Tough loss for eg, they did well to beat secret, and liquid was a tough match-up, maybe harder to prepare for than normal since they looked inconsistent a lot of the tournament.

Hard to tell what the biggest issue is - drafting? Rtz's hero pool?

Shouldn't be a talent issue.

Timber is great vs alch even if they don't lane 1 v 1.
But timber desperately needs early farm and especially levels to be a threat to alch. It's not pivotal to lane the timber against the alch for it to be succesful, but you need to be ahead of the alch after the laning stage in levels. This means that if the alch is mid, you lane timber mid obv, but if alch is safe lane for instance, you lane timber in a solo lane (unless he's against huskar or something that crushes him), because a timber who is ahead of an alch in levels will absolutely eat him until min 20-25 when he gets more tanky items. Late game timber (barely any hero, really) can't outdamage the sustain from alch, but early and mid timber wrecks him.

He deals a million damage (bursty spell/pure, the best type vs alch early), and is very tanky and mobile.

What an alch likes to do is run in first and just kill the first (and second, and third) hero he sees. Nobody can fight him because of how farmed and tanky he is and nobody can run away because of how fast he is. And even if he is getting low, he just runs away and resets. But timber doesnt care about that, alch can't catch him and even if he gets some time to punch him, it barely scratches the timber. Timber just moves to the back lines and destroys alchs team, and even makes killing the alch possible because of the insane damage he deals. Early/midgame you fight an alch line up by killing the alch or isolating him by killing his team before he kills yours, and timbersaw excels at both of these things.

Alch has no way of dealing with a timber, neither offensively or defensively, not until he gets a lot of items.

The only reason I can see EG wouldn't give more farm prio to timber in the laning stage would be they were afraid of relying on a timber main core vs an ET.

wisp carry EZ Clap

Notail with the stack of paper notes for the upper bracket game against LGD. In before Io first 3 ban? Looking forward to this match repeating in the grand final.

my OCD super triggered by that. ffs get a binder and tabs, thats some horrible organization. Almost makes me want to root against OG here

TI being on the other side of the world has really sucked. I haven’t been able to stay up past 1AM once this week. Would love to watch Secret v Liquid.

VOID SPIRIT

It's honestly unbelievable just how often Chinese teams end up making a huge mistake related to Roshan which ultimately ends up being their demise. It happens to everyone of them so many games.

Also OG, what more can you say really that does them justice. One thing was winning ti8 if they actually manage to do it again Idk if anyone will ever rival that.

The team i always think if when I see teams play minus armor lineups which because of that scale significantly harder in the late game than the sum of their individual heroes were wings.

And also topson has probably been the best mid player of the tournament not even kidding. He's at least up there close to Maybe. Last year he looked like the weak link and while he still dies sometimes, he does so much its unreal.

I expect LGD to destroy LB and give them a real run for their money tho

Liquid still hasn't lost a game yet, they are actually drawing live at going wire-to-wire starting from the LB which would be historic, not saying they will but if they somehow sweep LGD that would be the making of a storyline that could rival OG especially since all of the focus has been on OG/LGD

OG just has so much talent, arguably the best players on 1, 2 and 4 position (Ana, Topson, Jerax). I'd personally say Jerax might be the best, but they're all spectacular. Notail is obviously also amazing and Ceb brings the solid play + strategy factor. I think the key to beating OG is ganking Ana when he's out of position, like LGD showed in the game they won.

I either wanna see a Liquid OG finals or LGD to play the maximum games and then win out in the end, would be epic for their home crowd.

BibleThump Secret, great team but they were just not as up to date with the meta as other teams. I honestly think the matchmaking changes Valve did might have messed with MidOne's play, he's tweeted about how he can't find any solo ranked games.

Watching Secret lose with IO vs Meepo is pretty interesting. Looks like having a shitton of HP regen is a legit IO counter, since IO does put out a ton of sustained damage but it's not really a strong burst damage hero.

Liquid looks unstoppable right now. I think og just needs to bank on them getting tired out. Dissapointing series from secret, both games felt more like a drafting loss than anything else. The OD pick game 1 was particularly bad.

Don't get wrong, Jerax is pretty close to best in slot, but Ana is for sure G.O.A.T. if OG wins this TI.



I think its a bit results oriented to say that LGD lost game 3 on their roshan play. They won game 2 earlier in the series was because they outplayed OG hard at roshan on a similar play. Arguably OG threw game 2 when NP walked into void's chrono towards the beginning, making him unable to use his orchid on ember. Whether that was void or np's fault I guess is upto debate.

Jesus, technical difficulties for something that was already gonna go to like 2am PT (at least)?

yeah delays really suck for us

bleh

im still watching it all

gogogo

LETTUCE DOTES

You're east coast right? DEDICATION

strongest lategame hero in the game picked up here monkaW

First blood mid 30 seconds before first rune? Liquid is on a roll.

Wow.. liquid getting completely wrecked.. outplayed all game.

fy GOD

LGD seems to use vision better than any other team. They seem to really understand which core they need to shutdown and where they have the best chance to catch them. They setup wards that are hard to deward and take advantage.

Lets go Huskar!!!

lol, TL coach looks shook af

I feel better about liquids draft as jakiro + lion can fall behind and get dumpstered but the elder titan feed was pretty bad. Huskar will be fun.