After compLexity Gaming won the US qualifiers for MarsTV Dota 2 League it was Europe’s turn to decide who will join them at the LAN event at the end of January 2016.
Scheduled to take place between 27-31st of January 2016 in China with a $250,000 starting prize pool, MarsTV Dota 2 League is close to end the qualifier process for the LAN event.
Created in the Shanghai shuffle window, Team Spirit and Elements ProGaming are already dominating the qualifier stages for different tournaments, reminding us all the great run that OG - (monkey) Business and Team Liquid had immediately after their incarnation in the postTI5 shuffle.
In the one week double elimination bracket of MDL, both Team Spirit and Elements have defeated their Russian friends form Vega Squadron and Virtus Pro in the upper bracket to face each other in the semifinals and then in the grand finals.
The entire qualifier stage was dominated by the CIS presence, after the first upper bracket round four teams representing the region emerging victorious. With Elements defeating Vega and Team Spirit taking down Virtus.Pro, the favorites for these qualifiers had to face each other in the third round of the lower bracket and it was Vega Squadron who eliminated VP from the competition.
Team Spirit and Elements ProGaming meet for the first time in the upper bracket best-of-three semifinals where Spirit took the series with a 2-1 finals score. Finding themselves for the first time in the lower bracket, Elements managed to eliminate Vega Squadron and advanced in the best-of-five finals for a second chance at defeating Goblak and co.
All the five games had to be played in the grand finals to determine who will make the trip to China for the LAN event. With the new 6.86 patch released ,Elements relied in three out of five of their games on an Oracle support which worked as a charm twice but for the decisive game, Team Spirit found a way to shut him down with a Doom pick and a Dazzle on top of it.
For the Chinese qualifiers MDL will run a round robin - two game series format with eight teams entering the competition. The winner of this will get a spot into the main event while the rest of the teams will play in a bubble race bracket for one more available spot.
