MYM vs Navi F4F3

Last 2 weeks, one particular game caught the attention of competitive dota community. Or to be exact, the non-chinese community. It was game 2 of Winner Bracket Final of Farm4Fame3 between Danish-based MYM and Ukraine-based Navi. The game was rated Replay of the Week on Gosugamers, with over 11 pages of comments cumulated in just a few days. I admit that since WDC last year, I barely followed European scene and I never watched any European game this year, so for the first time, I feel compelled to watch this so-called epic game of MYM vs Navi.

Events: Farm4Fame3, Winner bracket final
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.72f, version 1.26
GameMode: -cm
Length: 82:07 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

VOD: [Tobi's Joindota] (amazing shoutcast, really)

After watching the whole game (Tobi's VOD, that is), I would agree that the game is worth the RR status because of the epic comeback. It was indeed an epic game – Navi managed to claim mid and bot rax and took MYM’s Tree of Life’s health to just below 200, but somehow MYM managed to defend and crawl back to steal the victory. A recommended game to watch, but IMO it did not deserve the RotW status as labelled in Gosugamers, because the game is filled with many unnecessary mistakes that almost cost MYM the game, but certainly cost Navi, and some that I'd like to point out:

• Base-rush by both side @44 min. It was a judgement mistake by MYM to have Windrunner going for top rax alone, while the whole of Navi went for mid. In the end MYM claim 1 rax in exchange of their own 2 raxes, and almost the Tree itself. MYM certainly could play it safer by having Windrunner TP back to base to help defending against Navi’s push. But if not for this decision, we would never see the epic comeback, no?

• The biggest mistake in the game – Alchemist’s item choice. Whether it is good to get a Manta Style and keeping that Vanguard late in the game is debatable, but not getting a BKB when he had 8k gold in his pocket is a big mistake. So many times Alchemist was rendered useless in battle because he was repeatedly hexed by Tinker and Windrunner. If he had got the BKB, he could probably finish the low-HP Tree of Life (at 57:30 game time). Now you might say MYM had Beastmaster’s Ulti that can counter BKB, but Navi’s Broodmother (who was virtually useless all games because of BM's Ulti) also got a BKB, so Beastmaster can only Ulti/disable 1 of them, and the rest of MYM (who had tons of disables in Tinker, Windrunner and ES) cannot do anything to the other BKB’d hero. I would even say Dendi's Venomancer also should try to get a BKB.

Nevertheless, it was still an entertaining game to watch particularly if you watched the VOD with Tobi’s shoutcast, his energy simply made any game worth to watch. Kudos to MYM for the great teamwork shown while defending their base, especially Mania's Earthshaker’s many great stuns and ultis.

Anyway, with Dota 2 The Internationals coming next week, pitting the best teams from all over the world, I am still not convinced that MYM or Navi (or any other non-Chinese team) could beat the Chinese. Yes the Chinese scene went through the Great Shuffles several times this year, but you don't often see them doing unforced error/miscommunication that could cost the game, like what Navi did many times in this game, and their grand final game. I hope I'm wrong though, because I do want to see that for once, a non-Chinese team could reach the top in an international LAN event.

p/s: I actually want to cover Tyloo's victory over iG at last week's WCG, but the replay is still not out -_-