The third edition of Elimination Mode saw OG crowned as Champions at the end of an exciting Bo5 grand finals between the Europeans and compLexity Gaming.
Apart from the community daily bans, Moonduck introduced a SUNSban with their latest tournament edition that counted for all the series held in a day. For the grand finals day SUNSfan chose Centaur Warrunner as unavailable in all the games while the ten community bans went to Luna, Lone Druid, Shadow Demon, Slardar, Invoker, Ember Spirit, Slark, Omniknight, Alchemist, and Drow Ranger.
Game One:
The best-of-five grand finals series kicked off with both teams taking some of the most annoying and troublesome heroes in Dota 2 off the board. OG made sure no Techies would be played while compLexity banned Meepo and Monkey King while trying to secure a heavy magic damage-pushing lineup. Although their draft looked strong on paper, their game plan got ruined with a last pick Nyx Assassin from OG who placed the hero on Anathan 'ana' Pham mid lane.
Having Ana with a fast level six, Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka playing his notorious Earth Spirit and at the same time Gustav 's4' Magnusson almost free farming in the early stage on Dark Seer, OG were ready to force the team fights fairly early into the game. The big plays were always there coming from these three, despite fighting against a Silencer ultimate. s4 nailed his Vacuum-Wall combo time and again and won his team the game around the 30 minute mark.
Game Two:
With the second game of the series compLexity were able to reduce the grand finals to a bo3 scenario on the back of an amazing Rubick played by Zakari 'Zfreek' Freedman. However, the game started really badly for the NA squad who had Jaron 'monkeys-forever' Clinton’s Underlord getting killed in the offlane a few too many times by Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein’s Chaos Knight.
Getting way behind in levels and farm, monkeys went to a full support item build and let Zfreek to run the show on the Rubick. His constant rotations alongside his brother, Kyle 'melonzz' Freedman who played Disruptor turned around a lot of OG ganks, up to the point where Ck’s illusions or Kunka’s initiations became irrelevant for OG.
With David 'Moo' Hull playing a carry Brew Master who got involved in many of the early skirmishes which translated in a rushed Radiance, coL took the second game victory in under 30 minutes with a crushing performance.
Game Three:
The third game draft was a very brave one for compLexity who chose to run a Pudge - Earthshaker support duo with a core Venomancer, despite playing on the Luxembourg servers. At the beginning of the match, SUNSfan mentioned that he personally checked and the coL’s boys were playing with 500 ping. The big latency for the NA squad played against them tremendously as they were clearly struggling to land perfect hooks or at times they would use the Tidehunter ravage a second or two too late in the team fights. But even so, the Fissure - Hook combo secured the laning stage advantage.
However, their lineup was not really suited for an early high ground push and with s4 playing Magnus while N0tail handling the Troll Warlord, OG had the late game in the bag. Thirty five minutes into the game compLexity were breaching OG’s high ground and although they won a long team fight for the top lane tier three tower, a buyback from s4 cought three coL players in the RP and coL got team wiped. That marked the comeback for OG who smoked up and managed to win the next team fight and aimed straight for the coL’s base.
Game Four:
One game away from securing a second Elimination Mode title, OG went with a full pushing strategy by picking for themselves Terrorbalde, Mirana and Chen while compLexity tried to save the day with a Gyrocopter and a Natures Prophet. CoL’s only strength was in the burst damage potential they had with the hero lineup and the pick off threat from Furion with Zeus ultimate.
Despite their efforts to stay alive against OG who was already at the tier three towers only 15 minutes into the game, coL was not able to push the series into a decisive game five and OG claimed for the second time in a row the Elimination Mode Champions title.
Elimination Mode 3.0 final standings:
1st place: $12,000 OG
2nd place: $8,000 compLexity Gaming
3rd-4th place: $2,500 Onyx, Alliance
5th-6th place: WanteD, Ad Finem
7th-8th place: Team Freedom, Ninjas in Pyjamas
