Riyadh Masters — DOTA2 Play Ins | Part 1: Position 1s

The eSports World Cup is just around the corner with a baffling prize pool of $20,000,000 USD. A significant portion of this sum goes to DOTA2: $5,000,000 USD. In this article series, we’ll be examining the different teams participating in Riyadh Masters and analyzing their performance.

First off, we’ll be looking at the Play-Ins, starting on July 4th. It consists of 12 teams battling for 8 spots in the major tournament. The teams will be competing in a group stage of 6 teams each, where the top 3 automatically qualify, and the 4th and 5th spots compete against the other 4th and 5th positions in the opposite group.

Play-In Seeds have been decided by qualifiers with a global division as following:

• 2 teams from Western Europe
• 1 team from Eastern Europe
• 1 team from MENA
• 3 teams from China
• 2 teams from Southeast Asia
• 2 teams from South America
• 1 team from North America

In this first part, we’ll be examining the position 1 players of each team to see which teams stand out more than others. We’ll then look into position 2 and 3 players. Subsequently, a series of team analyses will be conducted to look into each team’s strengths and weaknesses.

The data

This initial overview analysis will focus on gold and kills at the intervals of 10, 20, 30, and 40 minutes into a game. We’ll be comparing the different positions grouped against each other. This method provides a reasonably good high-level view of skill levels. There are many other aspects to consider regarding core players, which will be touched upon in the team analysis.

All of the data is retrieved from the opendota.com API and curated by myself in my own database. For questions regarding the data, do not hesitate to reach out.

Position 1

Let’s start with looking at the position 1s at minute 10–40:

While it appears that Watson and Payk are incredibly strong, remember that the X-axis scale is not very large. Watson averages perhaps 100 gold more at 10 minutes. What’s interesting, however, is the number of kills for Payk, Yuma, and Watson, as they almost double the numbers of some of their competitors, indicating an incredibly aggressive playstyle early on.

At minute 20 we have this graph. Shiro shoots up in terms of gold while watson remains in the top right. To understand this better, we also need to understand the gain of gold and kills during this period.

The bars in the graph show the average gold per minute between minute 10–20, and the lines represent the average kills per minute during this period. This provides more insight into the players’ performance between the scatter plots.

We see three kill-happy carrys in Natsumi-, Watson and Payk. On the opposite side we have 4 carrys that seem to just only want to farm, with K1 being the clear standout.

shiro keeps dominating the farm, K1 speeds up as well. Watson is clear in terms of kills. Let’s deep dive:

Key takeaways:

• shiro and K1 still dominating in terms of farm.
• Watson, incredible in both aspects really.
• Ulnit wakes up at this point, almost doubling his kill involvement from the previous 10 minutes.
• Natsumi- falls of in terms of GPM. Perhaps too focused on kills?
• 23 has a huge jump in GPM, from 2nd last to 5th.

shiro and K1 clear in terms of farm. watson and Natsumi- quite clear in terms of kills with payk and Ulnit just after.

Key points:

• K1 and shiro are incredibly strong farmers, with shiro becoming a lot more active in this time period. K1 steps up a bit compared to the previous 10 minutes.
• Lou, Kiritych and Monet feel a bit lackluster. Average farm, very low kills.
• Payk has a sudden boom in terms of GPM and kills!
• One to watch: Ulnit. While never in the top, I would not have picked him even in the middle personally. Has constantly been in the middle of the pack and now even moves forward a bit in terms of GPM and still a high kill gain.
• Interestingly enough: Yuma with a negative gain. Most likely that their games end early, and the few ones that stretch out results in him having fewer kills than in the earlier period.

Summary

In my opinion there are 2 standout carries in this group: K1 and shiro. Constantly in top with the exception of K1’s early game. They’re tightly followed by 23 and watson I’d say.

Overall though, the carrys from Western Europe are not that strong. And the same can be said about China with shiro as an exception, as Monet & Lou both are constantly beneath the middle of the pack.

payk and Natsumi- seem to thrive in chaotic hyper aggressive games as they fall of quite well, with the weird exception of payk’s spike.

My one to watch is definitely Ulnit. Not the greatest numbers but far better than what I expected. Will however be interesting to see how the whole team fares against the others.

Overall, I believe the numbers support the players’ performance from a viewer’s perspective. I did perhaps expect a bit more from TA2000, I do believe he’s a very good player, but the numbers aren’t bad and should be able to carry Quest to the group stage.

Follow for more, next up we’ll be looking at position 2 and 3, before moving on to the team analysis.