Berlin Major day 2 summary: Liquid and Talon are struggling

The second competitive day of ESL One Berlin Major highlighted not just the beauty of Dota 2 after patch 7.33, but also the struggles that some of the best teams in the world are dealing with.

Right now, the second and third teams of the Lima Major are having great difficulties in finding a winning formula in the current meta. Team Liquid drew three times in a row while Talon Esports drew once and lost twice. These results put both teams uncomfortably close to elimination.

Fortunately, they still have five matches left to play, so their situation could improve significantly until the end of the group stage. But the question is: will their playstyle improve fast enough for them to not completely fail at this Major?

Day 2 results

Day 2 of the Berlin Major went really well for OG, Tundra Esports, Xtreme Gaming, Gaimin Gladiators, Team Aster, and Team Spirit. All of them obtained either three or four points in the two matches they played and looked like they already found the big secrets of the latest version of the game.

Xtreme Gaming’s performance gave Chinese fans a lot of hope. Aster also displayed signs of strength but we don’t know yet whether their draw against 9 Pandas was a fluke or if they’re really skilled enough to win a game against one of the best teams in Eastern Europe.

Invictus Gaming and Execration continued to lose every single game and it’s very hard to have any hope left for them at this point. TSM, and Talon are in a similar position, but they are not completely lost yet.

They only won one game in their first three matches but that’s in part because they had to face very strong opponents. Perhaps day 3 will bring better results for them.

The second day of the tournament featured a wide variety of games. Some of them were very short and ended after just 16 minutes. Others lasted more than an hour.

The current patch makes it possible for teams to play a lot of different strategies and despite the tendency to fight more frequently, between opponents of similar strength the battle can go back and forth for many minutes before someone manages to get a strong networth lead and win.

So far, the strongest team in the tournament has been OG. Their current record is 3 W – 1 D – 0 L, which is quite surprising considering that they’re playing with a stand-in.

Header: ESL