Celebrating the team leaving the CIS in the second round of the playoffs at DreamLeague Leipzig Major did not last long. Natus vincerewho shockly carried out the group stage, faced with Team liquid and apparently decided to take revenge on the opponent Virtus.pro, also playing with him a protracted card for 70 minutes. However, Liquid was ready and knocked out the second club in our region from the tournament. How this happened is in the material.
Don’t you feel like deja vu?
The NAVI and Liquid match began with a protracted map, which in many respects – up to the 70th minute – resembled the meeting of the Swedish team with Virtus.pro. Let this time Disruptor be on the side of the CIS, roster Bakyt Zayac Emilzhanova anyway, he quickly gave his opponent the initiative and was locked in his half of the card. Liquid decided not to back down from its strategy – the team abandoned aggression and methodically farm, making rare attempts to enter the high ground through Aegis cooldown.
Interestingly, in this match Liquid abandoned all the “theories of ideal kneading.” If in the game against the VP it was important for the club to shut Outworld Devourer with the help of Static Storm in every fight, then here Huskar and Oracle decided everything, a bunch of which is as old as Dota itself. Already in the 12th minute, NAVI tried four times to kill Liquid Kerry, but under False Promise he survived Static Storm, Doom, Assassinate and continuous auto-attacks of all opponents – only Zayac could finish him off with a successful crit.
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Morphling at this time farm, without being distracted by fights – the same Mike miCKe Nguyen played against VP, albeit on a different character. As a result, by the 15th minute, his separation from Vladislav Crystallize Kristanek amounted to almost three thousand gold, and by the 30th – all six. The game was virtually non-contact: in half an hour the teams made 27 frags, half of which occurred during lining. The problem of NAVI was that, individually, its characters were not combat-ready: the peak was well suited for teamfights and high-ground defense, but the team was unable to go out and impose an opponent on an equal footing. Liquid used this and simply farm the whole map, arranging fights at those moments when her characters received the next core item.
NAVI, this situation seemed to suit – only the audience suffered. Starting from the 20th minute and until the end of the first hour, there were no big changes on the map, only the advantage of Liquid was slowly growing. However, the Swedes didn’t get stuck with the ramp approach: MagicaL on Sniper drove everyone away in a matter of seconds, and by the 42nd minute got Divine Rapier and became even more efficient. Zayac at this time alone waged a guerrilla warfare and carefully “crypto-skip”, stole runes and captured outposts. The movements of the NAVI Quartet during the game were probably the most interesting to follow. Over time, he received the Ninja Gear and began to burn creeps even more actively. However, this did not stop Liquid by the 50th minute from increasing the advantage in gold to 30 thousand.
Daughter roulette
Despite the presence of Rapier, NAVI could not leave the base and reached the match until the 70th minute. By that time, the Sniper ITembild looked like this:
In a normal situation, such items would be enough for MagicaL to sit on its high-ground for a long time, repelling all the waves of creeps. But in this case, this was not enough to stop Morphling: all because of neutral artifacts, in the distribution of which miCKe literally won the lottery.
Morphling knocked out Apex and Fusion Rune – perhaps the best items for this situation. The first gave the character + 80% agility, and the second – the effects of all existing runes. So the hero took 90% of the resist to physical damage, 1,200 damage and an attack speed of five shots per second. MiCKe took three seconds to destroy a pair of barracks, and one to kill illias after a buyback. NAVI, which fell Stygian Desolator and Trident, could only shrug their hands in this situation: Morphling broke his throne so quickly that there was no way to interfere.
The situation caused a lot of controversy in the community, the main theme of which, of course, was the power of neutral objects. It’s hard for me to argue with the claim that Apex and Fusion Rune won this match for Liquid, but I propose to look at the meeting from a different angle – if it is easier for you, just try to swap teams.
In the first part of the match, NAVI literally stood up as a “turtle” at the base, deliberately tightening the game. By the 70th minute, Liquid’s advantage was 40 thousand, but the team simply broke up to defend the opponent and could not achieve victory – it would seem absolutely logical. The Swedes can be accused of indecision, but the fact that the roster “won the Dota” until the 70th minute remains indisputable: he shockly completed the lane stage, crushed his opponent in midgame and then locked him on the base, taking control of the entire map.
Developers have long begun to introduce mechanics into the game that are designed to help teams capture the high ground. These are the runes of wealth, which must be collected by the side that grabbed the map, outposts with additional experience, and new items in Roshan – all of this can be regarded as “counter-torture” mechanics that save Dota 2 from just such matches.
No one forced NAVI to drag on until the 70th minute: the team itself chose a defensive style and decided to play this roulette. In addition, during the match, the Ukrainian club was also lucky several times with neutral artifacts: Sniper received Grove Bow and Telescope, which increased its attack range by 250 units, and Doom found the Repair Kit during the game, which allowed NAVI to repulse three more attacks of the opponent with relatively painlessness . Who knows – maybe, if Sniper stood closer to the war zone, the defense of his team would not be so impenetrable?
At the same time, Apex is a really powerful item, and it will be important to note that there is a huge difference between the artifacts of the fifth shooting gallery. Trident is an excellent topic, but if it was he who fell for Morphling, it would hardly have such a strong effect on the game. Therefore, some ideas of the audience seem reasonable to me. For example, add at the draft stage the ability to exclude several neutral artifacts from the game. Another option is to show all participants of the match which items will appear on this map, which will allow them to adapt the draft accordingly. However, this does not mean that the defeat of NAVI can be called a mistake – the system allowed to defeat the team that led the entire match. Isn’t it fair?
Leshrak, Shaker, Spider
The second map of the match was completely different. On it, Liquid got out of the Broodmother zagashnik, which NAVI proactively “controlled” the peak of Earthshaker on the mid. MagicaL defended its line well – as much as possible against such an opponent – and even at the end of the first ten minutes it was on par with Crystallize in pharmacy. The problem is that Broodmother at this time has already begun to leave in the gap.
NAVI moved well on the map and won fights, but only until qojqva was connected to them. The Zayac team had no tricks against him, and as the game progressed, he continued to increase his advantage. By the 25th minute he had a classic set for Broodmother: Diffusal Blade, Aghanim’s Scepter, Black King Bar and Medallion of Courage, and in time, Mind Breaker presented the character with a short silence.
At the end of the first half hour, the NAVI were again locked at the base, but this time they did not have Sniper to defend effectively. Instead of constant damage from auto-attacks, the main weapon of the team in protecting the high ground was Echo Slam, which is much easier to defend against. At the 35th minute, NAVI left the base for the first time, but in a fight where they had to use all the basic abilities, they could focus only Leshrac and Treant Protector, thus giving the opponent an easy approach to Roshan.
An unexpected glimmer of hope occurred in the 40th minute, when Liquid traditionally made a mistake in an attempt to break the enemy’s barracks. The Swedes split up, and NAVI managed to kill the two core heroes of the rival, and then also found Oracle in the forest just bought out. The team went to consolidate the advantage, broke the shooting range-3 tower and moved away … but then Slark picked up Double Damage, and on the courage NAVI went to their last fight.
Before the tournament, commentators noted the cold-blooded NAVI way of playing – the team did not take risks and did not succumb to emotions, as representatives of the CIS usually do. Here, the traditions of the region took their toll. Having beaten Smoke of Deceit, the team tried to take the opponent by surprise, but Boxi at Pangolier ruined all the plans of the team, preventing NAVI from attacking and turning Leshrac out of the fray. As a result, Liquid was able to turn the battle around and, in the counterpush, break all the barracks at the opponent’s base. This was the end of the map – the Swedes traditionally spent another 20 minutes farming the forests in preparation for the final attack, but the NAVI could no longer return to the game and oppose anything to them.
***
It’s scary to think, but the NAVI relegation in the second round of the playoffs is the best result of our teams in the majors of the current season. In the group stage, it seemed that the next “new era” began under the leadership of Zayac in the Ukrainian club, but for some reason the team crumbled in the playoffs. If on the first map the team at least imposed a fight on the opponent, then on the second Liquid the opponent confidently crushed the opponent, practically leaving the game out of control.
It is difficult to judge which NAVI at this tournament showed the real level of the team. It’s easy to scold the club when it leaves the competition, losing to Liquid – the team that makes a lot of mistakes in the late stages of the match. However, we must not forget that in the group stage NAVI performed very brightly – they beat EG with RAMZEs and even the same Liquid, literally smearing it on the map. Perhaps the playoff stage played a trick on the team, which in reality still has almost no experience playing in major tournaments. Perhaps DreamLeague Leipzig Major was another step towards becoming a roster – in the end, glimmers of hope in Germany certainly sparkled brighter than in previous tournaments.
