Talon Esports win the SEA Qualifier for The International 11

The SEA Qualifier for The International 11 ended with the victory of Talon Esports, who were the favorites ahead of the tournament. The only other team that could have bested them was T1. But unfortunately for their fans, despite Anathan “ana” Pham’s best efforts, they couldn’t even make it to the Grand Final.

There weren’t any big surprises during the tournament, except one: Polaris Esports defeated T1 in the lower bracket final. T1’s defeat was quite shocking to witness and it proved that Marci probably needs a nerf.

Throughout all of the regional qualifiers for The International 2022, Marci and Slark looked a bit broken. With these two heroes, the competitors won a lot of matches that seemed unwinnable. In the case of Slark, the hero becomes strong after he reaches a networth of around 12.000-15.000. But Marci becomes a menace with very few items.

This allowed teams to play her in support roles during the laning stage and then use her as the main initiator. With nothing but boots and a Black King Bar, Marci becomes very hard to deal with. Until the start of The International 2022, IceFrog will probably nerf her.

The results of the SEA Qualifier

Talon started the tournament in the upper bracket and Talon had three rough matches on their way to the Grand Final. They won all three of them without losing a single game, but each game lasted over 40 minutes. The opponents were Lilgun, Polaris, and T1. Until the upper bracket final, T1 hadn’t lost a game either.

What was unpleasant to watch in the Talon versus T1 match was the lack of discipline and overconfidence on the part of T1’s players. The team had a big advantage in game one but lost because of trivial mistakes.

They just didn’t give Talon the respect they deserved and treated them as though they were beginners who didn’t know how to punish bad moves. Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen had a phenomenal laning stage performance on Morphling but then threw all the advantage away with a few bad moves.

In the lower bracket final, Topson won game one for his team. But in games two and three, Polaris picked Marci and she was terrifying to watch.

Polaris nearly won the Grand Final as well, but in games four and five, Talon decided to steal their Marci and use their own combos, with heroes like Slark, QoP, and Pangolier. The match was very close but Talon won in the end with a score of 3-2. Marci was picked five times and won four of the games.

Header: Talon Esports