One thing that should be noted is that Na'Vi would have been well below Mineski if it weren’t for their recent roster change which brought in Ilya "Lil" Ilyuk (with his 900 DPC Points) from Virtus Pro.
That said, I am sure some of you might not have caught Mineski’s matches in the Dota 2 Minor. So here is a short recap for you.
Mineski vs Team Liquid
Game 1:
Team Liquid went for a push oriented lineup with the Terrorblade + Chen combo and Pugna, while Mineski opted for a Brewmaster and an Enchantress in the offlane, Tinker at mid and a safe lane Razor backed up by the ninjaboogie Witch Doctor.
Liquid’s early kills on the safe lane Razor, rendered any advantage gained by Mineski's aggressive offlane meaningless. While iceiceice had a 7 minute Midas, his repeated deaths completely slowed down his momentum heading into the midgame.
Team Liquid, using their Pugna and Terrorblade, were able to secure a number of outer towers. Even though Mineski lost to Team Liquid, they can hold their chin up. They are still the only SEA team to truly make Team Liquid (who are approaching G.O.A.T territory according to their fans) sweat.
Mineski are now 6th in the DPC rankings. Their next showing will be at ESL One: Katowice Major followed by the Bucharest Major. A top 3 finish in one of those two events will put Mineski within touching distance of a Direct Invite to TI8.
Of course, ideally they would want to finish as the winners. We too are waiting for a SEA team to win a Dota 2 Major. We can only hope. Mineski were unable to get any trades. Mineski started to fall behind, constantly being pushed back and picked off, thus making them stick together as five, allowing Team Liquid to pick up Roshan and push high ground.
The SEA team was simply not able to repel the 26-minute Aegis+Manta+Skadi+Dragon Lance Terrorblade who first took the tower, then the barracks and then their lives before backing out.
A big team fight broke out at Mineski's bottom barracks and Miracle on Terrorblade just shredded Mineski with his Metamorphosis. Mineski's buybacks did nothing but provide more kills to Team Liquid and Mineski were forced to call GG.
Game 2:
I know I’ve said this a lot in this very tournament. But Game 2 was the best game of 2018. While this game didn’t feature Mega Creep comebacks like Mineski’s match against Kinguin, this was by far Mineski’s best game in the strategy-wise as well as execution-wise.
The game started off with a “Nobody has ever done that” -esque bait by Mineski in the Roshan Pit.
With that early lead, Mineski got off to a decent start with all three of their cores being able to secure their key early game items. Team Liquid knew that they couldn't afford this game to slip out of their hands, constantly looking for kills and finally managing to successfully smoke gank 2 heroes under the enemy's tower, with GH’s Earth Spirit proving to be the key hero once again.
Fuelled by that, momentum started to swing in the favor of Team Liquid who built up a 9k Gold Lead thanks to efficient farming and constant pickoffs on Ninjaboogie and Jabz. Team Liquid had farmed up the items to successfully kite Mushi’s Ursa. The game was slipping out of Mineski’s hands when they decided to smoke up.
That’s when Iceiceice stepped up and showed us why he is arguably SEA’s greatest player ever.
They secured two barracks off the back of that play. But Team Liquid is the reigning TI champs for a reason. They capitalized on one of the few positional mistakes Mineski made which gave them the opportunity to secure Roshan, Cheese and Refresher Shard on top of an Aghanim’s Scepter for Mindcontrol’s Omni.
Mineski were not able to contest Team Liquid's next push and had to call the GG as they all fell one by one trying to defend their barracks.
Even though Mineski lost to Team Liquid, they can hold their chin up. They are still the only SEA team to truly make Team Liquid (who are approaching G.O.A.T territory according to their fans) sweat.
Mineski is now 6th in the DPC rankings. Their next showing will be at ESL One: Katowice Major followed by the Bucharest Major. A top 3 finish in one of those two events will put Mineski within touching distance of a Direct Invite to TI8.
Of course, ideally, they would want to finish as the winners. We too are waiting for an SEA team to win a Dota 2 Major. We can only hope.
Mineski is now 6th in the DPC rankings. Their next showing will be at ESL One: Katowice Major followed by the Bucharest Major. A top 3 finish in one of those two events will put Mineski within touching distance of a Direct Invite to TI8.
Of course, ideally, they would want to finish as the winners. We too are waiting for an SEA team to win a Dota 2 Major. We can only hope.