*Cover image via: @Mars Media
It took EG their second trip to China for the season as they had to enlist the help of CCnC to break finally break their 3rd place curse at MDL Macau. However, it was Team Liquid who won the title with a 3-1 victory in the grand finals.
Joint DPC leaders and defending champions, Virtus.Pro are the team to beat in DPC events, but at Macau, they faced complaints from certain sections of the community that they were not taking the tournament so seriously. Clowny drafts and videos of players playing popular BR game Apex Legends while their captain drafted during the group stages, didn’t go down well for some but the CIS powerhouse strolled through the lower brackets to finish in 3rd place and ending the discussions. The team knocked out 3 of the home teams including Vici Gaming, Newbee and Invictus Gaming but ultimately lost to EG in the lower bracket finals.
this is now an apex legends tournament
— Beyond the Summit (@BeyondTheSummit) February 21, 2019
https://t.co/VZnt4kO1Z3
@GranDGranT @DraskylDotaTwo & @TrentPax pic.twitter.com/4tHofxrWAX
The grand finals looked fairly one-sided but was also quite entertaining as Team Liquid dished out the pain in a 3-1 win over EG. Games 1 and 2 were complete stomps as Matu showed off on the new Viper build allowing Miracle to go to town on his carry heroes. EG struck back with an equally dominant win in game 3, on the back of Arteezy’s PA and CCnC’s Kunkka. But that was all she wrote for the NA squad as Liquid cleaned up the series in game 4 with help from an old Matu classic, Lone Druid. One of the quicker grand finals in recent memory despite going 4 games as all 4 got over before the 30-minute mark. Both teams will now play their next official gamers at the Stockholm Major in less than 3 weeks.
Liquid’s win nets them 135,000$ of the 300,000$ prize pool and despite not being a DPC event, MDL Macau witnessed some top Dota especially from Team Liquid.