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Dota 2 Weekend!; CAUSE YEAH
Topic Started: Feb 12 2014, 02:32 AM (18,086 Views)
steelfire81
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That is what I thought for a very long time until I started winning pubs. Based on the Dotabuff scoreboards it seems you guys probably don't know how to play against the non-bot heroes which is to be expected. You don't know how to play against every hero in the game until you've played against every hero in the game multiple times. Someone like Keeper of the Light is a pain in the ass to lane against until you realize you have to take the fight to him because he can't play on the defensive. I noticed him in one of your games and while he was one of the hardest heroes for me to deal with when I first started he's pretty easy to handle now, especially since a lot of pubbers don't know how to play him. If you see him charging his blast, get out of the way since he can't re-aim it. If he leaves the lane, check the trees (or better yet, ward to get vision of the jungle where he might be standing). Plus, since he can't move while charging, you have a good 2-5 seconds (based on its level) to walk up to him and punch him in the face.

Axe is another one who I saw in your matches, and he's another hero new players have trouble with. The best way to counter axe is by not laning him against a weak melee laner. Someone like Viper will shred Axe to bits, while someone like Phantom Assassin will be lucky to get out of the lane alive (until level 6 at least, but you have to get there first). Pub players aren't great at coordination, but if you're in a stack you can coordinate a lane change to make the lanes more in your favor.

Also though I won't blame the problem on all-pick since it's probably a good thing to play all pick as a beginner so you can play who you know, all pick also exposes you to nonstop pubstomp heroes at the beginner level. That could be a good thing since you learn how to deal with them faster, but it's not the easiest feat playing against Riki + Sniper + Axe + Bloodseeker + Drow every single game and learning how to play. Definitely keep all pick in your pool, but Random Draft isn't a bad idea when you have a 5-stack. Plus as a bonus it might force you to play someone you either want to try but have never played or someone you aren't familiar with (and learning to play heroes is a great way to learn how to counter heroes).

Don't get discouraged. If you want I could download a replay and go over it to see what in particular is causing difficulties, but my guess is it's a combination of not knowing how to deal with heroes the bots don't use as well as getting used to less predictable playstyles.
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Snowman
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Berserker
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I still want to do pubs, but I feel like our scrims are also good practice, 'cause we're all around the same skill level, except Oli/steel. Most of us are pretty comfortable with a handful of heroes. Oli/steel, do you think we need to be more aggressive in lanes? I feel like the enemy team always pokes us more than we poke them, but I'm sure part of that is related to the heroes I usually pick. I don't really pick the most popular or "bot standard" heroes all the time.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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I love taking an aggressive approach in lane. LoL taught me to do this. Previously I used to be very conservative, picking lategame-oriented heroes and going "yeah let's just hold them off and I'll outscale them" but our lanes would go bottom-up before that and we had a lot of early victories. When I started choosing heroes that could better defend themselves in the early game I found I really enjoyed playing very aggressively and getting in peoples' faces. You'll rarely see me choose a hero like Lifestealer or Faceless Void in our bot games intending to carry - I try to opt for a support, or in the cases I'm carrying, someone with good early-game presence. I don't like to sit back in a lane and just survive it, I want to butt heads and say "you want a fight, I'll bring you one". Yes, this results in some needless deaths (mostly vs bots, you still need to play with a bit of caution against humans) but you can't learn your limits without testing them. So yeah, I love playing aggressive early on.



EDIT:

Ursa's E is no longer a Unique Attack Modifier in 6.81, so it's possible to pull stuff like this off:

[utube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzSOwUq1Sds[/utube]

Also with Scepter, Lich's ult will have no bounce limit. So this is possible too (TURN YOUR SPEAKERS DOWN FOR THIS ONE):

[utube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc6GYt6aeUM[/utube]

And this too:

[utube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2PNkdL2XU[/utube]
Edited by Olinea, Apr 26 2014, 06:30 PM.
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steelfire81
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Scrub
Keep in mind too there are plenty of carries who play aggressive in lane. Lifestealer is actually great in an aggressive lane because he has Rage to make himself magic immune and Open Wounds to chase down an opponent. If a support sets up for you with a stun, you can charge on towards a weak opponent and start tearing away at their health. If they try to stop you or turn around on you, you have Rage to dispel their aggression because their stuns won't work. Other great aggressive carries are Viper with his orb and Corrosive Skin, and Chaos Knight with his powerful Rift->Stun combo. Anyone with a stun is always nice if you can chain stun (Sven + Leshrac is a powerful lane because of Storm Bolt -> Split Earth).

There are also carries capable of dealing well with aggression. Blink type moves like Faceless Void's Time Walk and Anti-Mage's Blink help you get away from attacking enemies. You should still be careful of silences and stuns, but if the enemy ever tries to kill you, you can just blink away to safety. Be aware that a lot of these abilities have poor range to begin with but usually increase range (and decrease cooldown) with levels. Invisibility is slightly less reliable due to true sight, but it can also help save yourself from death in lane, especially on Clinkz and Weaver, who gain movespeed from their invisibility.

Typically you rely on supports for defending your carries in lane and your mid and offlaner for turning into ganking threats in the midgame, but there are still plenty of carries who do just fine in lane and even succeed at carry because they're able to get such an advantage in the early game. One hero I haven't mentioned yet is Luna, whose aura gives a base damage increase to everyone around her. Luna is a solid late game carry because of her farming speed with glaives, but her strength in lane comes from the ability to guarantee her and her lane-mates can hit harder much earlier on. In a level 1 engagement, Luna's allies hit 14 damage harder PER ATTACK, which may not sound significant but both lets you CS better and gives your dual/trilane a damage bonus in the case of an engagement. Because she has an advantage in the early game, she's able to get a headstart into the lategame and hit her peak before other carries.

Though there isn't really universal advice for playing aggressive in lane, I'll give you a few key points:
1) Learn your heroes. This will in turn teach you each hero's limits in lane.
2) Avoid two melee heroes in the same lane. It's possible (Axe, Juggernaut, Dark Seer, and Clockwerk are all pretty solid solo melee laners so they could definitely handle a lane with another melee hero) but it's usually easy to force them away from the creeps.
3) Don't let them think they control the lane. If you can scare them away early on or even get a kill it will tell them you own the lane. If they force you away often in the early game, they'll think they can get away with it and will then keep doing it. Plus, getting an early lead in the lane is huge because the level/gold advantage means a lot.
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DarkFlashlight
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it will take a toll
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http://dotabuff.com/matches/629600676

Someone needs to watch that replay. Drow sort of throws (although that was not the worst thing Drow did) and SB just snowballs out of fucking nowhere. At least we denied FV farm super hard. Be watching for that time that he tried ulting me solo (LB was there, just not in the Chrono). It's pretty funny.

Also, I don't know much about TH, but I think you're supposed to take Kraken Shell before level 10.


I feel like a review of this game would be more helpful than that one awful bot game, since everyone was out of their element there. This one was much better, but still went wrong and I'm not totally sure where the tipping point was. We were winning towards the beginning. Downside of reviewing this is that only three of us were in it, so it's not as widely applicable as other games.

You wouldn't really have to pay much attention to the end game though, inside the base, since that was mostly just us dying and catching out a few overly enthusiastic divers.


Also Puck is probably one of my new mains because she is awesome.
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Snowman
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Berserker
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I would like to add that I started doing very stupid things later in the game because it was clear we'd lose and it was like 2AM. I tried to be more aggressive at the beginning-ish, but it might have been too much. We were up against their tower quite a bit.

EDIT: Never mind. Thought it was my Axe game, idk why. I feel like Tidehunter was taking too much CS from me in this one.
Edited by Snowman, Apr 27 2014, 07:04 AM.
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LightningBolt
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Boring Person
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I'll admit I was not very good at using Mek. I need to change the hotkeys for items to the numbers above the letters because I usually do not have a hand anywhere near the keypad during Dota.
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Romanticide
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LightningBolt
Apr 27 2014, 07:20 AM
I'll admit I was not very good at using Mek. I need to change the hotkeys for items to the numbers above the letters because I usually do not have a hand anywhere near the keypad during Dota.
This. I feel like it'd be more natural for me, too. Every time I need to use an item, I'm like "shit, where is that hotkey again...?" At least with numbers, I could just associate a position with a number and it'd be much easier.

Idk I've just been lazy with that kind of stuff. /shrug
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tfghost92
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swag on this dick, bitches
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image



won a pub today. it was a hell of a game, hard fought on both sides. i didn't get into the killing too much, but at one point, i dropped my aerial strike on the entire team of five and then one of my teammates stunned them. I got ZERO kills from it, but my team swooped in and cleaned them all up, and that was the deciding factor on whether we won the game or not. we had enough time to take out the final mid tower and push deep into the base. gg
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steelfire81
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DarkFlashlight
Apr 27 2014, 06:40 AM
http://dotabuff.com/matches/629600676

Someone needs to watch that replay. Drow sort of throws (although that was not the worst thing Drow did) and SB just snowballs out of fucking nowhere. At least we denied FV farm super hard. Be watching for that time that he tried ulting me solo (LB was there, just not in the Chrono). It's pretty funny.
I'm watching this one now and I'll post some stuff about it here when I'm done.

I'm not going to say anything about the Drow and Tide because they're never going to read this. You guys played a lot better than them (that being said, don't pin the loss on them because everyone can always improve from their losses).

Lightning
- If you want to harass the enemy in lane, don't cast the attack close to the creep wave (unless you have an orb). This will draw creep aggro and push the wave. The only exception would be if you take Chilling Touch and are suddenly hitting for +50 damage per attack which is great for harass, but even then you're still pushing the wave.
- Taking one point in Chilling Touch early is nice. It's not required, but being able to throw some superpowered attacks in lane is strong, even if you're the only one doing it. Since Puck isn't one who relies on attack speed in lane, giving two heroes +50 magical damage per attack is definitely a nice thing to have for last hitting or harassing.
- Get used to pressing your hotkeys and using your abilities as opposed to clicking on the images and casting. It may take a bit of practice but it lets you be much faster when casting and frees up your mouse for the actual aiming part of the spell.
- Throw Cold Feet on someone who gets caught by Dream Coil since they won't be able to run the right distance away without snapping the coil.
- There's no reason to get a Point Booster away from an Aghs and then suddenly buy up an Ultimate Orb. Send the courier to secret shop when it's safe, but don't suddenly change item choice. Especially on a hero where Aghs is extremely strong like AA. Doing this means you have to wait longer before you get your superpowered Aghs upgrade.

Snowman
- Don't autocast your orb (Glaives) in lane. If you manually cast it, you can attack your laning opponents without drawing the creep aggro. But if you have it on auto-cast, the creeps will start attacking you, you'll take damage, and the wave will push.
- Spirit Breaker comes top pretty early on and charges past your tower to kill Tide. While you couldn't have saved the Tide, you could probably have gotten a return kill. If someone dives your tower like that make sure they don't get away with it without a return kill (or at least plenty of return damage).
- Usually you want to max either your Curse or Last Word by 7 because both are extremely strong at their highest levels. If you go a Curse build, you'll want to be 3-1-1 by 5. If you're taking a Last Word build, you can usually just skip Curse altogether (0-2-3 by 5), but going 1-1-3 is just as viable. Either way, you want to max one of your non-orb spells as soon as possible while still having at least one point in your orb.
- The first time you use Global Silence is after Lich has already thrown his ulti (for a gank on a solo Lich). He has no other big spells to use or escape with, so it's a waste of a 130 second cooldown spell.
- Don't use Curse on someone like Lich who has multiple low cooldown spells (Blast and Armor); easy to dispel it at little cost.
- Mek doesn't stack with Mek if someone being healed has been healed by a Mek in the last 25 seconds. Getting two Meks on the same team is a waste of gold. Coordinate with your teammates to make sure you don't get two Meks.


Darkie
- Don't buy salves past the laning phase. It's a waste of money. While it's nice to be able to quickly go back to laning early on, later you can get a TP scroll for 20 more gold and go back to your base, refill HP and mana fully, or TP to a tower to help a teammate. Past the laning phase, missing some experience or last hits to teleport back to base is okay, so regen is just a waste.
- Completing Treads and/or a Null Talisman on Puck before Blink is okay, but get your Blink Dagger before going any further. Usually I don't even upgrade my brown boots until I get Blink. With Blink, you can initiate and escape a million times easier. Q->D->W->R->E->Blink helps you initiate without taking a scratch. Blink->W->R->Q->E->D works just as well. Puck takes quite a bit of practice but can become one of the most annoying heroes for enemies to deal with if you learn all of your combos (all of which become better with Blink).
- If you buy a Veil, remember to use it (especially on a team with huge magical damage from Tidehunter, Silencer, and Ancient Apparition). It's not easy remembering to use actives early on, but if you don't use the actives then most of them are just wasted money. If you don't like where your item keys are, you could rebind them like I did. Once I did that I started remembering to use items.
- If you're running away, keep track of your Blink Dagger cooldown. As soon as you have a chance to blink away, do it so you don't lose the cooldown by taking enemy damage. You can also escape from danger by throwing your orb and then waiting in your E until your orb is a safe distance away. Try to throw it into the trees so it's harder to chase you. Then teleport away while they try to find you.


General Advice
- If you have a team with a bunch of teamfight ultimates (Ravage, Global Silence, Dream Coil, Ice Blast), coordinate them and use them all at once. There were a couple good fights in there were you did this and won. Dream Coil keeps a bunch of enemies in one place to set up for a great ravage into an AA ultimate. Silence helps make sure a turnaround can't come. You might not always have every spell available at once, but if you have enough, start timing fights around your cooldown timers. Coordinate a crazy wombo combo and if you win enough fights, it turns into towers and eventually the game.
- I might make a video about minor creep control tricks including orb walking and harassing effectively later. This tends to be an issue I notice a lot when I play with you guys, but it's something I didn't learn about myself for a couple hundred games. It really improved my games once I figured it out so it might give you a leg up on your opponents.

Also, if you like these heroes, keep practicing them. Puck, Silencer, and AA all take a bit of learning before you can play at their fullest potential, but they're all extremely annoying in the hands of competent players.
Edited by steelfire81, Apr 28 2014, 10:25 PM.
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LightningBolt
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Boring Person
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Thanks for taking the time to look over the game.

I have noticed that I tend to get overly aggressive while harassing. Sometimes it works out fine for me, but sometimes it can really bite me on the ass. I don't think it was much of a problem in that game, but yeah it is sometimes. It's mostly something I kind of adjust as I go. If I'm laning against people that I don't think are very aggressive and don't have stuns or anything to kill me, I usually keep harassing. Actually looking at it now, that was the match with Venomancer and Venomancer was annoying as fuck in that lane so yeah I probably should have been less aggressive, or at least gotten away from creeps.

If I'm going to take anything away from this, it'll definitely be the point about Chilling Touch. It's my least-favorite spell on AA, but yeah 50 extra damage per attack is very significant early on, especially if you can cast it on one or two of your allies. Then suddenly you're doing +150 damage with attacks from the three of you. That is definitely enough to get some early kills in and something I'll be trying out from now on.

Hotkeys are a thing I've been meaning to work on but yeah I haven't yet. I will make a concerted effort to use them starting this weekend, though. As for the bit about Dream Coil, I don't even know what that is and that just goes back to me not being familiar with all of the heroes at this point of the game. Looking at the spell now, yes Darkie and I definitely could have coordinated our teamfight efforts a lot better. I think that's equally a problem of us not being coordinated enough and a problem of us not being familiar with the heroes so we don't really know each other's heroes' capabilities.

As for the Ultimate Orb thing, that was just an isolated incident. I'm usually pretty tunnel-minded when it comes to building items. Probably to the point where it's a problem.

I feel good with Ancient Apparition right now. Over my past several games with him, I've really cut down on my deaths for the most part. I used to have a problem dying early with him since his strength is really low early on and he has little escape, but yeah I've cut down on those early deaths and I feel like I'm much better at picking when to use my spells. I just love his teamfight ability, which his ult is great for, and just spamming spells in team fights. He also does a sneaky amount of damage over the course of a game, and with his good base intelligence and agility, he's no slouch as an auto-attacker. I still have room to improve obviously, but I'll probably start looking for another hero to main, this time a carry. I've been mulling over a couple of possibilities, and I think I want to try Doom. He's got awful base armor, but he has Pudge-esque HP/strength and I think with a Heart/Shiva combo, he'd be awesome. I'm mostly looking for a strength carry, and I have a few others I may consider. I feel like one of our problems in pubs is that we don't have much bulk given our preferred heroes. Only Snow really likes to play a bulky hero (Axe).
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dwestfan13
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Feeder
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I'm having Dota withdrawals. I really need to find a Hero that suits me. I love Lion and Drow but anybody can play those well.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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Question for Steel: In professional games I'm noticing Viper players building the team's Mek on him, and I think a number of people say Razor is a natural Mek holder too (changes to the recommended item builds indicate this too). It doesn't seem like either have the mana pool to build Mek, and since they have the strong early games, it seems like Mek isn't the proper item to push a snowball advantage. So what makes them popular Mek holders?
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steelfire81
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The reason Mek is great is that it lets you take an early game lead and turn it into an even bigger early game lead through tower gold. While it might take a support 20+ minutes to finish a mek, a strong laner like Viper or Razor can dominate the midlane and get one extremely early. You can use the fast Mek to bulldoze towers because it's extremely difficult to teamfight against Mek in the early game and a lot easier to sustain a push with one.

As a bonus, both Viper and Razor are heroes who benefit a great deal from survivability items. The longer Razor lasts in a teamfight, the more damage he's stealing from carries and the more armor his ultimate has removed. Viper already is difficult to kill with his 3 attack speed slows (orb, Corrosive Skin, and ult all slow attack speed tremendously) and a tanky Viper means fighting into Corrosive Skin and Nethertoxin longer. Mek gives you +4 HP regen, +5 armor, and +95 HP (from stats) ignoring its active. When you use its active, it gives you 2 more armor as well as the 250 HP heal.

The mana cost really isn't that big a deal by the time you have Mek. At level 6, with just a Wraith Band, Phase Boots, and Mek, Razor has a mana pool of 455. With the same build, Viper has a mana pool of 403. Viper only has to throw his ultimate (125 mana at level 1) and Mek (150 mana) in a teamfight. This leaves him with plenty of mana left over to throw a few orbs if he wants. Razor will be using his ultimate (100 mana at level 1), Mek (150 mana), and least one static link (20/30/40/50 mana). This makes his total mana usage 270/280/290/300 depending on his Static Link level. His Q has a fixed 125 manacost, which he will have enough for at least once with his leftover mana. Keep in mind this is at level 6 (midlaners will usually be joining fights at a higher level since they have solo lane experience and teamfights don't usually happen until at least carries have their big ultimates) and with minimal items. If you want mana regen, Aquila/Bottle are also nice pickups on these heroes. You could even just get a flat Basilius without the Wraith Band into Aquila if you want, it's just that I prefer opening Wraith + Tango on Viper and kept the same items for Razor since they're also viable starting items on him. Tread Switching with Power Treads (replacing Phase Boots) also gives you a little bit more mana.

There are alternatives to Mek on both of these heroes for tankiness. Drums don't give you the same pushing/fighting ability as Mek, but it's cheaper, gives you 9 of each stat instead of 5, and gives you nice movement speed (both Razor and Viper like being able to chase down their opponents as well). Personally I'm a fan of rushing Aghs on Viper (especially with an easy lane) because having a 12 second cooldown, 900 cast range, fixed 125 manacost ultimate is incredibly powerful if you can get it within 20 minutes. Getting Treads instead of Phases also works if you just leave them on STR. Keep in mind that Mek is a lot better for teamplay and pushing towers. If you plan on ganking a lot more than fighting, Mek is probably not worth it. I don't like getting Mek on Viper because I feel he does a lot better with ganking items (Aghs, Shadow Blade, Orchid, MKB), but someone like Razor is incredible in teamfights so Mek is usually a great choice. Hopefully this answer helps you a bit.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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Yeah, I did some reading after asking that and I think one guy summed it up pretty well with "Viper is a hero with damage already built into his skills, just keep him alive and he'll do damage no matter what" akin to someone like Necrophos. I also didn't realize Aghs put his ult on a 12 second cooldown so that works well, too. Figured Razor should be built on the bulkier side too but I've always thought of Mek as an item your support should buy, or in rare cases an offlaner like WR or something.



We also might want to try learning how to tri-lane for pubs, since it's a skill we should develop anyways, and might help deal with the enemies snowballing early. All I really know about the 3-1-1 meta is a small number of potential offlaners (Nyx, WR, Timbersaw, Axe, Batrider, Centaur, and more that I can't remember off the top of my head but I know the list of offlaners is far bigger than that) and that you're CONSTANTLY pulling with the 4 and 5, and the 5 stays VERY underleveled during laning so the carry gets the extra levels very quickly. Do you have much experience with a tri-lane / pointers for it? I've watched some competitive replays and it's just something that would take practice but if there's anything we can do to help get accustomed to it more quickly...
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