TI11 LCQ: Either Team Secret or Virtus.pro will qualify

The Last Chance Qualifier is down to four teams. From the moment the tournament started, everyone suspected that at least three of them would be fighting for the two TI11 tickets. Team Secret, Virtus.pro, Team Liquid, and Vici Gaming are excellent competitors, but the odds heavily favor the first three of them.

Secret and Virtus.pro will play in the upper bracket Final on the last day of the tournament, which means that one of them is guaranteed to qualify for the big event. The other will have a second chance in the lower bracket Final.

Vici Gaming and Team Liquid will fight each other for the opportunity to play in the Final and Liquid look much stronger than their opponent. In their previous match against Xtreme Gaming, arguably a better team than Vici Gaming, Liquid won with a score of 2-0. The games lasted just 46 minutes in total!

Secret vs. Virtus.pro

This will be an epic match between two equally skilled teams. Clement “Puppey” Ivanov has played many times against Virtus.pro, so he knows exactly what players like Roman “RAMZES” Kushnarev like to pick.

VP’s drafts at this tournament have revolved around a fairly small hero pool, and their best strategies are not that hard to decipher. Puppey knows all the tricks, so it shouldn’t be hard for him to figure out the best way to win the match. He did the same thing against T1 and despite their legendary players, the SEA squad couldn’t do anything against Secret.

The main issue that the captains of both teams will face is the huge overlap between Secret’s hero pool and VP’s. It seems that both competitors have identified the same heroes as the overpowered options of the current Dota 2 patch.

There are certain timings and maneuvers that work almost without exception and if you have the right heroes that can enable them, the game is easy to win.

The main carry heroes that will be highly contested in this match are Morphling, Slark, Ursa, and Lycan. Both teams love these heroes, so they’ll either pick or ban them, depending on how they assess their strength.

A crucial part of the games will be the coin toss. The team that has first pick will dictate what the game will be about. Some picks demand certain responses. A veteran like Puppey knows this, so he’ll probably take first pick if he has the chance, and then attempt to bait Danil “gpk” Skutin into a trap.

Header: Team Secret