ROOT Gaming’s Journey in MyR Smite Weekly Cup #11
Another weekend comes by where ROOT Gaming prepares themselves for an epic day of challenges ahead. Last week was our first tournament under the new title and this week still has the same high expectations from ourselves, management and most importantly the fans. Winning the MyR Smite Cup #10 last week gave us 100 points into the monthly invitational. Stacking as many points as possible in these weekly cups will help getting a higher seed to make the monthly invitational slightly in our favor.
Going into the tournament ROOT-Gaming possesses 100 points from the victory last week, being second place to Vivacity at 115 points who won the very first weekly cup of this month. Due to the overlapping time format of the January invitational and the first weekly of February, ROOT did not participate in MyR Smite weekly cup #9.
First Round ROOT Gaming vs. Curse Gaming
Unlike last week where ROOT had a relatively easy path to the finals based on seeding, this week is completely different as we start off facing a very strong opponent, Curse (formerly known as ProCore). Our lane compositions are Shing’s Vamana and Mattypocket’s Guan Yu against Zapman’s Odin and Spark’s Hades on the left lane. Mid lane has a very cookie cutter matchup of Jerbie’s Agni vs. TheBest’s Ra. Right lane we see Lassiz’s Thor and Allied’s Vulcan pairing up against PonPon’s Sun Wukong and Shadowq’s Ymir.
Early laning phase is pretty quiet and contempt as both teams feel each other out. It was only up until the 6:30 mark where the huge burst of Ymir and Sun Wukong girdle of might combination picked off our Thor who had just used his escape hammer to clear minions while Vulcan was warding around the Gold Fury area.
However, despite the death, Thor uses his opportunity of respawning by immediately setting up a gank in the left lane. With the wards in favor of ROOT in the left lane, Thor sits near blue buff as Vamana and Guan Yu bait the initiation from Odin and Hades. With a hammer from the sky and an ultimate from Guan Yu, the damage was too much and Odin eventually falls tying up the score 1-1 with both melee ad bruiser carries death counts at one a piece. Unfortunately by leaving right lane alone for too long, Vulcan falls to the heavy burst of Ymir and Wukong with a Ra rotation sniping the kill.
The next 20 minutes is a complete farm fest from every lane. The most action seen during this time frame was Ymir warding Gold Fury while Agni from mid would counter ward it after clearing a wave forcing Ymir to respond and losing a lot of experience in the counter-warding process. However, despite Ymir’s lack of experience, it is made up for with Sun Wukong getting solo farm and experience majority of the time being the second level 20 in the game.
It wasn’t up until the 28th minute mark where the first Gold Fury was even attempted by Curse. Due to their heavy burst objective clearing potential from Girdle of Might from Ymir, Ra’s Heal plus Snipe and Odin’s Shout, the Gold Fury fell in 8 seconds flat which prevented ROOT from being able to contest as a whole team accordingly. However, ROOT gets the first tower in the game during the process with Vamana side pushing left lane. This forced Odin to rotate over, leaving a 4v4 in mid lane which resulted in Curse’s Ymir being easily picked off due to his lack of farm and levels from the whole warding process. With this one man advantage, ROOT does a 5 man push in the mid lane scoring the second tower of the whole game in the 30 minute mark and only down by 500 gold.
Action picks up again shortly after with Sun Wukong pushing right lane tower. ROOT rotates and a big team fight occurs which is in our favor as we traded our Agni and Thor for their Wukong, Ra and Ymir. Even getting their red power buff after the fight was Vamana which is huge this late in the game.
At the 36:40 mark, ROOT goes for a Gold Fury objective but backs off as they see with wards that Odin attempts to solo Fire Giant. Despite repositioning both teams in middle for a brief period of time, Vulcan’s turrets still has the attention of the 50% health Gold Fury and ROOT was able to easily clean it up and forces Curse to prematurely initiate. With perfect kiting from Agni, able to avoid dying to the Odin near mid lane and later securing the kill with a Bomb Stun combo while Thor and Vamana chase down and kill the fleeing Ra.
This two man advantage allows ROOT to secure the Fire Giant objective with Curse contesting a few seconds too late. With Agni dying for the exchange of the rest of Curse, Vulcan uses this opportunity to push the second middle tower. Once Odin respawns and comes to the tower’s aid, he feels confident enough to try to trap the Vulcan in tower range with his ring of spears ultimate. However, the resilience of Vulcan bought enough time for Guan Yu to assist him and netted a kill on the Odin and destroying the second mid tower. During that whole encounter in middle, Vamana pushes the second left tower forcing Ra to try to slow him down but to no avail. With Vamana grouping up mid shortly after, the push continues as the mid phoenix falls. Thor uses this opportunity to freely destroy both right lane towers.
While not pushing for the win but extending ROOT’s advantage as much as possible, a Gold Fury objective is called for which was completely uncontested, extending ROOT’s gold lead to 9,000. Immediately after Gold Fury is claimed, Thor sees Ymir pushing middle lane and uses his ultimate to catch him from max distance, scoring an immediate pick off. Due to the heavy area of effect damage and stuns from Guan and Agni, the Odin which tried to come to the rescue falls as well.
With this two man advantage, ROOT takes an uncontested Fire Giant objective and pushes for the win as they take out two phoenixes and then the Minotaur.
Round Two ROOT Gaming vs. BLG NA
With a tough opponent down in round one, the road doesn’t get any easier with BLG NA standing in our way for round two. Despite a small roster change of BLG’s former mid player Arenatank leaving, their roster remains strong with the acquisition of Scytheman.
Left lane: Shing’s Vamana and Mattypocket’s Thor vs. Andinster’s Anhur and TheAlpha’s Bacchus.
Mid lane: Jerbie’s Ao Kuang vs. Scytheman’s Ra.
Right lane: Lassiz’s Hebo and Allied’s Vulcan vs. Kaeyoh’s Anubis and Stermes’ Guan Yu.
Action picks off very quickly as the level two combo’s and Girdle of Might of BLG were superior to ROOT’s left lane with Vamana being the victim of first blood to Bacchus. While every lane is relatively patient, this left lane is action packed. BLG’s Anhur and Bacchus initiates first forcing ROOT to counter initiate with double ultimates onto the Anhur. With a perfectly timed purification beads from Anhur to counter the Thor ultimate, BLG was able to re-initiate and secure the Vamana kill as his Colossal Fury ultimate expired. Shortly after, BLG picks another fight trying to extend their advantage as they take advantage of Thor using his hammer to clear a creep wave. The pop up from Bacchus’ Belly Flop and double ultimates were too much for Thor as he dropped almost instantly, even despite the attempt from ROOT’s Ao Kuang rotating over to help.
However, on the right lane, Anubis was able to wrap a stun on the Hebo which triggered the follow-up ultimate of Guan Yu. With the perfect purification beads and aegis timing from Hebo and the turrets from Vulcan, the counter initiate went in favor for ROOT as Guan Yu falls.
Action picks up further at the 12 minute mark as BLG feels confident enough with Ra’s heal, their small 1,300 gold lead, level advantages and most importantly Vamana being on the other side of the map, to attempt a Gold Fury objective with all players from ROOT alive. As ROOT comes to contest, Bacchus initiates on Hebo but with Ao Kuang’s Spirit Tempest ultimate landing and knocking up both squishy mages Ra and Anubis, leaving them at 50% health as soon as the fight starts, buys enough time for Hebo to get a few cooldowns off. Ra and Hebo both fall and Vamana comes into the fight a little bit later cleaning up the fleeing Anubis. With Vulcan’s turrets and Ao Kuang’s Tornado constantly zoning out Anhur while keeping agro on the Gold Fury and damaging it still, ROOT completes the objective despite Guan Yu still remaining in their face trying to steal it with an ultimate.
Right lane picks up a kill on Guan Yu as Ao Kuang rotates over to secure a kill after a long 2v2 fight leaving everyone with low health.
As action slows down, BLG goes into their heavy team jungle hunting trying to find someone to pick off that’s out of position and eventually catch a poor rotation from Vulcan.
At the 19 minute mark as Gold Fury respawned, BLG positions themselves around the area trying to fake that they were attempting the Gold Fury objective. ROOT didn’t bite due to a nicely placed ward but remained to keep a close eye in case BLG decides to fully commit to Gold Fury while still managing to push down BLG’s mid tower. Finally, after a lot of repositioning from both teams, the fight begins as Vamana catches Anhur slightly out of position damaging him so much that it forces him completely out of the remainder of the fight despite not securing the kill. With both BLG’s tanks trying to help Anhur, this leaves the Anubis and Ra vulnerable and our Thor and Hebo capitalize on this opportunity killing Anubis and forcing Ra to retreat with Sprint. As Guan Yu tries to retreat from ROOT’s pursuit, Ra comes back but instantly gets target switched dying in two seconds which still allows ROOT to continue to chase and kill very low health Guan Yu. As ROOT fights the Gold Fury, BLG’s Anhur comes in and steals the objective with his Desert Fury ultimate but sacrifices his life in the process. In the end of that whole exchange, BLG loses 4 members but gets the Gold Fury, while ROOT still has a gold lead of 1,400.
Shortly after, Hebo and Vulcan push the right tower down. However, in the process as Hebo tries to zone out the Anubis, it puts himself out of position as Anhur and Ra show up to net the kill.
Action slows down heavily up until BLG sets up for another Gold Fury objective at the 26 minute mark. With ROOTs Vulcan’s turrets and Vamana nearby, BLG decides to let the Gold Fury reset and tries again in an attempt to lure our Hebo or Ao Kuang out of position. As our Vamana dashes forward trying to get behind enemy lines, the fight begins. Once again our Thor and Ao Kuang worked perfectly with one another with their long ranged ultimates picking off Anubis early in the fight. BLG’s Bacchus falls once ROOT target switched due to taking early damage from Gold Fury and a lot of area of effect damage.
Despite these team fights going in ROOT’s favor, BLG yet again attempts a gold fury at the 29 minute mark due to witnessing Ao Kuang teleporting back to base in the mid lane. As the gold fury is half complete and Thor in the sky, BLG fans out and waits for him to land. As Thor and Vamana initiate onto Anubis, BLG react instantly with Anhur impaling Thor to the wall and Anubis and Ra landing their ultimates picking off both ROOT agressors. Despite ROOT completing the Gold Fury objective during the fight that took place in the back, BLG was still able to chase down and kill the Hebo making it a 3 man advantage for BLG which allowed them to take the Fire Giant objective after returning to base for a quick item purchase and heal. A delayed contest from ROOT allows BLG to secure the objective.
Even with Fire Giant buff on all five BLG members, ROOT does a fantastic job heavily delaying their ability to push towers with Ao Kuang’s tornadoes and Vulcan’s turrets. ROOT delayed the first middle tower from falling for a full 1 minute and 40 seconds while still being able to do long range poke damage. After destroying the first mid tower, BLG begins to move over to the right lane in an attempt to try to get it quickly enough before all of ROOT can rotate over. However, they hesitated while waiting for their minions to go in first to avoid tower damage, and ROOT was able to reposition themselves in time to delay the process even further.
This time, with BLG being fed up how long it took to destroy the mid tower, they fully commit on the first wave with Bacchus Belly Flopping and intoxicating onto Hebo with Ra barely barely missing his Searing Pain ultimate to secure the kill. Ao Kuang was able to hit Guan Yu, Ra and Anubis with his Spirit Tempest ultimate which allowed Vamana to clean up Anubis with his Colossal Fury ultimate while at the same time zoning out the Anhur from hitting anyone else. The amount of damage done from Ao Kuang’s ultimate and tornadoes allowed the Hebo to use his Crushing Wave ultimate to finish off Guan Yu then cleaning up both Ra and Bacchus for the triple kill. As Anhur remained in the lane for too long, ROOT all turned their heads to the last remaining BLG member and killed him off scoring a deicide without a single member from ROOT falling. This five man advantage allowed ROOT to push the right lane all the way until finally making BLG’s Minotaur collapse.
Round Three ROOT Gaming vs. MyRevenge EU
As if the first or second round wasn’t hard enough, ROOT Gaming faces off against another extremely difficult opponent in a Best-Of-One, MyRevenge EU. What should have been a grand finals match in the eyes of the community of Smite, ended up being played in the semi-finals due to the randomness of the brackets. It was an unfortunate circumstance for both teams to be in this BO1 predicament being so close to the grand finals.
Left lane: Shing’s Thor and Mattypocket’s Sobek vs. Youngbae’s Anhur and Badgah’s Ymir
Mid lane: Jerbie’s Ra vs. UlleW’s (subbing in for Sprayarn) Agni
Right lane: Lassiz’s Hebo and Allied’s Vulcan vs. Hyrrok’s Guan Yu and Spooh’s Hades
The laning phase was patient and meticulous waiting for perfect opportunities from both sides as there were no secured kills despite being several attempts from both sides. It wasn’t until the 18 minute mark where the first blood kill was landed for ROOT’s favor as MyR EU’s Agni was slightly out of position after rotating right lane to assist a counter gank which ROOT had set up for. As an immediate result of Agni falling, ROOT’s Ra was able to push and destroy the mid tower giving ROOT a 2,400 gold lead.
A few minutes later, due to Guan Yu assisting mid, Hebo and Vulcan were able to do a lot of damage to the right lane tower and eventually destroyed it as Ra rotated over to help. Because of this 3 man positioning over on the right lane, which was opposite side of Gold Fury, MyR EU decided to begin the objective but ROOT showed up quickly enough to force the Gold Fury to reset back to her original position. After MyR EU backed off, Thor decided to use his Anvil of Dawn ultimate, landing on top of a stray Anhur and instantly killing him with a full combo of abilities while landing one auto attack between each ability used. With this one man advantage, ROOT clears the Gold Fury objective while MyR EU hesitates and watches from the distance being zoned out by Vulcan’s turrets extending ROOT’s gold lead to 5,200.
A huge team fight breaks out soon after as ROOT attempts to steal the Red Buff power as Guan Yu and Hades secures it and catches an out of position Hebo, forcing a purification beads due to Guan Yu’s ultimate. A lot of combinations of ultimates, purification beads and aegis’ being forced in that fight but only ROOT’s hebo falls in the end to a revived Anhur that came in the fight late.
With this one man advantage, MyR EU attempts a Fire Giant objective at the 26 minute mark. After Hades initially grabs the FG agro, he goes to zone out ROOT and as a result the FG agro went onto the Anhur dealing 33% of his total health before the contest for FG occurs. As Vulcan and Sobek enter the FG cave throwing their spells out, Anhur is forced to jump out towards blue buff area while the MyR EU tanks stay on the giant trying to secure the objective. This left the Agni outside of the cave vulnerable to ROOT and he falls quickly. Despite Guan Yu and Ymir staying on the Fire Giant throughout the whole fight, the hawk eye of Jerbie was so focused on the health bar and his Searing Pain ultimate landed for the last hit giving the Fire Giant buff to ROOT! With Ymir having no escape possible and all of MyR EU retreating due to their low health, Ymir was picked off. Thor wasn’t done however as he used his Anvil of Dawn to cut the distance on a teleporting Guan Yu and caught him with his pants down.
ROOT begins to make a strong push as they use this fire giant and three man advantage to push down the middle phoenix, then immediately pushing all left towers, including the phoenix. After securing all left lane objectives, ROOT collectively teleport back to base to heal and purchase items. This push gave ROOT a 10,700 gold lead and huge map control. With only MyR EU’s second right tower and phoenix remaining, ROOT makes their march onward and picking off an out of position Ymir in the process. After destroying the last remaining MyR EU tower and phoenix, the last stand begins at the Minotaur. With all phoenix’s down for MyR EU, the Minotaur was very fragile and quickly fell despite the best efforts of MyR to save it.
Grand Finals ROOT-Gaming vs. Myoelectric Game One
After beating three out of the top four established and current Smite teams, we felt unstoppable going into the Grand Finals vs. Myoelectric. We knew who they were going into the match as we ran into them plenty of times whether it was solo or team ranked. They are all individually talented players but as a team, they didn’t prove themselves yet. However, being on this platform in the Grand Finals would allow them to gain a lot of notoriety against us so we weren’t planning on taking them lightly.
Left lane: Shing’s Vamana and Mattypocket’s Sobek vs. Gunmetal’s Hebo and Riddic’s Bacchus
Mid lane: Jerbie’s Ra vs. JeffzHindla’s Hades
Right lane: Lassiz’s Anhur and Allied’s Vulcan vs. LetsHaveAKiki’s Sun Wukong and JeffHindla’s Guan Yu
The laning phase was very quiet pre-level five up until the left lane Vamana and Sobek double ultimate after Bacchus used his Belly Flop offensively to initiate with Intoxicate ultimate. The counter-initiation allowed Sobek to land the first blood on Bacchus. Another kill in this lane occurs again at the level 9 phase but this time it was a trade of MyO’s Hebo for ROOT’s Sobek. Shortly after, a greedy and unsafe play by Vamana, with less than 25% health, stayed in lane too long for that one extra wave cost him his life as Guan Yu rotated over. Meanwhile at the same time, Anhur steals the Red power buff from Sun Wukong and almost kills him in the process.
ROOT attempts a early 12 minute Gold Fury while Bacchus and Hebo are on the other side of the map and secure the objective despite Sun Wukong, Hades and Guan Yu from MyO contesting. Once the fight breaks out Ra and Sun Wukong immediately get traded with Guan Yu shortly falling after. Then Vulcan, knowing he was going to die in that team fight to Bacchus and Hades, puts himself further away from the rest of ROOT to allow them to safely secure the Hebo kill.
After lanes reset a bit and a three man gank for MyO was spotted early, ROOT brings over Sobek to the right lane and a 3v3 fight between Vulcan, Anhur and Sobek vs. Guan Yu, Sun Wukong and Bacchus begin. All three members of MyO falls with only Vulcan from ROOT falling due to the rotation of Hades. However, ROOT immediately turns on him and it was a 4 for 1 exchange and continue to push down the right tower extending the gold lead to 4,500.
At the 17:20 mark there was a lot of action as Vamana and Sobek are pushing the left lane tower against a lonely Hebo. As Sobek is using Lurking in the Water to zone and attempt to kill a Hebo that had just used his own Crushing Wave ultimate to escape death from Vamana, Hades and Bacchus show up to save the day and end up killing Sobek. Meanwhile Anhur and Vulcan are doing Gold Fury while Sun Wukong watches and waits to try to steal it. As Gold Fury is reaching death and Anhur uses his Desert Fury ultimate to secure the objective, the Sun Wukong steals the Gold Fury with his Furious Monkey bounces! This diminishes ROOT’s gold lead to 2,500. While MyO rotated over to the gold fury area on right lane jungle side thinking a team fight would break out, Vamana was able to destroy the first left lane tower.
Shortly after, Anhur and Sobek grouped up with Ra in middle to secure the low health tower. After a bit of back and forth counter pushing in the middle lane, Anhur extends a little too far and gets three man ganked with a silence from Hades, a knock up from Bacchus and another knockup from Hebo, he had no time to react.
With another Gold Fury objective started by ROOT at the 23 minute mark, a fight breaks out as 5% health remain and MyO steals it again with an auto attack from Bacchus! At the end of the fight, MyO gains the edge as they pick off everyone except for Vulcan while only losing Bacchus and Guan Yu who are expendable at this point. This cuts ROOT’s lead to only 1,100 gold. This two man advantage for MyO allowed them to secure the Fire Giant objective.
MyO uses this Fire Giant buff advantage to push both left lane towers while killing Vamana and Sobek in the process. Afterword they decide to teleport back to base to heal and purchase items, then destroy the first mid tower immediately following that up with an uncontested Gold Fury at the 29 minute mark, taking a 4,000 gold lead.
Both teams gather around the Fire Giant as it respawned and hold their ground waiting for someone to make the first move. Eventually Guan Yu and Sun Wukong try to do Fire Giant while the other three from MyO zoned ROOT out. With Hades and Bacchus using their ultimates only on Sobek and Vamana, Hebo was able to finish off Vamana with his own ultimate. However, Hebo’s ultimate forced him in an overextended position into the rest of ROOT which immediately capitalize and pick him off. Guan Yu and Ra are the next to get traded off with Anhur using his leap offensively trying to save Ra and ends up being the victim himself to a Furious Monkey bounce.
With this one man advantage, being three against two, MyO decides to attempt Fire Giant after healing up. This immediately draws in Vulcan and Sobek and MyO capitalizes on Vulcan’s inability to escape from team fights picking him off then re-attempting Fire Giant again. However, Vulcan’s death bought enough time for Anhur, Ra and Vamana to respawn and contest the Fire Giant attempt by MyO.
Sun Wukong, Hades and Guan Yu are inside the Fire Giant cave as Bacchus and Hebo are zoning. Vamana immediately is on the Hebo like white on rice, making it a 1v1 near mid lane while everyone else is situated around Fire Giant cave. Sobek uses his Lurking in the Water ultimate to try to steal the Fire Giant but it wasn’t low enough so he immediately positions himself closely to the three MyO members hitting all of them with a full timer. Wukong gets immediately killed shortly after Sobek Tail Whips him outside where he is met by Ra’s Celestial beam. MyO then turn their attention to the low health Sobek and Anhur picking them both off. Both Hebo and Vamana come back into the fight but with Ra being so low, all it took was a Crushing Wave ultimate from Hebo and a Water Cannon to clean him up. However, luckily for ROOT Vulcan finally respawned and helped Vamana clean up the Hebo.
Shortly after, MyO’s bacchus got extremely overzealous as he used his belly flop into ROOT’s side Red Buff to clear a ward. Realizing that Bacchus had used his only escape, ROOT capitalized on this opportunity and picked him off. With this one man advantage, ROOT goes for a FG objective. Sobek tanks FG while Anhur is damaging it while Ra and Vamana zone the rest of MyO on the outside. Guan Yu and Hades used their ultimates on Vamana but to no avail as Vamana recovered all his health with a Colossal Fury ultimate further delaying MyO to effectively contest FG. This bought enough time for Anhur to kill FG but MyO didn’t know it was completed and Sun Wukong somersaults into the cave instantly getting impaled to the wall by Anhur. After recovering from the stun, Sun Wukong still managed to get off his ultimate and full combo killing the Anhur before falling himself. With the heals from Ra and the FG buff, ROOT was able to finish off Hebo and Hades. This then led ROOT to an uncontested second middle tower, and gold fury.
ROOT decides to make a push on the second left lane tower. Once initiating, Sobek takes the tower agro for too long and gets picked off rather easily. Once ROOT repositions themselves a bit further away, MyO overextends a bit too far and Sun Wukong and Bacchus die due to the heavy slow from Vulcan’s turret. With only Guan Yu and Hades being alive for MyO, ROOT completes an uncontested FG objective.
With this very late game FG buff advantage, ROOT makes a push on the right lane. After the initiation from MyO ouside of phoenix range, Sobek and Vamana was able to pick off an out of position Hebo with the heavy CC capabilities of Sobek’s Tail Whip and Fling. With FG Buff and one man up, ROOT destroys all three phoenixes and goes in to finish off the Minotaur.
Grand Finals ROOT-Gaming vs. Myoelectric Game Two
After a very strong performance by MyO in game one which could, and should, have been a loss for ROOT, we were able to keep our composure in the end of game one and shake it off for the beginning of game two.
Left lane: Shing’s Thor and Mattypocket’s Sobek vs. LetsHaveAKiki’s Sun Wukong and JeffHindla’s Guan Yu
Mid lane: Jerbie’s Ra vs. JeffzHindla’s Hades
Right lane: Lassiz’s Agni and Allied’s Vulcan vs. Gunmetal’s Hebo and Riddic’s Bacchus
Action picks up early on right lane as Lassiz scores a double kill with the help of Girdle of Might, Vulcan’s turrets and reaching level five before MyO was able to.
More action on the right lane as the level 7 Agni/Vulcan poke combo get Hebo and Bacchus low enough that allowed for a safe and calculated tower dive killing the Bacchus and forcing Hebo to use his Crushing Wave defensively to get away.
Shortly after, Thor comes crashing down from the sky to gank the Hades in middle lane. As Thor lands his full combo plus Heal/Celestial Beam combo from Ra, the perfectly aimed Searing Pain ultimate kills Hades as he was about to escape. Vulcan then groups up middle in an attempt to push the tower. However, MyO rotates Sun Wukong and Guan Yu over and was able to pick off the Ra with a double ultimate combo.
As Thor rotated over left lane to push the minion wave back with his hammer, Hebo waterspouts him forcing him in a very awkward position allowing Bacchus enough time to rotate and secure the kill as Thor decided to go the long way around trying to get away from Hebo buying time for his hammer cooldown.
Ra gets a little too confident in middle lane taking unnecessary damage from both the minion creep wave and Hades ultimate with Hebo coming in to clean up the kill.
Thor holds mid lane after Ra’s death and takes MyO’s Red Buff as Hades teleported back to base meanwhile Vulcan falls to the heavy burst combo of Guan Yu and Sun Wukong despite using aegis to counter act both ultimates.
MyO’s Sun Wukong and Guan Yu do a blue buff at the 12:30 mark which Vulcan comes in attempting to contest due to seeing their health and mana from a nicely placed ward. After Vulcan nearly kills the Sun Wukong and forcing a Guan Yu ultimate to try to save him, ROOT attempts a 13 minute Gold Fury and completes it without any resistance from MyO due to ROOT’s advantageous map positioning and warding.
Ra makes a nice play a few minutes later, securing the Red Buff of MyO’s side due to seeing Hades teleporting back to base.
At the 18:40 mark, it’s MyO’s turn to take advantage of map positioning and warding as they attempt a Gold Fury objective with ROOT slightly out of position. As Gold Fury nears 10% health, ROOT goes in with a Thor Anvil of Dawn crashing onto the battle field sparking the beginning of the fight, both teams take immense area of effect damage. ROOT is able to steal the Gold Fury during the big team fight. However, Sobek rotated over very late and without that protection that Sobek brings to a team fight, every member of ROOT in the fight falls while everyone from MyO remains standing.
MyO uses this advantage to push down the first tier towers of middle and left lane. After MyO teleports back to purchase, ROOT takes advantage by pushing down the first tier tower of MyO.
With the next respawned Gold Fury around the 24:50 mark, MyO groups up and begins the objective. Sobek uses this opportunity to push the opposite left lane tower down. After MyO secures the objective, they decide to immediately engage on the ROOT members that tried to get the last hit with a long distant spell. After MyO used all their cooldown’s on Ra and picking him off, ROOT was able to counter initiate picking off both Hades and Hebo. As this occurs, Sobek manages to push down the second left lane tower while Vulcan and Agni pick off Sun Wukong on the right lane that got stopped by a ranged minion from teleporting back! ROOT capitalizes on the kill by pushing the first tier right lane tower. As Agni and Vulcan continue to feign pressure on the right lane, Thor starts the Fire Giant objective.
As ROOT continues to press for this objective, using most of their cooldowns, MyO’s Bacchus comes in with a Belly Flop and Intoxicate ultimate to steal the objective! They don’t leave empty handed however as ROOT picks off the fragile Hebo.
Shortly after Hebo respawned and goes to counter-push middle lane, ROOT catches him out of position as he attempts to rotate over to right lane to group up with the rest of his team. Another MyO member, Sun Wukong is overextended pushing the right lane being right under the tower with his minions decides to teleport on the spot. As his teleport is nearing completion Ra comes to drop a heal on top of the Wukong to stop his teleport but the Magi’s Blessing item absorbs the first tick of it and safely teleports back home!
As ROOT makes a push in the middle lane and catches Guan Yu with a Sobek fling, Bacchus Belly Flops and Intoxicates on top of four ROOT players. With Agni being at very low health, Sun Wukong somersaults past the front line to use all his cooldowns only on the Agni securing the kill. Both teams reset after that and MyO makes an attempt at a Gold Fury. MyO secures the Gold Fury objective despite a Sobek and Ra contest, nearly killing the Sobek in the process.
A short while after things quiet down, ROOT attempts a Fire Giant objective when noticing Sun Wukong and Guan Yu teleported back. After realizing they didn’t have the adequate amount of DPS to take it down, they backed off and managed to pick off an extremely out of position Bacchus due to Thor being able to attract three MyO members attention away from helping. While still being a nuisance to the Hebo, Thor manages to do just enough damage and escape from everyone while Vulcan was able to get the last hit on Hebo with his Backfire. With the remainder of the fight being 5v3, ROOT was able to clean up the rest of MyO while only losing Ra in the process.
Knowing that every member of MyO is dead for a very long time, ROOT makes this final four man push, ignoring the Fire Giant objective. After destroying the left phoenix, ROOT demolishes the Minotaur and wins the MyRevenge Smite Cup Weekly #11!
This gives ROOT a total of 200 points for the February Invitational and currently in the first position. We are guaranteed at least the fourth seed depending on our results in the Smite Weekly Cup #12, however we will be aiming for the first seed! |
