GESC: Indonesia: Match analysis with Crystallize

A breakdown of Natus Vincere matches

NAVI.GG.BET have recently come back from their trip to sunny Indonesia, where took place. We secured some impressive wins during our stay there, but also had some painful losses, from which we will have to learn.

In an interview with cybersport.ru, our carry  Vladislav "Crystallize" Krystanek provided a breakdown of GESC games, and we collected some of his most interesting answers below.

NAVI vs Infamous

— At minute 7, you lost four heroes near the tier 1 tower…

— We tp'ed one by one. Generally, when playing against Disruptor you shouldn't tp if the enemy has vision because if he teleports one hero back, you end up in the minority. There were four of them, so we just had to give up Gyrocopter. I tp'ed in and Disruptor brought me back. Perhaps, if I had cast my Chrono, we could've killed two of them and it would've been different. But it was better to let Gyrocopter die and meanwhile do something else — attack Morphling, for example.

— In a Roshan fight, you cast your Nullifier on Morphling's Linken's Sphere. Did you forget about this item?

— I asked my teammates to break Linken's Sphere several times, but we didn't have anything for it. I did that so Doom could cast his ultimate. There was no other way to break Linken's.

— At minute 31, enemies were pushing down your mid lane. If you wanted to defend your base, why didn't Gyrocopter buy back earlier? And if you didn't, why did you buy back in the first place?

— Morphling took down our tower and barracks super quickly. We didn't expect him to destroy everything in like two seconds. If we had had more time, we could've broken Linken's with casks, cast Roar and defended the base. Ideally, of course, we should've given up barracks.

— By minute 39, you were 11k gold behind, but you bounced back in the next fight. How did you win it?  

— Morphling was in a very bad spot — he caught Doom, plus we set up a Chrono that made it impossible for them to come up from above and do anything. They had bad positioning, and Morphling didn't manage to shift stats. If Morphling hadn't been caught off guard with Doom, he could've killed everyone.

— What happened at minute 52, when you cast a Chrono into the rosh pit?

— I had a brain lag there. I thought Morphling went in to finish off Roshan because I saw him get in there before. If I had locked him down, we would've won the game. If we had killed him, we would've got Roshan and there'd be no buyback on Morphling. Otherwise, that would be the end.

NAVI vs Fnatic — Map 1

— Why did you give up all 4 bounty runes?

— Although it may sound funny, we couldn't fight for the runes with those heroes. If we went bottom, we would lose AA or I'd be forced to use regen. Tiny played solo in the top lane because Chen had to teleport creeps to help him. And the midlaner had to block creeps... 

— You killed three enemy heroes at minute 9…

— We used smoke to kill DK who was pushing our tower with his ultimate on. We had to kill him to break his form and defend the tower. Fnatic also used smoke — they wanted to attack us near the tower. Dendi needed additional 5 MP before he could cast his ultimate, so Chen teleported him to the base, and then he came back and killed DP.

— At minute 40, they killed you in the jungle and you lost mid barracks. Did you expect the enemy to be so close? 

— Until that point, the game was pretty passive. Nothing happened, and we just moved around together. We sent illusions and a dragon to push out the lanes. It was a successful smoke gank — they caught me. It was again my mistake because my teammates were far from reach. If there was Chen up close, perhaps, he could teleport me to the base.

— At minute 48, you had a chance to get Roshan, but you backed out. DK and Death Prophet didn't have their ultimates, why did you do that?

— I had very little HP left. I went out of the rosh pit to heal. Queen of Pain could potentially take down Roshan, but the process would be too long, so we decided to use smoke. We attacked DP while DK was away and killed her with Nullifier. But we still couldn't secure Rosh, because we cast everything in DP, while Tusk could use Ice Shards every 5 seconds. 

— At minute 59, you had a long fight which you had a chance of winning. What went wrong? 

— We wanted to prolong all team fights to get past their BKBs. However, Ancient Apparition hit three heroes with his ulti, and we decided to go heads on. But it's too dangerous of a move against DK and DP — they are hard to kill and we had low damage. I was forced to stay in the middle of the fight and died. GeneRaL bought back and told me to buy back as well, get Boots of Travel and teleport back, but I didn't have enough gold. We should've retreated after those first deaths. 

NAVI vs Fnatic — Map 2

— Sniper is a very rare pick in the current meta. Why did you pick him?

— They didn't have heroes that could get Sniper. We had Omniknight's save and a tanky Gyrocopter. Even if they wanted to attack Sniper with Naga Siren's sleep, we had Repel and GA to save him, plus we had a good team fight potential.

Sniper is a great damage dealer, he does fine against DP in mid and can push with Shrapnel.  Lil suggested that we pick him — he said he's the perfect hero for the draft.

— Sniper has to get constant help on the lane, because of how fragile this hero is. By minute 8, he died three times, why didn't you save him? 

— When he was ganked by Luna, there was no chance of saving him —  Dendi had to play more carefully. I pushed the tower on the bottom and we saw Omniknight on the top with no one else visible. 

— At minute 43, you won the team fight without Sniper…

— We had Disruptor with an Aghanim's, and they didn't have the Golem and DP's ultimate. I had my six slots. I felt the power of my hero and knew that I could kill them, so we decided to chase them down.

NAVI vs Fnatic — Map 3

— At minute 21, you lost Dendi, but went further for some reason...

— The opponents were low. If you see the red dot on the map, you hit it. And after that, there was no way for us to escape; we were too easy to catch with the ultimates of Brewmaster, Disruptor and other heroes.

— At minute 25, you had another unfortunate fight…

—We didn't know they had just got BKBs. We had a plan: I went to push the tower and my teammates were waiting behind me and to the right. If they started attacking, we would see them. If not for those BKBs, we would've won the fight. 

— With Fnatic gradually increasing their lead, no one really believed you'd come back. How did you bounce back in this game?

— We began winning all the fights in the last five minutes, so our hope was alive. Templar Assassin stopped buying items, and we had AA, with whom you can burst down virtually any hero.

— Tell us about your last attack on the enemy base.

— The key mistake was that they didn't buy back. If they had bought back and began to defend their base, not going for the race, most probably, we would've all been dead.

GeneRaL was shouting for us to go for the throne, and we did just that. We had no choice. If we had tried to kill the heroes, they would've bought back and fought again.

The full article in Russian can be found .