Overview of The Kuala Lumpur Major Playoffs Day 3

The Kuala Lumpur Major Day 3 consisted of 4 Lower Bracket matches. All the matches are BO3 and the winners make it to top 8 of the Major.

Alliance vs TNC Predator

First series of Day 3 was Alliance vs TNC Predator. In Game 1, TNC was running a core Shadow Shaman and I have to say, that was the best Shaman gameplay I have watched in a very long time. Kuku was playing the Shaman in the offlane along with Tims on the Centaur. They won the lane really hard and started rotating around the map, taking objectives left and right. Kuku went for a unique build – Blink Dagger and BKB. With the help of his BKB, he could disable Micke’s Morphling for a very long time without anyone being able to cancel the Shackles. Alliance tried very hard to hold the game, but TNC’s momentum was unbreakable. Alliance tapped out at 45 min.

Game 2 was the same story. The laning phase went fairly even but TNC just proved themselves to be the better team by taking control of the game and not letting Alliance make any sort of plays. Again, Alliance tried really hard to hold the game and held their racks by getting an Ultra Kill on Qojqva’s Mirana at 33 minutes. But TNC was so far ahead that Alliance could not achieve anything even after winning that fight. TNC just grouped up again, got a few kills and went for another push. This time they were able to kill the Alliance heroes even after buybacks and finished the game. Alliance is eliminated from the Kuala Lumpur Major.

Vici Gaming vs Pain X

Next series was Vici Gaming vs Pain X. The first game went even until the beginning of the mid-game. Vici was running the Troll Warlord + Magnus strat and as soon as Troll Warlord got decently farmed, Vici started winning fights and getting objectives. Ori on the DK held the game really well, allowing the Troll to farm. Vici took Roshan at the 24-minute mark and completely took over the game. They played super clean, taking objective after objective and finished the game by 37 minutes.

In game 2, Vici went for a wonky draft. They had a position 5 Brewmaster and Position 4 Enigma. And guess what, it actually worked. They won their lanes and it started to look like a 1k MMR game where there’s no support heroes and all 5 heroes on the team get farmed. Pain X got completely overwhelmed and after a certain point, it seemed as if they were playing against 5 cores. VG finished the game by 39 minutes and eliminated Pain X from the Major.

J.Storm vs Fnatic

Third series of the day was J.Storm vs Fnatic. In game 1, Fnatic picked Meepo for Abed. J.Storm last picked Earthshaker for Bryle and he did a wonderful job at keeping the Meepo on check. Abed wasn’t able to play freely and Fnatic weren’t able to get the early Meepo snowball into place. The game was going evenly for a long time with many skirmishes all over the map. Moo on his TB got a lot of farm in this game, finishing with a GPM of 865. He was doing a lot of damage in the mid-game. In the late-game, Milan on his Rubick made many beautiful plays, stealing blackhole from iceiceice’s Enigma over and over again, winning teamfights for his team. J.Storm managed to finish the game due to these teamfight victories.

Game 2 was very intense. J.Storm wanted to close out the series and picked up a Mid Medusa for Bryle. They made it work and won both the laning phase and the mid game. It was looking very grim for Fnatic and the only thing that was going well for them was that Abed was getting a lot of farm on his Arc Warden. Abed was able to hold the game for a long time by perfectly split pushing. By the time J.Storm finally pushed their bottom lane Barracks, Fnatic was farmed enough to hold their racks. This gave Fnatic even more time to farm and all their heroes on their team got really strong. At 53 min, they got the perfect teamfight with Dj getting a 4 man boulder smash with his Earthshaker. They got a full teamwipe out of that and just finished the game.

Fnatic picked the Arc Warden for Abed again in Game 3 and he worked his magic. In this game, the laning phase went evenly but Fnatic had a really strong teamfight lineup for the mid-game. They had the Axe + Mirana combo and a Silencer to top it off. They started winning a lot of teamfights in the mid game and got ahead. They took control of the entire map and started getting unstoppable. J.Storm had some moments of hope as they found some good skirmishes here and there, but it was all for naught. Fnatic pushed in all 3 lanes, got a teamwipe and finished the game by 43 minutes, eliminating J.Storm from the Major.

Evil Geniuses vs Forward Gaming

The last series of the day was EG vs Forward Gaming. EG had a really good game 1. Sumail on his Ember Spirit and Arteezy on his Arc Warden carried the game really hard. Forward Gaming was running the Troll + Magnus combo but the Troll got shutdown really hard and wasn’t able to do anything in the game. Forward Gaming did get a few good skirmishes throughout the game but it wasn’t enough to stop Arteezy and Sumail from snowballing. EG finished the game by 31 minutes.

In the second game, Resolution managed to have a good laning phase with Spectre and finished his Radiance by 17 minutes. The game was going even until that point but Resolution completely took over the game after that. Forward Gaming drafted Pugna for Universe and Shadow Shaman for SVG, so they also had a lot of tower push. Spectre dominated every teamfight with haunt and they started taking objectives really fast. EG tried hard to hold their base but Spectre got 6 slotted by 40 minutes and the game was over. Forward Gaming took game 2.

The third game was very interesting. The game was going even for a long time but Arteezy on his Arc Warden managed to get almost double the amount of farm compared to Resolution’s Morphling by the late-game. In this meta, Arc Warden seems to be almost as good as all the other hard carries in the late-game but his specialty is that he gets farmed extremely fast unless the opposing team has a direct counter. He is also really good and fast at split pushing which forces the opposing team to go out of their way and gank that hero over and over, whilst managing the creep equilibrium, if they want to shut him down. The game was dead-even until 30 minutes but after that, Arteezy soon got six slotted and S4 managed to get a lot of good Berserker’s calls, winning the game for their team. EG eliminated Forward Gaming from the tournament.

The matches today were really close compared to the rest of the matches in the playoffs which made them much more entertaining. Watch the games live on PGL’s Twitch stream. Here’s a schedule for the upcoming matches.