EPTNavi and Liquid concluded a ~75 minute game earlier. What made the game a little special was that it featured Ember Spirit. In this game, Navi was comfortably in the lead in the early-mid game, but they could not push high ground at all. Liquid eventually won the game with brilliant play by qojqva's Tinker.
Navi
Ember Spirit
Sand King
Prophet
Chen
AA
Liquid
Naix
Beastmaster
Tinker
Visage
Rubick
I think many have read my opinions in the Ember Spirit thread. In this blog post, I won't rant about the skill/item build xboct went, because IMO it had not much relevance in this game. What I meant is that even if Xboct went for my suggested mass BF/Crit build, it wouldn't make much of a difference simply because of the draft. Firstly we have to look at what Ember Spirit does in late game.
Ember Spirit has pathetic stat gain, and zero steroids. What this mean is that Ember Spirit should never be played as a manfighting hero. He will simply lose to every other carry, or get taken down easily. The only reason he can carry is because of SoF. Late game Guard/Remnant/Chain deal irrelevant damage, so I hope everyone recognises that Ember's sole usefulness late game is SoF. Coupled with my earlier mentioned point, it means that Ember in late game should be standing away and just spamming SoF every 6s. He only goes in melee range when it is relatively safe for him to do so (eg. cleaning up the fight).
Now we take a look at the draft. Because of the nature of Ember in late game, you need heroes to be in the front line for him. Similar to how 4p1 strategies work with Sniper, you need hero(s) to make it difficult for teams to initiate on Ember. That way, he has free reign to spam SoF comfortably. In Navi's lineup, Sand King wants to be in fog to prepare for Epicentre/initiation. Chen/AA are squishy supports. Prophet is a squishy right click hero as well. None of these heroes are capable of being in the front line. The only units in the front line are Treants and neutrals. You can say that Navi's draft is simply not suited to Ember's strengths.
Furthermore just by looking at the draft, you can conclude easily that Liquid is very likely to win. Why is this so? That is because Navi has zero heroes that can push against a March defense, and thus they are never going to break Liquid's high ground with Tinker alive. Tinker also nullifies the threat of Prophet split pushing.
So regardless of how well Navi did in early-mid game, or what item build Ember went, they will never be able to push against March if they went for a standard game. Their late game is also inferior because of how their draft is unsuitable for Ember. Right from the draft you can predict the following:
1) Early game that could have gone either way.
2) Navi is unable to push against March in mid game.
3) Navi is unable to push against March in late game.
Nonetheless, Navi did surprise me by how they were able to still compete in teamfights in the late game. It is a testament to their ridiculous teamfighting ability. Navi's only hope in late game was to catch Tinker without buyback. However it is very difficult to do so, and Tinker constantly had enough to buyback. The one time where they did kill Tinker, he had his Bloodstone already.
IMO with the way Navi played, they had a window where they could win. At one stage, they managed to take down tower after tower. They had a gold advantage, that should have gotten them enough gold for Blademails on Chen/AA/SK (instead of working towards Agha for AA, Veil for SK, and Force for Chen). Remember that Tinker was the only reason Liquid could hold the game, and the relatively early Blademails would simply kill him. Prophet could have built towards Necrobook, and the sheer strength of Treants + Neutrals + Necro 3 could easily get Navi raxes with Tinker dead.
75 minutes felt like it would make an epic game. But honestly I didn't feel it was fantastic. It was something that should have been expected when the draft was finished.
