Yesterday we had a nice dota game between the relatively new team EVO (EVOPLAY.dota) vs the veterans of team Wolk3r Gaming. The clash proves to be epic with new and interesting picks, really big kill ratio, blazing team fights.
The picks
BO1 | |
EVOPLAY | Wolk3r Gaming |
Bans | |
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Picks | |
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Lanes | |
Sentinel EVO!DeMeNt (Mid) EVO!Papashka (Bot) EVO!XoYnoZnU (Mid) EVO!ThePlaymatE (Mid) EVO!syndereN (Top) | Scourge Platinum^pgg (Bot) IllidanSTR (Mid) TR^blowurbrain (Bot) AmsiTheBEST (Top) TR^teNsA (Roaming) |
GameMode: -cm
Length: 52:31 Minutes
So the game starts with EVO playing sentinel and WG playing scourge. The game begins an unusual way with the not getting banned and what's even more strange is not getting first picked. Instead sentinel decides to go heavy artillery with first pick, scourge also declines to get Batrider and goes for the new cookie cutter and then . Sentinel replies by getting the Batrider and getting . So even now we can feel that sentinel is a bit better in picks because by not taking rider as first pick they made way more flexible hero choices and can easily counter any pick scourge might do. So scourge decides to go a somewhat unorthodox strat taking and , and combined with maiden they now have 3 support heroes and one carry/gank hero. Sentinel decides to go all out early game pressure and takes and the new support/gank hero , and then Scourge last picks for an early push strat.
Scourge has some very double-edge play since the best way to counter push is by getting early game heroes with converting one of those heroes in a late game carry, which in this case would be potm.
Nuke heroes help your team
We can feel the presence of / few minutes into the game scoring first mid on viper with the help of potm. Batrider faces veno top, while puck clashes against the trilane brood, sp and cm. Scourge begins their plan taking down bottom tower super fast, but everything comes with a price, and the absence of / is felt mid where viper dies 3 times in quick succession. After vipers gets locked down mid sent decides to defend bottom from pushing the lvl 2 tower with lina/ogre going bot and leaving potm to solo a bit. This culminates in a fight bottom, lina scoring a triplekill and effectively clearing the lane. Scourge continues the plan with brood tping mid and getting ready to push the lane. Top lane continues without excitement, the only notable notion is batrider almost freefarming the lane without any attempts to gank. Now we can feel scourge's play. Their idea is for to get as much spiderlings as possible, putting a bunch of wards down and overpower sentinels defenses. With a quick hood batrider decides it is time to help push back Scourge so he tp's mid and without any hesitation he launches in a attack scoring double kill and defending the tier 1 mid tower. While sentinel are distracted mid brood tries for a fast top push but that is quickly answered by lina with powerfull aoe spell's clearing all spiderlings and delaying the attack.
Scourge somehow manages to get their plan rolling despite their clear kill disadvantage having pushed all of sentinel's tier 1 towers.
Lina and Ogre scoring a fast first blood
Race to victory
Scourge realizes that their days are numbered so they try to force a few fights and take advantage of a mistake that sentinel might make. being able to shut down one hero with his powerful ultimate sentinel manages to win almost every fight, but balances things out a bit with his perfectly timed heals/shallow graves giving scourge a fighting chance. destroys scourge's game with couple of well placed stuns resulting in total domination in fights by sentinel. Item wise sentinel is way ahead with lina, puck and potm boots of travel, shutting down any attempt at tower rush and allowing more map control, batrider hood and vitality booster, 1.5k hp able to tank anything scourge trows at him, and potm starting Yasha slowly transforming into the carry hero for winning the game. Scourge's heroes have only bracers/wraith bands, with the exception of sp's mek and brood's vladmir's offering. We feel the level/farm advantage when a 3vs2 gank attempt by scourge fails with all 3 heroes , and dieing only to kill lina, with the good puck tp to aid in the fight. Sent decides to push down some towers, but after the first tower they overextend their push and scourge manages to get a 4-0 fight. They quickly rush mid but their try is met by potm and ogre who manage to deny the tower and score two kills.
The end is near
The aftermath of the fight enables sent to get couple of more kills and destroy a tier 2 tower, potm getting manta style, making it even harder for scourge to attempt any ganks on her. Scourge decides to go roshan and eventually try and ageis push but soon sentinel joins the roshan party killing 3 and losing 2 heroes stopping any roshan tries. Later into the game after an 3-0 fight for scourge they try to take advantage of the moment and go to kill roshan but brood pushing bottom lane instead of helping slows down the kill long enough for sent to initiate a fight and kill all 5 scourge heroes and a 10% hp roshan.
With potm getting maelstorm they quickly try to push but somehow scourge defends the attack, followed by a second attack with potm now having a mjolnir dealing the final blow. After a short fight scourge lost the fight and top barracks, to resign the game there.
The deciding battle
Conclusion
This game was is the perfect example of how important picks are. Having very strong early game sentinel neutralized scourge's push strat and made the advantage for the late game. The cm/veno support didn't gank or protect key scourge heroes resulting in viper's 18 deaths and potm/batriders freefarm. On the other hand the lina/ogre combo made viper cry, and followed brood around the map all day not giving him a single easy tower kill. Interesting replay with a lot of action and great heroes definitely worth watching.
Links
Replay Archive - Download the replay