If Team Spirit didn’t have the favorites tag before, they most certainly do now. The Russian squad is the first team through to Dota 2’s The International grand final after a one-sided 2-0 victory over Chinese squad LGD.
Yatoro was particularly ruthless, averaging over 950 gold per minute across the two-map series and disintegrating the LGD roster before they could really get going. The first slip-up from the Chinese squad came during game one, where they decided to let Spirit’s Collapse get his hands on the Magnus.
This proved a massive mistake, with Collapse the centerpiece for Spirit as both teams looked to take it late in the series opener. Ultimately it was Yatoro’s efficiency on Terrorblade combined with marvellous team play and catch potential from Collapse that saw Spirit walk away with the opener in 76 minutes.
To LGD’s credit, they stuck in with Spirit in seeing the game go late, and at times threatened a boilover thanks to niu’s Centaur Warrunner who set LGD up for success. However, back-to-back ultra-late team fights where LGD carry shiro immediately burst down on the Chaos Knight meant a fight from behind without their position one—and Spirit capitalized perfectly.
If game one was a narrow but dominant win, game two was total one-way traffic for the Russian team with Yatoro proving out-of-favor Morphling was a more than viable pick. Collapse, this time on the Chaos Knight following LGD’s decision to pick the Magnus instead of giving it up, was equally ruthless, with the pair out-farming the entirety of LGD by the end of the match.
Spirit coach Silent was confident in his team’s performance from the get-go, especially after taking the first game. “The game was in our advantage from the start,” Silent said. “Their lineup was pretty bad to take towers with Doom, Magnus, and Spectre—it allowed us to play aggressively.”
In the end, LGD finished the game with just 29 tower damage, all dealt by position four support planet. Otherwise, not a single tower hit was landed as Spirit dismantled LGD with extreme prejudice.
The Spirit organization will play for their second Aegis of Champions tomorrow, taking on the winner of the lower bracket final. LGD awaits the winner of the second lower bracket semi-final between Gaimin Gladiators and Azure Ray, which is currently live as of writing.
