From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

Chapter 94 Quickly leveled

"This combination of Keeper of the Light and Snapfire is quite a small one. Keeper of the Light can use Sun Bind to slow down enemy heroes and apply spell vulnerability. Then, after Snapfire is hit by Keeper of the Light's chakra magic, he might be able to cast Lightning Bolt twice. In the early game, there are basically no heroes who can withstand this burst damage."

Ah Wei has found another good partner.

"Binbin, next time you get a Keeper of the Light and we can try this combination?"

Binbin does indeed prefer playing Lightbringer. This hero is fast and his Shockwave can farm gold quickly. Although he is generally a bit of a toxic player and doesn't often buff his teammates with chakra magic, he will only reluctantly buff his teammates when they tell him to do so while playing with friends.

"It feels like their lineup isn't just about Keeper of the Light. Look at this wave of stealth skeletons finding the enemy Beastmaster farming in the triangle area, Ember Spirit comes over and feeds a cookie to the skeleton, stunning the Beastmaster and the two of them follow up with damage and kill him instantly."

Lin Yiming nodded in agreement.

At this moment, commentator SDN is also analyzing the source of the early-game advantage of Soul Stone:

They have a global playstyle. Although they can't fly across the entire map like Prophet or Spirit Breaker, they are very agile. Basically, two of them can deal enough damage to kill. They may not be strong in direct team fights, but by using summoned creatures to push lanes, Na'Vi has to come and take down towers. Once someone is exposed on another lane or in the jungle, it's a good opportunity to gank.

As they were talking, at the seventeen-minute mark of the match, Jiang Xia's Lightbringer used Shockwave to push the lane to Night Stalker's second top tower, and Navi's Windranger came over to farm the wave.

"The enemy Windranger is in the top lane, your bot lane can move."

After receiving the information, Lu Chen's werewolf pups rushed into the Night Demon Triangle and found a Venomancer farming in the jungle. Wang Chunyu's skeletons also came over. With vision of the Venomancer, Lao Fang's Clockwerk launched a grappling hook from a very long distance from the ruins of the enemy's first tower to stun the Venomancer. The skeletons followed up with damage and quickly melted the Venomancer.

Navi reacted quickly, and as soon as the Poisonous Passive was activated, everyone else moved towards the battle site. The first to arrive at the battlefield was the Captain, who immediately marked the Clockwork Technician with a Water-Gathering Ship.

"The enemy captain used Black King Bar (BKB) on the first wave, and he triple-killed me!"

Old Fang was caught off guard by the Captain's attack. He immediately checked the Captain's equipment bar and discovered that the Captain had upgraded to a Black King Bar. He quickly reported this important information to his teammates.

The teammates ignored the captain who was tanking with his Black King Bar activated, and instead went behind the captain to find someone to help him with his skills—after all, the captain couldn't kill the Clockwerk by himself.

Once again, Lu Chen's wolf made a contribution, finding Rubick and Beastmaster behind the captain first. The moment Gu Ran saw the two, he activated Lizard Kiss and bombarded them. Then Lu Chen's wolf also activated his ultimate and charged directly at Rubick. The opposing Beastmaster had no choice but to use his ultimate to stop the wolf in an attempt to save his own squishy support.

However, even though the Lycan was stunned, the output from the two little wolves and the Black Dragon's Great Dominator was still too much for the fragile Rubick to withstand. In the end, Rubick perished under the Black Dragon's flames and the barrage of Ember Spirit.

Meanwhile, on another battlefield, the captain's damage output nearly killed the Clockwerk. With his Black King Bar (BKB) about to expire, he saw that his backline teammates had already collapsed and could only hurry back home.

The Beastmaster, whose health was still relatively good, tried to finish off the Clockwerk with his throwing axe, but his intention was too obvious and Lao Fang dodged the axe. Without Black King Bar, the Beastmaster was also focused down and taken down. This wave resulted in a small team wipe for the three members of Navi.

[Oh dear, I was just saying that the team fight on the Soul Stone side might not be easy, but they first caught and killed one of your Venomancer, and then used their vision advantage to find your backline. In this team fight, Navi was endlessly toyed with.]

Soul Stones don't fight in well-organized 5v5 team fights; they're all about numbers, about team fights based on vision advantage. After this wave of kills and securing a Roshan's Aegis, the gold lead is already 8,000. This macro play feels incredibly smooth!

This isn't the first time the commentators have seen SDN use the Soul Stone's lane-pushing and operational rhythm, and watching it again now is still a pleasure.

Although Awei and Binbin didn't quite understand what the streamer was talking about regarding lane control and vision advantage, they were just happy to see Zhenhunshi getting kills all the time. The two brothers clinked glasses and gulped down several mouthfuls of ice-cold beer.

After securing the Roshan's Aegis with the Soul Stone, Lycan soloed the Cube 21 minutes later, bringing his economic advantage to 12000.

[We just finished the Rubik's Cube, so the enemy will definitely be relaxed. We'll immediately use Smoke of Deceit to find them. We've spotted the enemy Venomancer and Beastmaster in the bottom lane ward. We'll definitely find them in their main jungle. Our damage dealers will move as soon as they see them; no one can withstand that.]

Gu Ran stood in the mid-lane river, farming minions while directing his teammates to use Smoke of Deceit to gank. From Navi's perspective, an Ember Spirit was farming minions in the mid-lane, and the enemy had just finished destroying the Cube. This should have been a relatively safe time, a chance to farm for a while. However, they didn't realize that only Lycan had destroyed the Cube; the other three brothers were already preparing to hunt him down!

The three brothers found the Captain in the main jungle next to the Night Stalker's second tower. Clockwerk initiated with his ultimate, followed by Gear's ricochet to maximize the control time. Keeper of the Light applied Sun Bind to increase damage, and Gu Ran provided long-range support with his cannon. Skeleton King also followed up with damage. When the Captain woke up, his health was already down to half.

Kunkka quickly activated Black King Bar (BKB) and then Ghost Ship to gain the Rum damage reduction effect, but he was still taken down by the violent output of Soul Stone.

Firefly kills Niku, earning 334 gold + 267 gold, split equally among 3 heroes.

Firefly has become a ruthless killer!

After killing the mid-lane captain, the four of them rotated to the bottom lane. The Beastmaster, who was unable to retreat in time, was slowed down by the Keeper of the Light's Solar Strike, and the Venomancer was also directly charged at by the Lycan with his ultimate. Navi's army collapsed like a landslide. The two brothers in the third and fourth positions were rushed behind the second tower and killed. After killing them, the Soul Stone directly pushed down the enemy's bottom lane second tower and high ground.

"Holy crap, their push speed is too fast! The skeletons have Aghanim's Scepter entourage, and the Lycan has Dominator on the jungle monsters. Ember Spirit can also reduce armor. The enemy's respawn time is only about 30 seconds. As a result, when they respawned, they found that their own high ground was gone."

Ah Wei sighed, he hadn't expected that the enemy's high ground would be destroyed so quickly in this late-game version.

After pushing down the high ground, the economic gap between the two sides widened to 20,000. In the end, Navi had no choice but to use the smoke to make a desperate attempt. The entire team was wiped out, and they only managed to kill one werewolf. So they typed GG.

"Congratulations to Team Zhenhunshi! You brought us a resounding victory in the first game of BO02. Let's take a short break and then we'll start the second game of BO02 soon."

After the first round of the match ended, the five brothers in the room bumped fists to celebrate.

"Old Wang, are you having fun with that little skeleton?"

"That was awesome! The other team doesn't seem to know how to handle split-pushing compositions, but they'll probably ban Lycan and Keeper of the Light next game."

Wang Chunyu couldn't suppress the smile on his face; this first victory in the international competition was a great morale booster.

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