Evil Geniuses finally has gotten their pound of flesh against Vici Gaming at the Dota 2 DreamLeague Leipzig Major in the lower bracket finals held on Sunday.
EG eventually masterminded a 2-1 win over VG that recorded six straight wins against them.
In their last four meetings this season, the Chines champions had won three of the four matchups. VG lost only an unimportant series in the group stage of the ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational.
In the finals of the World Pro Invitational, VG thoroughly outclassed EG spanked them at the group stage of the Leipzig Major.
With this victory, EG will have to look for a way to defeat one of the strongest teams in the world at the moment which is Team Secret.
After taking a break from a tournament, Tem Secret, at the start of the Dota Pro Circuit, has maintained its fine form at the Leipzig Major.
Although EG has continued to improve their game as the competition progresses, their new players, “Abed” Yusop and Roman “RAMZES66” Kushnarev, who joined them in the offseason, have settled in without a hitch. The two had dominated games after being thrown into solo situations due to their immaculate techniques.
Despite their loss, VGT will still take solace in the fact that they have been practically guaranteed tickets to The International after finishing in a respectable third and being second at the MDL Chengdu Major.
How did EG succeed in smiling over VG this time around? All thanks to their top-tier execution and versatility.
With their love for the meta-game, which is a disciplined approach, they are, however, sometimes caught out by teams that can use off the cuff heroes and strategies like Team Secret.
With this development, they can still improve their games as they are already guaranteed to go home with $110,000 and 2,100 DPC points.
In the first game, the real action started in the mid-game as the early game witnessed multiple lane swaps from both teams trying to eke out any advantage they could.
In the mid-game, VG got a slight lead, but EG turned thigs around with an immense teamfight with saw Zhang “Eurus” Chengjun’s dominating Ember Spirit fall.
Although, the Chinese champions fought back hard but couldn’t stop EG’s overwhelming damage output from all three of their cores, making the game to be out of reach for VG, and the Chinese giants conceded.
During game two, VG went for the classic Gyro-Io combo while EG chose Broodmother in the last pick to counter out VG’s apparent lack of AOE, but the spider was handled well by VG.
However, Artour “Arteezy” Babaev’s huge play gave EG a glimmer of hope. Still, Eurus and Ding “Dy” Cong’s Io only got harder to kill as VG rallied expertly around their carry and repeatedly tore through EG’s defences.
In the final game, EG picked up “Abed” Yusop’s Storm Spirit while VG tried a faster tempo with a Puck, Magnus, and Doom core.
Storm Spirit has been on fire with throughout the tournament, but EG farmed up their items slowly and avoided fights as VG started the game with a lot of farm.
This was because their cores can siphon resources off the map.
EG got the upper hand with big teamfight ultimates like Chronosphere and Ice Blast, that greatly aided their power in the mid-game.
This allowed Abed to take over the game. Abed later executed a crumbling VG that was struggling to kill their opponents, which was the final nail in the coffin.
Written by: Oladipupo Mojeed
