After finally cracking their highground defense around the hour mark, LGD eliminated the all-star Team Secret in the first lower bracket round of the International 2016.?
With elimination imminent, both teams looked to perform their very best to continue their TI run. It was LGD who stepped up, and dominated Team Secret, sending the all-stars home.
Team Secret went with what looked to be a very greedy push oriented draft, with an aura stack on the Beastmaster and Vengeful Spirit to complement their objective demolishers: Alchemist and Terrorblade. LGD went with a much more balanced draft with some nice wave clear to counter the Secret pushers in an Ember Spirit and Mirana, with a support Kunkka and Winter Wyvern for some control and sustain.
Early on, the name of the game, rather the player of the game was Yao 'Maybe' Lu, who dominated Artour 'Arteezy' Babaev in the midlane with his Juggernaut, shutting down Artour's Alchemist heavily. While Secret left Artour to struggle mid, LGD capitalized and rotated, going up 3-0 in the first five minutes. With the pressure on Arteezy mid, Team Secret were forced to rotate to try and secure his lane, leaving the other LGD cores to simply farm and that they did: Ning 'xiao8' Zhang on the offlane Mirana, going even with Arteezy at times. As the game transitioned into the middle stage, Secret looked desperate with all their tier two towers down by 15 minutes and with only a handful of kills.
In the midgame, LGD simply suffocated Secret throughout. While Secret showed signs of life, taking Roshan at 20 minutes, LGD simply pushed Secret back into their base with Jacky 'EternalEnvy' Mao and Arteezy desperately trying to counter-push with illusions. With the game slowed down, Secret started to come online as Arteezy and Envy started to get their items slowly. However, Secret seemed to always be on the back foot, forced to just defend while LGD regrouped.
The name of the late game was top lane, as LGD continually tried to bash their way through the Secret lineup to take out the set of rax. It was the defensive disruptions by Johan 'pieliedie' Åström and the huge Cold Embraces by Zeng 'Dai-MMY' Rong Lei that kept both Secret and LGD kicking. With LGD tunnel visioned on the top rax, Secret looked to make their comeback as they took favourable trades on defense as they repelled the Chinese squad again and again.
However, with no offense for Secret, LGD finally broke through with the fifth Roshan. Initially, Secret looked in prime position to take the Aegis and Cheese at 65 minutes, as Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov set up two kills on LGD's supports. However, LGD answered back in a big way and contested, taking Rosh and forcing Secret back. With Aegis and Cheese in hand, LGD forced a fight at the last tier three bottom with a last purchase Divine Rapier for Sun 'xh??-Agressif' Zheng on his Ember Spirit. Ultimately, the power and control of the LGD lineup proved too much for Secret, as they isolated Envy's Terrorblade and dismantled the rest of Secret's lineup, sending the all-stars home.
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