WPC-ACE has the biggest prize pool ever for a non-TI Dota 2 tournament and DK is the first team to advance into the finals. By beating Vici today, they also surpassed Alliance in the team rankings at GosuGamers and currently hold the number one position.
Team DK adds yet another 3-0 result to the already 3-0 heavy playoff bracket of WPC-ACE. Today they showed that they are miles ahead of the competition if they choose to be, something that was also proved in the Fengyun final where they achieved a 3-0 victory versus TongFu. The victim of today's onslaught was Vici Gaming, arguably weakened by the lack of Sylar in the ranks. As seen in earlier matches for WPC-ACE, Vici have been forced to play without their most recently acquired player due to him being part of RisingStars when the season started. The rules of ACE is that Sylar is not allowed to play for any other team than RisingStars (a team no longer existing).
DK also surpassed Alliance in the rankings at GosuGamers, taking the first position off their hands. Alliance have been leading the rankings for more than half a year and managed to climb to a substantional lead at The International, the most highly ranked event, where they won every single match, thus gaining a significant point advantage. Over the last period of time, Alliance suffered various losses causing their untouchable lead to drop to numbers within reach. And today, the second to last day of the year, the team is dethroned here at GosuGamers.
The year has been good all in all for DK but they did not land a championship until two days ago when they won Fengyun. However it seems as if 2014 can be a year where they prosper right from the get go, considering they just moved on to the WPC-ACE final where the first prize is $163,000, the biggest prize pool for a non-TI tournament in Dota 2. On top of that, they are also waiting to face off with Invictus Gaming in the finals of G-League. Invictus might also be their opponents in the coming final of WPC-ACE, the second semi final will be settled 03.00 CET tomorrow/tonight where the winner of LGD and iG takes the second finalist spot.
Game 1
DK started the series in a convincing manner, getting a good gold and experience advantage on all lanes. Vici went for the aggressive trilane but they did not manage to properly shut down iceiceice and he was still able to leech a lot of experience from the lane. As per usual when lacking kills on an offensive trilane, the heroes of the lane will fall behind in terms of experience, especially when DK's trilane worked out better. Vici had troubles initiating fights, something DK was perfectly fine with as they could use the time to gain more momentum, building up pushes and farming up items. Impressive individual play combined with capitalization of the advantage snowballed DK into what looked like an easy 1-0.
Game 2
After the one-sided history that was game one, Vici switched around the roles slightly, placing Super! on the safe lane farming Lone Druid and the stand-in sydm mid with Night Stalker. And Vici did have a much better start to the game, partly due to a really awkward teleportation from LaNm where DK forced a fight ending 2-1 for Vici with Vici getting the first blood. A similar overextension happened top where the supports of DK set up a trap for Bristleback but it backfired and they lost both heroes to sydm and rOtk. The map belonged to Vici and they took down tier one bottom and pressured the second tower before the eight minute mark. Team DK regained some ground by slowing the pace down and keeping LaNm in the correct places to revoke and turn around some situations while also farming up with a stolen Spirit Bear.
A bit later Team DK managed to team wipe Vici with an instant Doom on Bristleback followed by DK just steam rolling over them, losing basically only BurNing. Vici went for Roshan and despite them taking the kill and the Aegis, their entire squad got beat down right afterwards by DK. Doom proved to be overly efficient versus Bristle, especially since Bristle also carried the Mekansm. The game featured a few fights more going the exact same way before Vici threw in the towel.
Game 3
Some unexpected laning put BurNing in the middle, where he got firstblooded by a three-man gank. Despite that, DK put the control on by moving around Io and Maiden where Vici lacked vision. After finding a few kills, DK transitioned the Tiny+Io to the bot lane where Lifestealer was having the time of is life. Vici got a few kills back at various lanes but Mushi had gathered a fair bit of net worth despite not really hanging around in any lane during the game. He was mostly stacking and killing ancients and rotating around. Vici claimed Roshan for themselves though, uncontested before minute 13. After that, DK started to five-man and Vici kept dropping heroes to poor co-ordination. Suddenly DK was in the driving position once again. All DK had to do was to keep it up which they certainly did, rolling into another game victory and moving forwards to the WPC-ACE final.
Headline photo by SCN.tv
