During the third day of the Main Event at the Dota 2 International 2016, the first match of the second lower bracket commenced. Two teams were eliminated, so which teams prevailed?
Alliance, the former TI3 champions were sent down to the Lower Bracket (LB) by EHOME in the Upper Bracket (UP) during the Quarter Finals on Day 2 of the TI6 Main Event. Alliance will be facing Fnatic in a best-of-three (BO3) series in the LB elimination match. The winner of this series secures the top eight seed in The International with a guaranteed prize of over $500,000.
Game 1
The first game started with a standard draft for both teams. Their setups were pretty common in the current meta, with Drow Ranger pushing line-up and Sven strong in the farm/team fight strategy.
Both teams played passively during the early phase of the first series. First blood was secured by s4 on his Mirana with the help of EGM on his Elder Titan to kill MidOne on his Storm Spirit. By 10 minutes in, there were four kills in total, as both teams were focusing on farming.
At 12 minutes, Alliance continued to push the tier 2 tower at the bottom lane while Mushi’s Sven farmed the ancient stacks on the opposite side of the map. By then, Sven’s farm increased dramatically and his net worth gap widened compared to the rest of the players in the match. With help from 343‘s Bounty Hunter, Fnatic consistently placed aggressive wards on the map to create space for the Sven to continue farming and avoiding team fights. The pace of the game for the entire match was pretty passive and there were a few kills every now and then.
At the 28 minute mark, Fnatic smoked into Roshan’s pit to secure themselves the Aegis and soon after Roshan fell, a team fight broke out just outside the pit. Ohaiyo‘s Slardar initiated with three-man slithereen crush and killed the Elder Titan. Storm Spirit went too aggressive on Mirana and was killed by Admiral Bulldog‘s Tidehunter under the mid lane tier 2 tower. Another fight broke out at 32 minutes in when Bounty Hunter tried to sneak into the Alliance’s squad and Loda‘s Drow Ranger was killed on the spot — his teammates were unable to save him in time and the fight went Fnatic’s way after killing another two heroes.
Alliance tried to take Roshan and Aegis at the 40-minute mark, but Fnatic jumped in and took the last hit, and Bounty Hunter grabbed the Aegis. Trapped in the pit, both teams took a huge fight resulting in four deaths on Alliance, while Fnatic lost the Aegis and Sladar.
From there on, Fnatic took down Alliance’s bottom barracks by using Shadow Demon‘s disrupt on Sven to create more illusions. Another fight broke out in the Roshan’s pit near the 50-minute mark, where Alliance was initiated on by Sladar and Storm — killing two of Alliance’s supports and secured another Aegis and cheese.
Towards the end of the game at 62 minutes, Fnatic forced a high ground push, taking down Tidehunter almost instantly before he could even use Ravage. With no buyback status on Bulldog, Alliance took a massive hit in their team fights and used buybacks on the rest of the team after each death but, Fnatic’s heroes stayed strong without any casualty. The last team fight ended with MidOne’s ultra-kill in the process and GG was called by 63 minutes.
Game 2
Alliance this time opted to pick their comfort heroes such as s4’s Puck, Bulldog’s Nature’s Prophet, Loda’s Lifestealer, and Akke’s Enchantress, which are good at early game aggression. At the beginning of the game, Ohaiyo’s Batrider was caught by surprise near the top rune and s4 secured the first blood. From then on, Alliance kept on with their aggressive play style to prevent Fnatic from finding any space to farm on the map.
By 15 minutes in, Alliance had 13 kills while Fnatic only had three. Alliance looked strong during the 20th minute with a 10k gold lead over Fnatic. Before the time hit 30, Fnatic took a good team fight with one casualty while Alliance (who looked unprepared) lost three cores and one support hero. After that fight, both teams’ experience were at an equilibrium point.
Immediately, Alliance heroes marched down to kill Roshan and rushed to push down top lane. Unfortunately, s4 with Lifestealer infested was hit by an arrow by Dj and died instantaneously, causing Fnatic to storm out of their base to take out three more heroes. Another unfortunate death came to s4 and Loda at the bottom tier 2 tower, where they were picked off by Fnatic and gave up a set of bottom barracks.
Fnatic soon transitioned into mid lane barracks and went for the last team fight, and wiped Alliance in the process. Alliance was forced to call GG as Fnatic attacked the Dire ancient at 39 minutes.
Alliance held an early lead, but Fnatic’s teamfight coordination wipes the TI3 champs to end the game at 39 mins. Fnatic moves on #TI6
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) August 10, 2016
Shoutout to the former TI3 champions. They really recovered quite well in game two despite a rough game one. Fnatic showed their resilience in their gameplay despite a bad start, and won the match with a clean 2-0 sweep. which guaranteed them the top 8 placement.
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Published: Aug 13, 2016 03:54 am