Written by: Tjernobyl
The last day of the qualifiers of The International, the biggest event of the year. The only two teams remaining are [team]LGD[/team] and [team]RattleSnake[/team], both of them granted a trip to Seattle but only the winners of the match are guaranteed to play in the main event.
Bracket
Today's match
[Match 1] LGD vs RattleSnake (best of 5)
Game one
BeyondtheSummit have dressed up for this one. LGD predicted RattleSnake's lanes to be sort of awkward so they opt for a solo safe lane Queen of Pain and sends the tri lane top. And the fact is that RattleSnake's lanes are curious, they go for a solo Magnus top (who gets firstblooded), Keeper pulling and jungling, Doom jungling, Batrider mid and Prophet bottom vs the Queen. The whole project proves to be rather greedy and LGD punishes them for it, avoiding ganks and killing Doom twice. It's hard for RattleSnake to react and respond with this line-up with LGD rotating around to gank. They max out Devour and tries to farm up Prophet and Doom instead. LGD takes down another tier 1 tower and Anti-Mage now has his Fury and QoP his Orchid. Both Batrider and Magnus have their daggers though. LGD keeps finding kills on Doom, rotating four heroes around while Sylar is farming elsewhere. Lanm picks up a Gem and RattleSnake to counter Xiao8 and start to deward. However, as they go into the enemy jungle to begin the process of reducing the opponent's vision, they find Sylar and manage to kill him. But since they use most of their big skills on him they severely lose the clash afterwards and gets picked off by QoP and Nyx, losing the Gem to LGD.
RattleSnake keep throwing most of their big skills (doom, lasso etc) on Sylar, trying to disable him and put him down quickly in the clashes but even if they succeed they have little to nothing left to deal with the rest of the team. And in an engage at the mid tower, they don't even manage to kill Sylar and Magnus get's Silenced, preventing him from using his Reverse. RattleSnake know their game has gone horribly awry and surrenders. LGD 1 - 0 RattleSnake.
Game two
Game two starting out with less greedy laning by RattleSnake, both the teams sending their trilanes to the safe lanes. Once again, LGD rotates their heroes very efficient and xiao8 with his mid-DK helps roaming out around the map with some rune pick-ups, aswell as fast reactions with teleportations to towers, turning a couple of fights. LGD seems to be one step ahead. They build a big early advantage in both experience and gold, just like the first game. RattleSnake only manages to farm up their SF while LGD have three farmed heroes. The same things was seen yesterday in RattleSnake's games vs Vici but their hero compositions and team play still won them those games.
Catching out Kunkka in the botlane followed by taking out Skywrath allows LGD to walk into RattleSnake's base and destroy the bottom barracks. Earthshaker has his Blink Dagger but LGD have Black King Bars already on their three core heroes. LGD falls back after that, farming jungle until the next Roshan is up. RattleSnake contests it, and Kabu manages to hook into Sylar and steals the last hit of Roshan. However, he fails to steal the Aegis. Sylar takes it and Kabu goes down. An incredible patient Blink+Echo Slam by Neo almost wins RattleSnake the fight, but three heroes survives with about 100 hp after the ultimate and RattleSnake lacks the follow up to kill them. They call "gg" and LGD 2 - 0 RattleSnake.
Game three
Lifestealer being the first hero to be picked by LGD which is a hero that has proven to be extremely hard to deal with in the past. Both teams send their trilanes bot and Sylar's taking up the mid lane with Lone Druid. The first blood goes to LGD as they kill Shadow Demon in the bot lane, sending RattleSnake into a hard start. They make up for it by roaming mid, saving Lanm and getting a kill on Sylar. The game is starting out slightly better than the last two for RattleSnake but the lack of a proper carry is brooding for them, Juggernaut is not getting any farm. Storm has decent farm and Queen of Pain is doing good, they'd need to apply for mid game fights - and win them, to win this game. RattleSnake ganks the Druid mid but quick responses by Yao and the supports allows LGD to trade a hero and a tower for the Druid. The farmed Lifestealer and Mek on Enigma allows LGD to win fights they shouldn't win, like when xiao8 misses the black hole, gets silenced, Lanm jukes around and Jugger lands a good ulti. Still RattleSnake are too underfarmed and LGD are too strong at this point of the game. This also comes to show a few moments when RattleSnake fail to kill the tanky Lifestealer due to Armlet toggling and Magic Stick usage. RattleSnake will have to use a big chunk of their arsenal to even kill off the supports and it's still a struggle.
RattleSnake's heroes keep melting, DD's Rubick is everywhere, always messing up the positioning of the Snakes and causing severe breakdown in the ranks of RattleSnake. The game is out of hand for Dire, nothing they try barely even scratches LGD and LGD claims the series. At the end, LGD are sure to join the competition in Seattle, despite losing their invite prior to the qualifiers.
