Yesterday’s Smite World Championship featured $2.6 million in prizes. The grand final match between Cognitive Prime and Titan was one of the highest stakes affairs ever: $800,000 was on the line.
With the game in the balance, you expect your best players to step up and make the plays that give them that recognition. The “MLC” in Brett “MLC St3alth” Felley’s alias stands for “mid lane carry,” and he carried harder than he’s ever carried before this weekend in Atlanta.
In the final match, his amazing finisher sealed the deal. This is the play that won $800,000.
Titan let Felley have his signature champion Scylla, a risky pick for most players due to the all-or-nothing nature of her ultimate, I’m a Monster. Land it, nail a kill, and its cooldown resets, allowing you to plow through the enemy team with massive damage. Miss and you get nothing.
Felley used it to obliterate the enemy team after Prime took the Fire Giant. Watching the three living members of Titan position themselves to counter thanks to a ward, he uses Scylla’s dash, Sentinel, to charge toward the enemy team, nailing three of them with her root Sic’Em. That lined up the enemy’s team for Felley’s ultimate to tear them apart.
In the live view, you can see Felley pumping his fist in the bottom-left player cam, the fist pump of a man knowing he’s now $160,000 richer.
The play was executed beautifully, leaving Titan with no living players and no way to defend the base, ending the game. Of course, the game was likely over already at that point; it was unlikely Titan could come back from a 10,000 gold deficit.
But that’s OK. It was a great play, a prime example of why Felley deserved the MVP honors awarded him after the World Championships ended. It’s also the play that sealed the deal in one of the biggest esports events ever.
