photo courtesy of PGL
Four teams will be gone by the end of the first day of Dota 2 Asia Championships 2017. iG Vitality and LFY opened the lower bracket battles. Runner up at the DAC 2015, Super failed to deliver and his road at the second edition of the tournament ended prematurely.
All the games in the first round of the lower bracket are a best of one affair, and the tension is piling up in China with every match up. The opening lower bracket battle was a one sided game where iG.Vitality perfectly executed an early aggression draft to eliminate LGD Forever Young.
LFY started off in a little bit of disadvantage from the laning stage, their offlane Magnus getting continuously zoned out by iG.V’s trilane while Xie 'Super' Junhao was slowly falling behind in farm in the mid lane on his Phantom Assassin. However, LFY scored the first blood and things evened out for a few minutes, but their lineup relied heavily on two big ultimates, Void’s Chronosphere and Magnus’ Reverse Polarity. Missing key items on their initiators, LFY’s only chance was to turtle as much as possible waiting for Magnus to get his Blink Dagger.
On the other side of the map, iG vitality had plenty of heroes capable of starting a fight, and a Warlock to control all the mayhem. Confident in their strengths, iG V went for an early five man push and kept pressuring LFY. The good map control allowed them to also secure an early Roshan kill and without any real threat coming from LFY, IG Vitality were able to capitalize on their lead around the 30 minute mark.
While LFY are the first to exit the tournament, iG Vitality will move forward into the lower bracket rounds, their next adversaries being the winner between VG.J vs NP.
