The International 2015 Dota 2 Championships (TI) has come once again to test every team's mettle in the biggest Dota 2 tournament the world has ever seen. Ever since the great TI4 shuffle, new teams emerged to become powerhouses whilst old teams crumble and succumbed to powerful ones.
Will we see last year's TI Champion Newbee win their second championship this year? Or will we see a new team take home the Aegis of Champions this TI?
Based on past history, every year's TI crowd favorite team always fail to take home the crown. In the first TI, we saw Natus Vincere (Na'Vi) take helm as the greatest Dota 2 Team in the world. Na'Vi, with Dendi fronting the mid has been the favorites to win TI each and every year. But in TI2 and TI3, they failed to reach the same feat they once did, only achieving as runners-up for two consecutive years with Invictus Gaming (iG) winning TI2 and The Alliance in TI3.
In the fourth installment of The International, The Alliance are dubbed as crowd favorites to defend their title against one of the past champions Na'Vi but failed to even make it out of the Group Stages to make it to the Main Event. Na'vi didn't do any better as they exited the Main Event on a tied 7th-8th place with iG on the first round of the Loser's Bracket.
Below is my Main Event Predictions for this year's The International.
The Teams:
Team Secret formed post-TI4 and have some of the most decorated members on the team. Previously headed by Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov and now by Gustav 's4' Magnusson, they take on the world as the strongest team of the West and maybe the world. Having four back-to-back first place finishes on LAN in a span of about a month heading into this year's TI and bagging around $380 thousand USD, they are the team to beat!
Team Secret's drafting style focuses on efficient use of the map and leave nothing untouched. Every member of the team will utilize the whole map farming lanes, jungle and do creep stacking. Even when their kill count is low and death count high, you still don't count them out til the Ancient falls as they always deliver right to the very end.
And let's not forget this tweet by s4 after demolishing Fnatic at ESL One Frankfurt 2015.
techies is a top tier pick
— Gustav Magnusson (@s4dota) July 14, 2015
Evil Geniuses (EG) is America's last hope for Dota. The team did fairly well during TI4 grabbing 3rd place overall when it was least expected of them. The team saw relative success post-TI grabbing 3 golds from tournaments they participated. After the new year shuffle, things went sour for the team when they lost Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg and Artour 'Arteezy' Babaev to Team Secret.
People begin to doubt the team's capacity to win tournaments when they brought in a new blood to join the team, the 15 year old child prodigy Syed "sumaiL" Hassan to replace their former mid laner. But their performance proved everyone wrong as they won gold in the biggest tournament outside of TI, the Dota 2 Asia Championships (DAC) bagging around $1.2 million USD.
EG's success is often credited to Peter 'ppd' Dager's suberb drafting. They combine pocket strats and counter drafting to give enemies hard time guessing their team's game plan. Helping the team's mid lane child prodigy in the early stages of the game is the main priority of the team. And let's not oversee Saahil 'UNiVeRsE' Arora's amazing offlane plays. From his signature Batrider to Faceless Void, he'll bring his A-game into each and every match.
ViCi Gaming (VG) is China's premiere powerhouse team. In the last TI, they placed 2nd behind Newbee which was previously headed by Bai 'rOtK' Fan. After TI4, VG welcomed the addition of 2 new members Daryl 'iceiceice' Koh and Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeir to replace to fill in the pieces to complete their roster. This change proved to be quite a success as they continued to dominate all throughout the year grabbing 1st place finishes in i-League Season 1, ESL One New York and The Summit 2.
But their success fell short of expectation in DAC when they took 2nd place in a convincing 0-3 in a best-of-5 series against EG in the Grand Finals. Although the team did fairly well despite their loss, they attributed their failure to Black^ and he was axed from the team shortly thereafter.
We saw the addition of Zhihao 'Hao' Chen from Newbee in early March 2015 after replacing VG's carry but the team is still not living up to most people's expectation as they only won 1 gold leading up to this year's TI.
VG's drafting and play style focuses on mid to late game more than anything else, trying to get everyone their core items before pushing into high ground. The team's aggressiveness mainly comes from two strong roaming supports that help strengthen whichever lanes they rotated to. Iceiceice, considered by many as one of the best off-laners in the world, always finds his way to farm even though he's been pushed out of the lane. Always be on the lookout for his signature Tidehunter and Clockwerk delivering big plays to bring success to the team. As for Hao, only time will tell if his early aggressive play style fits well into the team's focus on late game.
Invictus Gaming (iG) has been around the Dota scene for a long time finishing in the Top 8 in every reiteration of TI and claiming the Aegis of Champions in TI2. A team full of veterans, they have still yet to reclaim the Aegis.
iG as a team is very entertaining to see, Feichi 'Ferrari_430' Luo can single-handedly dominate the mid lane with his signature Queen of Pain or Storm. Hock 'ChuaN' Wong is always fun to watch with his quirky and sometimes funny demeanor
But it's not all fun and games for iG. After losing 2 of their long-standing members that helped them won their first TI back in 2012, their prospect for another gold looked grim, but then Zhilei 'BurNIng' Xu came. BurNIng, considered to be the best carry player in China and maybe the world, joined iG to help propel them to the top. Still, it's been a hit or miss for the team, winning just two LANs even after the addition of the great legend and losing to lesser-skilled teams in the most critical of moments.
iG mostly plays very greedily. They draft greedy supports that tend to farm a lot in the jungle from pulling thus leaving their lane unprotected. Since BurNIng is a farm-centric player, he expects his team to support his lane but he seldom gets what he's asking for.Their game plan and play style is pretty inconsistent and undecisive, Ferrari_430 wants plays aggressively in the early to mid stages of the game but the team's carry plays too passively all throughout thus resulting to bad plays in most situations. Still, BurNIng is BurNIng, you can't rule that out.
LGD Gaming (LGD) has had a long history in Dota. Being one of the first sponsored Dota team, they set high standards when it comes to their players. Their highest standing in any TI is a 3rd place back in 2012 with last year just getting a tied 5th-6th place bowing out in the 2nd round of the lower bracket against Team DK.
After Zhang 'xiao8' Ning's, most popularly known as the Director, recent success winning the Aegis in TI4 with his team former Newbee, he went back to his old roots in order to lead them to another successful run this year.
Xiao8 is a very good captain and drafter, often delivering good results. He recently switched into the support role from his previous off-lane role and it's performing well than expected. His drafting is mostly based on early to mid game dominance, helping his mid secure the lane. Be sure to be on the look out for Yao 'Maybe' Lu, an up-and-coming young player who first played for CDEC Gaming before transferring to LGD. His smooth plays with Shadowfiend, Storm, and Leshrac would definitely give you goosebumps.
EHOME being one of the pillars of Chinese Dota and also one of the oldest in the scene, is the epitome of a legend. After getting 2nd in the first TI, things went sour for the team in TI2 placing in a tied 5th-6th place with Team Zenith and disbandment soon occurred.
2015 saw the rebirth of EHOME but the team did not live up to everyone's expectation exiting DAC in a tied 9th-12th place losing to a best-of-1 series in the 1st round of the loser's bracket to Cloud9. Shortly thereafter, the team saw the departure of two of their members replacing them with rOtK and Tianyu 'Cty' Chen with rOtK once again taking the captain and drafting spot reminiscing his TI4 days.
EHOME's drafting and play style focuses on giving their mid laner Cty the best possible advantage early in the game even if it means sacrificing to make good space. Be sure to have your eyes on Cty with his exceptional mechanical skills on using Shadowfiend and Storm. Pu 'Zyf' Yang is not too shabby either as an aggressive carry often participating in team fights early in the game. And who could forget Zhicheng 'LaNm' Zhang's legendary Earthshaker?
EHOME's a dark horse in disguise, if anyone could take it, I think it would be them.
With this year's prize pool reaching a staggering $17 million ++ USD, every team will play their hearts out to be called the greatest Dota 2 team in the world for 2015.
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