Dota 2: Before The Chongqing Major

In late November 2018, I wrote an article reviewing the state of the Dota Pro Circuit after the first Minor and Major. Since then the teams have played in Major qualifiers, Minor qualifiers, and The Bucharest Minor.

Though a Minor is only composed of eight teams, it was certainly capable of upsetting expectations. Going in, OG and Ninjas in Pyjamas were the clear favorites, the former still formidable from their TI8 victory, and the latter having placed forth in The Kuala Lumpur Major. But China's second tier teams demonstrated their resilience, and earned 1st and 3rd place finishes. Gambit, from the CIS region, offered strong, but insufficient, strength in their attempt to reach a second major. EHOME, previously not in the top 20, rocketed into 8th place with their victory at the Minor and will enter the Major with a veneer of vigor. But was their win the result of victory against a collection of misfit teams, or because they truly have the will and the skill? I admit my system didn't do a good job predicting the winners of the matches each day, ending only 11 for 20 over the event. The failure was the result of a few missteps. As previously mentioned, the two best ranked teams, OG and NiP, performed poorly. Even the third best team before the Minor, Gambit, lost repeatedly to the eventual winner.

Among the minor teams, the pressure is sure to build on OG and Ninjas to reassess their situation and succeed at the next set of qualifiers. OG is still searching for a carry to replace their TI winning companion Ana. They already jettisoned their first replacement (Pajkatt) and are using iLTW, a relatively new talent who had some success on 3rd tier teams last year. Ninjas is now plagued by a question: was their success at the Kuala Lumpur Major because of their stand-in, Mind Control, or are they merely suffering from some defect they can correct.

What follows is the list of Awkward Mixture's new rankings. There isn't much to say about the teams which didn't participate in the Minor, and are only waiting for the Major (though they did shift slightly because of the Qualifier results). The teams in red are attending the Major, while those in black are not.

Top Tier:
1. Team Secret (0)
2. Virtus Pro (0)
3. LGD (+1)

Upper Middle Tier
4. Vici (+2)
5. Evil Geniuses (0)
6. Fnatic (+2)
7. Team Liquid (0)

Bottom Middle Tier:
8. EHOME (+?)
9. Aster (+3)
10. Forward Gaming (0)
11. TNC Predator (0)
12. OG (-9)
13. Gambit (+6)
14. The Alliance (+4)
15. J. Storm (+5)
16. Pain Gaming (-3)

Bottom Tier:
17. Ninjas in Pyjamas (-8)
18. Keen Gaming (+?)
19. No Pangolier (+?)
20. Tigers (-6)

36. Thunder Predator (?)

On a final note, both the Minor and Major continue to use an absurd system for determining the upper and lower bracket. With 16 teams in the Major, they are broken into four groups of four. At it takes to get into the Upper Bracket is losing to one team, and then beating the same team twice. Even worse, is the Groups for The Chongqing Major, which were just released today. Somehow Group B contains Team Secret and LGD! I rate them 1 and 3. DPC has them 2nd and 5th. If groups were formed by DPC, they should still be in separate groups because the top five teams are Secret, Virtus Pro, Evil Geniuses, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and LGD. Since Ninjas isn't at the event, the other four teams should be in separate groups. How do they determine the groups? Since the group stage is especially restricted, with each team playing at most three other teams, but more probably two, it is especially critical that the groups are well balanced (and even this can't compensate for the poor group stage construction).

More Dota after the Group Stage.

Recent:

Relevant:
Dota: The Boston Major Experience

Comments