Tharnder Gaming (2025)

30/08/2025

When I started trying out HOK a month ago, I thought hey this an interesting game.

ML has a reputation of being dominated by kids, like 8-12 year olds in most MOBA circles.

My honest review after a month : different MOBA, same 💩.

Somehow these MOBA games have the same algorithm. They are designed to get you hooked into the game. The moment you are at a crucial point of getting to the next rank, that’s when their dark system strikes. They pair you up with clearly bad teammates (MM clearly doesn’t know what to do/teammates doing 1 vs 3/1 vs 4). The same mistakes you see in ML are being done in HOK.

So after losing, you then want to try win the next game. And oops, another loss again! They will then give you 1 game vs pure bots to revive your shattered hope.

The vicious cycle repeats. The Hope-Despair cycle. The same mechanism as gambling: near-misses make you try harder, and intermittent wins keep you addicted.

So sometimes, it’s really not your fault. It’s the algorithm that is designed that way. The main goal : to keep you hooked onto the game.

I have so far only played 100% solo in HOK because no friends play HOK.

02/08/2025

Team Liquid won purely based on the draft.

Game 2 - Lancelot bad pick, Lance was trying to 1 vs 1 so many times but just couldn’t finish off.

Game 3 - The Gloo pick was scary. Absolute domination, no one had the answer.

Game 4 - Gloo was still out and given to TLPH. SRG took Uranus instead which in my opinion is the most overrated hero of the tournament. SRG is the only team in the knockout stages to play Uranus, the other top 8 teams didn’t both with this hero.

Game 5 - Gloo was again picked up by TLPH, SRG took Arlott. Didn’t work.

Throughout the games, TLPH was happy to give SRG Pharsa because they know Sanford would make sure Pharsa would struggle to land clean shots.

Congrats to TLPH. For SRG, it is difficult to win the same title consecutively. I don’t think any teams have won the same title whether it’s MSC or M-series twice in a row. As one of the players said, when META changes, sometimes it would heavily one particular team.

02/08/2025

Frame by frame analysis of ONIC PH’s last team fight vs SRG

So I will try to highlight in 3 images on the sequence of events which led to ONIC PH’s loss vs SRG

1. ONIC PH was losing in towers, 1 vs 8. Their wave flow was at a disadvantage and easily susceptible to any split push. Kelra was the only hero with strong wave clearing abilities, even then Granger is not the best marksman for wave clearance. Zhu Xin will take ages to clear even a single minion.
(Problem and chain of events : Draft disadvantage -> poor wave clearance -> always have to divide resources to ensure minions don’t destroy towers/end game)

2. The moment Kelra cleared minions, Chou used conceal immediately to look for a target. This was being opportunistic as it was a temporary 5 vs 4, number advantage for SRG. ONIC did well to regroup instead of staying in isolation, as a result, Chou did not pursue further.

3. SRG started Lord. They had Akai to use the ult to push everyone away, so they have the map advantage for Lord. Badang flickered in to wall stun everyone, but failed to get Bruno. Good reflex from Bruno meant that the marksman survived first invitation from the enemy roamer. Pharsa was untouched, able to free hit.

4. Now, I want you to rewatch the clip and pay attention to Akai’s positioning. Akai was in the Lord pit spinning but was brought out of the Lord pit by Super France. ❌ BIG Mistake from Super Frince, because of that, Akai was well-positioned to now push everyone further into the attack zone of SRG’S damage dealers. Basically, Super Frince gifted SRG free kills.

5. Kelra could not do anything but watched helplessly as his entire team was pushed into SRG’s damage dealers by Akai. He had no chance to rescue them. Kramm body-blocked all of his ultimate.

Edit :
A commenter mentioned that Akai dashed out. This can be the case and something I wanted to add to the original post at first. The reason I mentioned Zhu Xin pulled Akai out was that it would be logical Zhu Xin to pull Akai away from the Lord for Fredrinn to retri and the animation looked weird?

01/08/2025

In my previous post, I shared how lethal and efficient ONIC PH was in taking down core damage dealers.

Now let’s compare it to Team Spirit’s sequence of attack.

At 28:55, KidBomba did well to wallstun Kelra and SuperFrince. This was a key crowd control skill and a golden opportunity to take them down.

Instead?

4 of Team Spirit was too focused on KingKong and wasted an opportunity to take down Kelra. If you were to ask me who is more of a priority? I will argue it’s the marksman.

It took Team Spirit a further 6 seconds, at 29:01 to re-engage vs Kelra.

6 seconds is too much time for a player of the calibre like Kelra to re-position, especially in a fast-paced game like MLBB. ❌ BIG mistake from Team Spirit.

Also when caught during the wall stun, most players would flicker by now but not Kelra.

Now you may ask, why?

If you pay close attention, Kelra was saving the flicker for 1 hero from Team Spirit and that is Pharsa’s ultimate.

Kelra had 0 magic defence, he cannot afford a single hit from Pharsa, his only way to dodge magic attack is to flicker away. Despite Arlott coming in close, it doesn’t really scare Kelra because he has wind of nature.

It takes composure to pull of what Kelra did. Something the average rank game player would struggle with.

31/07/2025

Amazing teamfight for Game 4 of Team Spirit vs ONIC PH

How long did it take for ONIC PH to fully wipe out Team Spirit?

11 seconds.

The first 5 seconds of team fight analysis

1st second
- Novaria used the ultimate, Granger blast the ultimate

2nd second
- 3 man knock up by Kalea

3rd second to 4th second
- Wanwan dies. Phase uses purify. Chou flickered in to kick Granger. Phoveus targeted pharsa

5th second
- Hayabusa came in to target Pharsa, killed Pharsa.

Within 5 seconds, two core damage dealers of Team Spirit died. Game over.

Military precision + well coordinated attack. They prioritise taking out two targets which is the marksman and mage, and they did exactly that.

The sequence of attack
1. Novaria’s ultimate provided vision and increased hit box of hospital teammate’s skills
2. Kalea 2nd skill to knock-up
3. Granger free-hitting with the ultimate

Watching this was mesmerising.

Well-deserved victory to be honest.

28/07/2025

Started HOK just to try out the game.

Currently after 2 weeks, I reached diamond V and best of all, have collected 50 heroes! 50 heroes in just 2 weeks!

HOK has a promotion whereby that you can get a free hero every day which last for 30 days. I have 19 days to go, potentially allowing me to collect a further 19 heroes.

So far the games has been good, better quality than ML. Very few feeders like Miya 0-10.

Regarding HOK challenging ML, I think it will still take some time but otherwise, I have no plans to change games because you have to start everything from scratch which in the current working life, it’s not possible. Will probably play ML with friends but when it comes to solo, will play HOK.

27/07/2025

MSC 2025 Knock-out stage

What we have learnt about the teams/regions

1. For several tournaments, it is suggestive that Malaysia only has 1 strong contender for the title and that is SRG. Homebois is okay but just not good enough to fight for Top 8. The gap between first place and second place in MPL MY is huge. Could it be the lack of imports in Homebois?

2. Both Philippines and Indonesia continue to dominate international tournaments, each having two teams in the knock-out stages. TLPH didn’t even break a sweat, they did not lose any games. ONIC PH looks shaky but otherwise strong performances. Both RRQ and ONIC Indo are in the knockout stages.

3. Europe officially the 2nd best server after SEA. Team Spirit fared well, didn’t have much issues with the teams they faced. Aurora had to crawl their way from lower bracket to knock out stages, re-enforcing their fighting spirit. However, they should probably re-consider their draft with questionable picks like Uranus Jungler or Gusion Jungler.

4. Revival of Myanmar in the international scene. Strong performance from Mythical Seal. Could they be the dark horse of the team?

5. MENA, LATAM and China still weak. Despite MENA and LATAM having MPLs, no impact whatsoever in international tournaments. China is a bit of head-scratcher, somehow they just aren’t good? Coaching issue? Player issue? Not sure. Many feared China would be a dominant force in a year but clearly that isn’t the case.

6. Singapore unfortunately didn’t get to top 8 this time, squandered several winning positions whereby their base assaults felt rushed.

7. Bye to North America. Probably their last performance in international stage. It was entertaining while it lasted. (Hopefully the women’s team would still be able to compete internationally).

26/07/2025

Game of trolls.

RRQ trolled game 1. In return, Aurora decided to troll game 2.

Uranus 0-6-0, completely ineffective. At one point, Uranus was at RRQ’s base.

I don’t get pro teams’s obsession with Uranus Jungler. It doesn’t work as good as they think. I was trying to find an advantage Uranus offers in the two games but I struggle to find any.

I think this encounter between RRQ vs Aurora will be a top contender for the worst game in MSC

26/07/2025

It was obvious from the start who would lose the game. RRQ self-destructed with such a draft. Four melee heroes, they lacked ranged, lacked map control.

Poor drafting.

I like Aurora for picking up Atlas, this team isn’t afraid to use unconventional picks.

26/07/2025

Team Flash wins first game vs DFYG

DFYG fails to close the game..again. I am seeing a pattern on DFYG, they are winning early-mid late game but failing to close the game.

During the draft phase, DFYG made a rank game draft mistake by picking the double mm strategy, both Granger and Kimmy at the same time. In the rank games I play, if you were to pick both Kimmy and Granger at the same time, enemy would pick up Lo**ta, which is entirely logical. It’s incredibly annoying playing these two heroes vs Lo**ta, you need your other heroes to help cancel Loli’s shield. They definitely could have done better in this particular aspect of the draft pick. You could see that Kimmy’s second and ultimate were reflected by Lo**ta’s skill several times throughout the game

As a response, Team Flash drafted a counter-pick with rank game META by picking up the Lo**ta. Also, I believe they are the first team to use Gord. Gord is my favourite mage and I have made multiple posts about this hero. His burst damage when using the skill 1-Ult combo is amazing, his skill 1 opens up the map, second skill is painful — allowing you to displace enemies. Casters argue Gord is immobile which is true but his skill set compensates for it.

During most teamfights, I observed DFYG made the mistake of not targeting the backline, allowing Gord to literally free-hit. I can see a clear game instruction given by coach Zeus to Lo**ta and Cici, Loltia’s primary role is to protect Gord meanwhile Cici would be near to body-block any hits from Granger . This worked out superbly well as seen by Gord having 0 death in 18 minutes.

Throughout the game, Moskov maintained the same gold as Granger. Normally, you would ask your exp laners to target the backline but Flash used Moskov to target the backline. Cici’s primary role was also to protect Gord and letting Moskov target the backline.

I also feel that DFYG should have found a way to target Moskov especially when Moskov was solo farming the lanes. For most of the game, Moskov was clearing waves and joining teamfights with the ult. Basicslly, DFYG allowed Moskov to farm which in my opinion is a wasted opportunity to starve Moskov.

During the last base defence, I am unclear why Tigreal with immortality did not use second skill to push minions away. If they have done that, they would have another chance in the game.

In summary,
- Clean ex*****on of protect-the backline strategy by Flash
- DFYG inability to deny Moskov’s farm
- Avoid double MM draft simultaneously

25/07/2025

MSC 2025 Day 1 and 2 review

Team Liquid PH 2–0 Ultra Legends
TLPH had no issue against Ultra Legends, comfortable wins.

ONIC Indo 2- 1 CFU
ONIC had an early scare after losing game 1. They tried a Lunox gold lane but unfortunately did not work, took Granger for the next 2 games and did much better. Game 2 was tight but they managed to seal the win. Credits to ONIC for trying a non marksman at gold lane, I wished more teams have the bravery to try a new draft.

SRG 2–1 Virtus pro
SRG did well for game 1 but for game 2, Virtus Pro smashed the defending champions. Uranus in game 2 had zero impact and was feeding lots of kills as he was constantly isolated.

Mythic SEAL 2–1 Corinthians
No comments as I did not watch this game closely.

HomeBois 2–1 Team Flash (HomeBois won a tight Bo3 opener)
Let’s talk about game 3. Credits to Team Flash for trying Leomord gold lane, to be fair Team Flash should have won game 1, they dominated the early and mid late game, it was because of 1 teamfight that Masha and Leomord tried to blitz attack the backline but failed terribly! Homebois responded immediately with Joy running towards Flash’s backline. Sighs, I believed they rushed it and ultimately squandered a good opportunity to win the game.

Team Spirit 2–0 DianFengYaoGuai
Comfortable wins for Spirit. DFYG didn’t look settled for both games. Hmmm, this team has yet to pull off a convincing performance against the top teams of MLBB. 1 years has passed since their first international tournament, however from this match, it doesn’t seem to show any promising signs of challenging for top 8.

RRQ Hoshi 2–0 Area 77
Clean wins from RRQ Hoshi, Area77 clearly outmatched especially, their rotation and teamfights

ONIC Philippines 1-2 Aurora Türkiye
Upset of the tournament? M6 champions defeated by the Turkish teams. Aurora isn’t your average team, I do classify them as above average especially with experienced players in their roster. However, pulling off a victory against a top 2 team in the world is a big confidence booster. Rosa stuck with the same Selena for all 3 games.

Game 3 was particularly interesting, they secured 2 fighters at the sidelane. Ruby and Edith with only YSS jungler who functions as “the marksman”. They won the game as everyone dived, Selena threw arrows, Edith flickered into and Gatot jumped onto Kelra. 3 hero dive. Once Kelra was taken out, the whole of ONIC collapses. Aurora executed a perfect military-precision strike .

Observations
1. Kalea is the new “Chou”, able to isolate a single hero and is a META pick of the tournament
2. Gold lane Meta remains stagnant with Granger, Harith, Moskov but there are some promising signs of teams thinking “out of the box” such as Lunox, Leomord and Ixia
3. I can’t understand teams who pick Hilda. Hilda’s current win rate if 1/4=25%. I understand she’s good at providing vision but that has not translated into wins. My recommendation is don’t pick this hero, limited use in pro gameplays.
4. YSS and Zhu Xin have impressive win rates of 80% and 90% respectively.
5. For exp laners, despite buffs to Lapu and Ruby they are still underused with teams favouring Phoveus and Arlott. Esme is slowly making a comeback.

13/07/2025

EU server loves Kimmy, they even play her in the Wildcard tournament. Kimmy is preferred as a midlaner because of her fast clearing speed and then you also have a MM in the gold lane, late game = double trouble.

Triple MM strategy is a cheese strategy. The way it works is that you have a MM-like jungler like YSS, a MM gold lane and Kimmy midlane. Pros of the strategy is that your wave clearance will always be better than your enemies. Your enemy cannot keep up with protecting towers.

I have seen a variation of this strategy, some use Popol Kupa Jungler. Kimmy is usually the midlaner. The gold lane MM can be any MM. I feel that Rare Atom should have banned Kimmy.

Tharnder Gaming

30/08/2025

02/08/2025

02/08/2025

01/08/2025

31/07/2025

28/07/2025

27/07/2025

26/07/2025

26/07/2025

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25/07/2025

13/07/2025

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