DOTA 2

Yeah, they got the finals in the regionals, got their opponents backed up to their fountain/ancient, and then GG'd out because 3 of them have contracts with Valve to cast the Kiev major and Blitz is DC's coach.

Merlini was jokingly saying he would cast his own games, in-game, if Valve would let him do both.

beanboys advance to regionals, my guy is gonna win kiev~

now i'll go back and cry to this classic

Who the hell is casting this game right now I'm losing my shit. GG vs Maple. Naga vs Medusa. Shit is going on forever

EDIT: WTF was that end!? Worth the wait?

Intrinsic said:

Yeah they had already agreed to uphold their casting obligations regardless of outcome. So they GG'd at the end of game 3 even though they would have won. But who knows since everyone knew that agreement was already in place.

Click to expand...

I feel like they should GG out the round before Bo2s to not entirely gum up the bracket. That said, something Sing said recently I think rings true - if you have a hope of winning the regionals you should have no difficulty with the teams in the open. It does demonstrate that NA and EU opens are a shit show this time around, caster team (with two ringers...) wins and Sing, Bamboe and Cancel decide to form a squad a few days prior and win.

CIS qualifiers seem the most interesting, EU and NA have the potential for upsets but also seem likely to be one-sided. I do hope to see good performance from B)ears though.

It's amazing watching the qualifiers, as said above. You have a few standout teams (like PD and BeanBoys) who just shit stomp the competition in the opens.

And then you get to the regional qualifiers and they don't stand a chance. They only gets wins against the other open qualifiers, if any.

What the hell happened to Secret ? I still think Puppey plays the worst rubbick around, but somehow their drafts show just the right amount of greed while still letting Midone win the game for them.

Zaphid said:

What the hell happened to Secret ? I still think Puppey plays the worst rubbick around, but somehow their drafts show just the right amount of greed while still letting Midone win the game for them.

Click to expand...

I don't think the competition is particularly strong, 2 of the other 3 top teams formed since Christmas.

Luthair said:

I don't think the competition is particularly strong, 2 of the other 3 top teams formed since Christmas.

Click to expand...

The split definitely lowered the competition, but still, they used to trade games with these teams back and forth. Alliance particularly looked really strong, before they crumbled in the winner finals

FOH Opinion Squad:

Who do you guys think are the major contenders for winning TI this year?

Anyone placing bets?

Eh still too early to say. I would hazard to guess that the usual big teams (like EG) will make a run of it, but the massive patch kind of upended things a bit so it is hard to guess.

eXarc said:

FOH Opinion Squad:

Who do you guys think are the major contenders for winning TI this year?

Anyone placing bets?

Click to expand...

Too early to tell, especially since China still has to get its shit together, as usual. Prime suspects in the west are Liquid, EG and OG. SEA, CIS and other NA teams don't really hold up in international competition. If it's anything as usual, the "favorite" will crash and burn, while a relative underdog will power through seemingly out of the blue, with everybody saying "I guess we should've seen that coming" afterwards. Wings last year mostly crashed at LANs, DC was a team of rejects with nothing to lose.

Zaphid said:

Too early to tell, especially since China still has to get its shit together, as usual. Prime suspects in the west are Liquid, EG and OG. SEA, CIS and other NA teams don't really hold up in international competition. If it's anything as usual, the "favorite" will crash and burn, while a relative underdog will power through seemingly out of the blue, with everybody saying "I guess we should've seen that coming" afterwards. Wings last year mostly crashed at LANs, DC was a team of rejects with nothing to lose.

Click to expand...

And that's one of the most exciting parts of the Majors and TI. As much as I love EG and want them to win, it was incredibly satisfying to see the new kids do so well last year.

The teams have had so much change over recently, so I don't know who does what anymore, but I'd say the teams that are more focused on team fighting (especially early) will benefit from the recent changes. So that probably eliminates most of the Chinese teams (farm, farm, farm).

I don't think i could guess until after Kiev. Either way i'm rooting for babaev and the EG boys~

Rewatching EG vs EHOME game 1 from TI6 last year... i think that game single handedly made me pick up DOTA haha, sooo crazy

Needless said:

I don't think i could guess until after Kiev. Either way i'm rooting for babaev and the EG boys~

Rewatching EG vs EHOME game 1 from TI6 last year... i think that game single handedly made me pick up DOTA haha, sooo crazy

Click to expand...

That is truly an awesome game...I remember it well.

Intrinsic said:

I'm somewhat worried about EG this year. CoL has looked very strong. We'll see how the quals play out. Just seems like EG has been MIA the last few months and not getting much tournament experience on this patch. May not be that big a deal though.

Click to expand...

CoL ?

No, just ... no. I refuse to believe a swindle team could be an international tournament contender.

Go watch Secret vs A g2 in the grand finals. That was some weird game. G1 was a stomp after A forgot that physical damage is pretty good and gave them terrorblade instead of timber.