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Dota 210 years agoAndreas "drouks" St

Liquid crushes CIS, will take on MVP Phoenix in the Play-In final

With a dominant 2-0 performance against CIS, Team Liquid has managed to secure their spot in the finals of the Play-In series. They will now take on the Koreans MVP Phoenix for the precious spot in The International 4.

The second match of the Play-In series has just concluded, and Liquid managed to punch their ticket to the best-of-three final against MVP. The Chinese squad went for unconventional drafting with quite greedy core selections in both games. Using Tidehunter and Skywrath Mage twice, Liquid gave no chances to their opponent, overwhelming CIS with early 5-man aggression.

 

You can catch the wildcard games in English by following this stream, while the 1v1 matches can be seen here. Russian, Korean and Chinese streams are also available.

 

It's the holy grail of The International 4 coverage!


You can also visit our wiki page for more information on The International 4.

 


 

Team Liquid vs CIS-Game

Game One

CIS put together a very greedy lineup, picking Morphling, Invoker and Faceless Void as their three cores. Even having Visage as a support was quite gold and level intensive. Team Liquid responded with hero choices that favoured the early game more, whilst still having Outworld Devourer farming at mid. Liquid looked like they wanted to shut down the item dependent CIS roster early on.

Team Liquid quickly got a head start, taking an early score lead by playing very aggressively against the CIS safe lane. It only took them a few minutes to grab their first blood by diving under the CIS tier-one tower. CIS tried to match Liquid’s aggression by smoke-ganking the mid lane, but proper defensive response turn the tides into Liquid’s favour.

The Americans remained patient throughout the midgame and made sure to secure the victory that they all but guaranteed in the first minutes. As much as CIS tried to get return kills, Team Liquid’s aggression and nuking power was just overwhelming. They abused their early advantage and did not ease up the pressure at any point, winning every lane and completely shutting down the hugely farm dependent CIS team. Liquid ended the game with a huge lead of 26-6, with a little over 30 minutes on the clock.

 

Game Two

For the second game of the series, CIS went for the Io-Riki combination, long with solo Batrider, a roaming Mirana and offlane Lifestealer. Liquid put their trust on Tidehunter and Skywrath Mage once again, this time going greedier with Ember Spirit and Weaver as their cores. CIS entered the game with power, grabbing a 2-min first blood on Pegasus using Ayo's well-placed Sacred Arrow. 

Roughly five minutes into the game, June's Lifestealer rotated for a three-man gank against Tidehunter, but the hero's natural tankiness allowed him to pop the Ravage, resulting in the first bad engagement for CIS. The unsuccessful attempts continued to come by the Chinese, with Black^ lacking the DPS to grab the quick kills he seeked against Liquid's beefy cores. The beginning of the end for CIS came during the 15th minute, when a teamfight under the Radiant mid tier-one tower turned into a 4-1 exchange in favor of the Americans through a well-placed Ravage.

From that point, Liquid never lost control of the game. Liquid displayed their power with a 3-0 clash during at the 18th minute mark, and the first set of barracks went down five minutes later with 4-19 on the scoreboard. It was just a matter of time until CIS call the 'GG', being too far behind in terms of experience and gold. The huge difference is evident on qojqva's luxurious inventory, with Desolator, Linken's Sphere and Monkey King Bar by minute 26.

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Andreas "drouks" StThere's really not much to say about Andreas 'drouks' Stavridakis, except that he sleeps two hours a day, plays the guitar and survives solely on Diet Coke. He also writes about DotA sometimes.

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