OGA Dota PIT Season 4 Europe/CIS recap

The OGA Dota PIT Season 4 Europe/CIS concluded with the overwhelming victory of Natus Vincere over team OG. Although team OG asserted dominance throughout the playoffs, the unexpected arrival of the Mistwoods Update certainly evened out the Dota 2 esports playing field.

The Mistwoods Update

When the Mistwoods Update went live, the matches immediately shifted because of the new changes too. Most teams didn’t have time to even look at the patch notes, let alone study them. For example, Nigma and Alliance played their second round with the new patch. With the meta shifted, common carry picks such as Sven and Faceless Void just became obsolete.

Viewers got to witness Aliwi “w33” Omar played his signature Meepo after a very long time. With significant changes to heroes and mechanics, there’s no better moment to pick literally any hero. Hence, Nigma managed to salvage their series with a 2-1 comeback following Alliance’s first match victory.

Diglett dig,
Diglett dig, Diglett dig! pic.twitter.com/YIgWJ721nI

—
Team Nigma (@TeamNigma) December
18, 2020

OGA Dota PIT Season 4

Navi’s entry into the OGA Dota PIT S4 has been rather underwhelming for the most part. They defeated an underdog team in the upper bracket, Live to Win, and Alliance, who are mediocre at best. In contrast, team OG was first to secure a spot in the grand finals and defeated Virtus.pro in the first round. This is a noteworthy achievement, considering VP was the EPIC League champions after defeating OG in the grand finals.

Unfortunately, team OG played rather cautiously since the drafts, picking only familiar heroes instead of trying new strategies. Sébastien “Ceb” Debs’ Magnus, Martin “Saksa” Sazdov’s Earth Spirit, and Johan “N0tail” Sundstein’s Phoenix were frequent picks prior to the update. Whereas Navi pursued unorthodox drafts while the lines were still blurry on the top heroes in this update.

Second time's not the charm.

We tried our hardest, but it wasn't enough this time.

GGWP to @natusvincere!

And a huge thank you to iLTW for standing in when we needed a friendly hand, thanks for carrying us.

Till we meet again brother. #DreamOG pic.twitter.com/n8CBhFivKl

— OG (@OGesports) December 18, 2020

Navi’s offlane Slardar was a clear winner in the Dota 2 Mistwoods update. His new Aghanim’s Shards ability enables him to apply the Corrosive Haze debuff on enemies hit by him. This served as a perfect setup for the rest of Navi to bombard the victim after the first stun. Furthermore, Bogdan “Iceberg” Vasilenko’s Silencer with Gleipnir was a dangerous combo. The new item, Gleipnir, proved to be a reliable area-of-effect stun for Silencer to land hits while providing ample intelligence stats.

Despite team OG’s efforts, Navi won the finals before it even began. Regardless, it wouldn’t be fair to blame OG for the OGA Dota PIT Season 4 letdown since it’s their first few Dota 2 esports games with the Mistwoods Update. The matches could have gone both ways if Navi’s drafts hadn’t worked out so flawlessly for them.

Written by Marcus Wong

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