MLG Final Day Live Coverage, SK's RMP Victorious

Stream can be found here.

We're coming up on the final day of MLG Columbus and so far, it's been an event that met a lot of people's expectations (such as Ensidia schooling all the mirrors), but also an event that caught a lot of people off guard (like EMG's success and EG's failure). But rather than discuss the matches that already went down, I'll just give my two cents on today's predictions before the games begin.

If I had to make an educated guess at this point, I think Ensidia stands the best chance provided that they can learn from how SK beat EMG. Ensidia obviously has the talent to win and can beat pretty much any other team in the tournament with ease, but they need an answer for the PHD cooldown zerg. Redkoala and Kalimist will really need to be clutch (Redkoala especially) and do the right swaps in order to win a re-match if they get that far.

I still have hopes for Pandemic to get past group stage (Kintt Arthur really needs to step it up here and quit taking every series to 5 games) and to take it all like I originally predicted, but more realistically at this point I'd have to predict it will be Ensidia over EMG in the finals.



Fnatic (Rogue/Lock/Shaman) vs. eMazing Gaming (DK/BM Hunter/Holy Paladin) 0-3

First game in, everything goes as expected with EMG tunneling Glickz the entire game without pause. Fnatic attempts a few swaps back and forth between Flex (DK) and Twix (Hunter) but ultimately couldn't apply very much pressure outside of a small early burst on Flex. I really don't understand why teams don't dismantle Flex. He's using Fallen Crusader runeforge and a 10 sec disarm on him is a lot more useful than a 5 second one on the hunter.

Second game is more of the same from both teams for the most part. I really think that Fnatic's best bet is playing resto druid, rogue, affliction warlock. Pandemic could have and should have won with Druid/DK/Affliction Warlock, but Kintt's performance as a druid wasn't as good as he needed to be. Regardless, that comp provides fear dispel cover (unstable affliction) and a lot more sustained pressure.

For the final game, Fnatic keeps the same comp for some really strange reason. Hafu isn't very experienced at shaman and even if she were, resto druids are far stronger right now in the current state of arena. Once again, 30 cooldowns and a warlock strangulate later, Fnatic gets swept in the series 3-0 by EMG.



EG (Rogue/Lock/Shaman) vs. compLexity (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 1-3

First match, both teams run their usual comps of RLS vs. RMP and being that coL is one of the RMP's that EG has the most practice against, the results of the first game wern't surpsising as they opened on the priest and eventually swapped to the rogue later on and getting a kill when Azael was left open to channel.  coL never really had any sort of control in this game; they'll need to be a lot more aggressive to pull out any sort of win here.

For game 2, coL played much more offensive and put pressure on both Zyz and Azael. EG attempted a couple swaps to Sodah (priest) but Sodah was dispelling extremely well and getting immolates off his team before Azael could set up almost any bursts with them. Eventually Kollektiv gets caught in a poly -> fear combo that he can't trinket and coL scores a kill on Azael when Zyz is basically almost also dead. coL should just stick to this and play more of the same and not try some silly dance/arcane setup like they've been known to.

3rd game, Venruki basically wins this game for coL. Both teams start on each other's healers with EG doing a really strong burst on Sodah at the start with good fears and burst from Azael, but Venruki did some really good poly twisting to keep him alive just barely. Once coL was able to re-establish control, they were finally able to control Kollektiv enough to kill Zyz once again.

For the fourth game, EG continues to show their lack of coordination and they really lacked any sort of pressure at all this game once again. No one really did any damage or cc's and coL once again capitalizes on their lackluster performance and for the 3rd game straight drop Zyz after landing a CC chain on Kollektiv, which leaves EG with only a single win for the entire tournament, disappointing a lot of people expecting this team to win it all.


Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. Fnatic (Rogue/Lock/Shaman) 3-0

First game, Glickz is running affliction this time around. Yog lands a sap on Kalimist and opens early and does a really good aggressive opening on him with an early blind and even cheap shots Kalimist's vanish. Despite this, Hydra controls the burst very well and never lets Kalimist dip too low. Once the poisons wore off and Kalimist got off a re-stealth, the game was over as they managed to burst Yog down after a nice priest fear on Glickz to prevent any peels.

Well if you turned to grab some wings, you probably missed this game. Kalimist did an early fake opener on Glickz to bait out Yog, who pretty much vaporized right after that with a burst from the entire Ensidia team simultaneously before Hafu could even cast a nature's swiftness.

This series was pretty much over faster than any other in the tournament with the 3rd game being no different from the first two. Yog dies once again within the first minute of the fight and Ensidia sweeps this series as expected 3-0.



eMg (DK/BM Hunter/Holy Paladin) vs. Gravitas Gaming (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 3-1

Polar opposites clashing in this matchup with eMg coming in with only one loss and Gravitas coming in with only one win (against Fnatic for that matter). I expect Gravitas to come out with a desperation cleave setup for obvious reasons.

First game basically shows how stupid Ring of Valor is more than anything. Gravitas actually does a good job outlasting the initial cooldown spam of eMg but as soon as the pillar on their side goes down, Ely gets destroyed. Get RoV'd, I guess.

Celex really put their team in a really bad position from the start of the second game, being forced to block almost immediately by over-extending. After that, he was trained from start to finish and barely survived until he could reach his second ice block. Despite surviving, Celex had to mana shield in order to survive leaving him with no fuel left to do any damage afterwards.

Third game was basically an instagib on Payce but the fourth game was Celex getting the favor returned. Not much else to say about these matches... eMg wins the series 3-1. Next series won't be a complete snoozer thankfully.



Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. SK (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 1-3

In the first game, it was both RMP's going back and forth on each other's rogues. Being on Dalaran arena, there were a lot of resets and restealths with the rogues. Despite Redkoala doing an enormous amount of damage and Kalimist only doing 20k himself, it was the complete opposite for Enforcer and Pook, but Pook not doing as much damage meant he was controlling the match more which bought them the kill on Kalimist in the end.

SK comes out with their obligatory once-a-series strategy of zerging the priest from start to finish and this worked successfully on Hydra. Despite Hydra being able to escape the initial bursts and seemingly top himself off, he eventually got caught in one last cheap shot -> kidney shot and dies. SK has the chance here to pull off one of the biggest upsets here in the tournament if they can sweep Ensidia 3-0.

Third game was much closer than the other two. SK goes for the Priest strategy again and it almost works for the second time, but Enforcer uses a questionable blind on Hydra to catch up and with Ensidia training Enforcer the entire game, he dropped just before Hydra could be killed, giving Ensidia their first win.

Fourth game SK makes another early rush on Hydra, but it was a fake one to bait his pain suppression and then SK quickly swapped to Kalimist and with Hydra being forced to trinket a polymorph, one full blind on him later and a deep freeze on Kalimist resulted in his death to clinch the series for SK proving that Ensidia is in fact beatable in mirror.



Pandemic (DK/Rogue/Priest) vs. compLexity (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 1-3

Game 1 was a quick rushdown kill of Ely by Pandemic despite getting a good stoneform + desperate prayer combo off. Gravitas makes the mistake of going on the rogue, Ohnoes (in my opinion).

Second game, gravitas picks a better target and bursts Beast down extremely hard early on and get a kill to even the series basically. Cleave really lives and dies by these extremely fast games.

Third game, coL controls the match much better and forces Pandemic to split DPS and play almost entirely defensively, which usually spells the end for cleave. Both of Ohnoes' vanishes were wasted and coL eventually scores a kill on Ohnoes when hes out of cooldowns.

coL plays well again in the fourth game and controls Kintt hard from start to finish eventually catching him in a blind that he couldn't trinket and scoring a kill on Beast to take the series.



BRACKET STAGE

compLexity (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. SK (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 1-3

Quick recaps from Zilea until further notice:

Game 1: coL priest getting blown away
Game 2: sodah got trained and managed to survive the onslaught, followed by a ridiculous swap onto venruki, which then led to enforcer getting incinerated.
Game 3: there were swaps galore, sodah got opened on, survived the burst, then they swaped to happyminti and tried to stick hard on him for a little bit but the peels delayed his death for a little while, eventually he got blown away and SK steals another win
Game 4: SK opens on sodah, which leads to enforcer getting opened on and getting ridiculously low. SK then swaps to happyminti, gets low, survives,rogues train each other, both rogues get very low, happyminti floats at like 10% hp a couple times but eventually dies



Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. eMg (DK/Hunter/Paladin) 1-3

Game 1: the gift that keeps on giving of RoV is awarded again to eMg. emg predictably (after watching previous match of sk) trains payce hard. Hydra of course gets trained and strangulated at 20% hp. Hydra and payce both hover at 10% for a few seconds. Unfortunately, hydra gets blown up
Game 2: ruins of lor, payce trained and surprisingly forced to DS very quickly. Emg responds by getting on redhot to force a fast iceblock. they continue to train redhot after the block. twix is soon swapped to  redhot doing a fantastic job keeping the damage received on him low . payce swapped to with redhot being trained leading to a block at 5%. payce ends up dying. incredible gameplay by ensidia with redhot surviving the onslaught
Game 3: nagrand arena. redhot trained from the start with payce being trained. redhot trained again after the block, having a very difficult time staying alive as they are all clumped together and inevitably goes down
Game 4: As predicted, redhot trained out of the gate with what looks to be flexx being trained. Redhot continually trained after the quick iceblock. A good strangulate on hydra forces redhot to go into a second iceblock. Flexx is being trained from start to finish, but even with some fantastic CC  flexx manages to survive at less than 10% hp with hydra also at 10% hp. Hydra continued to be trained with flexx being trained after the bop. BOTH PLAYERS DROP at the same time. 2v2 pally/hunter vs mage/rogue. This game is over as rogue goes down quickly to the power of a BM hunter



Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. compLexity (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 3-1

Game 1: complex is frost/mut apparently. Ruins of lord. hydra getting opened on, leading to happyminti getting opened on. Complex sticks to hydra, which leads to happyminti once again getting ridiculously low for a very lengthy amount of time
Game 2: dalaran arena. both teams train the priests. Hydra uses an early PS. both priests get to approximately 20%. And it looks like the priest hero Hydra dies before sodah in what was a "who can train the priest faster" match
Game 3: venruki gets trained early on while hydra gets trained. ensidia swaps to happyminti while hydra coninues to be trained. hydra gets good peels, however, and minti gets bursted down as sodah gets stuck in cc's.
Game 4: stream cut out here but was told it was a kill on minti by ensidia kind of early



eMg (DK/Hunter/Paladin) vs. SK (Rogue/Mage/Priest) 1-3

Game 1: Ruins of lord. eMg vs SK. flexxors is sap. payce gets opened on with twix  feared. eMg sits on pookz, which leads to a questionably early iceblock. Once he comes out of the iceblock. hydra gets swapped to with twix getting sat on after the BM wears off. Realz and payce both get really low. But, payce dies and eMg makes a final desperate decision to kill enforcer, which fails. SK wins.
Game 2: blade's edge. Flexx gets opened on, which amounts to little as pookz gets ridiculously low very quickly, leading to a block within the first 5 seconds of the match. Payce gets swapped to as twix is also taking damage immediately after payce DSes. a clutch MD on the DS into a polymorph on payce leads to the death of twix
Game 3: Ruins of Lordaeron. Following 2 straight losses, players like didy are recommending that eMg needs to play a dumbed-down game of sitting on priest instead of bothering with training the mage or rogue. Flexxors gets opened on with pookz and realz both taking ridiculous damage as eMg decides to do split-damage.  It was just too much for realz as pookz sits at 40% while realz goes down while SK attempts to make a swap to hunter. eMg pulls off a win.
Game 4: Nagrand arena: payce gets opened on while flexx is polied on the bridge while payce was on the bottom. Payce DSes very quickly. Realz gets sat on and gets very low. Realz dies followed by payce about 10 seconds later. 2v2 mage/rogue vs dk/hunter with enforcer starting at 30% hp. Twix dies with enforcer at 20% and pookz at 30%. Will the 100% DK win? Enforcer dies with Flexx at 15% hp. Pookz manages to win the 1v1 with about 60% hp. SK wins the series 3-1 and defeating eMg for the second time this tournament



Ensidia (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. eMg (DK/Hunter/Paladin) 4-6

(Best of 11 series)

Game 5: Blade's edge arena is the map. Payce gets trained but gets away. A start on redhot proves unrewarding so they swap to Kalimist, getting him to 40% almost instantly. Twix ends up getting blown away almost instantly after swapping from payce to twix. Ensidia wins quite decisively
Game 6: Payce gets opened on very hard, leading to a very quickly DS at about 5% with twix Polymorph.ed Twix gets swapped to as hydra finally starts taking some damage. Twix gets bopped at 40% with hydra at 50%. Twix, unfortunately, goes down in yet again another decisive match. Dalaran arena really made the match difficult for eMg as LoS humping behind the crate became a big factor.
Game 7: Dalaran arena. Hydra g ets trained very quickly and gets to 30% before he gets behind the crates. Despite this, hydra struggles to get over 20% hp. Ensidia trains twix but hydra dies by the time twix gets to 40% hp. eMg wins.
Game 8: Blade's edge arena. Hydra gets griped to the middle of the bridge but immediately jumps down. Flex gets sat on to help peel for hydra, who does an excellent job to LoS damage. Ensidia swaps to twix which leads to a quick swap to payce right after that. Payce gets to 30% hp but does not have to DS. Hydra and twix but get to 20% hp as Ensidia swaps to Twix. Unfortunately, Hydra goes down before Twix gets in death range. eMg wins.
Game 9: This is match point if eMg can win this one. Dalaran arena. Ensidia runs druid/priest/rogue double healer. Payce gets sapped with flexx getting opened on as hydra gets opened on. Hydra manages to get away while Flexx takes some fairly serious damage and getting to 50% and hovering there for close to 10 seconds. Kalimist gets swapped to and as predicted gets very low, very quickly. Ensidia switches it up a bit and kills Twixz's pet right away and swaps to Twix. Twix hovers at 50% hp with Ensidia doing a fantastic job mitigating damage. But, the damage becomes too much for Ensidia as Hydra gets to 0% mana while the druid's mana is at 100% following an innervate. Carekoala, the druid, does a great job of keeping everyone at full hp while hydra sits behind the crates and gets a lot of mana back. Twix, once again, sitting very low in  HP while Payce is completely and utterly drained on mana.  Kalimist gets swapped to but only gets to 60% before getting topped off. Inevitably, twix falls with Payce sitting at 0% mana.
Game 10: Once again, still a matchpoint if eMg can win this one. Map is Ruins of Lordaeron. Kalimist again saps Payce, why isn't he Divine Saccing as he charges? Kalimist gets very low, very quickly with BM and garg popped. Payce HoPs Twixz's pet as Ensidia tries to kill it.
Kalimist is pretty much getting trained all game as his health ffuctuates in what must be very frightening for team Ensidia. And, as Kalimist sits at 5% hp for close to 10 seconds, a swap is made to Hydra, with both players sitting at 5-10% hp, but ultimately surviving that burst. Moments later, Kalimist again takes insane burst and does die as Hydra was drained with just Carekoala trying to keep Kalimist up. eMg wins the series and will move on to the Grand Finals to face off against SK for the third series of the tournament.



GRAND FINALS: SK (Rogue/Mage/Priest) vs. eMg (DK/Hunter/Paladin) 6-3

(Best of 11 series)

Game 5: The score is 3-1 in favor of SK in a best-of-11 series. Dalaran arena is the map. Rumor has it eMg's DK is going to try frost with almost no resilience. Could be trouble for SK if they don't realize it, or bad news for eMg if SK does realize it. Flexx gets sat on while Enforcer gets trained. A swap is quickly made to Payce by SK, which leads to divine shield, which was quickly mass dispelled by SK, followed by the death of Payce. Other than quick burst on Enforcer, there was very little pressure by eMg in this match.

Game 6: Dalaran again. Once again payce gets opened on by SK, while Flexx attempts to peel and trains Enforcer. Unfortunately, the peel isn't enough as Payce is forced into an early Divine Shield and gets good RNG with a mass dispel resist. Enforcer continues to be trained and gets very low while on the other end Payce is being trained. Aura mastery saved Payce here coming out of the divine shield since he failed to top himself off during it.  Unfortunately for Realz, the damage was much too high on Enforcer and he does indeed go down. eMg recovers and pulls off a win.

Game 7: Ruins of Lordaeron is the map. Flexx gets sapped. Payce gets opened on while Enforcer gets trained by SK. Payce recovers and manages to get away while Enforcer's HP is fluctuating. A clutch strangulate on Realz almost gets him killed. SK makes a swap to Payce, followed back to Twix after a quick HoP. Shortly after Payce divine shields to keep Twix alive, which does not get mass dispelled and leads to Enforcer going down.

Game 8: The map is Dalaran arena and Flexx is still playing as frost. Payce gets opened on after a fantastic sap to flexx, which leads to a polymorph. This forces a fast Divine Shield by Payce. A hungering cold is used and eMg goes to Enforcer, getting him to about 40% but manages to survive, at which point eMg swaps to Realz while SK gets back on Payce. The real rushdown occurs here as Realz hovers at 10% along with Payce and it is Payce that ultimately goes down first. SK wins this one and are now one win away from taking away the gold.

Game 9: The score is 5-3 in favor of SK and this could be the match point of the series if SK can pull away another win. The map is Nagrand arena. Twix gets opened on this time with an immediate swap to Flexx while Enforcer gets trained. Flexx dies less than 5 seconds into the match and it looks like Payce did not use any big cooldowns as it was clear that nobody was prepared for the burst. SK wins the tournament. The announcers claim that Payce dropped the ball but Flex died without using Unbreakable Armor or Anti-Magic Shell, and on top of that never left Unholy Presence. You decide who dropped the ball.






And with that final series, the tournament ends with SK winning the tournament and proving not only can RMP still win a LAN tournament even with the current patch ruleset, but US RMP can still hang with the best RMP of EU; and by hang with, I mean dominate. Unfortunately we couldn't witness any crazy Korean RMP's at this one, but that might be in store for Blizzcon.

Congratulations to Enforcer, Pook, and Realz for winning MLG Columbus.