by This match-up starts on Friday, January 11, 2019 – 19:00 UTC+8.
The champions of Group B, EHOME, will come up against second place from Group A, Keen Gaming, in a fascinating Dota 2 affair at the Bucharest Minor Playoffs Upper Bracket.
Coming into the game EHOME whitewashed both Playermakers Esports and OG to reach the top of their group.
Looking at the draft of EHOME against Playmakers in game one, EHOME drafted Tiny as their first pick. Tiny is open to any position in this match — whether it is as core or support, in this meta he is strong.
Playmakers Esports wasted their second ban chance on banning the offlaners heroes such as Centaur Warchief because EHOME decided to put Tiny in position three.
In its game against Playmakers Esports, EHOME drafted Sven as their first pick, which once again confused Playmakers because Sven can be put in position one or support in this patch.
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Drafting is one thing EHOME is very good at. They have the ability to both confuse their enemy and counter against enemy picks.
After EHOME successfully beat down Playmakers Esport, they were up against OG. In game one OG drafted Sven in the first picking phase, but EHOME stuck to their plan by picking Sven too. Although both teams tried to confuse each other by first picking the hero that is flexible to put in any position, EHOME still came out at top of the drafting by picking Timbersaw last,while OG had a four physical damage dealer.
Thanks to Timbersaw’s third ability, reactive armour, he always had high armour and health regeneration. He was tanky to OG, although iLTW purchased Silver Edge at 25-minute mark to apply a duration of 4 seconds of BREAK effect on Timbersaw, but Timbersaw countered that by purchasing EUL’s Scepter which allowed him invulnerable for 2.5 seconds.
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In game 2 of their match-up, EHOME drafted Huskar along with Oracle supporting him. Thanks to Oracle’s ultimate skill, False Promise, making sure that Huskar was invulnerable for 10 seconds after casting on him.
Huskar is a hero that is stronger when his health point is lower, so, Oracle casted False Promise on Huskar while he is below 15% of full health point was always able to turn the team fight from disadvantage to advantage because Huskar always able to kill at least 2 heroes under False Promise effect.
Keen Gaming played a total of 3 best-of-three series matches in Group A to earn their chance advance into Upper Bracket in Playoffs.
As expected from us, Keen Gaming beat down Ninja In Pyjamas in the opening match 2-1. However, they were whitewashed by Gambit Esports 2-0 in the winners’ match and taking on and won Ninja In Pyjamas again in Decider Match.
Looking at Keen Gaming draft in the group stage, they only played Brewmaster or Tuskar as their position four. This is advantage EHOME can utilize by banning or countering these two picks in their upcoming match-up.
Although Keen Gaming displayed a lot of core heroes being picked in group stage, but their understanding to the meta of the patch is not as good as EHOME because they picked Quee of Pain and Shadow Fiend as their position 2 hero in their match-up against Gambit Esports.
These 2 heroes are considered as tier 3 or maybe tier 4 hero in the meta of the latest patch. Gambit took advantage of those picks and drafted Mepoo to counter Queen of Pain in game one.
EHOME vs. Keen Gaming betting prediction
After analysing the drafting abilities and performance in the group stage of both squads, we give EHOME a 70% chance to win this match-up.
Our recommendation is to go low and bet on EHOME win at better than -120.48 at BetOnline.
