Here’s your 30-second summary of this edition of Ancient Tidings:
China will not be attending the Stockholm major
BetBoom, Team Spirit and MindGames will be going from EEU
Sonneiko? At a Major? In this economy?
Personal picks
Game of the week: BB vs Team Spirit, game 1.
Player of the week: Daxak, for absolutely stomping with off-meta heroes… against meta heroes.
Play of the week: Not every day you see a Snapfire do this after a 3-man Chrono by the enemy Void. The TI champs drop a game in spectacular fashion.
The EEU DPC returns (sort of)
A short while before the previous issue of this newletter was published, rumours were circulating regarding alternate arrangements for the EEU DPC. The previous TO, Epicenter, had to be scrapped due to alleged ties with Russian Oligarchs. This, combined with the fact that players’ families and lives were being affected put the breaks on the DPC for this storied region.
BeyondTheSummit, the TOs behind the SEA DPC stepped in recently, announcing this:
This is incredibly good news for the upcoming Stockholm Major. Dota is at its best when it has teams from all over the world, after all.
Few things to keep in mind:
The Virtus.Pro roster is apparently participating under a different name: Outsiders; it is reasonable to assume that they’re doing this to be able to play in an important DPC tournament while not being affiliated with their org.
The earlier Winstrike roster is now playing as Betboom, although in this case the org decided to drop the roster.
Hellraisers is back again with the same squad that played in the previous Tour; the org had earlier given a statement that they’d be backing out due to the adverse impact of the Ukrainian crisis.
The EEU DPC will notably be a lot different from the leagues played out in other regions due to the time constraints prior to the major. Teams will not be playing one game a week for 6 weeks; instead, they’ll be playing in a double-elim bracket that looks like this:
The earlier format of the DPC received criticism from pretty much everyone invested in the Dota 2 pro scene. This new format, while obviously being a result of bad circumstances, might serve as a testing bed to see how a shorter, faster DPC league will be received. Of course, every team isn’t playing every other team, this is more reminiscent of a playoff bracket… and if you lose 2 Bo3s in a row, you go to Div 2. This means you get no DPC points till the TI qualifiers. Harsh.
33’s thoughts:
Kaka returns
In the previous issue, I mentioned how iG’s fall from grace has been disappointing after TI10. This is largely due to them letting go of Kaka, their pos 4 and captain at the time. A single-player change led to them going from Major winners and a top-4 TI finish to remaining in Div 2.
Turns out, Kaka will be returning to the mainstage once again, this time wearing RNG’s colors. Just in time for the Major regional tournament.
China won’t be in attendance for the Major
Ah, yes.
Given the incredibly strict measures being enacted by the Chinese government in certain regions due to a new outbreak of cases, this comes as no surprise, as teams that fly out might not be able to make it back in time for the next DPC season. This would impact their chances to go to TI.
An unfortunate decision, but necessary. Paparazzi vs Yopaj will have to wait.
As of writing, there has been no information regarding the impact this will have on the Major. Will more teams from other regions be invited, or will the tournament proceed as is?
Polaris undergoes changes
Polaris let go of Mavis and Force, their pos 5 and pos 3 respectively, a few days back…
After which they came up with a new roster, at least for the BTS Pro Series. This might come as a surprise to some (unless they received tempting offers elsewhere), since Polaris were looking pretty decent during the recently concluded DPC Tour, despite failing to make the Major.
Twitch considering cutting streamer pay
While not strictly related to Dota 2, this is worth mentioning since streamers are an integral part of the scene. Twitch, according to this article by Gizmodo, is considering lowering the cut streamers receive from their subs. Under this new strategy, streamers will receive 50% of subscriber profits as compared to the earlier 70%.
Will this affect Dota 2’s streaming scene? Time will tell.
Pure’s actions during game 1 of MindGames vs Outsiders
The EEU DPC was postponed due to the Ukrainian conflict. It’s hard to imagine how affected players are even keeping their heads in the game.
That being said, Pure, the safelaner for Outsiders (Virtus.Pro), did something incredibly controversial during their first game versus MindGames:
For an explainer on the significance of the symbol, check this out:
Keep in mind that MindGames is a Ukrainian org, with 2 Ukrainian players, and you realize how incredibly screwed up this is.
For what it’s worth, here’s what Pure himself had to say:
Of course there were repercussions. BTS promptly disqualified Outsiders from the EEU DPC, followed by Virtus.Pro terminating Pure’s contract. MindGames received a retroactive default win for their match versus Outsiders as well.
Eastern Europe
Division 1
Team Spirit vs Betboom
The reigning champs of the Dota 2 world return in the EEU DPC… with a rather unexpected result.
BetBoom, the team earlier known as Winstrike, contains a mix of young, relatively new EEU talents, helmed by Sonneiko, a player renowned for his talent as a support… and his rather infamous reputation as a teammate.
On the other hand, Daxak, BetBoom’s pos 1, is no stranger to the scene. He’s been noteworthy ever since his days on Gambit under FNG; if not for Covid he’d have played a bit under PPD as well, on a former Ninjas in Pyjamas roster.
Regardless, Team Spirit are the defending champions of both The International as well as the EEU Regional finals. BetBoom had their work cut out for them.
And boy, did they deliver.
Game 1 featured BB attempting to out-tempo their opponents, going for a safelane Nature’s Prophet, mid Snapfire and an offlane Dragon Knight. Team Spirit chose the opposite route, going for a Void-Storm-Chaos Knight tricore. The writing was on the wall: if Team Spirit held on, they’d win simply by virtue of their scaling.
Sometimes, drafts don’t mean everything… especially when they’re being played by a team on fire.
For a while it looked like BB would succeed playing along the strengths of their lineup, but Spirit, being no strangers to playing from behind proved that they’re still masters of the macro game, getting back control of the game and building a lead.
It took all of BB’s coordination (and a massively farmed Nature’s Prophet) to poke and prod Spirit, inflicting what damage they could, until Snapfire hit key level and item timings… leading to moments like this:
Yeah, a farmed Snapfire absolutely rips apart unprepared opponents.
For game 2 BB opted to go for a safelane Necrophos to counter Spirit’s Tiny… which was promptly countered in turn by Collapse’s Nightstalker. He kept the Necro completely in control throughout the game, forcing him to go for a BKB… something Necros would prefer to avoid.
In this game Spirit got whatever they needed in the early game, leading to a rapidly escalating networth lead. A draft revolving around a Necrophos never wants to be behind early, and it got exploited.
In this decider game, BB opted to go for a proper safelaner this time, going for a Terrorblade. Spirit countered with a mid Lina… and of course, Collapse’s iconic Magnus. BB’s IO-Chen lineup had the unenviable task of keeping their team safe from the likes of a Chaos Knight, Lina and Hoodwink.
They did the job, well enough to ensure that their TB got out of hand for Spirit to deal with.
To cap off the end of the 50+ minute game, TorontoTokyo opted to go for a Divine Rapier… a move which cost his team dearly, as Daxak sniped his courier, taking it for himself.
Team Spirit could not deal with the damage of the enemy Terrorblade, and were forced to call GG.
Their next series is against Hellraisers. Both these teams were in the EEU regional finals last Tour… and now, one of them will be in Div 2 next season.
As luck would have it, BB and Spirit took the first 2 slots to the Major. BB off the back of Visage and Storm, while Spirit abused the KotL-Storm duo. This first match was the toughest for both teams; their subsequent matches were relatively more one-sided.
Team Spirit vs Hellraisers
Two teams who participated in the regional finals of EEU during the previous Tour… facing off to decide who’ll be heading to Div 2 next Tour, missing out on both Majors in the process. Brutal.
For the first game, Team Spirit came up with a rather different approach to combat HR’s Tiny… a Techies and a Sven.
Tiny’s decision to rush a Moonshard ended up costing him, as he simply could not stand up to the Sven, despite Sven’s rocky start.
Spirit took this comfortably, just shy of 30 minutes.
The 2nd game was a lot more even… for the first 20 minutes. A clutch fight by Spirit in the dire jungle ended with them wiping out four of the opposing heroes, after which they promptly began regaining control of the map, slowly but surely choking out the enemy TA. This was followed up by another teamwipe in Spirit’s favour 10 minutes later, granting the aegis to Yatoro’s PA. This enabled him to tunnel vision on the TA, blinking on her with not a care in the world and taking care of business.
Team Spirit took the series comfortably… kicking Hellraisers to Div 2 in the process.
Navi vs CIS-Rejects (First series)
Navi vs ex-Navi (or even ex-VP vs ex-VP), duking it out for a chance to go to Stockholm.
Noone vs Ramzes, Solo vs Rodjer. This series delivered the goods. Game 3 especially is worth watching. Lots of back and forth, rat Dota, one on one fights… and Ramzes, once again, getting ludicrously fat on his Nature’s Prophet.
These 2 teams will face-off once again; the winner of that sets up a date with Mind Games to decide who’ll be taking the 3rd and final slot to Stockholm.
Luckily, their second series followed much the same pattern as the first series (including a Ramzes Faceless Void taking a victory in the second game)… except this time, CIS-Rejects ended up clinching the win.
MindGames take the third and final EEU slot
In a twist no one could’ve seen coming, MindGames upset CIS-Rejects in the final match of the EEU DPC… a match most people had already dismissed as a CIS-Rejects victory.
A reminder: they made it this far due to them being given a default win. They then lost to BetBoom and Team Spirit handily. These 2 losses didn’t break their spirits however, they turned things around in a series that went the distance vs the favourites to take the 3rd spot.
That’s all for this issue of Ancient Tidings!
Appreciate the Dota Digest and NoobFromUA videos. I think the Navi v CIS Rejects series takes my favorite of the week but BB vs Spirit was a good pick too!