After the second day of the first NA Summer Global Circuit qualifier Tempo Storm and Naventic advance to DreamHack Austin.
The first qualifier for the North America Summer Regional at DreamHack Austin in early May concluded late Wednesday night with two teams advancing to the LAN event in Austin, Texas. Eight teams will qualify for DreamHack Austin where a prize pool of $100,000 is on the line, and more importantly a chance at advancing to the Summer Global Championship in Jönköping, Sweden.
Gust or Bust was able to take a game off Cloud9 in the first series, but Cloud9 came back with two impressive wins to advance. In the third game Cloud9 was able to get a keep five minutes into the game. Tempo Storm won 2-0 over Team Blaze and faced Cloud9 to decide the first qualifier for the NA SGC Regional. It was a very close best-of-3 series and both teams played really well. Tempo Storm won the first game, lead by their newest player Erho on Dehaka. Cloud9 came back in game two and sent the series to a third game. After a very close game three Tempo Storm ultimately came out on top, with their team clicking well after adding Erho to their roster. Cloud9 had a major problem securing kills and that ended up losing them the series.
COGnitive gained momentum after winning 2-0 over Panda Global. The all new GFE roster was put on display as they put up a very good fight against Naventic. Gale Force came out strong in game one where Dehaka saw even more play, but Naventic came back to win two in a row to move on to face COGnitive. The third game of the series was one of the closest of the qualifier and came down to a single play in favor of Naventic.
COGnitive and Naventic were back and forth throughout the entirity of a series that consisted of some really long games. The first game in the qualifier was a major stand-off that lasted almost 35 minutes and only had 15 combined kills. A last minute Tyrande owl snipe on the side of COG ultimately resulted in them winning the game.
After the first game, Naventic came back and COGnitive made a few mistakes that ended up costing them the game. By winning two in a row Naventic became the second team to qualify for DreamHack Austin.
Now that it's been a couple of weeks since Dehaka's release, he's been seeing a lot of play. Most teams were playing him, including Tempo Storm, Cloud9 and Naventic. He was being run as a solo tank, and can potentially make a major impact on the meta. With his global presence and drag ability, he's a serious force and that was shown in the qualifier today.
Naventic and Tempo Storm have secured a spot in Austin at DreamHack and two more teams will have a chance on Saturday in the second qualifier.
Follow us on Twitter @GosuGamersHotS for more Heroes of the Storm news and coverage from around the world.
