Day 1 of LA Major open qualifiers for Team B8

The first day of open qualifiers for the ESL One Los Angeles Major marked the debut of Danil “Dendi” Ishutin’s new team, B8. The first two matches were easy but the third one, against Team Empire Hope, went up to the 65 minute mark. Even though Empire Hope had good AOE damage heroes against B8’s Phantom Lancer, other heroes were not countered enough. B8 had an advantage in healing, counters, durability, pushing, split pushing and defending whereas Empire Hope had an advantage in initiation, right click damage and mobility.

The worst situation for Empire Hope was when they had the lead and wanted to push on B8’s high ground but they were unable to. They had bad pushing heroes and B8 had good defending heroes. This allowed B8 to buy some time for Phantom Lancer to get a good farm. After a few rough fights, B8 were able to close the game. Empire had a good laning stage, especially for their safe lane Bloodseeker, but as the game went late, he was not effective against B8’s cores. On the other hand, Magnus was the first to reach level 30 and he was a bit effective against B8 but he alone couldn’t do the required amount of damage. Road ahead for B8 B8 will face Hailhydra next and they need to win 3 more series to qualify for the closed qualifiers round.