Sad Boys - Denial Esports Show VoD
Draft
The draft started out in a fairly standard manner. With Sad Boys taking Visage with their first pick and Denial picking up Invoker and Venomancer in reply. But a few picks later, after Sad Boys made Dazzle their 4th pick, Capitalist--commentating on the jD stream--immediately reacted with comments that Arteezy may take Dazzle mid. As you may be thinking, this is a very rare ocurrence in professional Dota2. But this wouldn't be the only rare occurrence (read on for the others!). And Capitalist was on point with his prediction, as we later saw Arteezy indeed take the usual support hero into the midlane as a two/three role.
First Blood
That outside-the-box approach would soon be awarded with Arteezy's Dazzle assisting on the first blood on Denial's mid-lane Invoker, played by DK.
Denial would counter-punch by taking advantage when Sad Boys' Enigma, played by Zai, would find himself way too deep in Denial's Direside jungle. His attempted escape route even took him behind the enemy tier 2 midlane tower, but it would not be a succesful escape with Denial evening up the kill-score at one apiece.
Over the next ten minutes, both teams would stay relatively even in kills, but Sad Boys taking a slow, steady advantage on the gold and experience graphs. By 15 minutes in, their lead in both was over 7.5k. They had the game well in hand.
Checking back in on Dazzle at this point, Arteezy had chosen an ambitious Hand of Midas build. As many commtentators have noted, the Hand of Midas does not give as much immediate return for its 2050 gold cost as other similarly-priced items. Its value is from the progression of items that (hopefully) follow.
And, in the hands of Arteezy, oh how fascinating that progression would be!
Arteezy and Fear Get Aggressive and Make History
After finishing his Power Treads, he next purchased a Shadow Amulet, turning it into a Shadow Blade just a few minutes later. As Nahaz noted both in-game and on his Twitter, this was the first time in professional Dota2 that any player had ever built a Shadow Blade on Dazzle.
Around the time Dazzle was finishing his Shadow Blade, Fear's Bounty Hunter had a little over 3k Gold. A few minutes later, he had collected enough to buy a Sacred Relic, and subsequently turned it into a Radiance. Just like his teammate, Fear had made prefessional Dota2 history, completing the first-ever Radiance on a Bounty Hunter. (Props to Nahaz for both of these statistics!)
At the point that Bounty Hunter purchased his Radiance, Sad Boys Radiant side were approaching 15k in both gold and experience leads. The game was very much in their hands.
Just after the 25-minute mark, Sad Boys grabbed an Aegis, and then marched up the middle lane and after winning a huge fight at Denial's mid tier 3 tower, they drew the GG call from their American counterpart, and were ready to move on to their next game against
Revenge
Writer: SuperCletis