January 18 in Leipzig will begin DreamLeague Leipzig Major. The tournament promises to be a full-fledged “discovery” of the season in Dota 2 – almost everyone received slots on it (hello, PSG.LGD) the best teams of last year, only refused to participate in the qualifiers Og. About what we expect from the tournament and why it is necessary to watch it, is in our material.
Battle check for Virtus.pro and NAVI
The VP line-up appeared even before the start of the first qualifying round of the season, but so far has not had the opportunity to properly prove itself. At least that’s what they think. Alexey Solo Berezinwho called DreamLeague Leipzig Major “the first real test” for the roster. Of course, I want to ask a question, what then were Parimatch league, ESL One Hamburg 2019 and ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational Singaporebut I’m sure that if Virtus.pro really shows its worth in a major, then all the desire to argue with the captain will disappear both from me and from the fans.
The last time we saw a team in Singapore – there the team played a draw with Team aster, won TNC Predator, J.storm and Natus vincerebut could not handle Team secret and Alliance. Perhaps it will be wrong to draw conclusions from that tournament – a patch was released before its launch, which, according to Solo, hit Virtus.pro’s strategies strongly. Most likely, we can really see a completely different game from the team in a major in Germany – during this time she really could make great progress. The only problem is that its opponents were unlikely to stand still at this time.
Given that VP missed the first cycle of rating tournaments, the team will have to bite into each match in order to be in the top of the best according to the results of the season. Nobody wants a dramatic story to repeat Gambit esports, which at EPICENTER Major 2019 did not have one victory for the slot on TI9.
It’s even more difficult to talk about NAVI – the team left the media space after failing to qualify for the first tournaments of the season, and then decided to change their roster. After leaving Akbar SoNNeikO Butaeva The club’s results seemed to be on the rise – the team took second place in qualifying for DreamLeague Season 13: for the first time since March 2019, NAVI will play in the major.
In addition to qualifiers, the roster took part in the ONE Esports championship in Singapore, where he won against PSG.LGD and Team liquidbut lost to gambit and Evil geniuses. In the first round of the playoffs, the squad faced VP and lost 0–2. These two tournaments are currently limited by the competitive experience of NAVI in the current season, which greatly complicates the assessment of the club’s prospects.
On the one hand, at the championship in Singapore, the team showed that they can play the strategic Dota. Commentators noted the pragmatic style of the team with a focus on the late, in which NAVI did not rush into adventurous “arcades”, but methodically took control of the map, waiting for key artifacts. On the other hand, the same tournament demonstrated that there are enough tricks against such a game – both EG and two CIS squads found them. How does the NAVI style evolve and is this enough to be the first time since The bucharest major rise above the last line according to the results of the major, fans will know only at the start of the tournament.
The next meeting of Puppey and KuroKy
Clement Puppey Ivanov and Kuro KuroKy Salehi Tahasomi – Dota 2 legends that remain in the top of the professional scene for almost ten years. At DreamLeague Leipzig Major they may well meet again, hug, and at the same time – perhaps – tell us what the balance of power will be in the second part of the Dota Pro Circuit 2019/2020 season. Team Secret and Nigma of The International 2019 sample (then Nigma performed under the Team Liquid tag) are the two strongest European teams in the distance of the season. Now these teams are in an ambiguous position.
Puppey never hesitated to exclude players, again and again trying to create the perfect roster. Once the Estonian simply collected from the stage all the stars, but from these attempts, over and over again, a kind of e-sports Frankenstein was obtained, which did not want to work properly – the club took the big prize only for The Shanghai Major 2016. Then Ivanov changed his approach and became interested in scouting, but so far this has not brought proper results.
Secret became a truly formidable force only when Puppey mixed both styles, eventually bringing together in one roster the stellar Ludwig zai Wahlberg and Zheng MidOne Yek Naya with little-known pubers Yazid YapzOr Jaradat and Michalom Nisha Jankowski. With them, the team played in the finals of three majors in one season, and also entered the top four on TI9, but this was not enough for Ivanov. The last permutation happened after the first major – Lasse MATUMBAMAN Urpalainen replaced MidOne.
At the first tournament in the new lineup – ONE Esports Invitational – the team performed poorly. He lost to EG in the first round of the top bracket, and then did not cope with the future champion of the tournament – Vici gaming. Of course, the Singapore championship was not a priority for the club, and the real strength of Team Secret we will see only in Leipzig. But what if, in pursuit of the best roster, Puppey broke the synergy that was in the previous roster?
The situation with Nigma is less dramatic. At the moment, the main problem of the team is that she missed the first half of the season, and returned to training only at the end of 2019. Individual skill Amera Miracle- Al Barkawi and the company was enough to win a major in Bukovel, but before that the roster showed a frankly weak result in the qualifiers for the major. Hence the question that all fans of the team are now asking: can Nigma continue the winning streak in the major, or is the minor cup just the result of a low level of opponents?
Among the obvious problems of the Kuro team following the results of the minor, drafts can be distinguished: Nigma uses different supports, but here are the heroes for Miracle- and Alivi W33 Omar the entire tournament was selected from a very narrow pool. In fact, Kerry Club won this championship on two characters – Phantom Lancer and Ember Spirit. Experiments with Clinkz, Alchemist, Arc Warden, and even signature Invoker led Nigma only to the loss of points. The situation with the midliner is the same – w33 confidently won with Outworld Devourer and beloved Windranger, but on other heroes it stably failed. If KuroKy didn’t rectify the situation during the break after the Minor, Nigma’s major rivals will certainly be able to use it.
The best Dota in history
January 15 Saeed Samail SumaiL Hassan – once the champion of The International, and now the best puber of the North American region, – shared his opinion about patch 7.23f, which went against the position of most players. Former EG leader said that Dota is in better condition today than ever, at least in terms of gameplay. Then he said that river runes have too much influence on the game and can change the course of the entire lane stage, and this can already be argued with, if desired. However, the words of Hassan that the modern Dota 2 is really interesting to play are a completely fair observation.
Patch 7.23f was released right before the start WePlay! Bukovel Minor 2023, and already at the Ukrainian tournament we could see how players master the new realities of Dota. Minor had certain problems with the selection of heroes – all too often Rubick, Magnus, Abaddon and Phantom Lancer fell into the peak. But all this can be attributed to the adaptation of the teams to the update – right during the tournament no one wanted to experiment with the drafts.
What is more important is how the course of the games of the minor changed – an intrigue appeared in them, which sometimes persisted from beginning to end. The best illustration of this was the grand final, in which Nigma was able to win back nearly 40 thousand gold from the opponent and as a result win. However, other, albeit slightly more modest, coups took place throughout the entire major.
Major is a tournament of a higher level, at which we have the right to expect an improved quality of the game. On the one hand, this may mean that the clubs simply cease to give an advantage, and the situation will again become the same as it was in 7.22. But on the other hand, such a change of meta can make matches even more spectacular, because in most games of the last patch we had to watch how a team by the end of the lane goes into the lead over gold and then for half an hour tries to methodically strangle an opponent. If now Dota leaves this gameplay, eSportsmen and spectators will benefit from it.
Tournament without clear favorites
Vici Gaming seems to be the favorite of the tournament in Leipzig, however Team Secret with an updated roster can also claim victory. Nigma quickly accelerated along the course of the minor and now seems a real threat, and Evil Geniuses probably conducted a productive bootcamp – news from the camp of this team had not been heard for a long time. By the way, didn’t you forget that TNC, who will also come to Germany, became the champion of the previous major?
Before any tournament, it is customary to talk about intrigues – to search for dark horses, to identify the weaknesses of favorites … However, DreamLeague Leipzig Major eased the fate of all content makers, because it is interesting in itself. Vici Gaming in December won the ONE Esports Invitational, but noticeably skidded at the start of the tournament. Team Secret has just changed its line-up, and the major will be her first full-fledged event with MATUMBAMAN. Evil Geniuses showed good form in Singapore, but could not cope with Vici Gaming, and TNC completely disappeared from the radar after winning the MDL Chengdu Major.
Any team can win in such turmoil, and very different opinions of analysts confirm this. There is no single favorite in this tournament – perhaps for the first time in many months. All the more interesting to the audience will follow all the ups and downs of the major!
In my opinion, the biggest responsibility in Leipzig will rest with RAMZEs and his Evil Geniuses. This major is perhaps the best chance for the line-up to receive an early invite to the tenth The International. While Team Secret is rolling into the season, PSG.LGD is resting in China, and Nigma is trying to expand the pool of Alivi’s heroes w33 Omar, only Vici Gaming still looks like an insurmountable obstacle for the RAMZEs team. In the ONE Esports Invitational finals, the Chinese team defeated the opponent with a score of 3: 0 – for some reason it seems to me that the second time Fly will not allow this.
