EHOME whips LGD in Damansaras Grand Final

This years arguably most anticipated weekend for DotA players all around the world finally reached its conclusion. Three days offline action, featuring tons of games spread over preliminaries, a 40 team-big groupstage and double elminiation playoffs brought us joy and a new champion. EHOME, only beaten by Nirvana.cn in the groupstage, performed conservatively, but close to perfection throughout the event and took down their toughest opponent LGD.sGty in the Grand Final!

The defending Champions from LGD won with group A one of the toughest in the competition, by utilizing disable- and nuke-heavy lineups. It was the later champion EHOME themselves, who sent them to the Losers bracket afterwards a thrilling game in the winner bracket quarter final. From there ZSMJ, YYF and co worked their way through to the Grand Final by disrupting MI.AirAsia, the Malaysian rookies from IG-Inc-Ice, Nirvana.my, Deity and last but not least, the WDC winners Nirvana.cn.

EHOME on the other hand, advanced to the playoffs as second-place finisher, after their only loss in the tournament against Nirvana.cn. Their encounters on the road to the championship marked duels with the winners of group B DK, LGD in an epic Quarterfinal, and both the delegations from the Nirvana organisation.

The Grand Final itself was dominated by standardized drafts and careful playstyles. Especially LGD opted for the heroes they felt most comfortable with being Windrunner for YYF or Morphling for ZSMJ. EHOME had to get creative after their opponents chose Pugna, as a lot of casters would have easily been taken out by him. Due to that, they decided to strengthen their lineup in terms of physical damage-output, by picking up Sniper and the more or less obligatory Visage. Their tripple lane pushed the first tower on bottom rather fast, which lead to a few overextension in terms of aggressive play. Those got punished hard by LGD, enabling them to push their opponents back to their base. From there EHOME managed to not only defend, but also dodge unneccessary teamfights very well, while farming their carries up. By the time they felt confident enough, they took the initiative back and overran LGD's lanes mercilessly. The good game call came in after 65 minutes, marking EHOME's second victory in the SGNDT after 2008.

Grand Final Prizes

Rank

Team

Prize

Champion

EHOME

RM 50,000 (~11,000 Euro)

Runner up

LGD.sGty

RM 21,000 (~5,000 Euro)

2nd Runner up

Nirvana.cn

RM 14,000 (~3,000 Euro)

The prize distribution shows that no non-chinese team was able to make neither the top 3 nor the top 4. How much effort it takes to change this situation for future tournaments, remains unknown, but for now one can assume that the national competition in China is by far above the rest, be it either Malaysia or the scene in Europe overall.