Photo courtesy of PGL
Bucharest Major main event kicked off just a few hours ago, and here are some personal breaking downs on VGJ.Thunder vs TNC BO3.
Game 1
During the first matchup between VGJ.Thunder and TNC at the Bucharest Major group stage, TNC suffered miserably from a massive comeback at the hands of a three rapier gyrocopter from VGJ.T. Now in the playoffs they met once again and this time TNC definitely were more prepared with some draft analysis of their old opponent.
Without any doubt, TNC first bans out Jiajun ‘Sylar’ Liu ’s best 2 heroes -- Lycan and Death Prophet and then take the patch meta Gyrocopter with supports that are massively team-fighting efficient. Essentially, Sand King, Disruptor and Batrider are very good heroes either to initiate and counter-initiate with skills like lasso and glimpse. In response, VGJ.T chose a lineup that was very farm intensive and lacked tempo with heroes like Medusa, Tiny and Legion who all needs pivotal items to fight.
For the laning phase, TNC kept their 2 1 2 traditional split. On top lane, SK and Batrider duo dominated top lane for the early game by taking first and second blood on Tiny and Tusk. Here’s the sad play about the first blood -- Tiny chose to tp out and tried to survive the nuke after burrow strike landed but he didn't make it, so he had to literally walk out of the base to top tier 1 and simultaneously he missed out 1 huge creep wave under tower that kept him at level 1 while Batrider and SK both had advanced to level 3. This absolutely made VGJ.T suffer in the early game.
At mid lane, early game OD versus Medusa was not easy at all. Aside from player skill level, Medusa counters OD so hard during laning stage. Thankfully, Legion Commander seemed to be okay against Gyro and Gyro’s cs is top 1 at that moment. Three minutes later, Tiny geot demolished again by Batrider and SK so Sylar decided to swap lane with Legion to at least get some levels. However, Gyro tps top immediately and kills both Legion and Bane with his team.
At minute 7, VGJ.T took their first team kill with a gank to OD at mid. Here VGJ.T made the right call as they decided to break the ice of focusing on TNC’s weakest hero at that moment. Next, at minute 12, both teams pop their smoke and 3 of TNC's heroes met 4 of VGJ.T at the river. SK died immediately with duel but the advantage of TNC’s lineup seems to work -- glimpse kills Legion, lasso kills Bane and VGJ.T can't do anything about that.
At minute 25, the same story happens again - TNC smokes and kills the Tusk bottom and 4 players run up top to chase the rest of VGJ.Thunder. Batrider uses euls and kills Bane and Disruptor glimpses Medusa so VGJ.T has to take the team fight there. What follows is just VGJ.T falling apart so TNC were able to take their first rax. It was then that the game was pretty much over for VGJ.T. TNC took the first game of BO3.
Game 2
TNC banned out the exact same heroes as last game to limit Sylar’s performance and they opt for the same lineup themselves - except Gyrocopter was switched out for Mirana. On the other hand, VGJ.T only chose the Tusk from last game. This time, VGJ.T realize the lack of tempo heroes in their lineup from last game was a mistake and they picked less farm intensive heroes like SF and Weaver.
VGJ.T started the game with a 5 man smoke into the enemy mid tier 2 and killed the clueless Mirana who blindly walked up the hill.
For the laning phase, again, TNC stayed with their classic Batrider and SK duo; but this time, VGJ.T did not make the same mistake and countered with two ranged heroes Weaver and Rubick in lane. At bottom lane, TNC's last pick OD laned against Tidehunter but this seemed to end up being wrong and had more of the opposite effect. OD is a hero that massively requires level and with a position one OD, he doesn't really do much damage to a Tidehunter with low levels of astral imprisonment and arcane orb. Hence, Haiyang ‘Yang’ Zhou ‘s tidehunter is absolutely strong in the lane and handles an OD and Disruptor quite easily.
The early game leans to TNC's favor as they seem to be better at the gank timing. However, Sylar’s Weaver is absolutely on point and tops the networth charts for 20mins into the game. At minute 18, TNC smokes again using the Mirana ult and they kill the Tidehunter instantly with Static storm and they still want to go for the Weaver. Fortunately, Weaver barely gets away with an extreme time lapse. Here, VGJ.T made a small blunder in communication as Tidehunter wanted to fight and Weaver follows him there but SF and the rest of the team decide to bail out.
At minute 25, OD gets his bkb and TNC smoked again. They successfully killed Tide with all of their spells and they take the game back a bit, but their networth is still so far behind at this point. At minute 30, Mirana thought he had bkb and blink so he decides to make some dangerous scouting but actually got picked off instantly by SF and Weaver. This allowed VGJ.T to take the second Roshan, pretty much securing the second game.
Game 3
The match point game was really in the favor of VGJ.T. TNC again stayed with the meta Gyrocopter in their draft but the hero didnt help them much as the mid lane was lost for SF against Viper and Earth Spirit - as a matter of fact, he literally can’t cs. When Viper and ES initiated onto SF at minute 1, Rubick rotated in but SF missed his razes and didn't get the gold for the kill.
In the top lane, Omniknight isn't that easy to solo against Luna and Witch Doctor. Comparatively, Yang’s brewmaster is having a much better time in the bottom with even more cs than the Gyrocopter. At minute 6, Earthshaker tried to kill the panda with Gyro but Yang popped the wand at the last second and got away. In the meantime, without the protection of Earthshaker, SF got owned again by Viper and Earth Spirit at mid. At this point, TNC's early game has been crushed again by VGJ.Thunder.
Then comes to minute 16. TNC smoked up with three heroes - Gyro, Omni and Rubick into the enemy jungle trying to find and control some game tempo but they walk straight into Luna, panda and Rubick. Luna just nuked Rubick and Gyro instead. TNC was just getting destroyed again and again with these unsuccessful ganks. One minute later, TNC knew they had to try find kills and opportunities again or they would just lose the game because they are so far behind as Luna outfarms them very easily with the entire map of resources. Again, a failed smoke under the enemy ward accomplished nothing and their hopes started to slip.
Till this point, Gyro’s networth doesn't even reach half of Luna’s making it obvious that the game is really difficult to turn over for TNC. Undoubtedly, VGJ.T takes the BO3 2:1 versus TNC, eliminating the SEA team from the event.VGJ.Thunder became the first team to advance to the semi finals and lay claim to some DPC points.
