Team Dignitas vs Reason Gaming



Bans: Bacchus, Odin, Loki, Hercules



Dignitas: Agni (Thebest), Sobek (Anatoliy), Thor (Lassiz), Apollo (Zapman), , Aphrodite (Shadowq)



Reason Gaming: Athena (Eonic), Poseidon (Tocketty), Neith (Snoopyman), He Bo(Wolfy2032), Vamana (PeccYz)

Team Dignitas vs Last Resort



Bans: Agni, Hercules, Sobek, Athena



Dignitas: Odin (Anatoliy), Hun Batz (Lassiz), Cupid(!) (Zapman), He Bo(Thebest), Bacchus (Shadowq)



Last Resort: Poseidon (ZeroGarz), Neith (Hero), Loki (Soulshiner), Guan Yu (NexusAngel), Ymir (EMC²)

Finals Game 1

Team Dignitas vs Cognitive Gaming



Bans: Apollo, Sobek, Loki, Hercules



Dignitas: Agni (TheBest), Artemis (Zapman), Hun Batz (Lassiz), Athena (Anatoliy), Bacchus (Shadowq)



Cognitive Gaming: He Bo (MLC Stealth), Neith (Kaeyoh), Thor (Shing), Ymir (Allied), Hel (Omega)

Finals Game 2

Team Dignitas vs Cognitive Gaming



Bans: Hercules, Bacchus, Apollo, Sobek



Dignitas: Ra (TheBest), Neith (Zapman), Loki (Lassiz), Athena (Anatoliy), Aphrodite (Shadowq)



Cognitive Gaming: Agni (MLC Stealth), Artemis (Kaeyoh), Freya (Shing), Thor (Allied), Hel (Omega)

The recent balance patch skewed a lot of things and changed a lot of the Gods that were played. A lot of changes were made (full patch notes here ) this week, but the stand out is most definitely the fact that Hercules now has a guaranteed stun on his charge ability, Driving Strike. That combined with a nerf to Isis's support abilities made it so that we saw Hercules banned every game instead of Isis, and even with Isis not banned, she didn't see much play. In almost all of the weeks passed, Isis has been an instant ban or an instant pick in the event of a respect ban, so this definitely made things interesting this week.We've been seeing a lot more level one engagements since those mid harpy camps are so heavily contested. In this case, the level one engagement sort of set the tone for the game, as Wolfy's jungle He Bo suffered the first of nine deaths.The first tower went down due to Zapman's attention to structure damage, and quickly set the rest of the game into motion. After winning the first team fight, Lassiz as Thor saw the entire Reason Gaming team grouped up with mid health, so he ulted in and stunned everyone. It killed him, complete suicide--but it was enough of a distraction to allow his team to get there and completely wipe Reason Gaming, and secure the win for Dignitas. Even though he died, Lassiz proved why he's lauded as such a team player, and wound up with the play of the game.This game started off looking really great for Last Resort. They got off to a fantastic start: Thebest died a couple of times in mid, and Last Resort completely won a team fight due to Zapman not being able to reach the other side of the map before the fight started. Totally out of character for Dignitas, they realized this and quickly picked up and immediately responded to the lost team fight with a Deicide of their own. They really forced the fight, diving to the enemy's porch, behind BOTH towers. You could tell Dignitas was hungry after losing that last team fight so badly, and really wanted to make up for it. This pushed control back in their favor, they immediately went for the Gold Fury, and evened things out. The game was decided around the 34 minute mark, after another team fight going in the way of Team Dignitas.Zapman playing Cupid was definitely a break from the norm, both for Zapman himself and the overall meta of the game. He did a lot less damage than we're used to seeing, but he healed a ton with hearts alone. That coupled with the team dash really lead to an interesting match, but I think Zapman is more comfortable with a straight attack carry than the support carry that Cupid is.Last Resort put up a great fight, and this was a great match to watch. Whether it was Dignitas underestimating Last Resort's abilities or just Last Resort surprising everyone with how well they perform, the beginning of the game was a real indicator as to just how skilled these newcomers are. Also worth mentioning is that to even get to this point, Last Resort had to get through Denial NA, which is no easy task. This week's Dig/LR matchup was a lot different than last week's onesided game. Definitely keep an eye on these guys in the future, expect big things, because they've proved they're more than capable, and they only get better each time we see them play.The top two teams fighting in the finals, such a great matchup to watch. Dignitas really shines and wins most of their games based on team fights. They have amazing cohesion, and COG isn't oblivious to this. COG did a really good job at avoiding team fights and playing defensively, so Dignitas had to really adjust their strategy after a few early encounters showing them that they weren't going to be able to just team fight their way to victory.All the members of Cognitive Gaming played a good game, but Dignitas just slowly picked off kills one at a time. At all times, Dignitas had at least two more wards out than COG, and that vision lead to 17 kills, almost all of which were taken in small encounters.Hel really shined despite the loss for Cognitive. Omega built Hel very tanky, and was almost unkillable. Although Dignitas won, Artemis didn't have as much as an impact as anticipated, mainly due to Allied's great job playing Ymir. Every single time Zapman used Artemis' ultimate, Allied quickly used Ymir's Frost Breath and froze the boar before he could stun anyone and do any real CC. THAT SAID, Zapman still lead the game in player damage, quietly sneaking his way to over 13 thousand in that category.Cognitive brought zero tanks to this fight. It seems like COG's plan was to outnuke Dignitas, but I could be wrong; the team setup was so unconventional that the intention wasn't really clear. Trying to go against the meta didn't really work out, and it was a quick, unfortunate loss for Cognitive Gaming. Set to a disadvantage early due to what seemed like lane confusion, a lane swap here or there set Cognitive back by 4k gold early on, and Dignitas was just able to take care of business. Ra had an AMAZING ult through the jungle to land a kill, which will almost certainly be featured in top 5 plays. Look forward to this weeks episode for it.***It was very refreshing to see some new-old Gods come out and get played. Zapman experimented with some Artemis and some Cupid, two carries we haven't seen around the competitive scene in a while, if at all. We didn't get to see much Hercules, because he's scary enough for every team to want to ban him. Hel, although getting a decent amount of EU play, almost never gets any play in the NA scene, and Omega did work piloting her. Great sustain and a reliable team heal makes her such a powerful teammate. With PAX coming up, it'll be interesting to see which of these experiments make it out of the weeklys and onto the larger stages, but either way it's nice to see some things shaking up the God selection. Tons more excitement next week, tune in at noon on TwitchTV on Saturday to catch all the action live!