With table toppers, EG not playing in the third set of day 3, it was a chance for everyone else to catch up. Let's see how things turned out ...
Mineski clashed with Thunder in a crucial encounter but a tied series makes reaching the playoffs much harder now. Game 1 was a pulsating hour long encounter that Mineski led for the most part. Sylar’s decision to pick up a Divine Rapier on Luna to get things going their way gave Thunder some hope but Mineski were able to carve out a win after a long toiled game. Luna even had a backup Rapier to see things out but it didn’t matter as without a BKB it didn’t mean a lot.
In game 2, Moon wasn’t able to win the mid lane convincingly enough on the Huskar and both Sylar’s Lycan and Freeze’s Clinkz had a good matchup in facing the Huskar. With their Huskar getting countered, Mineski’s lineup lost their edge and it ended up being a pretty easy victory for Thunder.
Liquid picked up their second win of the day, wiping the board clean with bottom placed Winstrike who faced their 5th loss in the group stage. Game 1 saw Matumbaman take over the game on his signature Broodmother and outplay Iceberg’s Tiny despite having a laning disadvantage. The 23 minute game was a display of utter domination and strength and Liquid showed just why they are considered one of the best teams in the world.
In game 2, Winstrike picked OD and Nightstalker, two heroes who had gone unpicked at TI8 till the series but still found no success as Liquid proved to be much better than them. Mind_Control channeled his inner carry playing the Ursa and showed no mercy, slicing and dicing through Winstrike Miracle and Matumbaman tanked much of Winstrike’s damage as Mind_Control lay in on them. Another excellent gameplan from Kuroky’s seemingly endless book of strats.
Despite OG holding the better record in the TI8 Group Stages, 2-0ing IG was quite a surprise. In game one, IG only got to take down the 3 tier 1 towers. That’s it. No other towers or objectives. OG, on the other hand, ended the game with 25 kills, 10 towers, a 20,000 gold lead, and the win.
Game two was a different story, but only slightly. It wasn’t quite as much of a blowout, but the result was the same. OG, though leaking kills to XXS’s Zeus, kept control of the game by virtue of ana’s Phantom Lancer. The stellar 20/7/10 performance from ana as Phantom Lancer, that included a rampage, gave OG the win.
In just under 40 minutes, LGD showed why they were considered as one of the favourites to take TI8. Even though the kill score was even, and they acquired a 12,000 gold lead even with an Alchemist, LGD took an game one out-executing Fnatic. The star? fy, with a 6/6/13 performance on Windranger.
Game two, like Game 1, was business as usual for PSG. This time the win took 38 minutes, but the gold lead was even higher at 15,000 gold, and Fnatic just kept leaking kills all over the map. This whole series was just ugly for Fnatic. They could have won both games, but very questionable decision making handed over the game to PSG.LGD