Dreamleague S6 Finals Preview — Proving Ground for Teams Left Behind.
As the sun sets on the fall season and the elite teams begin to bootcamp for Boston, the remaining squads have already begun their shuffle early. The CIS scene has turned itself upside down, while the rest of Europe has been a bit of a more cautious. Two such reformed teams will make their LAN debut at the $185,000 event this weekend — hoping for an early head start on domestic competition for the winter.
The sixth iteration of the ROG DreamLeague has been a rough affair. Their initial announcement boasted an all star western lineup with the likes of OG, EG and Team Secret; by the end six teams (including the previously listed) had withdrawn from the competition citing scheduling issues. Regardless, the league play has come to an end and the final four will battle it out for almost $200k in prize money.
If the Boston Major was a UFC Pay-Per-View, then this tourney would be the free undercard broadcasted on Fox Sports right before it. It might give the viewers a glimpse into the potential of upcoming teams, or it might not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.
All four of the teams listed above were unable to qualify for the Boston Major. Bulba was let go from the Liquid roster following the team’s mediocre showing and Escape’s promising offlaner Khezu was poached by Team Secret a couple of weeks ago. While Liquid opted to pluck a fresh blood from the pub scene in the form of GH.God, Escape has chosen to revive their team with an aging Trixi.
Do the two teams have enough firepower with their new players to compete with rest of the domestic competition? Let’s dive in with the usual five takes.
1. Imperial’s Ryze to Power.
Sorry, the pun was too easy to pass up on.
Cr1t’s homeboys come into Sweden as the only team with a positive win-loss record out of the four attendees. They’re 54–13 overall in the past month, going 16–7 in premium tourneys. While the record is inflated by open qualifiers for Boston, they did tie Escape for first in league play with a 10–4 record. The core of the lineup has been together for over a year now, and their solidarity is starting to pay dividends.
The ex-Danish Bears entered the spotlight with their victory at WESG’s Europe & CIS offline qualifier, where they defeated a star-studded Ukraine squad (Dendi, Reso, General etc.) and then Akke’s Team Horde in straight sets. This was the team’s first LAN event after grinding out online tournaments for years, and they won it in convincing fashion.
A lot of hype accompanied Imperial as they entered into open qualifiers for the Major — they were dubbed favorites to advance by many. However, after qualifying through the second OQ, their campaign ended in disappointment as they failed to make playoff bracket with a 4–5 record. Unfettered, the team resumed their grind almost immediately, playing an average of 3 officials per day in the past month. One such tourney was Dreamleague, where they found a lot of success against Europe’s wounded.
Imperial’s playstyle is often based around their mid Babyknight, who joined the current lineup in June. Babyknight comes across as a feast or famine midlaner, there seems to be no mediocre in his arsenal. NoiA & Ryze are quite active early, often leaving Ace to do his own thing in the safelane all while Heste-Joe annoys the hell out of the enemy carry.
The team has their share of comfort picks which they rely on pretty heavily. Heste-Joe alternates between Batrider and Dark Seer, NoiA loves his Ogre Magi, Ryze is ridiculous on Rubick and Babyknight often holds the hammer with Outworld Devourer. Ace plays Luna/Drow a bit, but his heroes vary quite a lot as he tries to round out the team’s picks as the primary drafter. They have some comfort bans too if that is a thing (EG should really make it a thing with Alchemist) — they’ve banned Mirana 43 times and never played it once in the past month. They have a cool 88% winrate doing so.
This isn’t to say the team has a shallow hero pool — they played 72 heroes last month including a lot of unconventional picks. Heste-Joe played offlane Windranger 4 times and won all of those games (who plays WR, let alone win with it in the offlane?). Ace busts out his Pugna from time to time and they still favor the rarely seen Nature’s Prophet. The team plays an entertaining, high action brand of DotA.
Imperial look like the strongest team heading into the finals despite their Boston hiccup. They have had enough time to figure out their team chemistry and form an idea of playing the game, which is often instrumental in edging out games against more skilled teams. The Russian Bears (VP) may have left the arena but the Danish Bears are still here; and they’re hungry.
2. Liquid’s Support Struggle — Can GH fill the void left behind by Jerax?
Bulba clearly couldn’t, and he was ousted without even an official announcement by Team Liquid (ouch). While he still remains one of the smartest minds in DotA, his serviceable mechanical abilities and the otherworldly expectations to perform right away never gave the team a chance to find their stride. With the early addition of a new player in GH, the team seeks to develop under less pressure and more time to figure out their game.
Jerax and Cr1t, besides being superstar position 4s, had one more thing in common — they complemented their mid players extraordinarily well. FATA- & Jerax brought an almost unmatched stability to the volatile midlane, while Cr1t molded Miracle- into a superstar; and also for a period of time, the best player in the world. Neither Kuroky or Bulba showed much semblance of that uncanny ability and Liquid’s midlane suffered as a result. Miracle-’s performance has been largely lackluster after switching teams. On the other hand, OG.Ana already looks like a star against tougher competition.
Kuroky took over the position 4 role when the team was playing with Bulba, but with the addition of GH he has returned to the hard support role again. Hopefully, the team has settled down and given up their almost schizophrenic role-switching as of late. Matumbaman is in his prime as a carry and has way too much talent to be playing hard support infrequently depending on “pushing” hero compositions. That reasoning still seems dubious, even though they won 4 out of the 6 games Kuroky played carry in his place.
GH has unquestionably large shoes to fill. While he definitely has the mechanical skill to compete at the biggest stage, it still remains to be seen if he has the smarts to keep up with other playmaking supports. Games in the current meta are often decided by early game movement, and Liquid will rely heavily on GH to carry them through it. Thankfully, he has a veteran captain in Kuro to learn from.
3. Escape Gaming — Can Synderen revive a decrepit offlaner?
Khezu joined ESC as a promising offlaner from Heroes of Newerth (another “best player in the world” mind you) after quickly ascending the MMR ladder in DotA 2. He showed promise — not only in terms of his mechanical ability but also in attitude. Khezu grinded out games, worked hard, took all sorts of feedback and kept on improving his craft. When Forev left for his old team, Team Secret came calling. It was Khezu’s chance to make it in the big leagues and he was ready.
Escape Gaming has always prided themselves on sticking together and progressing as a team. They didn’t make any changes in the last two shuffle periods nor were ever rumours about any internal scuffles. Still, it felt like the team had stopped improving at some point after TI6, and their disappointing showing in the Boston Qualifier (2–7) was a cause for concern. The departure of Khezu gives them a fresh opportunity to shake off the cobwebs and start gunning again. The squad has two star talents in Qojqva and Yapzor and wallowing in mediocrity does not suit them.
On yesterday’s broadcast of Elimination Mode 2.0, Synderen mentioned that he wanted a more aggressive-minded offlaner and that after six months Khezu was sometimes still hesitant to play that role. This is where the finnish offlaner Trixi, of Fnatic.EU & 4ASC fame comes in.
Except according to Dotabuff, Trixi has played a total of two (!) professional games in the last six months outside of standing-in for Escape. Before that he was part of STARK which failed to make any mark on the scene in their time together. Safe to say, his recent resume is unimpressive and his MMR rating of 6516 doesn’t help the case either. While MMR might not mean much in the pro-scene, it has still proven to be a decent indicator of skill in the past couple of years for teamless players.
Regardless, Trixi brings an initiation-heavy style of playing the offlane to the team as seen in their recent games vs Imperial and Power Rangers, sometimes overly so. He has a KDA rating of 2.57 (3.4 kills / 7.6 deaths / 16 assists) with Escape compared to Khezu’s rating of 2.92 (2.86 kills / 4.6 deaths / 10.6 assists).
While these stats don’t carry significant weight since the sample size is much smaller for Trixi, it is clear that he is willing to throw himself into dangerous positions for a kill — a lot more than his tamer predecessor. It’s a very high risk high reward kind of playstyle, for a series of unanswered deaths can severely stunt item progression — as evidenced by his low GPM average so far (330 avg). It is 40 GPM lower than Khezu’s overall average, who was already a light farming offlaner.
But DotA is not all about numbers and mechanical skill. Trixi is a veteran, and has played the game professionally for 4 years now. He brings with him intangibles that are beneficial to a team that a pub player can’t at the start. With his previous squads, he’s shown willingness to stick with a team and grind out games even if results don’t come right away. He fits right in with Escape’s philosophy.
Still, if Escape do stick with Trixi, the first few months will be a lot of getting him up to speed rather than him elevating the squad immediately. Whether that time investment will be worth it, given the shuffle is so near, still remains to be seen. Their games tomorrow will give us a glimpse into Synderen’s predicament.
4. Alliance Reborn — Can Loda succeed without his TI3 teammates?
Alliance parted ways once more after TI6. Their mid player & drafter s4 left for greener pastures to OG, and the organization rebranded their logo with a touch of green to welcome the new roster. Only EGM and Loda remained and three ex-NiP players joined the team. Loda had opted for an all-swedish lineup once again, in a time where teams were favoring skill over nationality more and more.
Alliance have been pretty underwhelming in the fall season. They failed to make the playoffs for the major qualifiers, going 3–6 in the round robin stage. They lost to Akke’s pickup squad Horde twice — first in the Swedish WESG qualifiers and then again on LAN at Kiev. Following that, the team went to Northern Arena where they were managed to beat a crippled compLexity in BO1 before getting spanked by Team NP towards elimination. They made it to Dreamhack Winter only after Virtus Pro withdrew their spot. Needless to say, it’s been a tough four months for the team.
Loda has always been the heart of Alliance, but without s4’s brains they’ve always looked a little lost. Handsken’s drafting doesn’t measure up to other top drafters yet, and his insistence on playing the position 4 role over EGM seems to be hurting the team. Jonassomfan is only a serviceable offlaner when not playing his signature Axe, and the team has also lost the advantage of Bulldog eating up the opponent bans. Loda has been playing decently well, but a lot more rests on his shoulders that he is playing the traditional position 1 role and there will be an adjustment period without Akke by his side. But, it’s not time to panic just yet, says the carry.
I decided to take it a little bit easier these past six months. It’s been a long and intense couple of years and I’m pretty much back to the point where I’d rather build a team from the bottom up and be able to more strongly control that change or push for that progress. So I actually feel good playing with these guys and I’m happy playing with all of them.
Sometimes when you lose, you don’t really feel that you can win, that’s how it is with some teams and lineups, but with this team I felt like we could actually win. I think we knew what were our weaknesses, but those weaknesses are something that takes quite a long time to change.
- Loda, in an interview with theScore esports at BEAT Invitational.
For Alliance, Dreamleague is an unexpected gift that will give them another chance to gain insight into the team’s offline tendencies and potentially improve upon on them. While the team isn’t looking to shuffle after the Major by the looks of it, the LAN experience might finally click or break something in the team — for as it stands, the team’s future does not look very bright.
5. Predictions Corner: Some quick takes and a filled bracket to round it out.
- The Imperial will win the tournament on the back of some great team play by their support duo, especially Ryze.
- Escape Gaming will finish last without winning a game, and Trixi’s play will show some major rust.
- Team Liquid will have a good showing on the back of outskilling their opponents. However, their team play woes will continue.
- GH will have a breakout LAN and overshadow his other 9k teammates.
- Handsken will continue his largely underwhelming streak as position 4.
Dreamleague begins early tomorrow morning at 11:00 CET / 5:00 AM EST / 10:00 GMT. You can catch the action live on their twitch channel alongside ODPixel, Godz, Sheever, Fogged, AnneDroid and of course, good ol’ SirActionSlacks.
The teams may not be the best of the best, but there is still DotA to be played and at Dreamhack, it’s always a good time.
