For the second Sennheiser Prime Defending tournament in a row team Meet Your Makers will square off against Virtus.Pro for the overall championship. These two teams have met countless times in the past and have always displayed the top tier of skill in DotA. In their recent matches, MYM defeated VP 2-0 in the ClanBase semi finals and shortly after VP bounced back and beat MYM 2-1 in the Winners bracket of this MYM #8 tournament.

Virtus.Pro advanced through the group stages & early playoff stages without dropping a game until they played MYM. Through their excellent ganking and map control, they were able to retain most of their outer towers and finish the game rather quickly. This PriDe is reversed from MYM #7, in that VP will play with the 1-0 advantage going into the final game vs. MYM. In a interview with Virtus.Jolie he was able to elaborate on a few things going into the match.

Interview with Virtus.joliE

This Pride, you guys are playing with the advantage of the 1-0 head start after beating MYM in the Final 4 stage, will you approach the first game any differently having the 1-0 advantage?

Virtus.joliE: Of course, our concentration will be more on the 2nd game (if we lose the 1st), but I think that our form is good for winning with 1 game.

Matches vs. VP and MYM are always considered great matches, do you enjoy these high pressured matches, or are they a bit stressful?

Virtus.joliE: Yes, we enjoy them a lot, because only the matches against MYM help us improve,and we don't like to lose.

You guys have looked very strong this pride with losing very few towers and ganking extremely well, did you put in a lot of practice for this MYM, or did all of the other tournaments going on put you into top form?

Virtus.joliE: Hmm, we haven’t had special practices, but some last lessons (ASUS Autumn-final, MAI-final and Clan base-semi) taught us as best as possible. So I think VP is on fire!

Ok final tough question! Tell us about THIS, and is there much pressure to win MYM 8 for this great city?

Virtus.joliE: Hahahaha, a lot of dota-players moved into ribalka-city in the last few days, and all TV's and radio in the city will stream VP-MYM game. I will try my best for my people!

Interview with MYM|MaNia

Meet Your Makers have been on a roll as well. They proceeded through the group stages and the early playoff stages with relative ease. MYM is coming off a tough 2-1 win over the much improved Malaysian team KngSurf in the losers bracket. I sat down with MYM|MaNia-, and he provided me with insight on his upcoming match against Virtus.Pro.

This Pride is a little different with MYM coming out of the loser bracket instead having the 1-0 advantage, do you think you will approach the match any differently or will it mainly just be added pressure?

MYM|MaNia: Yea, we are a little more pressured than normal, but we just take one game at a time and focus on winning. I hope we will break our loosing streak in the overall final, since we approach it from the looser bracket, which normally is where VP comes from.

Matches vs. VP and MYM are always considered great matches, do you enjoy these high pressured games?

MYM|MaNia: Yea its fun being pressured, and especially playing these intense, close games. We were also a bit pressured by KS, who obviously had learned a lot from our previous meeting. This kind of stuff will also come into play with our games vs. VP, since both teams have had the chance to observe the strengths and weaknesses from the opposing team.

Yeah, it seems KS came a long way from the games you guys played in the first round of the final 4, did you expect the step up in their play in such a short period of time?

MYM|MaNia: We were definitely impressed, but we just tried some new strats and seems like it was enough to win.

You guys have been pretty dominant through the group stage and early stages of this Pride, then you had some great games with VP for this pride and ClanBase. You also pulled some tough ones out vs. KS, did you put a lot of practice in for this Pride or did all of the tourney's going on prepare you for it?

MYM|MaNia: We haven't really had much time for practice games, because our schedules have been tight, and we have had so many official matches. That leads to us using strats we haven’t really practiced thoroughly. We practiced a lot before pride on the more gank related strats, which you have seen a lot of in our games. Strats with many mid-game heroes, but during our travel through pride, we have started using aoe-strats or carry-hero strats.

The DotA community's spotlight will most assuredly be on this match which is scheduled for 19:00 CET on Friday. I encourage everyone to watch the live stream or the replays as it will no doubt be a great display of high end DotA.

Thanks to MYM|MaNia- & Virtus.Jolie for the interviews. As well as thanks to Jokes & Ganked for their help with the article.