It’s a rough day for Team Liquid as they face an early elimination at BLAST Slam III. The powerhouse faced Team Spirit in a nail-biting best-of-three series, which ultimately ended in a 1-2 score in favor of the latter.
This marks the end of Team Liquid’s journey at BLAST Slam III, earning them a disappointing last-place finish.
Team Liquid faces elimination at BLAST Slam 3 (Image credit: BLAST Slam)
Recap on Team Liquid vs Team Spirit
If you have been following the BLAST Slam III since day one, you would have observed that Liquid isn’t at its best condition. They lost three out of four matches in the group stage, which is unheard of the PGL Wallachia Season 4 Champion. And while some may argue that there’s no shame in losing to Team Spirit as their opponent, it’s important to note that the latter also wasn’t performing phenomenally themselves.
Nevertheless, Liquid managed to make their game 1 performance look like a Legends-tier ranked match. They had an early lead going into the mid-game, but did not leverage on the 8000 gold lead they had at one point. Note that Liquid won every lane in this first game, which is a great outlook for their draft of late-game heavy hitters, like Lifestealer and Timbersaw.
Hence, when Liquid decided to play passively, it gave enough space and time for Spirit to regain some growth. Unlike Liquid however, Spirit wasn’t afraid to bring the fights to Liquid, as their draft revolved around strong team fights. Their Kunkka and Troll Warlord were able to overwhelm Lifestealer, and as cherry on top, even Ancient Apparition proved to be a powerful counter to Lifestealer’s regeneration.
Drafting gone wrong for Team Liquid
Going into game 2, Spirit made some questionable drafting decisions, such as not banning Nature’s Prophet, a hero that defined Liquid’s victory at PGL Wallachia S4. Their complete disregard to Michael “miCKe” Vu’s signature hero gave Liquid the momentum they needed in game 2 to secure a game back. Here, we once again saw how proficient Liquid players can be when they have comfortable hero picks.
Just when we saw a potentially close series between Liquid and Spirit, the former just had to experiment with their own unorthodox draft in their decisive game 3. Liquid managed to pick Nature’s Prophet again, which was weird of Spirit to not ban it after getting stomped. However, the true blunder of game 3 was Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi’s support Tinker and Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s hard carry Beastmaster.
On paper, Liquid likely wanted Nisha’s Beastmaster to rush Aghanim’s Scepter for its ability, Drums of Slom. It greatly improves the damage output when used alongside his ultimate, Primal Roar, which can ensure successful ganks against Medusa. Whatever the game plan was by Liquid, this was likely an early-game countermeasure against Spirit’s first-pick Medusa.
Team Liquid loses 1-2 to Team Spirit at BLAST Slam 3 (Image credit: BLAST Slam)
Team Liquid’s poor direction in BLAST Slam III
However, letting Medusa have a comfortable laning phase was their second mistake, which was a blunder by Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek’s decision to level-up Burrowstrike at level 1. Without Sand Storm, Sand King got heavily bullied out of the lane by Spirit’s Medusa and Bounty Hunter combo.
In hindsight, Team Liquid looked like they lacked proper direction on the games they play. Couple that with the unusual drafts, courtesy of coach William “Blitz” Lee, really cemented Liquid as the worst Dota 2 team at BLAST Slam III.