It was the Winner Bracket's Finals. A best-of-five series that determined who would move on to the Grand Finals with a 1 game advantage. Team Dignitas faced off against Tempo Storm, North America’s final team left standing. Twenty minutes into Game 2 of the series, Team Dignitas decide to make their move on the core with a 2 level advantage.

In what seemed like a risky move, as Tempo Storm had all five members of their team up to defend, Vilhelm “POILK” Flennmark made a play that put Team Dignitas in a great position to win the game. In the blink of an eye, POILK on Li-Ming used his ultimate, Wave of Force with the Level 20 upgrade, to push Tempo Storm’s Psalm into a full Li-Ming combo of Magic Missiles and Arcane Orb. Psalm disappeared in a purple flash and then Team Dignitas continued on their way to winning the game.

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“I was actually surprisingly calm when it happened,” POILK explained, “it was more Zaelia that went completely nuts.” POILK had been picking on Psalm’s Hanzo all game. In his eyes, Hanzo was an easier Hero to attempt the Li-Ming combos on as his mobility was quite weak in comparison to the other Heroes on Tempo Storm’s team. It was planned to use Wave of Force to push Psalm into an already cast Li-Ming combo. Even with that kill, POILK knew the game wasn’t over just yet and had to remain focused to ensure more takedowns.

Immediately after the game, Reddit lit up with Twitch clips of the play. “I wasn’t really aware of how it blew up on Reddit. I was too focused on the next game,” POILK said, “but Zaelia was super excited.”

It seemed like a complete one-off, but it was actually something POILK had spent a lot of time practising before games: “To get warmed up, you can’t really play Hero League on stage, so I like to go into Try-Mode and practice combos on common Heroes I might play. With Li-Ming, I toggle all the cooldowns off and practice combos against a Valla bot.” It was important for POILK to warm-up his fingers and hands by spamming combos in Try-Mode.

“It’s very rare to see the combo actually happen,” POILK said, "if it fails, it fails, but it was planned to get Hanzo." In the game, the combo was so fast it was hard to realize what actually happened to the enemy Hanzo.

We asked POILK to go through his typical Li-Ming build with us and explain the value of each talent.

Level 1 - Power Hungry gets more value in general. Sometimes Force Armor, but Force Armor doesn’t work well against any sort of damage-over-time effects.
Level 4 - Always go Dominance. The 20% heal is just too good to pass up, especially in this current meta. Triumvirate is good, but this meta has too many enemy Heroes trying to dive you.
Level 7 - Calamity 100%. It just a lot safer to secure damage and it makes it easier to clean up low-health enemy Heroes. Seeker is really difficult to get through with the dive meta, especially without stuns to set it up.
Level 10 - I’m a big fan of Wave of Force. I only take Disintegrate against an enemy Anub’arak to break the Cocoon.
Level 13 - I always go for Illusionist. I don’t think Cannoneer is that bad, to be honest, but it’s nowhere close to how good Illusionist is. Even if you don’t benefit from Illusionist's cooldown reset on losing 20% max health all at once, the 50% increased Teleport range just makes it a lot easier to get into good positions and it goes well with Calamity.
Level 16 - This one is based a lot on feeling for me. If you come into Level 16 with good momentum, Mirrorball is really nice to have and helps with poking buildings for free. Fireflies is not bad and I think it’s pretty good against Genji, Zeratul, and Tracer. I think in general, Mirrorball wins, as that extra little damage output can get a one-shot and win the game.
Level 20 - This choice has a lot to do with momentum for me. In the Tempo Storm game, because we were Level 20 and they were Level 18 and there were no Keeps left, so we knew we wanted to dance around and look for picks to end the game. That’s why Repulsion worked so well. Sometimes Repulsion is difficult within big teamfights because it’s hard to control who gets pushed out, but it’s really good for getting picks.

POILK has really proved himself to be a top-tier Assassin player. His continued growth helps push the team further and further as they aim for the win at BlizzCon. If you’d like to watch Team Dignitas’ games from the Western Clash, the VODs can be found on the Heroes Esports YouTube Channel. Thank you for all your support! #DIGWIN