Just in case you missed any of the action

This article was written by Chise Alcantara.

 OBS Gaming vs OBS Vanity

The showdown between the twin teams of OBS, showed all viewers why assassins continue to dominate the Mobile Legends meta right now. OBS Gaming’s Z4pnu dives solo against three opponents after receiving enough gold from his farm. His teammates know that the key to success is getting their assassin fed and then promptly unleashing him onto the unsuspecting enemy squad.

You’d think OBS Vanity would come to the second game having learned their lesson but they made no adjustments to shut down Z4pnu’s Guison after their crushing defeat in the first game. This time, Z4pnu had the support of his teammate Dian on Helios and Pakbet on Kagura to execute effective pick offs to push their way to a quick 2-0 victory.

Invictus Godz vs OBS Exodus

If people ask why you auto-ban Fanny in high rank games, show them the matches between Invictus Godz and OBS Exodus and they’ll quickly understand. The sheer map pressure that the hero applies on the enemy team when piloted by a capable player is unrelenting. OE JZEFF, Fanny supports the tower siege tactic exploited by exodus while  farms with Lancelot.

In their second game, Invictus Godz first picks Fanny for Vhen and gets the quick revenge win over OBS Exodus using the same exact tactic used on them in the previous game. OE didn’t have an answer to the strategy they prepared themselves.

If there’s one thing that we have learned from these three games, it’s to ban Fanny. After the first blood was given to Vhen’s Fanny, no one could have stopped Invictus Godz from snowballing the entire game and securing a 2-1 victory.

Aether Valkyrie vs OBS Pegasus

AE| Kenji on his Hayabusa dominated the enemy farmer, OP Yeezus on Helcurt allowing for an easy win for AE Valkyrie. Going in for the kill, Kenji chose Helcurt in their following game and farmed like crazy to contribute damage in the late game team fights. *Aether Valkyrie* had an amazing engage composition with its three-man onslaught AE | Van’s Johnson, AE | Lebron’s Saber, and AE | Kenji’s clean up using Helcurt. AE claim the swift 2-0 victory over OBS Pegasus.

Aether Main vs Digital Devils Professional 

The players from Digital Devils Professional starved Aether Main for resources with their methodical jungle stealing and rotations. Their amazing use of DD Heww’s Lancelot’s and DD Luffzy’s Harley to dominate them in late game team fights helped secure an early victory.

Yellyhaze’s on engage with Chou was on point which helped AE dominate the early to mid game in the second game of the series. A miracle steal by Harley caused the tides to turn in DD’s favor, eradicating the 6K gold lead Aether Main worked so hard to achieve. But their luck was short-lived because of a few overly ambitious fights by DD, where AE showed their dominating teamwork.

In game 3 of the series, AE Yuji’s Harley got fed early, having a score of 4-0-1 at level 5. DD’s Helcurt kept forcing the split push play but wasn’t accomplishing much and left his team with a disadvantage when it came to team fights. DD Heww’s Martis defended their base valiantly and got picks whenever he could, making it difficult for AE to enter DD’s base even though there were no turrets defending. Eventually, AE secured a pick on DD Luffzy on Kagura and that caused DD to full under the weight of the rampaging tanks of AE leading to a well-fought 2-1 victory for Aether Main.

OBS Gaming vs Invictus Godz 

The first semifinals matchup came down between OBS Gaming and Invictus Godz. OG Yolo showed the playmaking potential of tanks by opening up opportune engages for his carries to capitalize on. OG Pakbet on Kagura also proved to everyone that you don’t need to rack up kills in order to greatly influence the game. OBS Gaming quickly gained an advantage as they pushed the first semifinals matchup into 1-0.

In game 2, OG Jeffqt4ever’s Jawhead dominated the game from start to finish by virtually transforming into an unkillable machine while still being a threat to the enemy team. Invictus Godz fate was sealed when they had a miscommunication in the last moments of the game which caused them to fall one by one to the Lord. OBS closed the series in a 2-0 sweep.

Aether Valkyrie vs Aether Main

AE | Yellyhaze went to work as Chou by neutralizing any threat that may come to his carries by being as annoying as possible to deal with. Yellyhaze’s efforts led to a flawless game 1 victory against their sister team. 

AE | Changu showed off his Martis skills in the second game of the semifinals series  to deal out the damage when AE Valkyrie needed it the most. Aether Valkyrie applied a slow push strategy which eventually led to a tied up series at 1-1. The third game was a complete stomp in favor of AE Main with three members of AE Valkyrie accumulating less than 3k gold each. The three assassin plus two tank composition was too much for AE Valkyrie to handle leading to a final score 2-1 in favor of Aether Main.

Invictus Godz vs Aether Valkyrie 1-2

Vhen on his Martis and Helena on his Grock kick off the third place matchup by showing off their synergy with their flawless scores leading to an easy Invictus win. Aether Valkyrie was ultimately unable to put a stop to the snowballing duo as they drop the first game in the best-of-three series. The three tank composition for IG didn’t go as well as they had hoped in the second game once mid-game started and AE’s assassins, Gusion and Nathalie started both dealing over one thousand damage each.

Even though it seemed like a close fight, AE Valkyrie kept the gold lead throughout the final third game while pressuring Invictus Godz’s towers. Inevitably, Invictus made the mistake that AE Valkyrie was waiting for and quickly translated it to a victory after 26-minutes. Aether Valkyrie closed out the first week qualifier with a 2-1 victory to secure the third place spot.

The triple-man knock up no one talks about

This article was written by Chise Alcantara.

Going in 3v1 as an assassin might be considered questionable to most people, but OBS Gaming’s Z4pnu showed all of us that with enough game knowledge and hero mastery, you can completely dominate your opponents.

Z4pnu gave fans quite a show in OBS Gaming’s first qualifiers against OBS Vanity with his flashy kills while playing Martis. Sure, everyone loves watching heroes going at it and epic fights do make for awesome highlight reels but what goes unnoticed are the little things that pro players do that get them these advantages to completely snowball the game.

A few minutes into a game, after a questionable tower dive and jungle invade by OBS Vanity, three members of the OV team were heading midlane in order to catch the minion wave crashing to the tower. Z4pnu then intercepted the three heroes and prevented them from reaching the minions while dealing a bit of damage to all of them.

We won’t take it against you if you don’t remember this moment because it quickly got overshadowed by Z4pnu’s triple kill moments later. But if we were to really look into it, we would see that these minor aggressive plays triggered a domino effect that eventually tip the entire game in favor of OBS Gaming.

The minor damage caused by Z4pnu forced the members of OBS Vanity to recall, leaving the the turtle unguarded and free for OBS Gaming to control heading into the fight. Because of the experience that was lost by all three members of OBS Vanity, they were at a disadvantage heading into the fight for the turtle because they were behind a level and a bit of gold. This why it was so easy for Z4pnu to clean up and score that triple kill.

What differentiates Z4pnu from your teammate who dives into the enemy team 1v5 and then blames everyone else for not following up is that Z4pnu knows he can make these solo plays and get away with it because he was actually in no danger when he harassed the enemy team. Z4pnu knew that he had enough time to knock the enemies up and use his three slashes to damage and re-position himself to safety.

He also took into consideration that his enemies were already at low health and mana. Prior to their failed engage at top, it was also apparent that they their skills were also on cooldown. Even though Z4pnu’s mechanics are pretty impressive, what clearly won that game was his dominating playstyle.

Being aggressive doesn’t mean being reckless. It may come as a shock for most people but assassins don’t have to always kill their target. If you can get in and out of a fray while dealing damage to your opponent, that’s great too because little advantages like those add up as seen in OBS Gaming versus OBS Vanity. An advantage could mean as little as making your opponent miss a few minions or even getting into your opponent’s’ heads and making them play more passively. These advantages are what lead to wins in high level play and the sooner you can adapt to this mentality, the sooner you’ll breeze through the ladder.

No one expects the backdoor play

This article was written by Chise Alcantara.

Hanabi, the Scarlet Flower, has made her debut in the Mobile Legends live servers. Along with the copious amount of HanabiXHayabusa ship fan art floating around, there have also been polarizing opinions whether she’ll be a meta-defining hero. Regardless if you’re a Hanabi fan or hater, you have to admit she’s bound to disrupt the Mobile Legends Live competitions meta severely.

Her champion design is actually very straightforward and fits this early-farming meta very well. Her first skill and second allows her to clear waves very efficiently due to their natural AOE effects. As Hanabi, you can quickly push your lane to the opponents turret and farm the side neutral monsters (hopefully including the buff monsters) to get the level advantage over your opposing laners.

Seems too good to be true right? Well, the reason why we particularly mentioned that she should probably farm the buff monsters since she runs out of mana VERY quickly. It’s also very difficult to farm buff camps without Retribution, which is a shame to get because Hanabi greatly benefits from the attack speed steroid given by Inspire. Before you say, “TAkinG InspIrE iN HiGH ElO LuL” you have to realize that Hanabi does insane damage in late game team fights with her AOE auto attacks. She can melt heroes AND turrets if she’s left alone, which is the main reason that she can really be a force to be reckoned with particularly in premade rank and competitions but not necessarily in solo games.

Hanabi requires A LOT of baby-sitting since she’s very immobile and only has two defensive skills that are both situational in their effectiveness. Sure, her passive seems pretty overpowered and does sync very well with her first skill’s innate lifesteal but once any hero with a gap-closer touches your soft markswoman behind, you know that no amount of lifesteal will save you.

That said, if you do get to late game and have enough tanks and/or supports to shield you from damage, you’ll be an unstoppable turret-wrecking machine. Your first skill is a very unique ability as it actually bounces off of turrets and into defending champions. Imagine turret-hugging and a Hanabi is wrecking your team and your structures by auto-attacking any of your teammates.

That’s why Hanabi excels so much when grouped with coordinated teams that will play to her strengths. But, the downside is that pros don’t exactly have much time to practice and test her before competing, which will definitely show off their inexperience with the hero. You best expect that Hanabi will definitely be a dark horse in the early Mobile Legends Professional League Philippines qualifier season because no one really knows how well she’ll play into the current meta and the playstyle of the teams. Let’s just hope she won’t get the Moskov treatment if she actually stomps the competition early on because she’s actually an interesting champion that pushes for precise playstyles and team coordination, which is somewhat lacking within the ML community.