Dendi and his team came into the ESL One Los Angeles Online ready to prove that their roster was capable of competing with top Dota 2 talent. But another new team Cyber Legacy ended up taking them down today.
B8 forced a quick rage quit in game one, but CL ended up winning the whole series on the back of their strong core play, shrugging off the early struggles and getting right back into the fight.
Game one kept the pace of the other three series in the Europe/CIS bracket, with B8 taking control early with Dendi’s Dragon Knight and Steve “Excalibur” Ye making a strong debut on Morphling. CL took a small lead in the opening minutes, but after that it was just 10 straight minutes of B8 picking off heroes and easily taking the lead, thanks largely in part to Nikola “LeBronDota” Popović’s Snapfire play.
CL turned things around in game two, drafting the impressive Mars-Snapfire combo, which made letting Dendi and Excalibur re-draft Dragon Knight and Morphling a safe call.
Yaroslav “Pikachu” Vasilenko had a strong Ember Spirit game, going 12/1/18 while Nikita “Palantimos” Grinkevich crushed teamfights with his Wraith King. Dendi and his squad couldn’t open things up and walked away from every interaction worse off than their opponents.
With a 38-11 win under their belt, CL went for another strong laning draft with a first pick Centaur Warrunner and core Dazzle, while B8 built up a teamfight-centric roster behind a Faceless Void, Mars, and Rubick.
B8 ended up mismanaging their Ultimates a lot, having to drop several just to ensure a few kills while the Centaur was running rampant and CL dominated the lanes. There was nothing any of B8’s players could do running solo, which led to them losing more lanes because they had to run as a group.
And even when they did connect, CL were prepared and could counter everything thrown their way, shutting down almost any attempt for B8 to win a teamfight and rushing to the finish line.
CL ended up winning every lane thanks to the strong support play from Sergey “HappyDyurara” Horonzhiy’s Lich and Danil “Bignum” Shehovtsov’s Grimmstroke, while Pikachu’s Dazzle kept Dendi’s Pugna on its heels. B8’s inability to take out the supports became their downfall as CL closed out the series 2-1 with another quick win.
Matches in the ESL One Los Angeles Online EU/CIS bracket will now swap over to Group B, starting with Team Spirit and Chicken Fighters at 4am CT on April 5.
