Current Standings After Group Stage
Teams in bold will start from upper bracket. Teams in italics will play from the lower bracket.
The eight teams starting from the lower bracket will play best of 1s for the first round, then best of threes. There’s a decent chance that beloved teams Secret and EG may be going home early…
Group A: Newbee, OG, Empire, Complexity
Group B: NaVi, Digital Chaos (!), Wings, Secret
Group C: Liquid, Fnatic, Alliance, Vici Gaming Reborn
Group D: LGD Gaming, MVP Phoenix, Evil Geniuses, Mineski
I woke up Saturday morning and thought “I can probably catch a piece of one of the Deciders’ Matches live… wow Fnatic and Alliance?” Imagine my surprise when I tuned in and it was 1-19 kills in favor of Fnatic at 22 minutes in. Wut.
At 1-21, Fnatic was raxxing. I thought [A] was finally going to get their second kill in by taking down DJ (Ancient Apparition), but he simply walked away from highground for a minute and waltzed back in.
At 1-23, MidOne was beyond godlike. The Ember Spirit forced Alliance into their fountain. At 1-27, second rax went down and Alliance called GG shortly after. WUT
Much like the Spanish Inquisition, I don’t think anybody expected this. Total blowouts like this are fairly uncommon in top level play in Dota – especially a kill score as low as 1.
Same goes for Digital Chaos – the team nearly disappeared after the latest round of roster shuffles. Owner SUNSfan managed to pick up a number of players displaced from other teams, and it seems like they’re really starting to gel. Resolut1on played carry on Empire for a while and Misery has actually attended every single TI, albeit on different teams. Combined with Moo, Saksa, and w33 who have varying levels of pro experience, Digital Chaos has managed to place second in the group stage at Manila. I’m excited to see how they’ll fare in their first matchup against Newbee.
Ok, so DC lost this game, but it was probably one of the best games of the whole group stage. If you have the time I highly suggest watching the whole thing.
And here we have Team Secret getting dumpstered… EternalEnvy, I just want you to win games again. It was so nice to see you break the c9 curse. Please?
It was cool to see Kunkka get picked up for Arteezy, as Kunkka pretty much never gets picked in pro matches. Too bad it was highly ineffective.
Let’s hope that the main event brings us more of the same!* Matches start on June 7th in Manila, so the evening of the 6th for North America.
*okay, maybe less Team Secret dumpstering.