picture courtesy of ESL One
Virtus.Pro kick off the Pro Circuit in force. Their ESL One Hamburg run was impressive, with victories over the TI7 Champions and the runners up, Team Liquid and Newbee, and a strong performance in the grand finals against Team Secret.
Game One
In the opening game of the best-of-three grand finals series, Team Secret chose to go with a simple Laguna Blade into Decrepify combo and tried to win the laning stage with theoretically continuous ganks from the Mirana and Spirit Breaker supports. However, the game didn’t go as planned at all. Virtus.Pro anticipated the early shenanigans and protected Vladimir "No[o]ne" Minenko in the midlane which prevented Secret’s early aggression while having Lina killed times and times again in the early stages.
While VP were basically winning all the lanes due to perfect rotations from Ilya "Lil" Ilyuk on his Enchantress, Team Secret managed to make a comeback by grouping up as five in the bottom lane. They pushed down the tier one tower and found a couple of kills on the Brewmaster and the Ogre Magi. However, No[o]ne died only once and with Bloodlust and the Venge Aura on his side, he killed Secret’s momentum pretty fast. Secret had no real answer to the super farmed Sniper and conceded the game at the 40 minute mark.
Game Two
One game away from a Major victory, Virtus.Pro kept the same tactic from game one, but with a different hero lineup. No[one] was given Viper this time around, but once again boosted by the Venge and Chen creeps auras. Team Secret tried to dodge the Viper vs Ember Spirit mid lane match up and sent Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng in the offlane. The game one story repeated itself when Clement "Puppey" Ivanov couldn’t find any early Charge - kills and in fact, 15 minutes into the game he was still level 4 while VP were already grouped and pushing with the Chen creeps army the bottom tier three tower.
Clutch saves from Alexei "Solo" Berezin who had an amazing Bane game, which might have been a deciding factor in the public vote for the tournament MVP prize, and beautiful coordination from all the Virtus.Pro, squad brought the first Major Championship title along with $500,000 prize money and 750 DCP points to the CIS region.
ESL One Hamburg final standings:
1st place: $500,000 and 750 DCP - Virtus.Pro
2nd place: $200,000 and 450 DCP - Team Secret
3rd/4th place: $90,000 and 150 DCP - Team Liquid, Newbee
5th/6th $40,000 - Evil Geniuses, Keen Gaming
7th/8th place: $20,00 - SG e-sports, Fnatic
The next pit stop for VP is in Split Croatia next week. The AMD SAPPHIRE Dota Pit Minor will begin on the 2nd of November. Team Secret will be back in action on the 19th of November, when the Perfect World Masters - Minor will commence in Shanghai, China.
