When you look at Liquid’s lineup, you certainly don’t think about weak lanes. Yet, on the 12th minute, they were at a 6k gold deficit. This is terrible news for their lineup which is most definitely not built to play from behind – they want to be ahead in order to hit their early-mid game 5-man Dota timing with their extremely hard to kill Undying, Necro, and Underlord.

The way Liquid’s heroes win lanes, however, is much different than the way e.g. Lesh and Venge win lanes.

Undying, Necro, and ET don’t have huge kill potential. They are simply very durable and great at harassing. They stay in lane, whittle down their opponents and slowly but surely take control of their lane and get more farm.

In recent patches, however, denying was nerfed. This might mean that in the early game hero kills are more valuable than they were before. In other words, kill lanes are more valuable than hard-to-deal-with lanes. This is one of the reasons why Ursa, for example, is having a resurgence in popularity despite not receiving significant buffs.

In this game, the top lane (where Miracle was supposed to find farm) was heavily pressured by the kill potential of Venge + Lesh. Secret managed to secure a couple of kills and the situation became even more difficult when MidOne started rotating and fighting around the map.

The result was that Miracle had a very hard game and was almost constantly pressured, while Nisha was free farming: