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:
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
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