The lower bracket finals for Dota 2 League Western Challenge has concluded with the Ukrainian giants, Natus Vincere, displaying a resurgence in their playstyle and ousting both; Team Empire and Fnatic. Na'Vi will now face Evil Geniuses in a best-of-five grand finals tonight at 18.00 CEST.
After some criticism and speculation as to the ability of Na’Vi to perform as they have done in the past, the Ukrainian veterans manage to beat Fnatic in two straight games to advance to the Grand Final of the tournament.
Na’Vi showed why they are such a big name in eSports by playing in a focussed and efficient way. Earlier in the day they had already managed to storm through to this stage of the lower bracket with Dendi’s play continuing to silence any critics. The whole team played convincingly and assuredly, guaranteeing them a second place result and showing a return to form ahead of The International regardless of the result of the final.
Game One
Na’Vi drafted an aggressive line up that pressured the early game with the Enchantress pick and transitioned into completely dominating the mid game with Brewmaster and Batrider. They managed to get off to a running start with Dendi controlling the mid lane unequivocally against the Shadow Fiend of Fnatic. This lane win was crucial to the whole game, as the Shadow Fiend was completely shutdown and simply out played by Dendi’s pure skill and aggression.
The aggression continued from Na’Vi throughout the game, as they really stepped up their play a notch, rolling off the wins earlier in the day. They were so focussed on capitalising on any mistake or slip up any enemy player made. Fnatic failed to get off the ground and were left clueless. Excalibur was often caught out of position and H4nn1 was the only one to really make anything happen by creating pick offs on Faceless Void.
Fnatic tried to mount a high ground defence and fended Na’Vi off for a few pushes before they were just overwhelmed and tapped out around the 40-minute mark. However, the game was Na’Vi’s to win from about 10 minutes in with the experience graph just out of control.
Game Two
After the convincing win in game 1, Na’Vi looked like they wanted to round the series out as quickly as possible. They drafted a classic pushing line up with Lycanthrope, Enigma, Nature’s Prophet and Leshrac. Fnatic answered with Tinker and Ancient Apparition picks to try and develop some counter push with a farming Doom and Axe in an kill focussed tri-lane.
There was a slow start to the lanes, but Fnatic managed to turn their aggressive Axe, Vengeful Spirit and Ancient Apparition tri-lane into first blood. They very quickly managed to bring the Radiant safe lane tower down while getting an early kill on Dendi from an Axe rotation. It looked like aggressive laning from Fnatic had managed to buy space for Tinker to farm and prevent the huge push potential from Na’Vi. However at about 12 minutes in Dendi managed to initiate in mid lane, which was followed by a four to one exchange in favour of Na’Vi. This lead into a midgame with lots of team fights with the momentum for each team swinging back and forth, but Na’Vi importantly held tower control.
Solid vision and initiation from Dendi lead the team into winning fights. Even though he didn’t play as well as in game one and ended up feeding a bit, Kuroky and Funn1k managed to stay on top of the kill charts. They took up Dendi’s slight slack and found kills all around the map behind enemy tier two towers and by ganking Tinker effectively. By holding towers whilst slowly managing to outplay Fnatic in team fights, Na’Vi eventually managed to use their heavy push line up to win the series without dropping a game.
In the meantime, Fnatic settle for the third spot after displaying some promising performance throughout the playoffs for D2L Western Challenge.
