MLG Columbus Friday Night: Ensidia's Arrogance Cost Them The Opening Round

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For those of you who missed the opening night, let's just say you can tell who qualified for the regionals, and who didn't.  Teams that did qualify for the regionals showed a lot more cohesiveness together and they dominated the opening night.  Gotfrag is running replays on all the matches played tonight, watch it again here!

Complexity (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs Fnatic (Rogue/Lock/Shaman): 3-0

No contest here as Glick/Hafu showed very little coordination together since their break-up.  I am not sure why didn't they go back to warrior/lock/druid, or even rogue/lock/druid as Hafu-chan looked very uncomfortable on her shaman.  The Fnatic team looked as out of shape as Jared "Noktyn" Fogle's 2008 Pandemic team, and I can't see them winning a single series in this tournament with this comp.  I suggest all sponsors put some sort of hard clause in their contracts, your team should at the very least be top 3 in your own battlegroup before they send you to a tournament.  Shaman has a very high skill cap right now, Hafu needs to stick to her druid as she was pressured from start to finish.

Duelist Going For Gladiator (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs TeamEG (Rogue/Lock/Shaman): 0-3

The opposite of the first series, as Azael demonstrated exactly how to beat RMP as RLS.  Much better defensive stops to prevent pressure on shaman, Kollectiv's shocks and grounding totems made Hafu looked like a total amatuer.  Zyz is also the best defensive rogue in the game, and compliments a warlock much better than Yog's flashy offensive plays.

To be fair, DGFG is almost as out of shape as Fnatic.  In round 3 they wiped out rogue/retribution paladin/priest in desperation, and got Azael to 5% before the warlock hero was able to teleport away, gets healed to full and proceed to land his nuke on Emolol.  I was wondering why didn't they run with this comp from the start?  Did they really believe their RMP was a real factor in this tournament?

DGFG should scrap their washed-up RMP altogether and go with rogue/retribution paladin/priest as their main team rest of this tournament.  They can play zerg the priest as well as any cleave can against RMPs, and they have a much better chance against DK/BM/Paladin and Rogue/Lock/Shaman with the cleave comp.  Try this tomorrow and thank me later guys, you may not win the whole thing but you will definitely make some noise.

SK-US (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs Pandemic (DK/Warlock/Druid): 3-2

Serennia-sama wondered why didn't Pandemic go with DK/Rogue/Priest against RMP, and I had the same question.  The series really wasn't as close as the score may have suggested. All five matches Pookz the mage managed to shut down both DK and warlock, and SK-US got too many clean easy swaps onto Kintt.  All five matches Kintt went below 5% and stayed there for quite some time, in two of those matches he managed to pick himself back up and they eventually outlasted Realz the priest's mana pool, the other two he went down.  

The final match saw some very good pressure on Kintt early before SK-US swapped to the Pandemic DK, got him low and forced him to blow all the defensive CDs.  They swapped to Kintt again and forced him to play keep away before swapping to the warlock for the kill, not before a reset allowing Realz the priest to get drinks off.  SK had full control the entire way.

No, that is not how this match-up is supposed to go down.  Watching Another/Inflame vs AAA Nawak, I know DK/lock can put out so much more pressure and defensive stops for their druid.  Throw all your CCs and interrupts on the mage, full DPS on the rogue, wear them down slowly.  Didn't Pandemic study the ESL Invitation Week 2 footage if they chose to run DK/Warlock/Druid against RMP?  SK-US's rogue had very little pressure until his priest went out of mana, and he had too easy of a time to stick to Kintt.  

You are probably not going to kill the rogue until priest is low on mana, but Another/Inflame still produced burst chains that forced the rogue to play very defensively, and sometimes killed him outright coupled with a strangulate or spell lock on the priest.  I did not see the same pressure from Shinaniganz and Beastlol, they played soft and did not protect the paint, they allowed Enforcer to drive to the hoop whenever he wanted.  You gotta be a lot more physical than that!

Shinaniganz needs to step up his game as he was left open most of those series, and he didn't look like the dominant TR warlock who had perfect peels AND dished out immense damage pressure.  It is probably because of LAN jitters, I know you can play much better Shani, don't let me down!

Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs Emazing (DK/BM Hunter/Paladin) (0-3)

Let's see here, you know DK/BM/Paladin dominated the Koreans, you know you are going to run into the only American team that actually qualified for the regionals running PHD (when most gave it up for shadow cleave, Serennia-sama included).  Twix the hunter hero has been around forever and he has great talents around him (Payce aka Ramius has a super high SAT score and easily on Sck's level, it just took him a very long time to find superstar teammates).  I even warned every RMP about this team in my preview.

What did Ensidia do?  They walked into the series without a game plan at all, and lost 0-3 without any resistance whatsoever.  Hydra never had a chance against DK/BM hunter zerg. Did they practice against this comp before the tournament?  Did they watch ESL Invitational Week 2 when X6tence ran the same comp, took a 2-0 lead against RIP before RIP swapped out their priest for druid and won the next 3 games?  

No practice, no backup plan, and it is laughable Europeans actually complained about the DK/BM/Paladin comp.  Both HON and SK-Asia already got as close as 2-3 against Spitfire in Korea running the same comp, they actually prepared for it and I fully expect them to overcome it by global finals with hard practice.  If you can't find a team to practice against, at least have your MVP practice a different healer.  Heck, just read WOM, I blogged about the exact same match-up a few days ago.  Did Ensidia really believe they could walk into this series cold and win?  If that is their attitude, they won't win anything here on American soil.

Complexity probably has the best chance against Emazing, as Sodah should still be a capable druid.  I still believe Ensidia can get out of this 0-1 hole tomorrow and advance to the finals, but they really need to respect their opponent and get a better coach.