Dlarimit

lol srsly.. waiting 10 minutes to get ashkandor or bulwark is going to drastically change the game more than pumping 15k into the citadel after giants.  Would you rather have slightly stronger giants trying to beat down slightly weaker giants and the citadel through enemy aoe?  Or would you rather have 3 portals worth of slightly weaker giants against 1 portal of slightly stronger giants?  

as for holding portals late game.. if your teammate dies you need to IMMEDIATELY lock one and then run to the other (unless you know they're going back to base because they're close to dead anyway).  Ideally you can stall long enough until your teammate comes back.

Creeps do play a pivotal role in 2v2.. but sometimes it can be more beneficial to get an item like orb of defiance, hungarlings, j-treads, or groffling warplate first.  If you can do something that will give you greater control of the game and ideally net you even 1 kill, it's totally worth it.  You can get complete map control and sell that item back if it served its purpose (i.e. I had gotten an orb of defiance.  It helped us get a kill and a portal when we had catapults.  I then went back and sold it so I had enough for giants and then could assist in flag locking).

Anyway.. it's a judgment call as for getting expensive items and getting creeps.  Creep upgrades are usually not worth it due to massive aoe negating most of it anyway.  If the enemy team is Rook / Sedna / Erebus, then ya.. creep upgrades might be a beneficial upgrade.  If it's tb / occ / beast, you're much better off saving longer to get an artifact.

Thank you all for the advice! Very useful info.

Also, regarding the Blacksmith and Armory upgrades, a general rule to stand by is to get no more than N-1 upgrades for each, where N is the number of players you have on a team.

Hedgie' s post would not be complete without a formula Very helpful, I'll remember this one.

This cost us 1 game in the current tournament.  We were beating renz/mcshane/or-chin in a game and I chose upgrading creeps instead of trying to pimp out our ub.  Big mistake.  Granted, the lesson is learned, but learning when to by troop upgrades over artifacts is important.  That falls more in line with 3v3 games though... hopefully most 2v2 games aren't about getting artifacts over troop upgrades.  Don't think I've encountered any in my 3k + games. 

2v2 late game pn cataract is almost mainly flag hunting, if you lose one portal it is very hard to come back in a 2v2 (cataract). Because there are three important flags that you have to protect. If you don't have two dg's that has aoe it's hell. Because hard to hold the flag against another dg locking it. most of the time that DG and giants will be too much to tank. And the other dg is kept busy among valor and portal and giants eventually start bashing mid. Thats how most games end.

1-If you are not on vent or if you don't know your partner well enough, there will be the problem of communication. If that's the case, sometimes it is best to pre-decide on a strategy. So each one of you pick a side and protect and push that . You are responsible of that lane's threats and portal pushes. Or defensively determine which dg is gonna hold who. so you are playing as oak, tb and enemy is sedna, ub.  It might be good to think of who is gonna take care of who. If ub rushes for your portal, always oak teleports if sedna rushes it is tb's job. This can all be told in one line and i think that helps. Example: I hold ub. this is the defensive aspect. 

2-well if the portal is gone and if both teams are playing correctly. All you can do is to play the teleport game , this is the period when you watch your enemy teleport times more carefully. Now you have to draw attention make enemy port and fake-port to fight in your portal outnumbered or force them to fight after they lock the portal and eventually find a good time to turn into yellow when the enemy is outnumbered.

This usually happens at some point if the items are balanced. because if you lock the flag and fight a short while. You will not have enough time to recharge and teleport back to lock it. So forcing the enemy to fight a while where your distance is shorter to the crystal is usually helpful. They might decide to stay for relocking but then it will be harder for them to fight without full hp. Either way it is to your advantage.

Oak is an exception to this. He can just safely lock the portal, kiss you on the chick, port out and come back for another round. So go for their portals and play tricks so he just fuckin stops doing that.

Regarding troop upgrades. My personal strategy is usually" I like mine being better than theirs". So watch the upg they have on their giants(their hp) and get a better upg. i think it is quite helpful to have your troops have a slight advantage over theirs unless there is aoe madness on the oppoenent team. If the aoes are about the same on both teams. You are likely to gain some more vision on the map( it is important after towers are down) and if the enemy giants are pushed further away to their side when they fight for 2 mid section flags, they will get the extra bash from your troops. But yeah, after 1st upg of armory and bs, always get the journey and the basic need first. 

well everything is quite situational so actually this can all be summed up as late game map awareness is more crucial. 

Random Dg history in 2v2s:  There was sakke and erska back in the day and they played a mean speedy oak,sedna combo. They just ran around flags and spammed abilities. Almost never engaged and was very hard to deal with.They were brothers from Scandinavia in RL and played quite in their own style. I always thought that was seriously cool.Oak, sedna combo along with ub, sedna combo eventually failed against the ub, oak combo.

I think i am lost in this. So i am just gonna end it here.

Lol you guys still think we pimped out our UB eh.  The only time we kind of did that was against Rawrr, I believe I sold a hungarlians so Renz could get something sooner, 

Well both sides have their could haves.  If you had done that we could have countered by actually pimping out our UB, since we were swimming in money and he had much better items on his own.  I just finished the replay, our creeps were equally upgraded (both sides only had the final armory upgrade to get) and Orcun got the citadel award even though he was 0-3.  Really it wasn't upgrading creeps that cost you the game, it was blowing your one chance when you guys took the portal and then cow died so we got it back.