Dota 2: MDL Macau 2019 – Finals Highlights

It was a day of beautiful Dota at MDL Macau today. Our final day of competition saw our winning teams push themselves to the limits; with Evil Geniuses and Virtus.pro taking the lower bracket finals to the full best of three, and Liquid and Evil Geniuses treating us to a 4-game series.

Loser’s Bracket Finals

Our first series of the day was the loser’s bracket finals. Virtus.pro met Evil Geniuses for a Bo3 series where we saw some of the best neck-and-neck Dota we’ve seen in the tournament so far.

Evil Geniuses looked strong throughout the series, and game one seemed to be going well for them until it neared the twenty-five-minute mark.  But after swinging a team fight, the bears came back and Virtus.pro raced for Roshan. After taking the aegis and the cheese, it was a full-throttle push to the base which left EG scrambling to mount a defence.

Game one went to Virtus.pro at 39 minutes.

Virtus.pro’s fight comes to an end

The next two games of this series were a different story.

The second game of our series saw a Weaver pick for Ramzes as a counter Arteezy’s Lifestealer. But there was just no stopping RTZ in this game. He decimated the net worth, reaching 30k and racking up an impressive 742 gold per minute by games end.

There were some moments where it seemed like Virtus.pro would turn this game around. No[o]ne’s Invoker did well securing pick offs that helped keep VP afloat and push this second game out to almost fifty-minutes. There was no stopping EG, however, who took the win at 48 minutes.

Arteezy munched through VP during this match, taking out 19 kills for his team and playing a massive part in securing the victory.

Our final game was the shortest of the series. Evil Geniuses picked some unexpected heroes in the draft, including Jakiro and Leshrac. While the Sven for Ramzes and the Chaos Knight for Pasha on VP’s side looked strong. But in the end combo was in EG’s favour, letting them come in strong and control the map from the early stages of the game.

Game three was another EG bloodbath, similar to the breakneck pace we’ve seen from them earlier in this competition.

Arteezy took out a massive 42 kills across these three games, and Cr1t provided excellent support, with 49 assists. After an exciting Bo3 series, the result saw Evil Geniuses dominate to take the spot in the grand finale against Team Liquid.

Upper Bracket Finals

EG threw Liquid a curveball in the first game of our upper bracket finals. The Pangolier pick for Arteezy seemed to put Liquid on the back foot in the early laning phases. But by the 15-minute mark, Liquid had pulled ahead with an 8 kill-lead, and Miracle’s PA leading the net worth.

Liquid’s teamwork in game one gave us some beautiful moments of Dota 2 to watch; including their Rosh play at twenty-minutes, where they pushed back EG’s attempt to stop it, and continued the momentum with a push mid that helped them take the mid rax by 21-minutes.

Game two was a similar stomp. Matumbaman's Viper pick in mid allowed him to easily farm the jungle and the mid lane, allowing him to fly ahead of CCnC on Lina in the net worth.

Evil Geniuses tried to bring the pressure, taking objectives early with the T1 towers, but there was no stopping Matumbaman and Miracle this game. Miracle’s Juggernaut went through the match undefeated, and EG called the game after a twenty-minute massacre.

EG not giving up without a fight

After two games of Matumbaman punishing them with Viper, EG finally chose to ban the hero first pick. Forcing Liquid to go with Lone Druid in the mid lane. Liquid’s draft continued to look a little unorthodox, with Miracle taking Drow Ranger as a last pick.

We saw Pango return to EG’s draft this game, played by s4, and an Enigma slip though for Cr1t. These two heroes provided the space that Arteezy’s Phantom Assassin needed to come online quickly.

This was exactly what Evil Geniuses needed, and we saw a flashback to their series against VP earlier in the day, where they again dominated the control of the map from the early phases of the game. This game was an absolute bloodbath for EG. They ended it at 27-minutes, with a 24 kill-lead on Liquid.

With a victory for themselves in game three, Evil Geniuses secured themselves a game four against Team Liquid.

Liquid out to prove themselves

The draft for game four is what set the pace of the match. It was going to be a race between Miracle’s Troll Warlord and Arteezy’s Phantom Assassin.

There was some back-and-forth in the early game, including some good rotations by s4 during the laning phase which let EG keep close to Liquid in both kills and net worth. However, Cr1t’s Rubick pick failed to contribute much, even by the game’s sixteen-minute mark.

As they neared the Roshan spawn time, Miracle continued to outpace Arteezy’s farm, allowing him to pick up a Satanic by twenty-minutes, and basically solo Roshan. There was a Butterfly on the Troll Warlord by twenty-five minutes.

Towers melted under the onslaught of Liquid’s cores, and with the aegis on the Troll, they obliterated the top and mid rax to give themselves mega creepy at twenty-six minutes.

This was the beginning of the end for EG, who held out as best they could, with Liquid fountain diving them through their defence, until buybacks were unavailable. GG was called at thirty-minutes, and so were our MDL Macau 2019 champions; Team Liquid.

Evil Geniuses didn’t fare very well when they faced Liquid earlier in this tournament. GranDGranT said it best today, “With Liquid, everything’s scary.” While our Bo5 grand finals went to four games, there is no doubt this series was conquered by Liquid and their draft versatility.

With our winner’s decided, MDL Macau now comes to an end. But there is always another tournament around the corner. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for all the latest Dota 2 news, and check out our YouTube for daily esports updates and video highlights.

Image and Video via Beyond The Summit.