Leader Jolie strategizes with teammates Admiration and Vigoss
Many of you will remember the epic Game 2 between these two teams in the finals of MYM Pride 7. This game is a perfect illustration of Virtus.Pro’s playstyle from the very beginning. Virtus.Pro began with a Sven/THD laned middle and later changed to Sven/SK middle, a setup that allowed for early ganks as well as complete dominance of Slahser’s Tinker. In fact, at 5 minutes (when most heroes were still level 3), Sven ganked bottom with a rune for a double kill.
Virtus.Pro shot out to an early 11-1 lead in kills through a series of well-timed ganks. then. took out all of MYM’s outer towers before 20 minutes; MYM didn’t do the same until 60 minutes. This entire time, Virtus.Pro was able to ward the entire bottom half of the map and both rivers, score the majority of the runes, and have PotM, Sven, and Sand King all become farmed with high tier items. Their access to runes proved critical when four MYM heroes chased after a hero with bottled Haste; this mishap resulted in the loss of their bottom rax-effectively ending the game. With these advantages, VP was able to overcome H4nn1-‘s farmed Faceless Void to win the game.
Conclusion: How do you counter the strategy?
There are two main ways to counter Virtus.Pro’s map control strategy: offensively and defensively.
The offensive method is to destroy VP’s outer towers early in the game and become the aggressor, outganking and outfarming VP through midgame—essentially using VP’s own strategy against them. However, this approach is usually unviable because it depends on having an early game advantage, something very, very few teams are able to achieve against VP.
The alternative is to exploit an inherent weakness in VP’s strategy. Although the pushed situation allows Virtus.Pro to gank more effectively, it also in a way puts them at a disadvantage because they’re forced to gank and farm aggressively. When Virtus.Pro forces a skirmish (which they do with unusual frequency), having additional reinforcements come to the point of conflict can turn the skirmish, usually through TP scrolls. However, even better are heroes that can help in a skirmish instantly: namely the Spectre/Zeus combination that rB and MYM defeated VP with. The teams that have had the greatest success against VP have successfully defended against skirmishes whether using TP scrolls or global attacks.
VP, however, has adapted to these counters—first by banning Zeus in every game and also by scaling back on their aggressive ganks slightly and emphasizing the farming aspect of their map control more after their loss to MYM.
Perhaps, then, a true counter to their playstyle has yet to be found. In any case, the performance of Virtus.Pro-and other teams attempting to defeat the juggernaut-in MYM Pride 8 will be compelling to watch indeed.
