The second day at Starladder|i-League Dota 2 Invitational saw the first CIS teams being eliminated from the tournament, as both Vega Squadron and Virtus.Pro ended up in the lower bracket after their respective matches from day one.
Vega Squadron played against a very well prepared LGD yesterday and despite the 0-2 final game score the series was extremely close, suggesting they will be a strong contender in the lower bracket. The same cannot be said about Virtus.Pro who were decimated by Alliance in the first game of their series, and although they improved their coordination and teamfight discipline in the second game, they still lost the series.
Today’s opening match at the CyberSports Arena in Kiev, Ukraine featured the two CIS teams fighting each other for their survival in the competition. For both teams the Starladder|i-League Dota 2 Invitational is the first chance to test out new rosters but for VP the spring shuffle brought interesting role swaps as well. It is only speculation of course, but that alone might have been a core reason for them only hitting their strid when they were one game away from being eliminated.
The first game of today’s first match between Vega Squadron versus Virtus.Pro was no different from the one against Alliance yesterday by VP. VP were seriously outplayed by Vega and lost the battle in convincing fashion, with a 27-5 final kill score in favor of Vega and more than a 10k gold and experience gap.
Artsiom 'FNG' Barshak’s Natures Prophet had no impact in the early or the mid game and was not able to split push the map as he would have liked, while Alexei 'Solo' Berezin and Andrey 'Mag' Chipenko both got to play their strongest heroes, Enchantress and Beastmaster respectively. They were the uncontested playmakers for Vega along with Vladimir 'No[o]ne' Minenko’s Puck, who was on point with his Dream Coil initiation at all times.
Heading into game two after a demoralizing loss and facing elimination, VP allowed Vega to continue to pick Puck and Beastmaster, but had a very good response in form of a full five man push line-up relying on strong heals.
With Chen, Witch Doctor and a mid lane Juggernaut to get his levels as fast as possible VP was able to gather for a five man objective Dota extremely early, and took the first set of barracks only thirteen minutes into the game without any casualties courtesy of a finished Mekansm on Chen. They never retreated and didn’t let Vega to recover at any moment which in the end resulted in their first win at the CyberSports Arena.
For the decisive game of the series VP prepared an oldies but goldies draft with an Earth Spirit twist for Alexander 'NoFear' Churochkin. Despite having FNG continuously getting killed on his Broodmother in the offlane, feeding Vega’s Spectre, the duo Chaos Knight - Crystal Maiden dominated their lane and were able to join the teamfights again extremely early.
As a consequence, VP forced Vega to group up to defend their towers or to contest Roshan, which enabled Broodmother to solo push one of the lanes up to the high ground. Never joining the teamfights, FNG took two set of barracks on his own only 22 minutes into the game and created the easiest path for his team to make a last five man push a few minutes later.
With Vega Squadron eliminated from the tournament, Na’Vi in the upper bracket quarterfinals and a Virtus.Pro that seems like they are finshed calibrating their players in the new roles, Starladder|i-League Dota 2 Invitational might just became an interesting story, with the main theme being CIS and Chinese Dota taking the long-awaited road to revival.