Team Dignitas HGC Mid-Season Brawl Recap

(Photo courtesy of Blizzard, Marianna Bagirova)

The first Heroes Global Championship event, the Mid-Season Brawl, has come to a close. Some of the most exciting, epic, and astonishing games took place in Heroes of the Storm to date. Team Dignitas fought through the Group Stage with an impressive performance to earn the 2nd seed into the Playoffs Bracket. The team made it all the way to the Grand Finals, but fell to Fnatic after 6 close games, earning themselves 2nd place overall. This event showcased the most outstanding games Team Dignitas have ever played, which included the monumental games versus the Korean teams. In this article, we’ll go through some of the highlights of Team Dignitas’ MSB Playoffs journey.

TEAM DIGNITAS vs MVP BLACK 3-1 (UPPER BRACKET) Bo5

After doing so well against L5 in the Group Stages, Team Dignitas had to prove they were capable of taking on any of the Korean teams. Jérôme “JayPL” Trinh on his Stitches proved in many of the games that a playmaking tank was integral to Team Dignitas’ compositions. JayPL has extreme accuracy at landing Hooks and the rest of the team was always there to follow up for kills. Many of the game winning fights in this series were initiated with a Stitches hook or Anub’arak Cocoon to isolate a target, then a follow-up from James “Bakery” Baker’s Malfurion to silence all nearby enemies. Team Dignitas also drafted Illidan for Kenn "Zaelia" Rasmussen a few times, which allowed them a split soaker who had a semi-global ability at Level 10. Zaelia successfully used The Hunt to catch MVP Black off-guard anytime they tried to disengage from a team fight. Again and again, the stun combos were followed up with Genji, Greymane, or Thomas “Mene” Cailleux’s mages to burst down and finish off members of MVP Black. Their superior drafting and near perfect execution secured Team Dignitas another series against a formidable Korean opponent.

TEAM DIGNITAS vs FNATIC 2-3 (UPPER BRACKET FINALS) Bo5

This was a very back and forth series between EU’s top 2 teams. Fnatic would win one game and Team Dignitas would win the next. With the series tied at 2-2, the final game on Sky Temple was the most exciting and heartbreaking of them all. Team Dignitas seemed to get many of their preferred picks in the draft, such as Stitches, Genji, and Uther, while Fnatic’s draft was very confusing at first with their picks of Chen, Auriel, Valla, Dehaka, and Kharazim. That is until they started 5-man pushing one lane at a time. Unable to defend or counter-engage Fnatic’s aggressive push with Chen, Team Dignitas soon found themselves down 2 Forts with pressure on their bottom Keep. Fnatic grabbed a very early boss and escorted it down the bottom lane, where they took the Keep and gained Level 10. Even with reaching Level 10 themselves, Team Dignitas were unable to focus any members of Fnatic and the boss pressure took the core down to 1%. With Zaelia on Zeratul having to use Void Prison on their own core, Team Dignitas defended against the unexpected “objective ignoring” strategy from Fnatic. The downside was that they had to spend the rest of the game attempting to prevent Fnatic from destroying their 1% core. Unfortunately, Team Dignitas could not keep Fnatic at bay, and they pushed to take Game 5, sending Team Dignitas to the Lower Bracket. 

TEAM DIGNITAS vs L5 3-2 (LOWER BRACKET FINALS) Bo5

Team Dignitas headed into this series with an impressive 3-0 record against L5. As both teams were fighting for their tournament lives, L5 did not let Team Dignitas win without a proper fight. Team Dignitas won the first game on Infernal Shrines by outplaying L5 at the objectives. The 2nd and 3rd games went to L5, who accomplished a terrifying Towers of Doom game that forced Team Dignitas to regroup mentally. Luckily, the comeback kings were able to draft Illidan in both Game 4 and Game 5. Once again Zaelia’s Illidan allowed for so much split pressure, and with the constant fear of The Hunt, Team Dignitas were able to bully L5 on both battlegrounds. They won both games in a similar fashion: capturing mercs or a boss and pushing alongside them. Once they got a kill on any member of L5 who overstepped the smallest amount, they snowballed the kills from there and took the wins.

TEAM DIGNITAS vs FNATIC 4-3 (GRAND FINALS) Bo7

The rivalry continued as for the first time in Heroes history, two European teams made it to the finals at a world event that included Korean teams. As Fnatic won the Upper Bracket, they went into the Bo7 with a 1 game advantage. Team Dignitas had a lot of work to do. The first game was on Towers of Doom. Even after Team Dignitas’ shaky performance on this battleground against L5, they went with their usual strategy of picking up Abathur. By also picking up Zeratul for Zaelia, Joshua “Snitch” Bennett had a perfect Ultimate Evolution clone target for team fights. Anytime an objective spawned, Team Dignitas could draw out the team fights and allow for Abathur to soak lanes and get ahead in experience. Two altars spawned and Team Dignitas pushed Fnatic off of the first one and capture it for themselves. Zaelia attempted to catch the bottom altar but was delayed. The team moved in after getting a kill on Tyrael. They took out the rest of Fnatic at the altar and capture it to win the game.

The second game was on Cursed Hollow, and Team Dignitas pulled out their Illidan strategy once again. Even though Fnatic took away Stitches and succeeded in landing many Hook into Gorge combos, Team Dignitas’ counter-engagements with Mene’s insane Li-Ming damage gave him kills and resets with her trait. Bakery on Uther made a huge save this game by countering Brightwing's Emerald Wind and Falstad's Gust with a self-cast of Divine Sheild. He was able to walk through Fnatic's disruption to heal JayPL who was being focused with Fnatic's damage. Later in the game Team Dignitas get three kills on Fnatic, quickly pick up their third objective tribute and run it down mid to Fnatic’s core.

Game 3 and Game 4 do not end in favour of Team Dignitas. On Infernal Shrines, Fnatic’s Sonya composition outplay Team Dignitas, even with their global Falstad pick. Fnatic won the first few Punishers, but Team Dignitas take the next two. They push towards Fnatic's structures with their last Punisher, but Fnatic caught them with a well timed Twilight Dream from Malfurion, causing a full team wipe and allow Fnatic to rush and take Team Dignitas’ core down. On Tomb of the Spider Queen, Fnatic picked Medivh, who countered nearly every stun engagement and blow-up attempt Team Dignitas made. With this second Fnatic win, the score was 3-4 going into Game 5.

Team Dignitas are able to tie up the series with a win on Battlefield of Eternity. Their hyper-carry composition relied heavily on Snitch and his Tracer play. The game was very close, but Team Dignitas pushed their advantage by killing top Keep with an Immortal and helped it to march right onto Fnatic’s Core. With all 5 members of Team Dignitas up and an Immortal, Fnatic could not stop the damage. 1 game left to go with the series tied at 3-3.

The final battleground of the tournament was played on Sky Temple. Team Dignitas drafted Stitches, Kael’thas, Malfurion, and Illidan as part of their stun and burst composition, with the addition of Medivh for vision and sustain. Fnatic, on the other hand, picked up three globals, which proved to be difficult for Team Dignitas to deal with. After an unfortunate fight near the boss, Fnatic took out Team Dignitas and claimed the final win of the series.

It was a hard defeat, but Team Dignitas showed how much they have improved during Phase 1 of HGC. While the team will have to try again at BlizzCon 2017 to become world champions, at least this event earned them the subtitle “Korean Team Slayers”.  Thanks for cheering on the boys! Be sure to catch them do it all over again with HGC Phase 2 starting the weekend of June 23rd.