Team Faceless vs Eagles Gigabyte: Game 2 @ ASUS SEA Cup

EG = Eagles, fL = Faceless. Courtesy: OpenDota

Faceless picked the Pudge fourth versus the already mobile duo-core of Mirana/Void. Eagles then rounded out their lineup with Slardar & Morphling. Playing against four heroes with an escape skill is a pretty difficult task for the Butcher, but Jabz made sure to provide vision via the Bounty Hunter pick and reliable early lockdown through the CM pick.

Often times the carry & offlaner swap roles depending on team priority (or comfort level) and the carry player ends up in an unfavorable matchup in the offlane. Instead, Iceiceice played Juggernaut solo in the offlane while NutZ babysat Black^ as he rotted away in the radiant safelane.

Let’s dive in.

Hook at 04:55

The Void had been using the dire creep wave as a shield from hooks until this point. Black recognizes the split second window between the dire creeps aggro-ing over to the radiant creep and the Void taking up a defensive stance again, and times the hook to perfection.

The slow motion demonstrates how difficult of a skill shot it was, and how he used the hitbox to his advantage (by casting slightly to the left of Void’s position). NutZ follows up with the newly buffed Frostbite to prevent a time-walk and Team Faceless have their first kill on the board.

A minute before this engagement, Iceiceice did some classic Iceiceice things and fed away first blood to the solo enemy offlaner. The unnecessary dive under the T1 tower gave Frostb1tez a great start — he was level 5 before the 5 min mark .

It was shaping up to be a lost lane for Faceless before the timely kill on Void. Black was able to delay the chronosphere which might have led to kills on the other two radiant cores.

Two minutes removed from the first hook, Black landed another one on the Darkterror.

Hook at 06:55

The Crystal Nova slow allows the radiant duo to get in closer. Frostb1tez is forced to timewalk away to avoid the potential lockdown from frostbite into Dismember. The move also makes sense in the context of limiting FL’s vision due to night time, but it’s hard to say if the Void had it in mind. In addition, he uses the trees’ fog of war to hide. This is where the mindgames begin.

Black animation-cancels the hook ever so slightly, and the void sidesteps to the left to avoid the ‘perceived’ incoming hook. Black does not have vision of the void at this point, but he correctly predicts the behavior of the void. He launches a hook to the left of his fake one — catching Frostb1tez once more.

The second kill all but secured the early game for Faceless. The Void was still level 5 at the time of his death and his item progression was stunted (1461g @ 7min). The often guaranteed early kill (<10 min) from the first chronosphere didn’t happen either. Black also drew enough attention to the bottom lane, allowing the Juggernaut to catch up farm & XP.

The game snowballed in FL’s favor after this point. With Bounty Hunter reaching level 6 & acquiring track vision, landing hooks in the mid game became more reliable as well.

Teamfight at 20:00

Still, the bounty reached level 6 at the min 13 mark. By then, Black had connected on 4/6 hooks. Eagles were getting apprehensive about moving out on the map and they played scared going forward. For a team with two strong initiators, they held increasingly defensive positions after realizing that Black was feeling it.

It’s similar to a basketball player making a shot after shot, forcing the opponent to double-team him. A good team always takes advantage of the extra space offered by the hot hand.

By the 25 mins, five of the top six net-worth positions were Faceless players and they had secured enough of a lead to end the game. Eagles’ first (and only) high ground defense was also disrupted by Black’s pudge.

Teamfight at 26:00

Eagles are desperate at this point and Frostb1tez is looking for a big chronosphere to force a turn-around in momentum. He decides to lurk in the jungle to find a favorable initiation and barely shows up in FL’s vision. Black blinks immediately and throws out a blind hook to catch the retreating void.

While a kill wasn’t secured, Bounty hunter was able to a get a track off on the Void. The vision allowed the FL players to 3-way split in response to incoming chronosphere a few moments later. Only the Juggernaut was trapped in the purple bubble, and the rest of his team won the fight handily.

The game ended shortly afterwards as Black & crew cleaned up a weaker cast of Eagles Gigabyte. FL clinched the series 2–0, and in quite the convincing fashion.

The Butcher finished the game with an impressive accuracy of 52.2% on offensive hooks: 12 on 23 attempts. He also hit 3 out of 4 defensive hooks, one of which was an especially timely one to save Iceiceice from certain death in the mid-game. Iceiceice had many sloppy plays this game in particular, but that comes with a high-risk/reward mentality.