The OMEGA League Immortal division entered the playoffs stage and the first series was a spectacular one, played between Team Liquid and Virtus.pro with elimination on the line.
Both teams fought tooth and nail and delivered one of the most tense series of the entire tournament so far in their quest of staying alive in the competition. Virtus.pro opened with a draft that excelled in objective taking, with a mid lane Nature’s Prophet, a Beastmaster and a carry Terrorblade guarded by Shadow Demon behind him to provide the saves and the extra illusions to make his right click even more devastating. Given the incredible potential of their draft in the early stages, Virtus.pro had no issue keeping the map control and pushing Liquid with their back against the wall.
However, all the VP confidence was shattered in the second game, when Liquid took them by surprise with a role swap between Samuel “Boxi” Svahn, Tommy “Taiga” Le. In the winner’s interview, Taiga explained after the loss against Ninjas in Pyjamas in the group stages he asked the team to let him play in the offlane as he feels that he has a deeper understanding of the current patch and he can bring some fresh ideas to the table. With everything to lose on the line in the second game against VP, Liquid went with Taiga’s idea and found a powerful synergy between the two players with Taiga on Enigma and Boxi playing Spirit Void in position 4. They forced a very fast tempo with a mid lane Lycan and hit the pushing timings to perfection to send VP to a decisive game three in just 20 minutes.
Liquid kept the same Enigma-Void Spirit combo and even enhanced their push strategy with a Lone Druid and a Leshrac in the last game of the match-up, but VP matched their draft in all aspects. The CIS team had Vacuum into Echo Slam on their side, which made the team fights engagements extremely awkward as both teams were trying to stay as spread as possible. Liquid, however, had the advantage with their pushing power and around the 15 minute mark, the VP towers started to melt down. It took Virtus.pro a bit more than 30 minutes to land the Vacuum – ES combo for the first time, but when they did, they were able to wipe Liquid, claim an uncontested Roshan kill and take a full lane of barracks through the mid lane to even the game with just one big play.
From there on, both teams played around the buyback timers, knowing that one single team fight can decide their tournament fate. The game went up to nearly an hour of back and forth battles, insane high ground defenses from both sides until 9 out of the 10 heroes on the map were left without buyback. In the end, the fate of the game was sealed with another clutch move signed Taiga.
Virtus.pro ended the OMEGA League run in the top eight while Team Liquid advanced into the second round of the lower bracket which will be played on the 4th of September.
Read also:
Source: Read Full Article