HEROIC clutch it out against Team Liquid at BLAST Slam 4

A massive upset just occurred at BLAST Slam 4, with South American hopefuls HEROIC beating Team Liquid two games to none in the play-in stage.

My expectations with regards to both of these teams have now been completely shattered, neither squad being where I thought they would be at this point in the tournament.

Game 1 — Liquid’s draft win goes to waste

The first game of this best-of-three series saw Liquid win the draft pretty handily, thanks to them getting their hands on Marcus “Ace” Christensen’s Underlord — one of his comfort picks and a hero that was supposed to counter the entirety of HEROIC’s lineup. After all, HEROIC picked heroes like Gyrocopter, Puck, and Night Stalker for themselves, all of which are solved by Underlord simply buying Crimson Guard and Pipe of Insight.

Unfortunately for Liquid, the laning phase didn’t go quite to plan. They saw HEROIC gradually build a net worth lead for themselves in the early game with some great decision-making in their lanes, which was of course very bad news for Liquid’s win condition around Ace’s Underlord. It didn’t help that Liquid didn’t even have a good backup plan, because Michael “miCKe” Vu wasn’t exactly getting the best farm on his Sven this game.

And speaking of the Sven, HEROIC did a sickeningly great job of shutting miCKe down whenever he saw an opening to blink in and start hacking away. Elvis “Scofield” Peña, whom I praised the other day for being locked in this entire tournament, was on point with his Eul’s Scepter of Divinity in this regard — which frankly almost made me question whether he was scripting or not. Seriously, every time miCKe tried to jump in, Scofield was there to put him in the air and force Liquid to disengage.

This wasted precious chances for miCKe to really do some damage in teamfights, which Liquid were desperate for in the mid game. But HEROIC would never give them any other opportunities with a clinical approach to the rest of this game, holding Liquid to just four kills versus their 24. So much for a draft win, eh, Liquid?

Game 2 — Another HEROIC comeback

What is with this team and coming back from huge deficits born from critical mistakes? HEROIC proved yet again in game 2 that they are one of the most dangerous teams at BLAST Slam 4 when their backs are against the wall, squeezing out an improbable comeback after it seemed like Liquid had finally woken up in this tournament.

Ironically, the game actually started well in HEROIC’s favor, as Liquid made some pretty uncharacteristic mistakes in the laning phase. For example, Ace and Samuel “Boxi” Svahn, playing Undying and Batrider respectively, tried to dive HEROIC’s tier 1 tower in order to get a kill against either Yuma “Yuma” Langlet’s Anti-Mage or Matheus “KJ” Santos Jungles Diniz’ Bane. But a timely TP rotation from Scofield’s Hoodwink prevented the dive attempt, and even turned things around quickly giving HEROIC the kills instead.

At this point, I began to think that Liquid were thoroughly cooked in this series. They just didn’t look like they were ready mentally to go up against HEROIC, despite their on-paper talent advantage. The South American team would keep the pace through the rest of the laning phase, though it wasn’t an outright stomp like it was in the first game.

let yuma cook pic.twitter.com/Aqcutl5Bvp

— HEROIC Dota 2 (@heroicdota2) October 19, 2025

Liquid would, however, rally in the mid game thanks to the teamfight potential of their draft. Keeping miCKe’s Gyrocopter alive with Soul Rip (W) from Ace and the healing from tOfu’s Life Drain (R), they managed to take several key victories in five-on-five engagements. These moves eventually gave them a net worth advantage of almost 15,000 gold at the 43 minute mark, as well as mega creeps after some more heated teamfights.

But Yuma was completely uninterested in allowing Liquid to force a deciding game 3 in this match. Unleashing his full powers as a carry player, he made sure that his Anti-Mage carried the load in the late game as the hero is meant to, ripping Liquid’s lineup to shreds with his crazy damage output and clutch decision-making. He looked completely unfazed by the back-and-forth nature of this game, and played out of his mind to keep Liquid down for good.

Some important pickoffs finally allowed them to break the game wide open past the 60 minute mark, with Liquid finding themselves bereft of buybacks on both Michał “Nisha” Jankowski (Storm Spirit) and miCKe — the latter being their only real source of damage in the deep late game. And with no damage to put on the table, they could do nothing to stop HEROIC from taking their Ancient at 70 minutes.

Absolutely huge result for HEROIC, no doubt, who now have for themselves a slot at the LAN in Singapore. They’ll have plenty to look forward to as one of the hottest teams at this tournament, and I’m stoked to see what else they can do come November 7th. As for Liquid, they’ve got a lot of work to do with regards to figuring out how to integrate Ace and tOfu into their strategies. This squad doesn’t really have a solid identity right now, and it looks like they’re going to have to spend a ton of time this season finding just that.