On the night of January 13, in Bukovel, the Dota 2 minor from WePlay studio ended. Became a champion Nigmawho has not performed on the professional stage since August. In this article, we’ll tell you how viewers will remember WePlay! Bukovel Minor 2023, and try to find positive aspects in the speech of the CIS representatives.
Photo: WePlay Press Service!
In the CIS, so far without trophies
In October, I wrote a text, the title of which has often flashed recently in the comments on our website: “What a cool Fng!” But then Gambit esports failed on the first major, but on the second and could not get at all, losing the slots Natus vincere and Virtus.pro. However, all this could easily be attributed to a variety of circumstances – somewhere out of luck with the grid, somewhere they made a mistake.
Because of this, our entire region was waiting with interest for the major: if Gambit had won it, the team would have been forgiven for all the failures. But everything turned out not so smoothly. The team showed a good game in the group stage, coping with Furia and Fighting pandaSand in the playoffs was close to sending Nigma home. However, they did not succeed in squeezing the opponent, and as a result the club finished the tournament on the fourth line – this is not at all the result that the fans were waiting for.
Most offensively, at the tournament Gambit had moments for which the team really wants to praise. The most obvious of these is the performance. Danila gpK ~ Skutina. Yes, the player was predicted a bright future after the qualifiers on TI9, but how many young talents have already failed to gain a foothold in the professional scene? Apparently, such an outcome does not threaten Skutin.
Source: WePlay Press Service!
On eight cards out of ten, the Gambit leader overtook his carry on farm, and the ratio of murders and assists of Skutin to deaths at the end of the tournament was almost 8.00! For comparison: w33, who became the champion, scored only 3.6 on this indicator – such a gap would be impressive even if we compared two equally experienced e-sportsmen.
On the other hand, Gambit failures may partly be associated with such gpK ~ results. I drew attention to this problem Dmitry Inmate Filinov – the team tried so hard to ensure a comfortable game for its mid, that dream actually lost the status of “first position”. It got ridiculous: in the match against Geek Fam, Kerry made a teleport to “sell” himself and save gpK ~!
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A special mention deserves the show match, which was so loved by the audience that on reddit players already advise Valve to learn how to organize from WePlay. It turned out that the recipe for an entertaining match is very simple – it’s enough not to include cybersportsmen who participated or continue to participate in this tournament. Sounds logical, right?
As a result of the competition, English-language forums were filled with newly-minted WePlay fans. Users were delighted with the atmosphere of the streams: the major was already called the best in the history of discipline and now they ask Valve to entrust the organization with a major for the studio. Is it possible, we will find out only in the next season, but I want to believe that the example of WePlay will help even more eminent operators to finally throw off the shackles of the “classical format”.
IceFrog has something to think about
Bukovel Minor became the first ranking tournament after update 7.23. Here we first saw full-fledged professional matches with neutral items. About a month after the patch was released, analysts debated how this random effect on DotA, and it turned out that … he didn’t change the game so much.
The main conclusion on the basis of the minor was that in the matches there were more comebacks. In the final, Nigma won back 30,000 behind RNG – this is the most striking example, but coups more modestly happened during the tournament many times. In 7.22 the game, this was very lacking – most matches by that time went according to one scenario: whoever won the advantage in the lane stage ended up winning the map. According to rumors, sometimes some teams already “buried” themselves by the tenth minute of the game, if by that time they did not have time to achieve a certain advantage.
Photo: WePlay Press Service!
The patch solved this problem, but here it is important to remember that the network performance is now not so objective. Neutral items, many of which remain relevant until the end of the match, have no price in the game, and therefore do not affect the total cost of the teams. For example, w33 finished the second map of the grand final with Stygian Desolator and Mirror Shield, which is why the value of his Windranger in the post-match statistics was hardly an informative indicator.
However, it’s still interesting to monitor the coups, and therefore it’s not so important whether the lag in the network is inflated or not. More importantly, for the entire tournament no one complained that neutral artifacts “ruined” the game for someone. It seems IceFrog still keeps abreast of Dota 2 – in vain we were all worried.
However, with regard to meta, the developer has yet to think carefully. 38 heroes from a common roster have never been in the game. Among them are not only specific Pudge and Techies, but also absolutely mainstream Warlock, Phoenix, Tidehunter, Dazzle, Dark Willow, Bristleback … Some of these heroes fell out of the game, as Abaddon became one of the key characters of the minor, among other advantages , also knows how to remove debuffs, but because many casters were a little out of work. But not everything can be attributed to the Lord Averno effect!
With the release of patch 7.23 from the game, Medusa, Chaos Knight, Juggernaut, Sven, Gyrocopter completely disappeared … In general, almost all classic carry. About this on reddit have already managed to make a terrific zakos under the “Old people do not belong here.”
Source: reddit
But memes are memes, and the problem needs to be fixed. Of course, the new Magnus with Echo Saber and Daedalus made the matches quite spectacular, but by the end of the Minor it became clear that eSportsmen were simply cramped in the current patch. All regions arrived with unique blanks, but up to the final map they remained true to themselves, which is why viewers did not see any new ideas or drafts. Instead, the enemy’s throne was broken over and over again by either Slark, or Phantom Lancer, or Drow Ranger, behind which Abaddon stood in every second game.
Perhaps it’s too early to sound the alarm: there will be a major ahead of us, where the best clubs on the planet will perform. As you know, where Puppey is, there are games of the mind, and therefore there is a chance that even Juggernaut, who is now desperately trying not to fall below 40% of the win rate in pubs, can suddenly open up from a new perspective. However, if even in Leipzig the trophy will be raised by a team that chooses each match between PL and Drow Ranger, then we will have to admit that Dota 2 in terms of meta took a huge step back.
