Talon Esports set Dota 2 record for the latest First Blood

Dota 2 is famous for its intense, action-packed matches. There’s something happening almost every minute, and that gives fans a great experience when watching professional tournaments.

For a long time, Dota 2 players used to make fun of League of Legends and point out that it’s relatively static and a bit of a farm simulator compared to Dota. But in recent years, we’ve seen Dota 2 turn into a much more technical game that can have prolonged sections of “peace”.

Recently, Talon Esports broke the record for First Blood but in a negative way. Instead of making a kill sooner than everyone else, they made it later than everyone else. In an esport where many rounds end at the 22-minute mark, Talon barely got their first kill of the game.

Where and how it happened

The tournament in which the record was broken is BTS Pro Series Season 14: Southeast Asia. This was a tier-2 event that featured 12 teams from the region and was won by Talon Esports.

After defeating EHOME and BOOM Esports, Talon encountered Blacklist International in the upper bracket Final. Game one was won by Blacklist while game two was won by Talon. This made the third game extremely tense, especially after an epic game two, which lasted nearly 70 minutes.

Neither team wanted to give First Blood to the other side, so the game was slow-paced. The two teams farmed as much as they could and were almost perfectly even at the 20-minute mark. Then, following a positional error made by one of Blacklist’s players, Taon got First Blood by killing Riki.

This was a mere support death but it actually led to a massive snowball. This snowball was destroyed in the next five minutes, but after that came another series of encounters that helped Talon to gain a massive lead.

The impact of this incident

The fact that it took such a long time to get First Blood in a professional Dota 2 match shouldn’t really worry us. If this would happen more frequently, then IceFrog would need to change the game dramatically to prevent it from becoming too static.

Having constant battles is part of Dota 2 and this is likely the main reason why such a huge percentage of the game’s community is interested in its esports side.

Almost certainly, this was a rare event that will not be repeated any time soon. But if it will be, we can expect a decrease in most heroes’ base armor and HP. That will solve the problem.

Header: Beyond The Summit