by Sören ‘Fantasy’ Vendsahm
Yesterday the coL.Dota squad punched their tickets to Seattle. Today they followed up with the final step of their pre-TI journey – winning the North American qualifier. In a decisive and completely dominant display against North American Rejects V2, captain Swindlemelonzz and his team cruised to victory, securing themselves a spot amongst 15 of the best teams on the planet.
After reaching the Grand Finals through the Winner Bracket yesterday, compLexity Gaming was forced to sit back and wait for mousesports and NAR to slug it out first. Many people expected the “NA” team of mouz to pull through and ultimately face coL.Dota once more, but in the end it was the All-star team around Fogged to end the journey of mouz one game away from Seattle.
Despite connection issues, server problems and even issues on both teams voice servers in the Grand Finals, compLexity Dota kept their composure and remained cool, calm and collected. All the hard work from the last few weeks was channeled on this one moment. The International was the goal for the team straight away, a goal they’ve now reached in style.
None of the Grand Finals matches was remotely level or contested It eventually turned into a showcase of compLexity’s improvements and dominance. NAR looked completely out of sorts at times, trying to counter the lineup choices of Swindle in the draft, but falling short in the execution. On the other side the communication, game plan execution and plays were on point for coL.Dota, hitting every rotation and winning nearly every team engagement.
Whether it was the curveball with a Queen of Pain support, or the comfort heroes like Zyzz on Phantom Lancer or Swindlemelonzz on Dragon Knight. Whether it was Furion played first by Moon, then by ZfreeK; everything seemed to work out for coL. NAR was forced to play catch up from the get-go and wasn’t able to win the laning stage. They were getting rotated on constantly and seemed to be a few seconds too slow on nearly every move. One of the deciding fights in Game 3 might paint the perfect picture of how the series went. NAR looks to have a good look in a team fight, they are one auto-attack away from killing Moonmeander in his Phoenix Supernova egg. That last auto-attack doesn’t come in time, the egg explodes, the whole team of NAR gets stunned and Furion, as well as a rejuvenated Phoenix are calling for clean-up on “Aisle NAR”.
A few minutes later NAR went ahead and called the game, congratulating compLexity Gaming on going all the way, clinching the spot in the big TI5 competition. Emotions were overflowing in the house, all the pressure, enthusiasm, joy unloaded in an instant – pure joy. We’d like to wish NAR the best of luck in Seattle and thanks for the amazing games over the past 2 days!
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Now the red-black brand returns to Seattle for the second time, after The International 2 back in 2012. None of the old faces are on the team. New talent will go to Seattle – with the exception of veteran Fly, who will make his return to the city with the Space Needle. In less than three months the biggest Dota 2 tournament to date is taking place there, three months of hard work are before coL.Dota.
Tonight though, it’s time to celebrate and be thankful. While we will raise the roof of the Dota 2 team house in Maryland, we would love to thank all of our fans for believing in this, going with us through all the ups and downs, all the roster changes, every close qualifying loss, always holding true to us and believing in better times. The support was incredible, the energy sent to us through Twitter, Facebook and Twitch chat pushed us to new heights. Thank you so much and keep on supporting us as we bring the red and black to Seattle!