The Patch
This is likely the last big LAN event of the patch; 6.88d will be phased out soon and with it comes new strategies that’ll benefit different teams. The last few patches, especially the post-TI patch didn’t have as many changes, which signifies that the state of Dota 2 is reaching a more sustainable level of balance. But a patch change always means something tumultuous is about to happen. Perhaps Alliance is back?
Arteezy
It’ll be interesting to see how Arteezy fares with his new (heh) team Evil Geniuses. With Cr1t leading the pack and PPD, one of the most celebrated captains in esports, leaving to fulfill a business management role, it’ll be upto the remaining squad members to see if they can eek out Arteezy’s talents to build a successful team.
Ana
Ana on OG is a new face in the top-tier Dota 2 scene. The 8k MMR, half Australian half Chinese recruit has to fill in Miracle-‘s shoes, but the community has held up their hopes so far. After all, in the last two years of Dota, picking up young recruits and placing them in top tier teams hasn’t exactly worked out badly for the scene. And let’s not forget about Jerax.
JerAx with boss level hair game at the photoshoot today. #MDL
A photo posted by OGDota2 (@ogdota2) on
SEAcret
SEAcret: Team Secret’s massive roster overhaul keeping only Puppey and PieLieDie and bringing in Forev, MP and MidOne is fascinating. We don’t know how they’ll perform – there have been no indications that the team won’t perform, and these are very talented players from different regions of the world. If Secret manages to place highly or even win the tournament it’ll be a truly great showing after the disastrous performance of the previous iteration of Secret.
Chinese Competition
The Chinese-Western diatribe ebbs and flows. At the beginning of this year the Chinese teams were crumbling, but like always they got together and a Chinese team ended up winning TI. It’ll be interesting to see IG.V and LGD.FY (super vs Super) battle it out against Newbee, MVP and the Western Teams. There’s a mix of talent, both old and new, and this is the first glimpse we get into how the rest of the post fall-shuffle Dota 2 scene is going to look.
TEAMS:
Invited
Evil Geniuses: Arteezy, Sumail, UNiVeRsE, zai, Cr1t-
MVP.Phoenix: Febby, QO, Velo, Reisen, DuBu
OG: N0tail, Ana, s4, JerAx, Fly
Team Secret: MP, MidOne, Forev, Puppey, pieliedie
DPL Winners
Newbee: uuu9, Sccc, kphoenii, Kaka, Faith
VG.Reborn: END, ghost, yang, fy, DDC
Chinese Qualifiers
iG Vitality: Yuno, Sakata, inJuly, dogf1ghts, super
LGD.Forever Young: Monet, Super, Yao, xiao8, lpc
SCHEDULE AND FORMAT:
Group Stage: September 28 – 29
- Eight teams will be divided into two groups and will play in a double-elimination system
- All series will be played in Bo3
- The top 2 teams of both groups will advance to the winner’s bracket.
- The remaining two teams will have to fight from the loser’s bracket.
Main Event: September 30 – October 2
- Double elimination. All matches are Bo3 except for the final, which is Bo5.
(Teams and schedule from /r/dota2. Check out the full thread details here.)
If you’re interested in knowing all the roster changes in the Dota 2 Fall Shuffle, check out our article on the Fall Shuffle here.