Team Evil Geniuses advances in the lower bracket with a clean 2:0 victory and Complexity is eliminated from the MDL.
Team Evil Geniuses seemed to have pulled every trick out of their pocket at this point. Knocked down to the first round of the loser’s bracket, the American titans once again stuck to their tradition and started their journey in the toughest way possible. Their first opponent in the loser’s bracket will be their fellow American squad Complexity Gaming, who is still waiting eagerly for a break out performance.
Game One
EG resorted back to two of the strongest meta picks currently – Earth Spirit and Faceless Void. Lina was also picked up for SumaiL which guaranteed a strong laning presence for EG. Complexity’s game plan was an early five-man team fight lineup with the Luna’s Eclipse and Kunkka being the lineup’s backbone. However, their lineup severely lacked locked down and burst. EG answered this with the Clinkz pick for Arteezy, which is a strong skirmish hero and a good gank partner for Faceless Void.
EG was able to pull right ahead early with the active rotations from Earth Spirit, killing off Viper twice with clutch initiations. As expected, EG emerged victorious in several early skirmishes but whenever Complexity grouped to push down outer towers EG dodged away to accumulate levels on their support. This paid off when Complexity overstayed at the EG bottom tier two tower. With the Chronosphere, Ice Blast, and Magnetize combo, EG successfully deterred Complexity’s early aggression.
Through the mid game EG did a good job maintaining their distance from the powerful team fight potential of Complexity while pulling off small successful skirmishes around the map. They continued to pull ahead after the successful Roshan fight at the 25 minute mark. Complexity began to lose control of larger team fights with the damage output of EG increasing steadily due to more items purchased. The decisive team fight happened at 35 minutes with a smoke engagement from Complexity. But EG immediately retaliated with the Chronosphere taking out Viper and Leshrac almost immediately. The clean up was easy due to the amount of stuns and burst damage by EG and they proceeded to take down the last tier two tower of Complexity and the Aegis. With the Aegis on Clinkz, EG marched into the Complexity base killing of all the heroes on the Dire side almost immediately and Complexity exited the game. EG leads the series 1:0,
Game Two
Complexity opted for a different strategy this game – the Chen, Lone Druid Alliance brew. Although these are two of the most powerful heroes in this patch, they also added their own flare to it, the offlane Slardar. On the other hand, EG was also trying out refreshing picks with Natures Prophet picked up for Arteezy. Along with the Invoker, they aimed to use the Natures Prophet for an early team fight option and a late game split push back-up tactic.
The early game was very heated due to the active rotations from Chen and Bounty Hunter. As a result 14 kills were produced by minute ten. Arteezy’s Natures Prophet also joined in the fights and the global presence coming from Arteezy really enhanced the pick off potential of EG. Walking into the mid game, EG managed to pull ahead with the mobility and global burst power. Along with that, the Track gold has been accumulating for them as well. Although Complexity tried very hard to look for good fights, but the lack of farm on the Lone Druid meant that their damage output was severely weakened. Meanwhile, EG continued to abuse the Chronosphere and Invoker combos taking out opposing heroes in fights extremely quickly. Although the Lone Druid finally managed to purchase his Radiance at minute 25, EG was already too far ahead and they were able to breach the first tier three tower and the melee barracks on the back of a timely pick off on Lone Druid. From this point on it seemed like Complexity ran out of options to counter the Chronosphere plays from EG. With two more pick offs by EG, Complexity lost another lane of barracks and exited the game shortly after.
Although the TI5 champions were off to a bad start as always in the playoff stage, they managed to get through the first round of the loser bracket in dominant fashion. Unfortunately Complexity has now been eliminated and EG will advance to round two and their opponents will be the winner of Secret vs Newbee.
