Boston Preview: ‘Middle of the Pack’ Edition
There is a sizable group of teams at the Major who posses the potential to beat any of the attendees, but have not displayed a championship caliber just yet. They’ll be tough opponents to square up against and several of them will make deep runs into the single-elim tourney, before ultimately falling short at the hands of the elite few.
Eight out of the remaining ten teams were present at the Summit. Check out the following preview if you need/want a slight refresher into their histories and tendencies, as this article focuses mostly on the last month or so of the DotA scene.
Let’s dive in.
Team NP: NA’s secret hope
The hot-sauce boys have quickly captured the community’s hearts with their fun-loving nature and in-game shenanigans.
In one of the better debuts in recent memory, NP made it all the way to the grand finals of the Northern Arena. They took down EHOME and domestic rivals Evil Geniuses before being gutted by the World Champions in the final series of the event. Even though the second place curse was fulfilled once more, Envy’s all-American squad had put the dota scene on notice.
Summit 6 saw them regress — they made an early exit at the 5–6th spot after losing to Wings (again) and EG in straight sets, before knocking out EHOME. Their continuing struggle with closing out leads and forcing their advantage cost them two games at the very least, and it was clear that the team needs more work before they can become a legitimate contender.
Regardless, the team has picked up a really important ingredient over the two offline tournaments — confidence. They’ve settled into comfort picks and their idea of playing the game, while not being afraid to experiment. There is a marked difference in how they played online versus lesser domestic teams before and how they played offline versus stronger opponents. The LAN jitters are out of their system, and they’ve found their mojo.
MSS has emerged as the team’s best player, putting up a solid performance after the other on the offlane. Aui & SVG have been great in their roles as well. Envy’s transition to the mid lane however, is still a work in progress, to put it lightly.
He’s gotten out-laned quite consistently by the scene’s top mid players and his mechanics are not up to snuff. SVG has more often than not been the saving grace for his early laning stage with his rotations. Still, it’s Envy and he usually finds a way back into the mid game on the back of some good decision making and unmatched farming efficiency.
Team NP are a team who will get progressively better as the tournament goes on — they’ve shown the ability to adapt and adjust their game plan as needed. However, they need to make it through the early stages first — and the single elimination format will do no favors if the get off to a rough start.
Watch them somehow end up facing Wings in the first round of playoffs again.
MVP.Phoenix: The Prodigal Son
Besides Execration, the Korean squad were the only other team to upgrade their roster via Valve’s half-baked substitute system. They were in desperate need of a change, for their recent performance had been nothing short of appalling.
MVP after reaching the finals of MPGL, have failed to make top 4 in any other tourney — qualifier or otherwise. They finished 7–8th at WESG SEA finals, a tournament where common nationality squads have an gigantic advantage over their competition. They also took last place at MarsTV LAN and in the Summit 6 Qualifiers. For a team who was directly invited to compete against the best of the best, they had been playing a pretty ugly brand of DotA.
On the other side of the world, Forev had failed to qualify for the major through the EU qualifiers. Team Secret, despite looking dominant, had some clear playstyle clashes. All three of their cores (MP, MidOne and Forev) required a decent amount of farm to come online, not to mention Puppey’s own greed. Khezu, who is a comparatively light farmer was poached as a remedy to Forev’s departure and Team Secret shortly won their first LAN of the season at ROG Masters.
Interestingly enough, Febby will be moving back to support, and Forev will take his place as the team’s position one player. While most offlane players are able to play both the safelane and hardlane as required by team composition, Forev will still need to add a lot of the meta carries to his arsenal. DuBu and Febby have already been support partners before, notably at TI6 so that transition will be much smoother.
March started something special within MVP back when he took them all the way to a Top 8 finish at TI5; QO & Forev have continued the tradition at each Valve event. Even though their recent results have indicated otherwise (they’ve been worse than Execration and WG.Unity, both Tier 3 teams in the list), the Koreans will come out to play at Boston and will roll over teams who don’t take them seriously.
In a way, Forev earned his spot at the Major as much as the rest of his team — he was part of their deep run at the International. While four of the players of that squad will reprise their role once more, it still remains to be seen if they can regroup and focus in time to put up a competitive performance at Major.
EHOME: Cloud9 of drafting
EHOME is probably the most bi-polar team at the Major. They have a ridiculously high ceiling afforded to them by Old Chicken/LaNm’s unconventional drafting, but sometimes they just mind game themselves into awful picks with minimal synergy, and bomb games because of it.
At Northern Arena, they soundly defeated favorites EG 2–0 by forcing the Alchemist twice on them. It was the beginning of EG’s troubles with the hero, plaguing them all the way to the Summit lower bracket finals (EG finished 0–3 versus it).
They were also the only team to take a game off of the red hot Wings at the event— they picked Pugna+Pudge into a Wings draft that relied on their positional superiority. They did lose the series however and finished third overall at the event.
At Summit however, they took their leave in the first round itself. They fell to VP 2–1 after drafting a really underwhelming Drow+Tinker+Veno combo in Game 3. Team NP made short work of them in the lower bracket.
While Sylar has been performing notably well in the carry role after spending a year on the monstrosity that was Vici Gaming, their offlaner eLeVeN has gone cold except for a game here and there. And those few good games make the drought even more frustrating as a viewer — for they really showcase exactly how high his ceiling is. His Clockwerk versus VP in Game 2 of their series was one of such performances; he single handedly changed the outcome.
If EHOME can reign in their itch to bust out the next-level draft and eLeVeN gulps down some cold medicine, the team can go really far at Boston. Otherwise, they might be staring at a first round exit.
Actually, they’re just too hard to predict. I’m just going to close my eyes on this one.
Digital Chaos: Who are we?
The Misery-led squad has played a grand total of seven officials since their historic run at TI6. Seven games in three months of the fall season (no, elimination mode don’t count). That’s it.
Maybe the team just got lazy (they did start practicing in late October). Maybe this is actually a masterstroke by Sunsfan to give his team the best chance at another top 3 finish. Hiding strats by literally not playing.
From what little of DC we’ve seen this new season, they’ve looked underwhelming. Moonmeander is a definite upgrade over Moo — he’s more versatile as a traditional playmaker and brings a wider hero pool to the offlane. But, in replacing Moo, it also seems that they’ve lost some of their identity as a team.
During TI6, the team drafted and played around Moo. W33ha and Resolut1on could play any hero in their roles, while Moo did excel on a select few. Misery always made sure to to secure his hero during the draft. DC also often prioritized his farm by placing him in the safelane & often sticking Saksa with him.
Moon is a player who does like to play the hard lane by himself, and without much assistance. He’s a more ‘traditional’ offlaner in that sense. While the options for Misery are a lot more open now and he can potentially draft any strat from the playbook — this increased flexibility has made his job harder initially, at least it did at the Summit.
For example, they tried brute-forcing the Ursa pick for w33ha thrice; but it came up short each time.
The team has three really versatile cores, and it’ll take some time before the team finds a new identity to play around. And their extended vacation in this regard is a possible misstep. Maybe the players really needed the time off, but they come into the Major the least prepared out of all the 16 teams.
Digital Chaos recently added a second coach in Bulba, who was unceremoniously let go from Team Liquid. Bulba’s mind for the game is probably unmatched in the scene — Aui went on record crediting him for EG’s TI5 victory. He was also instrumental in Liquid’s deep run at the Manila Major earlier this year.
Teams will be looking to play their own style against the rusty purple & yellow early on in the tournament. If Misery, with Bulba at his side, improves his reactive drafting chops, their absence from the scene could turn into a potential advantage.
Evil Geniuses: Feeling a bit blue
NA DotA’s finest have now failed to make the finals of an event two times in a row. For an average team, finishing Top 4 in consecutive LANs is a probably cause for joy; but when you assemble the strongest mechanically skilled in the west and give them a wily old veteran as coach, good enough isn’t really good enough.
It was Team NP at the Northern Arena and it was Team OG at the Summit 6. Both times, Cr1t was out-drafted by the opposing captain, despite the IO eating up a first phase ban each time. While the game is never over at the draft, the edge gained by a team gets magnified several times over in high level competition.
This iteration of EG has a lot of strategies and ideas that they’ve adopted as their own style and they often draft around it. Their emphasis on Venomancer, Ursa & Treant Protector is some evidence of it. Cr1t’s ability to react to his opponent’s picks however, is nothing to write home about just yet. And for better or for worse, his drafting chops will always be compared to EG’s old captain PPD — the greatest reactive drafter in the history of the game.
EG are at their best when Suma1l is playing a high-impact scaling core. They’ve had some success with 4-protect-1 when Artour plays the Anti-Mage or the Morphling, but it has often required him to pull out heroics that shouldn’t be necessary in such a strategy. Suma1l’s impact in those game is often minimized and the team only wins such games by out-skilling the enemy. From an outside perspective, the sweet spot for when to prioritize which players remains to be found for the boys in blue.
Outside the draft space though, EG’s performance has been stellar. Cr1t’s philosophy of “position 4.5” supports seems to be paying of dividends as him and Zai continue to make their presence felt throughout the game. They make crisp rotations early on, find their farm accordingly and are often able to contribute positively when their heroes become largely irrelevant in the later stages of the game. Their cores are doing what is asked of them pretty well — one of the three often takes over and completely dominates the game.
Most importantly, the team has found chemistry outside the game. Charlie lovingly called them a “bunch of goons” and it comes across quite well in the True Sight series and in player interviews. When the team inevitably faces a string of defeats, their friendship will hopefully provide them with enough buoyancy to stay together.
Suma1l is also yet to enter his prime as a DotA player. He’s one of the Top 3 mids currently, but his ceiling is higher than his competition (and even his own team’s carry player). This is all conjecture, yes, but he has shown such flashes of brilliance that maybe no other current player can lay claim to. If the 17 yr old prodigy is able to take the next step at the Major, the boys might just win it all.
EG will most likely make a strong run at Boston, but questions about their drafting prowess forbid them from being placed in the elite category. A lot rests on Cr1t’s shoulders, and he just might not be ready for the pressure yet.
Newbee: Under the radar
The Chinese squad had an amazing start to their fall campaign and they’ve shown no signs of slowing down since. The pickups of uuu9 and Sccc have proven immensely successful as Kaka has been able to reel in the pubstars and shape them into players who execute well within a team structure.
They’ve made the finals of both offline events they attended this season — MDL Autumn and Nanyang Cruise Cup.
And unlike other top CN teams at Boston, Newbee has also continued their dominance online — sporting an impressive 82.8% winrate in the last month over 64 matches. They’ve managed to qualify for ESL Genting & Dotapit S5 while also wrapping up the tedious ACE Provisional, without dropping a single game in the playoffs.
The team looks invincible online as of late, and the western scene just might be sleeping on them a little.
Still, the team has failed to pull out the necessary wins in the either of their offline finals appearances, which is not a great sign.
MDL saw them defeat EG resoundingly in the upper bracket, before falling to the same team in the finals. Sccc was unable to deliver an encore on Invoker as Sumail’s Mirana took over game 1. As the series went on, Kaka couldn’t provide any answers to EG’s increasingly varied drafts (18 heroes in 4 games) as they forfeited the series 3–1.
Nanyang Cruise Cup was a much closer affair as they took the reigning champions Wings to three contested games before falling short at the hands of the shadow Morphling. Their insistence on first-picking Lifestealer bore a bittersweet fruit that time, winning them game 2 but losing the other two.
It’ll be almost two months before the team steps foot into an offline booth again at Boston. Many teams will have had an opportunity to catch up, and Newbee would’ve themselves had a chance to figure out their own weaknesses. Whether the gap between has widened or shortened still remains to be seen, and it will largely determine where Newbee finishes in the tourney.
Team Faceless: Hungry and waiting
The Black-IceIceIce reunion squad has dominated the SEA scene since their inception, pushing aside the domestic giants in Fnatic & MVP. The team qualified for Boston without dropping a single game and have won every other tourney they’ve taken part in since October.
There were ridiculously high hopes for their international debut at the Summit 6, with people pegging them to even make the finals in a very stacked playing field. However, Faceless crashed out of the double-elim bracket without a single series win. Their lack of international experience had bit ’em in the backside.
Regardless, those losses came in hard fought games. The Jabz led lineup took both the reigning Summit champs EG & the rusty TI6 runner-ups DC to three games before falling in the decider each time. Even in defeat, the team showed promise and a capacity to hang with the big dogs — a good sign for the future.
Also, IceIceIce always comes to play on the big stage. Back in his comfort offlane role after playing the support/carry switcheroo for EHOME last year, expect Daryl to regain his footing as one of the world’s three top offlaners.
Faceless have been together for about three months now, and their upward trajectory has been extremely impressive during that time. At rate the team has been developing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if the SEA squad improves drastically on the back of their first LAN experience.
After all, as Black^ said, if they don’t win, they don’t eat. That’s gotta be a powerful motivator.
Power Rankings: ‘Middle of the Pack’ Edition
A rudimentary list of how these teams stacks up against each other going into the Major —
- Evil Geniuses
- Newbee
- Digital Chaos
- Team NP
- EHOME
- MVP.Phoenix
- Team Faceless
A single-elimination playoff bracket means at least 8 teams will be going home in the first round and the departing list is bound to include at least a couple from above. It’s time to step up or shut up for a lot of these teams.
