After they lost the battle for the Fall Major in the qualifier playoffs last year, this time Team Liquid found themselves surrounded by CIS teams in the same qualifier stage. In the past three days Liquid defeated five CIS representative and finally took the first European spot into the LAN event.
The third day of qualifiers started for Liquid with a matchup versus Team Empire in the upper bracket and it was quite close to end bad for the sole Western European representative but after all three games were played,Team Empire was the one to drop into the loser bracket while Team Liquid advanced in the second round of upper bracket where Team Spirit was waiting for their adversaries.
Team Spirit vs Team Liquid
Game One:
Stakes being so high, Team Spirit focused in the first game of the series on banning Adrian "FATA-" Trinks and completely forgot about the most annoying disabler in the game, Earth Spirit - a hero on which Jesse "JerAx" Vainikka excels. To combo him up, Liquid went with a support Vengeful Spirit and a Dark Seer, leaving Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen to carry them on Lycan.
Despite a poor laning phase, especially for Fata- who had to survive an Outworld Devourer and that meant slow item progress and no impactful rotations in the first phase of the game, Liquid finally found the opening around the 15 minute mark when a good executed initiation setup with Earth Spirit and Venge took down four Team Spirit heroes.
From there on things escalated quickly for Liquid who was already testing high ground territories a few minutes later. But the first tier three tower defense of Team Spirit was a complete success and on the back of it Treant Protector found the gold for his Aghanim’s Scepter and Roman "Ramzes" Kushnarev was served with an Aegis of the Immortal.
The next fifteen to twenty minutes went in favor of Team Spirit who was maintaining the map control with Artur "Goblak" Kostenko’s Eyes in the Forest.
Liquid came straight back in the game when Venge finished her Aghanim’s on top of Aether Lens and the Swap, Smash, Rolling Bolder and a Vacuum brought the enemy Gyro from bottom barracks all the way into Team Liquids fountain where he was slained. Incredible coordination between the three heroes created a true Dota 2 show and closed the game in favor of Team Liquid.
Game Two:
Being one step away from getting knocked down into the lower bracket, Team Spirit didn’t want to take the chance of playing against Earth Spirit again and tried to secure a push oriented line-up.
But despite an even more terrible start than game one for Liquid who had a couple of failed ganks, a few poorly managed early team fights and an underfarmed Razor (Fata-), Matumbaman (Gyrocopter) survived the entire feed fest from the beginning and even found a kill here and there to keep his farm on track.
With two sets of Necro Books finished on both Invoker and Lycan and with the Furion on their side, Team Spirit was feeling confident enough to force an early five man push. But they got taken by surprise by Gyro’s finished BkB and lost crucial teamfights that put Liquid back in the lead.
Only 30 minutes into the game it was in fact Liquid who was marching to a high ground push and in one single attempt they took two set of racks and with that they secured the trip to the Shanghai Major.
The last day of the regional qualifiers in the European double elimination bracket will start January 10th at 14:30 CET with Vega Squadron facing Team Empire, the winner of this will advance in the second round where Team Spirit waits for their last chance of grabbing the second spot left available.
