While most esports fans were moving away from New Year’s Eve and eating salads, HellRaisers presented the real composition of all the stars from the CIS. Bright and experienced players, who on paper looked like the clear favorites of the qualification, actually finished the qualifiers with a 0: 4 statistics. At the same time, it will not be possible to find one culprit in the collective’s failures. HR failure – a combination of factors, starting from a new position for Alexander Nix Levin and ending with wards from Ivan VANSKOR Skorokhod. What prevented the star squad from showing a decent game in qualifying – in the material Cybersport.ru.
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HellRaisers didn’t play
Perhaps this is the first and most obvious explanation. For example, VANSKOR officially joined the team only on January 4, and the player’s tests passed, judging by the post of the club’s CEO, the day before. At the same time, the first HR game took place on January 8, that is, there was practically no time for joint training and perfecting strategies. Conditional NoPangolier registered the roster at the end of December, although most of the roster, according to the coach ArsZeeqq, was collected back in early November.
On the other hand, EXTREMUM, against which HR played the second match, also made two changes in the squad only on December 31 and said goodbye to the coach. Same Alexey Solo Berezin, which was recently in Just Error, registered a new roster on January 2nd. Therefore, if HR can make a discount due to lack of match, then it is quite small. However, it was the lil me alone roster that showed the weakest team play among all the teams in qualifying. This manifested itself in micro-moments in mass battles, when HR players acted in disunity, as, for example, in this fight against NoPangolier. VANSKOR on Oracle gives Puck the ultimate before Beastmaster’s Primal Roar hits him, which loses time in the camp. Moreover, he Resolut1on put Dream Coil in one Ghostik. HR seemed to be ready to take a fight: lil me alone broke into Earthshaker perfectly, but Ember Spirit and Puck could not do damage, and Cooman generally fled from the enemy forest and dealt only two hits to Lion. As a result, the promising fight ended with two deaths of HR players.
Nix in an unfamiliar role
Nix hasn’t played in mid lane for almost a year. We are used to seeing Levin in the first position around which the team’s play is built. However, with Cooman in Nix, you need to take on the role of a mid-playmaker. However, Nix failed to realize their potential on the center line in the qualifiers.
Problems arose already at the laning stage. On both maps against NoPangolier, Levin was noticeably inferior in overall value to his counterpart. On the sixth minute of the first map, he lost to the enemy Mars almost 1.5 thousand gold. On the second map, despite the teammates’ constrictions, who twice sent mellojul to the tavern, by the tenth minute Nix was again losing 500 gold. Against Kunkka in the match with EXTREMUM, Levin defended exactly, although later he lost time and pace on unsuccessful attempts to enter the gank. However, already on the second map, Nix completely lost the central lane, dying three times from Ember Spirit – in the seventh minute the gap between them was more than a thousand gold and two and a half levels.
Nix also had problems in midgame. Levin’s second map against NoPangolier turned out to be a frank failure – he ended it with a 2/9/8 stat and dealt only 16K damage to Leshrac in 40 minutes. Nix often found himself in a not very successful position and was one of the first to die, not even having time to press all his buttons, although, looking ahead, this was not only his fault. The moment in the 40th minute of the second map against NoPangolier was indicative, when Nix, knowing that the opposing team had Legion Commander and Batrider, approached to destroy the Shadow Shaman wards, although Mirana alone could cope with this task. The opponents immediately focused Levin, and he did not deal damage at all in a rather promising fight. Having immediately bought back, Nix returned to the fight, from which Cooman had already fled, after which he immediately died again, and then immediately left the game.
Probably, Levin’s play was also affected by the lack of tournament practice, because HR missed the EPIC League, so Nix did not play on the professional stage since the beginning of November. Mild uncertainty manifested itself even in small things, which resulted in serious problems for the team. For example, on the 20th minute of the first map against EXTREMUM, HR players went under Smoke of Deceit to look for an opponent. At the worst possible moment, Nix decided to farm a bunch of creeps – when Resolut1on and Cooman were already breaking into Kunkka. After that, Levin blinked behind his supports away from the enemy and didn’t help finish off the opponent’s mid lane. As a result, HR did not have enough just a couple of punches to finish off Kunkka, while Puck kept his ultimate until the very end of the fight and eventually gave it, just to save himself.