Day two of the playoffs stage at Riyadh Masters 2024, the Dota 2 competition at Esports World Cup is all about elimination matches.

headline image credits: Luc Bouchon|EWC

Aurora and Weibo.Xtreme Gaming were the first two teams to duel for survival at the $5,000,000 tournament. The former were seeded straight into the lower bracket rounds on the back of their lacklustre group stage performance. WBG.XG, on the other hand, landed in the lower bracket after losing to Falcons 1-2 in the playoffs opening day.

For South East Asia, Aurora represented the last hope in the tournament, but a 9th-12th place is all that it could be achieved in Riyadh

What is “run at you” meta?

Nothing of Xtreme or Aurora’s concern, at least for the first game of the series despite both drafting with a fast paced playstyle in mind. Aurora revealed an offlane Brewmasters in the first drafting stage and closed their draft with a carry Broodmother. Along with a mid lane Storm Spirit, their strategy seemed to rely on early laning stage dominance that should have translated into map control and a fast win.

However, WBG.XG went for comfort picks with Ame’s signature Morphling, Xm’s Puck and XinQ’s famous position 4 Monkey King. Given both drafts, everyone expected to see a lot of action on the map, but instead, everything was about a farm fest. The most kills happened in the first 8 minutes of the game with Aurora lading 4 to 2. But with Broodmother being one of the heroes to die early on Aurora side, the SEA team changed the pace, avoided the fights and at the 33-minute mark, the kill score was just 7 to 7.

Unfortunately, for Aurora, going in a defensive stance didn’t work at all, as the scaling power was clearly favouring Xtreme, and with all their timings missed and a crucial mistake from 23savage, who also missed timed a Roshan attempt, WBG.XG  had all the opportunities to punish their opponents and take the lead in the best-of-three series.

Game two featured the same Morphling and Monkey King from Xtreme while Aurora did look to improve their game and execute the same “run at you” concept, but with an Invoker mid lane and Sand King offlane. Nonetheless, their coordination was off, Xtreme found crucial pickoffs on Aurora’s cores and around the 20 minute mark they were already so ahead that they could afford to dive past tier 4 towers unpunished.

Aurora’s journey at Riyadh Masters 2024 ends in the 9th-12th place with $100,000 in their pockets and with Ame crushing their tournament key.
 

 Riyadh Masters 2024 prize pool and Champions Club points distribution

  • 1st place $1,500,000/1,000points 
  • 2nd place $800,000/600 points
  • 3rd place $600,000/350 points 
  • 4th place $400,000/200 points
  • 5th-6th place $300,000/90 points 
  • 7th-8th place $200,000/30 points
  • 9th-12th place $100,000 Aurora
  • 13th-14th place $70,000 Heroic / beastcoast
  • 15th-16th place $40,000 Blacklist International / MOUZ
  • 17th-18th place $25,000 Virtus.pro / nouns 
  • 19th-20th place $15,000 Azure Ray / G2 x iG
     

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