2015 featured a plethora of brilliant storylines and most of them featured a common theme – newcomers, from SumaiL’s MVP performance at DAC to CDEC’s second place at the International 5.
SumaiL was the first in a series of pub star signings, at least in the western scene. Teams have now started to realize the value of these youngsters. And now an entire group of them has emerged into the professional scene.
Although most of them have not been able to match the achievements of EG’s SumaiL or LGD’s Maybe, they’ve made a name for themselves in the DotA 2 community. Moreover, in some cases, their play styles have even turned metagames on their heads. A prime example of this is SoNNeikO; he was the first to showcase Winter Wyvern, consequently, making it a staple pick in 6.84 and 6.85.
Most of the newcomers at this event do not belong to the best teams. Therefore it’ll be highly unlikely for their teams to make deep runs in the tournament but we can still look forward to their individual performances.
To begin with, let’s look at Ritsu and Cloud9. Group C features Team Secret, LGD Gaming, Newbee Young and Cloud9. Secret and LGD are easily the favorites to win the group and it will be very hard for C9 or Young to make it to the upper bracket.
Ravi 'Ritsu' Kodippili, Cloud9’s star carry, has an amazing farming ability and has maintained a last hit count of 376 (post TI5) which is the highest amongst the players at the event. The next closest LH/Game is that of FATA - 296, a differential of 80 last hits per game. It is true that this rate is a little skewed because of his hero picks but putting up these kind of numbers is still mind boggling.
Even though Ritsu has been excellent at his position, his team has been fairly average. Cloud9’s win rate may suggest otherwise but since they play in America, it is hard to judge their performance by it. They finished 7th-8th at MLG where they went 1-5 in the group stages, even losing 0-2 to MVP.Phoenix. It is very hard to imagine a deep run by this Cloud9 roster, but if they somehow manage to pull it off, Ritsu will have to do some more heavy lifting.
picture of OG roster from their facebook page
The next on the list is Miracle from OG. OG (ex-Monkey Business) has played 88 games post-TI5, the most on this patch and Amer 'Miracle' Barqawi has been outstanding. The former 8k MMR pub star has maintained a GPM of 570, which is the third highest for the players at this event. On his signature hero Shadow Fiend, he has maintained a win percentage of 70% and a GPM of 634.
Compared to Cloud9, OG has a much better shot at making a deep run. They’ve had a win rate of 72.4% after 88 games which is the highest post TI5. OG also finished 3rd-4th in the MLG World Finals and on their way, they beat EG 2-1, VP 2-0 and even took one game off Secret in the playoffs stage.
China has been producing good players via their youngster teams such as Newbee Young and Vici Gaming Potential. Yang Wei 'eLeVeN' Ren who has been in the Chinese scene since 2013 has finally found a tier one team in EHOME. The squad was deemed unstable after the departure of rOtk but they’ve found considerable success. They qualified for ESL One NY and Nanyang after beating the likes of Vici Gaming and Invictus Gaming in both BO3s and BO5s. The team also finished first in their group at Nanyang but unfortunately lost to VG twice and finished third in the event.
Mineski in Frankfurt
One of the reasons for the success of EHOME has been ELeVeN’s terrific off lane play. He may not be carrying them as hard as say Ritsu on Cloud9 but he has been very consistent and has helped the team in every way possible. EHOME’s captain and DotA 2 legend, LanM also praised him in a recent interview, “When eLeVeN is confident he can put severe pressure to the other team.” Another interesting statistic: EHOME has a 70% win rate when eLeVeN plays solo in the off lane, which is considerably higher than their overall win rate of 58.6%. This differential of 11.4% clearly shows he’s much better when he is able to roam or put pressure on the enemy safe lane.
The three players above mentioned can prove to be the most explosive but we should also keep an eye out for Cr1t from OG, oldchicken from EHOME and the entirety of Unknown.XIU, Mineski.PH, Newbee Young.
We’ve got a lot of storylines to look out for at this major but the most important storyline, at least to me, will be the performance of these young stars; will they crumble under the high pressure or will they bedazzle us with their performances and manage to hold their own against the tried and tested?
Picture Credits: Mineski's Facebook, SGamer, Valve, OG's Facebook
