What to expect from Liquid v. Vitality

Liquid took a hard blow today after starting off from the dizzying heights of a 13-0 win over G2 on Ancient. After securing that map, the sky was seemingly the limit however, like Icarus, Liquid lost their wings and fell down to the lower bracket after a really poor showing on Inferno and Mirage. Their punishment for losing to G2 is to now play Vitality for survival in Singapore.

While Vitality are attending the tournament with a stand-in and started the tournament with a loss to Spirit, Vitality are still a massive threat to Liquid and it will require the international squad to pull off something really special to stay alive at the BLAST Premier World Finals.

Runny Liquids

While Liquid's 13-0 win to start their series against G2 this morning was a fantastic showing for the team, it should not be used to smoke screen the fact that the remainder of the series was a blowout, with G2 stomping Liquid on Inferno and Mirage. If we're trying to form a coherent narrative and why Liquid fell flat in these two maps, one only needs to look to another poor performance form Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis and a complete collapse from Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak. If Liquid want to survive in Singapore, these two players clearly need to step up against the Frenchmen.

• YEKINDAR and ultimate had a stinker of a series against G2

• Twistzz and NAF are as usual the best part of Liquid by a country mile

• Unfortunately Liquid will not get a chance to play Ancient again tomorrow at it is Vitality's perma ban

• Liquid's last showdown with Vitality was quite close

Les Bleus once again

For the first time in a long time, Vitality went into the series with a French core and... it clearly did not go particularly well. In their 2-0 loss to the Eastern European squad, Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut was Vitality's only player with a strong performance while everyone else really struggled, especially Audric "JACKZ" Jug, who played his first tier-one LAN match in 19 months. While JACKZ is likely to continue to struggle after a long-time out in the wilderness, it is unlikely Vitality will be as flat again tomorrow so Liquid need to be ready to face one of 2024's best squads.

• ZywOo will be deadly especially if ultimate does not show up

• JACKZ is a liability Liquid should aim to exploit

• The Israeli duo of Spinx and flameZ had a quiet showing against Spirit

Previous matchups

Liquid is currently 1-4 in maps against Vitality after losses to the team at the BLAST Premier Fall Finals and ESL Pro League Season 20. The showing at the BLAST Premier Fall Finals does give some hope, however, as Liquid only fell 12-16 on Anubis and 11-13 on Nuke.

Likely Vetoes

As always, these vetoes come with the caveat that they are highly speculative as they depend on whether Vitality, as the higher-ranked team at the time of seeding, chooses to pick first or ban last. We will assume they ban last. Overall, we should expect Liquid to target Anubis, Nuke, and Inferno while Vitality will be keen to ban Ancient while picking towards Anubis, Nuke, and Dust2, meaning there is a decent degree of overlap in what maps both teams want to play.

• Liquid ban Vertigo (Permaban)

• Vitality ban Ancient (Permaban, Liquid's best map)

• Liquid pick Anubis (82% Winrate, bested VIT on it at EPL S20)

• Vitality pick Nuke (89% Winrate, 2-0 record vs. Liquid on it)

• Liquid ban Dust2 (32% Winrate Δ)

• Vitality ban Inferno (Similar winrate to Mirage, recently played 11-13 versus Spirit)

• Mirage as Decider

Analysis: Should the above veto play out as predicted for Liquid, their best bet at winning the series is to win Anubis, something they really need to do as they are exceedingly unlikely to win Nuke versus Vitality.

With that, the series would then go onto Mirage which is a fairly neutral map which could come down to a slugfest between the two team's fraggers. As such, that is largely contingent on who from Liquid shows up tomorrow, but Liquid winning 2-0 seems highly unlikely.

Liquid will head into battle against Vitality at the wee hour of 07:00PM for NA fans.