Virtus.pro were on the brink of elimination in the group stage at OGA Dota PIT after they lost two series in a row. They got seeded in Group B along with Team Secret, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team Liquid and Team Spirit and their first two series were held against Secret and NIP, both lost 0-2.
VP were sitting at the bottom of the group before their match-up with Team Liquid and another loss would have got them a step closer to an absolute disaster. However, the series started in a pure Team Liquid fashion. The Europeans had a Lycan – Queen of Pain pushing duo and one of the most annoying team fight combos, Mars-Phoenix, while VP went with a safe lane Beastmaster for Igor “iLTW” Filatov, an offlane Timbersaw and a late game option with Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko on Morphling in the mind lane. As anticipated, Liquid took control over the game pretty fast and around the 30 minute mark they were holding a bit over 11K networth advantage. However, they couldn’t take more than a lane of barracks and were dragged into the late game. Their line-up slowly faded away up to the point where they were ripped apart by the Morphling and had to admit defeat.
Nonetheless, Liquid bounced back strong in game two with a very aggressive carry Weaver and perfect coordination between all the team members. Unfortunately, the beautiful synergy was brought to an end by a carry Luna from Virtus.pro in game three. Liquid were displaying the same aggressive stance with Riki-Grimstroke causing a lot of trouble during the laning stage. Luna was forced to play from behind but she got full support from her team, and despite lagging behind in terms of farm or team fight impact for the first 20 to 30 minutes, VP have patiently accepted the unfavorable kill trades until iLTW was ready to join his team with BkB, Manta and Butterfly completed. From the lowest networth core on the map, Luna took over when the farm accelerated and she became impossible to bring down once she got a lucky Illusionist Cape neutral drop and she completed the Satanic as well.
While the victory is pushing VP to the third place in Group B for now, Team Liquid have completed all their group stage matches and will have to wait and see how the final standings will look like at the end of tomorrow’s games. Team Spirit are currently at the bottom of the group and need to take at least a game from Team Secret and a clean 2-0 victory over Virtus.pro to avoid elimination.
Related:
Source: Read Full Article