Manuel 'GrubbY' Schenkhuizen of Team EG was close to being knocked down to the lower bracket after losing to Dmitriy 'Happy' Kostin in the semi-finals opener, but he pulled off two round wins at Melting Valley and Echo Isles with brilliant control of tier 3 combo to squeeze past his team-mate.

On the other hand, Pedro 'LucifroN' Moreno Durán of nGize made light work of securing his place at BlizzCon for the second consecutive season as the Spaniard avenged last year’s consolation final defeat to Kim 'SaSe' Hammar with a 2-0 victory.

Thomas 'ThomasG' Glinski produced the biggest shocker so far in the competition as he eliminated title holder Happy with a 2-0 win in the lower bracket. The Russian made no cover of his confidence in this match-up in his blog before his trip to Cologne as it is arguably his best one, but he was likely affected by his defeat to Grubby earlier as he quit the game without typing gg.

Nikita 'Nicker' Pomadov, who replaced mTw's latest signing Silviu 'Nightend' Lazar at the last minute, leapfrogged the inactive SaSe to reach lower bracket final with a 2-0 win. He will compete for the last ticket to BlizzCon available with ThomasG at 20:45 (CET).