Sina Cup 3 Grand Finals: Team DK beat VG in an explosive best of five

The third season of the Sina Cup Supernova Dota 2 Open ended with an action-packed best-of-five series between two of the best teams in China — Team DK and Vici Gaming (VG). This included a heart-stopping base race from both teams, excellent execution from VG and an awesome global strategy from Team DK. We’ll be giving you a game analysis of these awesome matches, but for now, let’s look at a quick recap of the series.

Game 1: pushing power and disables

The first game had quite an interesting lineup for Team DK, as it picked heroes that we don’t often see in today’s metagame, the Queen of Pain and Jakiro. DK went for a safe lane trilane with Jakiro, Rubick, and Lifestealer against an offlane Clockwerk. VG also went for a safelane trilane with their Shadow Shaman, Ancient Apparition, and Doom. And finally, Templar Assassin and Queen of Pain headed mid.

The first game was very one sided even as DK got an early kill on the Templar Assassin as well as the early towers. However, after it took a bad team fight at 10 minutes, their towers started falling one after the other with an enemy tier two tower being denied at top. DK’s movements across the map were rather questionable, as it kept getting picked off. It also did not have anything that went through magic immunity by the time VG had Black King Bars (BKB) on their heroes, allowing VG’s Doom to shut down DK’s core heroes. With no way to close the gap, Team DK was forced to call the GGs.

The match ended at 29:37 with a score of 5-22 in favor of VG.

Game 2: the heart-stopping base race

This game was definitely the most exciting one of the night. Team DK once again went for the Life Stealer carry and Nature’s Prophet offlane. The team sent their carry in a safe lane trilane with Nyx Assassin and Visage against another offlane Clockwerk from VG, who also went for a safe lane trilane of Rubick, Ancient Apparition, and Morphling to the bottom lane. This saw the Storm Spirit and the Pugna going mid.

VG’s supports were the first to rotate, and Pugna successfully got a first blood on the Storm Spirit. With Pugna in the lineup, VG was definitely looking to push as early as possible. In addition to that, the Decrepify and Waveform combo proved to be very effective in killing off heroes. VG also had the gold advantage thanks to their early tower kills. Team DK, on the other hand, kept on making questionable moves once again, like trying to go without enough lockdown and damage on a farmed Morphling. In addition to that, Team DK had no big spells like Black Hole or Reverse Polarity to turn the game around.

What DK had, however, was a very capable iceiceice on Nature’s Prophet, who effectively pushed out the top and bottom lanes. Mushi’s Storm Spirit shone towards the mid to late game, where he constantly created nuances for VG and managed to get good pick offs without getting killed. At 33:05, VG lost all five heroes in a team fight, giving much-needed gold, experience, and space to Team DK.