Comparison of Pure~ and Nightfall ahead of their head-to-head match. Which one is better?

April 27 at the tournament ESL One Birmingham 2024 in Dota 2, perhaps one of the most anticipated matches of the playoffs will take place: in the final of the upper bracket they will meet Tundra Esports And BetBoom Team. And of course, the focus will be on the confrontation between two former teammates who found themselves too crowded in the same lineup – Ivan Pure~ Moskalenko and Egor Nightfall Grigorenko. Yes, Pure~ already played against BetBoom Team, but it was in the group stage of an online event, which, of course, does not compare to the battle in the playoffs on LAN. In anticipation of this duel, we decided to compare the two carries.

Pool of heroes at the tournament

Nightfall used a little more characters throughout the tournament, despite playing two fewer maps. For example, one could see the rather unpopular Monkey King and Wraith King from him, although Grigorenko ultimately lost in both. There is no clear signature from Nightfall here – he played most of the matches on Gyrocopter, but the difference with other characters is minimal.

From Pure~ in Birmingham we saw seven different heroes. There was also his signature Meepo, which almost no one competes with now, and Medusa, which is not the most popular at the moment – he won on both characters. Morphling and Luna can be identified as signature heroes. But on the rather meta Lifestealer, Pure~, on the contrary, does not have a single game.

Whose heroes are your opponents most afraid of?

BetBoom Team’s rivals, of course, respect Grigorenko, but banning his heroes is not a priority. Most often, the team was blocked by supports and Keeper of the Light, on which gpK~ is falling apart. Of the Nightfall heroes, only Gyrocopter was in the top 5 bans against BetBoom Team, and even then you need to understand that this is a flex character, which BetBoom Team also uses as a support (twice in this tournament). Of the pure carry heroes, opponents were only afraid of Morphling (also five bans).

Against Pure~, opponents work a little more actively at the draft stage. Yes, in first place with a huge gap between Monkey King and 9Class, but next is the very signature Luna for Moskalenko. A little further down is Morphling.

KDA: Nightfall is the most indestructible, Pure~ is the most dangerous

Nightfall and Pure~ are noticeably different in playstyle, which is noticeable already from the laning stage. The difference in approaches to playing in the first position was reflected in the statistics of both e-sportsmen – in terms of average KDA at the tournament, Nightfall was seriously ahead of Pure~:

• Nightfall – 6.42;
• Pure~ – 4.78.

That is, if Nightfall is second in the championship in this indicator, then Pure~ is only tenth and inferior, for example, to his teammate Tobi. This statistic stems from two other rather different player stats. If their average number of assists is almost identical, then the difference in the average number of deaths and kills demonstrates the difference in styles. Nightfall often acts more cautiously, tries to avoid risky attacks, dives and battles until the “last drop of blood”, thanks to which he dies almost half as often as Pure~. According to this indicator, Grigorenko is generally the absolute leader of the tournament by a noticeable margin:

• Nightfall has an average death count of 2.57.
• Pure~ has an average death count of 4.25 (not even in the top 15 and lower than his offlaner).

However, Pure~ makes up for the high number of deaths with an equally high frag rate. And here Moskalenko turns out to be the absolute leader of the tournament:

• Pure~ has an average kill count of 10.94.
• Nightfall has an average kill count of 7.29 (only 11th).

Farming and participating in fights

In the matter of farming, no matter how much it contradicts the previous section, Pure~ turned out to be the leader. As you can see from Moskalenko’s pool, almost every one of his heroes is designed to quickly and rapidly gain gold (unlike the same Lifestealer or Monkey King). Pure~ currently holds first place in both GPM and XPM; Nightfall, in turn, ranks third in both indicators.

• Pure~: GPM – 825, XPM – 990.
• Nightfall: GPM – 735, XPM – 813.

In addition to the previous point, it is worth noting that Tundra has a slightly higher average match length than BetBoom Team. However, the difference is not so significant – only one and a half minutes.

Speaking of the more aggressive style of Pure~, it is worth paying attention to another indicator – the average amount of damage per game. Here Moskalenko is significantly ahead of Grigorenko, although in the overall standings he is only second (the first place by a huge margin is occupied by Topson, who played half of his games on Zeus).

• Pure~ has an average hero damage per card of 44,440.
• Nightfall has an average hero damage per map of 32,629.

Pure also leads in average damage to buildings – its characters are also often predisposed to this. And here he is already the absolute leader of the tournament, and Nightfall is third.

• Pure~ has an average building damage per map of 12,988.
• Nightfall has an average damage per structure per map of 10,699.

***

This kind of confrontation between two different carry styles awaits us in the finals of the upper bracket on April 27. We will watch with interest who will emerge victorious and whose kung fu will be more effective. In the meantime, we suggest choosing which of these two carries you liked best at ESL One Birmingham 2024.