by The Dota 2 Asia Championships 2018, which finished on April 7 in Shanghai, is over and the result is nothing short of spectacular.
Mineski has stunned the Dota 2 world with a win over heavy favourite LGD Gaming in the final on Saturday.
Except for Virtus.pro, the event had three outsiders in the top four, two of which played in the grand final.
If you’ve been following the Dota Pro Circuit this season, you might be asking yourself: how was this even possible? How did TNC Pro Team, LGD Gaming and Mineski climb all the way up to top 4 in a Major event attended by the best 16 teams in the world?
Here’s how:
DAC 2018 summary
DAC 2018 was full of surprises and many of the top contenders were eliminated much sooner than people expected. After the Group Stage, OG, Keen Gaming, Effect and paiN Gaming left the tournament. This had been anticipated, as all of these four teams were either in bad shape or too inexperienced to deal with the other participants.
Virtus.pro and Mineski dominated group B, finishing with a record of 7W – 0L and 6W – 1L respectively. In Group A, no less than 5 teams finished with a record of 4W – 3L and had to play tiebreakers. During these tiebreakers, two unlikely underdogs (TNC and LGD) rose above everyone else and won the group, qualifying directly for the first round of upper bracket matches.
After the Group Stage, DAC 2018 had an unusual Breakout Stage in which 8 teams (3rd-6th from each group) had to fight for a place in the actual Playoffs. And it was during this phase that three top contenders got eliminated from the tournament: Team Secret, VGJ.Thunder and Newbee.
In the first round of upper bracket matches even more upsets occurred, as Virtus.pro and Evil Geniuses got sent to the lower bracket. Together with them, OpTic Gaming and TNC Pro Team were also thrown in the crocodiles’ pit.
From this point onward, Virtus.pro had a good run in the lower bracket, getting all the way to the lower bracket finals, which they lost against LGD Gaming. In the upper bracket, Mineski and LGD won their battles against Vici Gaming and Team Liquid respectively, qualifying for the upper bracket finals.
This last match was won by Mineski.
The grand final saw the Southeast Asian team take on LGD Gaming one more time. The match was much closer this time, but still ended with a victory in favor of Mineski.
The most obvious question after this tournament victory is “how did Mineski make such a spectacular recovery, after vanishing from the spotlight many months ago?”. And the short answer to that question is Tang “71” Wenyi. The man who coached EHOME at the very first edition of The International, where EHOME finished in 2nd place, is now Mineski’s coach.
He’s been with the team for just 3 months and the results are already obvious. Based on this spectacular success, I’m pretty confident that we can expect more top placements from Mineski in the months to come.
Following this tournament, the Dota Pro Circuit rankings table has changed significantly and the new top eight teams are the following:
- Virtus.pro: 7872 points
- Team Liquid: 4734 points
- Team Secret: 4710 points
- Mineski: 3150 points
- Newbee: 2220 points
- Vici Gaming: 2160 points
- LGD Gaming: 1821 points
- VGJ.Thunder: 1665 points
