Round 2 of the Dota 2 International 6 Group Stage has NaVi facing EG, OG playing Alliance, LGD versus Escape, and TNC fighting to stay relevant against wings. Every team went 1-1 in the previous round, except for Alliance and TNC, who went 2-0 and 0-2 respectively.
The first series had EG take an early high ground and victory over NaVi, ending the game at 24 minutes with Sumail and PPD leading the charge on Templar Assassin and Chen with 24-14. They carried on into the second and needed only one extra minute to stomp NaVi 41-11. Fear on Ursa went 19-0-4 and Zai’s Elder Titan went 8-1-18 on their way to the 2-0 series victory.
Second, OG and Alliance squared up in a short first game that featured an underwhelming Terrorblade courtesy of Loda, who was powerless to stop Miracle-‘s Drow Ranger from securing Alliance’s concession at 17 minutes with 14-9 on the scoreboard. In the second game, an equal battle was waged between OG’s late game Naga Siren-Tiny lineup and Alliance’s push-heavy Pugna-Mirana team. Of great note, Moonmeander took his Axe deep into enemy territory, blinking through the trees along the edge of the map before using a Smoke of Deceit to sneak into the Dire fountain and steal the Gem of True Sight that Alliance was relying on to keep Cr1t’s Riki down. With plays like that, Alliance couldn’t help but concede after being out-ratted by OG at 53 minutes with a final score of 21-17, on the way to OG’s 2-0 series win.
Our penultimate series showed LGD playing against Escape, where a low-kill first game ended in LGD’s victory at 36 minutes, with a final score of 13-6. Escape struggled to control the flow of the game, and Agressif and Maybe closed them out early and often. During the follow-up game, Escape had a much better time of it, controlling the mid-game with early power spikes from qojqva on Templar Assassin, Era on Anti-Mage, and KheZzu on Beastmaster. Unfortunately for them, LGD had Maybe on Storm Spirit and Agressif on Lifestealer to fight back, and it was seven short minutes and three team fights later that Escape’s sure victory had turned into LGD’s comfortable 2-0 at 45 minutes.
Finally, TNC and wings had their very own dust-up, where TNC shockingly took the series 2-0, the first game in 32 minutes and the second in 45. In the first, Faith_bian and shadow never got their Windranger and Drow Ranger to a point where they had a great enough impact, while Raven, Kuku, and Sam H had no such problems with Naga Siren, Phantom Lancer, and Axe, especially after 22 minutes. In the final game, advantage went back and forth five times before TNC completely team wiped wings twice in the space of fewer than four minutes, leading to a dominant last fifteen minutes before wings conceded at 45 minutes, with the final score at 28-40.
This article was written by a past writer, Daniel Giroday.
