Month: September 2020

Categories
Dota 2

OMEGA League Season 2 to arrive in October 2020

 We are just days away from the end of this amazing event. Even though we are yet to see who will win the OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division, we already have news about the second season of the OMEGA League. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise as the first season was magnificent.

The event started in the middle of August and it features twelve of the best teams from EU and CIS. The prize pool for this region was $500,000, which made this one of the biggest online Dota 2 events ever.

New Season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y6x4D7SZYI

According to the official information, the second season of this league will also have two divisions. Needless to say, we will once again see a bunch of European and CIS teams, which is always good. However, there are also some pretty notable changes.

The first one is that there won’t be twelve teams anymore. Instead, we will only have ten teams that will play in a round-robin format in the group stage. Once the group stage is over, the top four teams from each will advance to the upper bracket of the playoff. On the other hand, the teams that finish from fifth to eighth will have to battle in the play-in stage. There, they will meet teams from the lower division. Lastly, the last two teams from each group will automatically be moved to the second division.

We still have around a month to go before the actual event begins. However, we already know the names of some of the participants:

  • Team Secret
  • Alliance
  • OG
  • Team Nigma
  • Team Liquid

As for the prize pool, we will once again have a total of $500,000 for the first division and $50,000 for the second. Of course, we will also have qualifiers, which will start on the 28th of October.

Feel free to follow DartFrog on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch for the latest Dota 2 news. We will let you know whenever there is something new.

Categories
League of Legends

G2 is the LEC 2020 Summer Champion, defeating Fnatic 3-0

G2 Esports has claimed victory in the LEC Summer Finals 2020, collecting their eighth championship, and their fourth consecutive title. The victory came over rivals Fnatic, who were also looking for their eighth title. In three dramatic games, G2 were able to capitalise on mistakes in order to become the LEC 2020 Summer Champion.

Things started well for Fnatic. A closely fought game saw both teams misplay, but eventually the raw scaling of Rasmus “Caps” Borregaard Winther would wrap things up.

Game two initially fared better with Oskar “Selfmade” Boderekon on Hecarim. Combined with the rare and unorthodox Zilean top, the spectral centaur could speed his way into ganks and team fights, causing havoc the G2. However, like death and taxes, Caps getting fed is inevitable. After a pair of misplays which saw members of Fnatic caught out of position, G2 were able to take an elder drake and secure the second victory.

Game three started disastrously for Fnatic as Caps zoned Fnatic’s Corki mid, and attempts to stabilize nemesis just let G2 snowball even further. The choice by selfmade to run Ignite/Smite rather than flash robbed the already short ranged graves of a vital piece of mobility, but allowed him to claw back the lead for Fnatic. Some questionable decisions by Mikyx who seemed to try and make up for missing Nautilus hooks by forcing engagements.

A dramatic fight at the Infernal Drake would seem to close things as Caps’ Syndra demolished Fnatic, and the team would attempt to wrap things up from there. But a series of incredible holds from Fnatic delayed G2, until eventually an incredible back door play from Caps would wrap things up.

Taking home the title, G2 must now prepare to head to Worlds 2020. Last year, the squad were the runners up of the entire event. Expectations for the team are another return to the final.

For all the latest news and analysis on League of Legends follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch.

Categories
League of Legends Uncategorized

CoreJJ Wins LCS Summer MVP After First-Place Finish to Regular Season

Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in has been crowned the LCS 2020 Summer MVP, securing his second season MVP award in two years. The Team Liquid Support player was announced as the winner on the afternoon of September 4th across the LCS’s official social media.

The award comes after a landmark season for the veteran support and one of the best showings for him following his return to the North American Region. Team Liquid rocketed from a dismal ninth-place finish in the LCS 2020 Spring Season, to a dominant first-place next split in Summer 2020 – Thanks in part to the impressive place of CoreJJ.

An in-game leader for the squad, Team Liquid’s Summer record with CoreJJ was an impressive 15-3. The support player garnering individual game MVP honors in week two, twice in week six, and again in week seven. In the Summer playoffs his performance saw the team advance to the upper-bracket finals. However, the team would unfortunately fall to FlyQuest in the fourth round. The squad now contends with TSM for a possible rematch against FQ for the title of playoff champions.

This, combined with his ever expanding popularity of CoreJJ has made him a natural candidate for MVP. Since his return to NA in 2019 CoreJJ has lived up to his reputation as a international-calibre talent. A former World Champion with Samsung Galaxy in 2017, Team Liquid’s support superstar now looks at a return to Worlds. It would be his fifth trip to the championship tournament in five years.

But first TL must topple TSM. Then CoreJJ be on the road to Worlds 2020, and a chance to secure his second world title.

For all the latest news and analysis on League of Legends follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch.

Categories
Dota 2

Gambit Esports and fng part ways

There are many legendary players in the Dota 2 CIS scene. Although most of them play core roles, there are also plenty of support players, such as Artsiom “fng” Barshak. This player was a part of Gambit Esports for some time now, playing a major role in the team and winning a number of events.

Nevertheless, after spending some time with Gambit, fng’s contract came to an end. As a result, he and the organization have decided to part ways.

Gambit & COVID-19

Gambit Esports was one of the most promising teams in Dota 2. However, the team failed to keep up with the rest due to COVID-19. As you know, the virus completely changed the competitive Dota 2 scene, which had a massive effect on just about everything. Unfortunately, some of the smaller organizations couldn’t adapt to the change, which is why they’ve released their Dota 2 rosters.

Due to the fact that Gambit didn’t take part in most events, fng decided to team up with Alliance. He’s been playing as a stand-in for the Swedish powerhouse for some time now and even took part in two grand finals. However, no one from the team has officially confirmed that fng was a part of it. What’s interesting is that many people have tried asking Alliance’s players this question, but they were never answered.

It will be interesting to see what will happen with the talented CIS player. Currently, he is once again helping Alliance in the OMEGA League Europe Immortal division. The EU squad is battling for survival in the lower bracket of the event.

Don’t forget to watch the series between Team Liquid and 5MEN tomorrow. Feel free to follow DartFrog on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch for the latest Dota 2 news.

Categories
CS:GO

Heroic and EG win ESL One Cologne

Heroic and Evil Geniuses are your ESL One Cologne Champions after they both took down their opposition in the EU and NA Online events. Both teams put in fantastic work and show the world why they are winning the majority of their games over the last few months.

Heroic win EU

Heroic have put in the work over the last few months of the online era. The team was approaching around 70% win ratio over the last few months before the player break, and this trajectory only carried on into Cologne. The team returned for the DreamHack Open Master Summer event where they finished second place. With the hype from that tournament, they transitioned into a successful team for Cologne.

The most impressive thing about Heroic is that they had to win the event, facing off against the likes of Fnatic in the Lower Bracket and Team Vitality in the final. What makes the event even better is they beat Team Vitality 3-0, which is really unprecedented. With this victory, Heroic become the first Danish team to win an ESL One event, granting them a historic status within Denmark.

Heroic’s map results were quite extraordinary as well. Heroic won Mirage 16-7, Inferno 16-13 and Nuke 16-9. This is incredibly exciting considering that these are some of the more popular maps in CS:GO right now, and Team Vitality has some excellent firepower and strategy as they one of the better teams in CS:GO.

However, Heroic has had some wind knocked out their sails. Heroic’s coach has been found to have abused a spectating bug during the DreamHack Masters Summer event. He was caught abusing a bug where the spectator camera was allowed to stay in a position the following round. This meant that the coach was allowed to get free information in live rounds. Because of this, ESL has banned their coach for a year, leading to him being benched from the team. This is serious allegations, and definitely one to watch as we pay closer attention to Heroic in the coming events.

ESL has ruled that Heroic, MiBR and Hardlegion abused the bug in recent tournaments.

EG win ESL One Cologne clean

On the other side of the Atlantic, Evil Geniuses beat Team Liquid 3-2 after an intense series between two rivals. Both teams ended up trading map after map, where Evil Geniuses earned their series victory on map 5. To top it off, both teams had really close map results as well. This was an incredible series, showing that North American CS:GO us getting their top tier rivalries back.

After a period of struggle for Team Liquid, they came bouncing back in the Final. Team Liquid had a slow start getting to the top of the scene after Evil Geniuses battered them in the Group Stages and Cloud 9 took a map off them in the elimination round. However, the more the tournament went on, the more Team Liquid found their footing.

Evil Geniuses found themselves taking the first map of the series on Nuke 19-16 after Team Liquid had only been battered 16-9 on Nuke by EG in their group stage encounter. Moving on, Liquid had a nice map of Vertigo with a 16-9 map win. Team Liquid dominated the T side of Vertigo, showing the world how exactly the T side can run away with the map.

Team Liquid with great gameplay on Vertigo

The theme of the series came back to haunt Team Liquid. EG would once again get a map pick, with yet another close scoreline on Inferno. This map was another 16-12 map, with Evil Geniuses taking the map, bringing them to the series point. Although, TeamLiquid was not going to be eliminated that easily. Mirage was the following map and team Liquid dominated that showing 16-6. Finally, it was time for the decider on Dust II.

Dust II went yet another 16-12 victory, with EG coming in clutch and taking the trophy. Yet again, EG takes another trophy in North America and maintain their dominance over Team Liquid. The only thing to note on this front is that EG has some work to do as this newly fired up Team Liquid roster is making it their rivalry really competitive once again.

EG are your ESL One Cologne Champions.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via ESL.