It is the MYM PriDe #7, and this is the final game of the Winner Bracket. Home team of MYM.DotA versus the title defending Russians from Virtus.Pro.
Let's see the lineups first.
MYM PriDe #7 WB Final
MeetYourMakers (MYM)1:0 Virtus.Pro (VP)
H4nn1 (Sand King, top) smile (Priestess of the Moon, top)
LevenT (Slayer, top) ns (Beastmaster, jungle)
slahser (Chaos Knight, mid) jolie (Netherdrake, mid)
MaNia- (Tormented Soul, mid) admir (Rogue Knight, mid)
Merlini (Lord of Olympia, bot) vigoss (Nerubian Weaver, bot)
PotM facing a hard lane top. SK with no projectile stun backed up by Lina with a stun and a nuke will surely make virtus.smile play less aggressive. Really interesting lane mid, Virtus with advantage but this will surely be the most interesting lane to watch. And bottom - some might be surprised by the pick of Nerubian Weaver. Often seen as a paper carry hero with no lane control. The fact is - it's one of most underrated solo heroes. With only a bottle she can outharass most heroes 1v1. The ones that destroy her are heavy nukers like ie Tinker or Zeus. Hence Vigoss won't have much space bottom.
Both teams have incredible gank and chase, with MYM having a stronger AoE, which might decide in team fights, but the question is which team will gank better, to secure their carry? While Weaver needs multiple high tier items, Chaos Knight is a good pick due to lack of heavy AoE spells on VP side and almost no reliance on items but on the proper use of his Ultimate of GG.
MYM PriDe #7 WB Final
Virtus.Pro (VP)0:2 MeetYourMakers (MYM)
vigoss (Priestess of the Moon, top) Merlini (Lord of Olympia, top)
sahka (Tormented Soul, top) slahser (Netherdrake, mid)
jolie (Nevermore, mid -> bot) MaNia- (Rogue Knight, mid)
admir (Butcher, bot -> mid) LevenT (Warlock, bot)
smile (Slayer, bot -> mid) H4nn1 (Spectre, bot)
Merlini soloing with Zeus again, this time all in all 4 nukes 2 of them being disables. Lets see if he can make anything out of that lane. No wonder jolie swaps. Viper absolutely owns SF no matter what SF player does. Sven is just icing on the cake. On the bottom side Butcher with Lina might get the First Blood very fast, and after the swap most enjoyable lane to watch should be mid.
This game looks like it will be much more interesting than the first, due to questions concerning the ganking phase and the mid game. How fast will vigoss farm and kill with PotM? How fast Spectre will farm the Radiance? The teams are very balanced, both having great gankers, slowers and chasers, lots of AoE spells and tons of Burst damage. A won gank by MYM can secure an easy 4 or less man push while Spectre farms, but we have already seen admir's Pudge, vigoss's PotM and jolie's SF in action many times.
Game 1
Game beggining is rather calm with only few big moments. Unlike I speculated vigoss doesn't get trashed bottom farming creep to creep with Merlini and mid lane isn't that loaded with action. Ward on gnoll camp trashes Beastmaster's jungling, ns goes to creep pull Ancients Camp to the third bottom tower, but ends up quite underleveled and forcing VP to be more passive during the ganking phase of the game. Jolie comes to gank with smile killing top for the FB performing a great poisonwalk. Things yet start to turn bad for VP, MYM picks them up one by one quite easy, so admir goes to farm.
About the 20th minute things start to be really bad for Virtus, they do not have enough map control that Hawk + Watchers + Wards should give and except for admir they don't have much items and MYM is ganing a stable advantage in kills. The 23rd minute brings us one of the best fights in the game, starting from a 2v2 skirmish and ending with a full 5v5 engaging clearly won by VP. Unfortunately, this was the only moment that Russians had a chance to come back to the game.
All MYM players get key items for their heroes along with massing Bracers, continuing to pick scourge one by one. Admir successfully rice farms like there was no tomorrow, but leaves Weaver with next to nothing, while slahser grabs BoT and Radiance and consequently pushes the towers down every time his Ultimate of GG cools down.
Game 2
The level of skill in this game is extremely high, both teams playing cautious and planning the game very well. jolie swaps with bottom pretty fast due to hero advantage MYM has over him mid. First blood of course bottom, Rot is best skill in terms of FB attempts. Merlini has a really hard time farming in top lane but plays his best, successfully to admit. MYM also ensured that jolie wouldn't farm enough items fast to go gank, their so called 'ezy treatment' turned out perfectly, SF was pretty much under for the most of the game.
Mid game and ganking are some masterpieces of teamwork from both sides, they go head to head with kills until a flawless team fight by MYM around the 37th minute when they outplayed Virtus.Pro killing four of them and loosing none. This established enough control on the game to let Spectre farm Radi + Reaver an Sven to get his HoT. LevenT and slasher hardly got any items but they both played a very good game, establishing map control with tons of wards, slahser showing yet again his great Viper skills and LevenT being the captain instead of Maelk.
Overall a very square game, both teams showing DotA at it's highest, planning always few steps ahead, flawless team play, great individual skills along with a solid performance.
Links
MeetYourMakers - source
DotA-Allstars Forums - lineups
