The Eastern European derby between PARIVISION and Aurora Gaming at the Esports World Cup for Dota 2 has come and gone, with the former winning the series more or less as expected.

Esports World Cup Dota 2: PARIVISION continue march to grand final

Nothing terribly surprising given their incredible form over the last several months and their penchant for dominating ESL events this season, but the series itself at least went all three games — something that hasn’t happened since the end of the group stage.

Game 1 — Wrath of God

I already knew that the first game would go the way of PARIVISION, because they managed to get their hands on Chen.

Chen: the hero that this team has yet to lose with throughout this entire tournament (in addition to HEROIC, but they’re gone now) over six games. Yeah, giving PARIVISION this pick is just not a good idea. And it showed this game, because both Andrey “Dukalis” Kuropatkin and Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov had a great time in the lane, which is what you hope for when you draft these two heroes in the first place.

PARI Dukalis Esports World Cup
Copyright: Wojciech Wandzel, ESL FACEIT Group/Esports World Cup Foundation

They had such a fantastic time of it, in fact, that Satanic was already invading Aurora Gaming’s triangle area before 10 minutes had even elapsed. That takes some serious guts, because if even one Aurora hero walked past him in that moment, he would have just folded over for sure. But he didn’t, so he was able to not only farm the stack, but basically deny it from Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek and Myroslav “Mira” Kolpakov.

So, with Satanic’s mid game timing completely secure, PARIVISION made their move at around 17 minutes. And because Aurora drafted Phantom Assassin for Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko for some reason, they just couldn’t delay the game long enough for him to get online. They got run over in just 32 and a half minutes, with Satanic recording 13 kills and just one death throughout.

Game 2 — Bathed in shadow

Thankfully, for the sanity of everyone in the building, Aurora didn’t just take the loss lying down. They made the necessary adjustments in the second game, allowing us all to finally witness a full three-game series at the Esports World Cup.

First of all, they banned Chen this time around, which forced Dukalis to find a different hero to play as in the form of Bane. Secondly, they picked Shadow Fiend for Gleb “kiyotaka” Zyryanov, which is great because it’s one of his best but not-so-often-played heroes. And thirdly, they somehow baited PARIVISION into picking a dogs*** hero like Phantom Lancer, in a single elimination series.

Yeah, that happened. That was a last pick PL, by the way — even though PARIVISION had already seen the Shadow Fiend selection over on the other side. They got summarily punished for it as they deserved, because Aurora recognized the need to not allow him to get going in the first place. With his lightning fast Kaya and Yasha timing at 14 minutes followed by a Blink Dagger at 16 minutes, kiyotaka just imposed himself on the map, and there was not much PARIVISION could do to stop him.

Phantom Lancer just isn’t the hero he used to be, where he can just farm for 40 minutes and become a late game inevitability. He needs to participate in teamfights in order to not fall behind — but he’s also bad at that without items. So, he’s just not a very good pick right now. Onto the next one for PARIVISION, then.

Game 3 — Oh, they gave them Chen, again

I would have thought that Aurora had learned their lesson from the first game about giving Chen to PARIVISION, because they banned the hero in the second game like I mentioned earlier. But I guess I was stupid to think so, because they allowed PARIVISION to first pick Chen after evening up the series.

Why? Just why? You know that your opponents are the best in the world at playing fast lineups like this, so I don’t understand why you would give them the hero that destroyed you so badly at the start of this match. Sure, you also got your previously undefeated Shadow Fiend once more, but if it comes at the cost of letting Chen go to PARIVISION, it’s just not worth it.

And so PARIVISION just laughed at Aurora’s challenge in the third game. There were some interesting lane-swapping shenanigans in this game, with Satanic and Nightfall going to their respective offlanes, but it was PARIVISION that came out of the laning phase better for it.

Satanic crushed TORONTOTOKYO and Mira up top, which was basically curtains for Aurora before the laning phase even ended. Allowing Morphling to get that good of a start in the offlane while also giving up Chen in the draft is just a recipe for disaster. Aurora got bulldozed by PARIVISION’s sheer gold and draft advantage thereafter, and stood no chance at actually upsetting their Eastern European rivals.

A valiant effort from them, to be sure, but it looks like they’re not quite at the level of the absolute best teams in the world yet. We’ll be seeing them at The International in September, though, so they’ll have plenty of Dota to look forward to soon. In the meantime, it’s PARIVISION who are marching on to the semifinal, where they will face Team Spirit on Friday.