role swapping and some times dog shit drafts I would try to run.
Anyone looking to Captain in the future, don’t hesitate to grab any one of these guys — I promise you won’t be disappointed.
