Spirit.Larl analysis on match against PSG.LGD: "Dawnbreaker wasn't a good hero to counter Lina. We were more surprised by Spectre and mid Furion" Exclusive
Team Spirit mid player Denis "Larl" Sigitov shared with us some thoughts after the win over PSG.LGD in Lower Bracket of Lima Major. He explained how Chinese team managed to surprise his team, and gave his analysis on drafts.
— Let's start with the first map. It looked like they intentionally gave away Lina to counter her with the Dawnbreaker. What do you think about it?
— They surprised us with lastpick Spectre against Lina. They really tried to counter her. I don't think that Dawnbreaker was some special saved strategy. Maybe the team just decided that their offlaner shouldn't play on Nature's Prophet. I was always under an assumption that their carry plays it. I don't remember offlane Furion from PSG.LGD at all. I don't think it was a good idea to counter Lina this way. We were much more surprised by lact pick Spectre and Nature's Prophet on mid.
Our opponents played really well until the moment when Furion got level 6 and tried to utilize his ult. He teleported to the top, but died without killing anyone. After that PSG.LGD slowed down a bit. They could stomp us if he wouldn't die there and destroyed the tower. Later we made mistakes and died on mid. But the game went in such direction that they couldn't do anything against Lina. She just stands there and hits people. We had a Magnus who always can Skewer and RP people for her.
When we got our BKBs, we made some good fights. We were running around as five, so they couldn't pick us off one by one with Spectre and Furion. The only thing they could do was to split-push, but we have an Ember Spirit, who can always teleport and push lanes out. You could say, our draft was way better.
— Why you couldn't deal with Storm Spirit on the second map?
— NothingToSay played really well on mid. And his team did a good job around him with their support constantly teleporting to fill Bottle. On both first and second maps they were controlling Bounties and Water runes really hard. So it was easy for Storm Spirit to make kills with full resources. We just didn't play around runes.
Our enemies made right moves with strong heroes, Storm Spirit had all runes. Basically, he run us over by himself. We couldn't find any answer. Our peak timing was when we bought Diffusal Blade on Pango and Aghanim's Scepter on Furion, but we just couldn't find a good fight. And at some point Collapse just got caught on mid while we were waiting for two BKB's. That's why we lost.
— What can you say about the third map?
— They had a good pick, but we also made the right decision to pick Drow Ranger. Our opponents didn't focus on sidelanes, we had a free farm there most of the time. Their support was teleporting mid and abusing the Bottle again. Overall, they are often focusing on mid at the expense of carry and offlaner. And I think we just played better. We had a good pick, we just caught Ember a few times, and that was it. He couldn't do anything anymore.
— How it is to play with an empty arena?
— I don't feel much difference.
— All of Group Stage you had early matches, and all your playoff matches so far were late ones. Does it affect you?
— It affects me quite a lot, because I always wake up early. My sleeping schedule is set up in such way that even if I go to sleep very late, I still get up in the morning. Here I wake up at 7-8 am, and I have to lay in bed, try to catch more sleep until 10-11 am, to not feel tired during the games.
— What about the next game? Who are you expecting to play?
— I want HellRaisers to win. That would be cool to play against them. And overall I believe in them more. I want them to win, not Talon.
