ESL One Genting: New Year, New Meta

It’s just about time for ESL One Genting, and the views look amazing.

The talent is on their way to Malaysia and the organizers are setting up the arena.

Participating Teams:

• Fnatic (Direct Invite)
• Digital Chaos (Direct Invite)
• Wings Gaming (Direct Invite)
• Team NP (Qualified)
• Newbee (Qualified)
• Virtus Pro (Qualified)
• Warriors Gaming.Unity (Qualified)
• Execration (Qualified)

According to the Majors Registration List at the time of writing, only three players have locked in to Virtus Pro’s roster. Fnatic only finalized their roster yesterday. And if you look at the list of competing teams, you’ll notice a lot of conspicuous absences. Yes, this will be a tournament without OG, EG, Liquid, or Secret.

The qualifiers occurred back in November, so things have changed a lot. If you’ve been living under a rock, we’re now in Dota 7.01, which has added lots of interesting stuff, but is also annoyingly buggy. In Boston, Virtus Pro was finally dethroned and sent packing to a 5th-8th place finish.

Dota 7.01 Meta Evolution & Team Strategies

Dota 7.01 makes predicting a winner at ESL One that much harder. Alliance isn’t in the tournament, so we won’t have Loda, the bug magnet to showcase the issues in 7.01, many of which remain unfixed. Teams had better hope they’ve practiced enough on the new patch to deal with them, or keep their fingers crossed.

Bugs aside, tournaments near the beginning of a new patch are always unpredictable and exciting. The only top tier tournament played on 7.00/7.01 thus far has been WCA 2016, an event that featured a whopping four teams. That’s not enough variation to produce a meta just yet.

General consensus, if the internet ever truly reaches agreement, is that Dota 7.01 will favor shorter games and more teamfights. I’ve called it a movement in the “Heroes of the Storm” direction: more brawly, with less of an emphasis on a mechanical farming phase. On the surface, this seems to favor the CIS Davai Davai Dota of Virus Pro, and present some issues for more methodical teams like Newbee.

The presence of the Shrines will make very mana-dependent heroes more viable, like Storm Spirit, and encourage more fighting as players will not have to expend as many consumables or return to base. Additionally, the talent trees are allowing heroes that were previously pigeon-holed into one role to expand and be viable in different positions. Every hero’s kit is now more customizable to the specific game at hand.

ESL One Genting Predictions *

*Take these with a grain of salt. Remember, I thought Liquid was going to win TI6.

1. Virtus Pro
2. Wings
3. Newbee
4. Digital Chaos
5. Fnatic
6. Team NP/Warriors Gaming.Unity
7. Team NP/Warriors Gaming.Unity
8. Execration

My gut tells me that Virtus Pro is going to win ESL One Genting. They’ve had excellent results in recent tournaments, and their two biggest nemeses (OG and EG) are not competing. Wings remain an unknown quantity in this patch (especially with their proven track record of ignoring the meta and playing whatever they want), but I think VP has the upper hand. As much as I’d love to say my boys NP are gonna win it, I think there will be a couple of classic Envy moments that will be their undoing. I’ll admit I’m not super familiar with Warriors Gaming.Unity, but they 2-0ed Complexity during the Boston Major and took a game off OG. Newbee and DC could go either way—it depends on how much practice they’ve managed to squeeze in on 7.01.

Of course, all of this can easily be undone with a few clever pocket strats or a lucky combination during the playoffs. When it’s this early in a patch meta, anything goes.