TI3 East: RattleSnake eliminates ZSMJ's Vici

 

Bracket

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Today's matches

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So, RisingStars give Lifestealer to RattleSnake, probably the most dreaded hero in the Chinese scene. Lets see how this will work out, they do have Entangles and Flaming Lasso as response to it though. Aswell as the Weaver who can't easily dispel the slow from Open Wounds. The game starts off with Luo finding a solo kill on xdd's Bat on the bottom lane. RisingStars gets the early advantage duo to them having a jungler, although the laning still goes well for the Snakes, taking down the top tier 1 tower early on. Great use of the farmed Lifestealer aswell as great map control by Lanm and VIsage's birds creates a lot of space for RattleSnake on the map and they start to force down towers. They're doing well in clashes but RisingStars find themselve a bit of a rebottle when they manage to 5 man gank the Lifestealer, giving him his first death aswell as stealing his gem. They follow up taking down the tier 1 bottom tower.

RattleSnake trades themselves a Roshan for a tier 1 tower, a trade they are happy to make. With the new found Aegis they find and vaporize the Batrider and then take down the mid barracks. RisingStars does not put up much to contest the barracks, they realize they can't do much. RisingStars continues to struggle during the fights. They can lock down one or two heroes but they lack the damage to burst them down, whereas RattleSnake has heaps of burst damage to throw down. After a fight where Batrider gets a great Lasso on Lanm, the Stars still loses the fight badly and forfeit the game moments after when Snakes are pushing the bottom barracks.

 

Game two

RattleSnake opts for the offensive Drow-based trilane, and it starts out rather poorly. Since it's on the enemy side, they get less experience and they don't manage to shut down Anti-Mage resulting in a big farm gap. On top of that they also give up a few kills to the lane. Doom finds himself an early Satyr to Devour on the top lane, and with Scorched Earth and Tranquil Boots, he can go head-to-head with the Dark Seer of Stars. Doom gets an early Mekansm and eventually switches his Devoured creep to a Wildkin, resulting in him now having 2 + 11 armor, quite tanky this early on (Tranquil, Mek, Devotion aura). RisingStars rotate up the Nightstalker top in an attempt to snake the Doom but he manages to survive with very low hp, casts Doom on Dark Seer and then Lanm appears to Reverse them both and grab the double kill. Doom gets a Medallion after that, giving him even more early armor. They make use of the Medallion to take Roshan quickly after a successful clash in the midlane. Despite of the good opening at the trilane for the Stars, they are now in a severe disadvantage due to rotations from Magnus and Doom. The Doom also helps picking off Anti-Mage, preventing him from Blinking. RattleSnake move around the map, killing off all tier 2 towers, increasing their lead further.

RattleSnake starts the siege attempt mid by Nyx blinking in and stunning Anti-Mage, followed by a Doom. AM dies and is forced to buy back. Dark Seer throws down the defensive wall and the Stars start focusing Doom, although he is too tanky and manages to walk out and heal up. Nyx blinks in once again and lands a three man stun followed by Magnus joining and with a Reverse Polarity on same three heroes. Drow right clicks during all this and suddenly finds herself getting a Rampage, going from 0-1 to 5-1 in one fight. RisingStars are defeated and RattleSnake move on in the qualifier.

 

[Match 2] ViCi Gaming vs RattleSnake

Game one

Vici Gaming opts for an aggressive trilane, leaving ZSMJ's Lone Druid solo on the safelane. They grabbed the early advantage in the game, securing kills on both the trilane and on their solo mid Clockwerk. Vici's three core heroes topped the farming chart ten minutes in. Rattlesnake however managed to delay early tower pushes with their Venomancer and his wards. That defensive power was diminished soon when Vici gathered up and pushed as five, taking the mid tier one tower within seconds.

Rattlesnake kept getting pushed into, losing tower after tower. One good fight in the midlane however pulled them right back into the game as they killed all of Vici Gaming's heroes, forcing out four immediate buybacks.

Winning the teamfight was not enough though and the Chinese struggled to gain map control, while Vici Gaming attempted Roshan. Knowing Rattlesnake would pursue it, they retreated and a fight ensued in the Radiant jungle, 3:2 in favor of Vici who then took the Aegis after all.

The next teamfight went in Rattlesnake's favor and they caught up in terms of experience, were however far behind in terms of gold. Vici started to siege the midlane, but the Plague Wards proved to be too hard to push into, forcing Vici out again. Despite Vici taking down another Roshan and having a new Aegis it remains tricky for them to push vs the line-up of RattleSnake but they do manage to finish off the mid tier 3 tower. Although, when RattleSnake leaves their base  to contest the next Roshan, things go horribly awry. Vici uses the Wall of Replica at the pit without hitting any heroes essentially but they keep RattleSnake around and forces the fight at the Wall's location. Vici massively wins the fight due to a great damage output and due to the usage of the Wall. After that Vici pushes the base, RattleSnake tries one more awkward defending sessions but it falls flat and the game is over.

 

Game two

Vici are getting the better farm at the start of the game, although Luo finds the first blood on XTT followed by them taking the tier 1 tower top. But Vici's advantage is already starting to build up, with them getting good farm on all of their three core heroes while only Shadow Fiend of RattleSnake getting some. There's a few kills trading in the midlane with multiple heroes rotating in but most of them managing ot survive, for both sides. Following the tradition of mid lane clashes, Batrider blinks in to grab Shadow Fiend, and Silencer backs him up with the Global Silence. However, Nyx uses his Shell before the Silence strikes and Batrider selfstuns himself with his Firefly touching Nyx. They fail to take down SF and Magnus lands a great Reverse Polarity, Skewers two heroes + the Spirit Bear into Shadow Fiends ultimate. They then take down the Druid who just resummoned his bear. RattleSnake then takes down another clash like that at the bottom lane, also taking the tower. Suddenly the tides have turned. At every chance they get, RattleSnake focus the Spirit Bear and brings it down very quickly, resulting in the resummon often being on cooldown. Even though all the gold of RattleSnake goes down the pockets of Shadow Fiend as opposed to Vici having three farmed heroes, they control all the fights at this point and Silencer isn't doing much at all. RattleSnake keeps forcing engagements and Vici forfeits the game.

 

Game three

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The third game starts out with very well timed and aggressive rotations by Enchantress after Visage goes down in the first blood. Two times of those being on CTY in the midlane. However CTY still does very well in his lane, still being able to out-lasthit Kunkka. Some rotations around the map also lands him two last hits on tier 1 towers, not exactly hurting his networth. Meanwhile, the Spectre who struggled massively early on has been able to recover at this point. The first proper team fight breaks out at approx 14 minutes of game time, where a great trigger of Cocos Rum keeps the heroes of RattleSnake alive long enough to endure the fight and grab a few kills. However Spectre stays around for too long in the fight and gets killed. The reprise the fight a few minutes after but this time it goes a lot better. Vici throws most of their heavy spells on Enchantress and she takes very long before she dies, meanwhile Visages picks up a triple kill. In terms of pure last-hitting, Vici are still doing better at this stage of the game but the last two fights have put the Snakes in a good position.

RattleSnake more or less shut Vici down everywhere on the map at this point, the supports of Vici are very poor whereas Neo's Visage is getting his fair share of farm and experience and Lanm has been a force throughout the game so far. Lanm's huge amount of damage (especially with the Aghanim that he picks up) is big issue for Vici's weak supports. The initation power from RattleSnake allows them to control the pace, with long distance damage and stuns from Kunkka and Clock. Spectre is really farmed at this point and Vici lacks an answer for it, RattleSnake shows superior mid game into late game control and breaks the base without any sheer response from Vici. The outplay results in RattleSnake securing a trip to Seattle. Tomorrow it will be decided if they will go to play the rest of the invites or if it's to first play vs ddDota.