The home crowd favorite Natus Vincere defeats LGD Gaming and advances into the Grand Finals of the Starladder i-League Dota Invitational.
After Natus Vincere's convincing win over Vici Gaming Reborn yesterday, they overwhelmed LGD Gaming today with relentless aggression once again. Tomorrow they will face the winner of Vici Gaming Reborn and LGD in the grand finals.
Game One
After yesterday’s showcase of relentless aggression against Vici Gaming Reborn, Natus Vincere once again opted for the Queen of Pain, Beastmaster combination with the addition of Lycan. With Bounty Hunter, Na’Vi was able to secure a heavy snowballing lineup. LGD Gaming also stuck to their playstyle and drafted strong meta heroes such as Death Prophet, Batrider and Enchantress with the addition of Disruptor to counter the Queen of Pain. It seemed like that LGD believed VG.R’s terrible performance on Death Prophet yesterday was an outlier.
Na’Vi’s game plan was consistent with yesterday’s. Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin's Queen of Pain was given plenty of space because of Bounty Hunter’s harassment on the Death Prophet in the laning phase. LGD decided to let Lu 'Maybe' Yao take on the pressure and instead focused their fire on Victor 'GeneRaL' Nigrini’s Beastmaster in the offlane, which proved to be effective as he was forced into the jungle. Even though the game was going smoothly for LGD, the game immediately went downhill as LGD initiated a failed kill attempt on Lycan in Na’Vi’s jungle, which resulted in a team wipe in favor of Na’Vi. Despite Na’Vi being able to pull ahead, the aforementioned Disruptor proved to be a huge problem for them. But Na’Vi grasped onto their accumulated advantage taking tier one towers one after another.
Although Na’Vi had a lot of burst damage, their high ground siege was difficult due to the combined defense of Batrider, Ember Spirit, and Death Prophet. However, because LGD’s lineup was so reliant on Ember Spirit, Na’Vi began to pick up items such as Scythe of Vyse, and the Refresher on Beastmaster to control him in the team fight. With a successful engagement at the Dire secret shop, Na’Vi successfully forced the Ember Spirit’s buy back and took the first lane of barracks. With more controlling items coming out from Na’Vi, LGD also purchased more defensive items to protect the Ember Spirit such as the Lotus Orb. Ember Spirit decided to maximize his damage output with a Divine Rapier, but that ended up in the hands of Lycan after Sun 'Agressif' Zheng was caught. With this huge swing of gold and the Aegis pick up, Na’Vi stormed into the base of LGD and took game one.
Game Two
Na’Vi’s draft had very little room for error. It was an extremely aggressive five-ranged heroes lineup with the Drow Ranger aura.
The mid-lane quickly became a huge problem for LGD due to the support of Io and the active rotations coming from Nature’s Prophet. With the precision aura, Na’Vi's early attacks were extremely powerful. As a result LGD quickly fell behind in all three lanes. Nature's Prophet's global presence and the incredible amount of damage coming from Na’Vi meant that they were able to wipe out LGD over and over again. 13 minutes in, Na’Vi had already breached the first lane of barracks and led with a score of 20:9. Shortly after, Na’Vi destroyed LGD in the second game in under 15 minutes and moved on to the Grand Finals.
