Image by @MonsterGaming
The first tournament of the 2019-2020 Dota Pro Circuit season will kick off on November 7th 2019 with the DOTA Summit 11. Eight teams from the six Dota regions will compete for $300,000 and a chance to play in the MDL Chengdu Major.
Two teams from the CIS and Europe region had two slots and North America, South America, China, and SEA had one slot. The highest ranked four teams that did not make it to the MDL Chengdu Major from the qualifiers played in a double elimination bracket for a slot at the first Minor tournament.
Here is a recap of all the action from the closed qualifiers.
The Oversight, Team Xolotl, Demon Slayers, and Team Plus were the four teams participating.
The newly formed Quincy Crew saw the Hassan brothers, Aster.Suma1L- and QCY.YS joining forces alongside Quinn, QCY.MSS, and LoA for a new NA super team. Many expected this team to do well and make it to the Majors but lost to J.Storm in the last series of the Major qualifiers.
Quincy Crew were a league above the competition in this qualifiers and went 7-1 all the way to qualifying. Sumail and CCnC went a combined 72 kills, 3 deaths, and 73 assists in their 3-0 grand finals victory over Demon Slayers.
Sumail left the team shortly after the qualification and Quincy Crew replaced him with SabeRLight- on a loan from Team Singularity as position 3 and Yawar returns to the carry role.
paiN Gaming, Incubus Gaming, Noping VPN, and Furia were the four South American teams playing for the one spot at DOTA Summit 11.
This qualifier was a Brazilian show down as the three teams that weren’t the first to be eliminated featured all Brazilian players. Incubus Gaming had a Peruvian and Bolivian mixed squad but they went 0-4 to elimination.
NoPing e-sports which had five veteran Dota 2 players including ixquizo and lapsus prime knocked down paiN Gaming to the lower bracket then beat FURIA Esports in the 2nd round to make it to the finals. FURIA Esports had SG.tavo and Duster but in that series the team that picked Faceless Void won all three games. FURIA Esports picked him first and won game one but NoPing e-sports picked him in games two and three to advance.
In the lower bracket paiN Gaming went 4-0 to secure their revenge match against NoPing e-sports. The grand finals was a stomp fest with each team passing victories back and forth. Game 1 was a 28-3 victory for paiN Gaming, game 2 was a 40-24 victory for NoPing, game 3 was 42-26 victory for NoPing, game 4 was 23-12 victory for paiN, and game 5 was a 27-5 victory for paiN.
This qualifier had two teams making it to the DOTA Summit 11 tournament. Ninjas in Pyjamas, Ad Finem, Team Singularity, and Ascomanni were the European teams.
Ninjas in Pyjamas were the most accomplished and experienced team at this qualifier and it showed as they went 4-0 and never had a net worth disadvantage after 20 minutes in their games.
The lower bracket finals however was an epic five game series between Ad Finem and Team Singularity.
Ad Finem placed 2nd at the 2016 Boston Major and the same squad rejoined forces to play in the new season. Team Singularity had five high MMR European players but they haven’t seen much success in the professional scene.
Game one was a throw by Team Singularity. In a 1 hour 13 minute game, Team Singularity had a net worth advantage of 26,000 gold at one point but from the 60 minute onward, it was all Ad Finem as they killed Team Singularity 14 times whereas Team Singularity killed Ad Finem only 10 times. This led to a massive gold swing including a Divine Rapier drop, which eventually led to the comeback victory for Ad Finem.
Games two and three were victories by Team Singularity and that could have led to a 3-0 finals victory for Team Singularity, unfortunately the throw in game 1 gave Ad Finem hope in games 4 and 5 and they delivered for a 3-2 finals victory.
CIS had two qualifier slots with teams Old but Gold, HellRaisers, Virtus.pro, and jfshfh178 participating in the double elimination qualifier.
Virtus.Pro was the most experienced and well known team but after losing three members of their original roster, they’re pretty much a new team. They still went 4-0 to advance to the Summit 11 tournament.
Despite their victory, it was announced that Virtus.Pro will not be attending the Summit 11 and Beyond the Summit stated they were working with jfshfh178 to replace them.
HellRaisers were knocked down to the lower bracket by jfshfh178 and then went undefeated to earn the 2nd slot at the Summit 11 tournament.
Each series in the CIS qualifier was a sweep with the team winning each series never losing a game.
The most competitive region in all of Dota featured four excellent squads playing for a single slot at the Summit 11. Knights, G2 x iG, Newbee, and Dawn Gaming could not qualify for the MDL Chengdu Major so they’ll have to win the Summit 11 minor to play in their home country.
Invictus Gaming and CDEC Gaming proved to be the top teams at this qualifier by winning in the first round and then CDEC Gaming knocked out Newbee in the lower bracket finals.
The grand finals was a young and up and coming Chinese star show down. Both teams had a young roster with Aster.Kaka being the veteran for Invictus Gaming.
The grand finals was a 3-2 series going the way of Invictus Gaming. It was a close series but Invictus Gaming makes it to another tournament and continue to impress. Unfortunately for CDEC, they did not have a TI grand finalist on their team, like Invictus Gaming did with Kaka.
SEA is a tough region because it has many skilled and passionate players and organizations. In this region, Cignal Ultra, Team Jinesbrus, Geek Fam, and BOOM ID were competing for the one spot at DOTA Summit 11.
There was a Filipino squad in Cignal Ultra that was founded in 2019, an all Indonesian squad in BOOM Esports, and two mix matched but experienced squads in Team Jinesbrus and Geek Fam.
It should be no surprise that Geek Fam was the team that made it through these qualifiers. With veteran Dota stars in Fnatic.Raven, Kuku^, and TSM FTX.DuBu, beating this team was a tough ask.
You have to give it up to Kuku though. Despite all the controversy surrounding this Filipino star, he has been playing in many high exposure tournaments for years and continues to prove he’s one of the best Dota players in the scene. Even after leaving TNC Predator and being the face of their franchise for years, he joins a new team and immediately starts qualifying for big tournaments. Say what you want about his character but you can’t deny his success as a Dota pro!
Pretty Nice
The wording is confusing and error-strewn, the punctuation and structure is nauseating, and the correlations and comparisons drawn were puzzling. Look, I hate to be so critical of an article's layout, but it messes with how the content is read.
^ to his point I only read if I see it's Kawaii
I used to enjoy Canuck’s articles on trying to break into the top tier scene, or eggs’s opinions here and there.
Hey, guys, thanks for kind words, but writing is a learning process and takes a while to get right. I mean, look at things I wrote at the beginning, like this precious gem:
https://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2014-01-20-much-hook-very-skill-such-wow
Or whatever that was:
https://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2016-04-13-from-russia-with-love
On top of it, my "TI9 predict sucks" (same as "TI8 predict", to be fair).
So let's just be a little patient, we are working on getting it all right)
@KawaiiSocks
I think providing a bracket image would go a long way to helping with this article. Also it sounds like ETd aka Writing Gordon Ramsey would like to be your proofreader.
Seriously though, the lively and varied conversations within these post threads always drown out the article poopooers, and considering the vitriol thrown around so readily within this and all other internet communities, that's saying something. Improvement is a noble endeavor, but you're already a major help to many dota players looking to better understand how to be better prepared. As someone who frequents these articles as a way of moonlighting as a talking head, know that we, the commentors, are jealous of your position.
And all our TI9 predicts suck.
Kawaii, it isn’t as if I wish to be nothing but critical, nor do I want to single out Yongelee’s written pieces for this forum. Yongelee has had good articles where I had no complaints whatsoever, with both the content and the format. For example, I enjoyed reading his article on the top 3 meta picks, or his piece on Skywrath. However, you must realize that as one of the main posters, that readers would become accustomed to your level of writing, and subpar articles, especially those from newer writers, would receive more scrutiny.
But, I digress. I come off as a pretentious grammar Nazi. I’ll just meme the comments from here on. Keep it up, Dotabuff staff 👍
@ETdAWESOME hey thank's for the feedback, I am not taking it personally and I always appreciate honest feedback on my writing. This article didn't read too well, thank's for letting me know!
Well written, thank you for the coverage.