Looking back at Asia’s performance in The International DOTA 2 Championships 2013

The biggest annual DOTA 2 tournament has come to an end. The International 2013 (Ti3) has concluded with Alliance winning 3-2 against Natus Vincere (Na’Vi) in the best-of-five grand finals. In my previous post, I talked about the eight Asian teams to watch out for in The International 2013, and offered an analysis of the Asian teams’ group stage hero picks. Now that TI3 has concluded, let’s take a look back at the important events that the Asian DOTA 2 teams went through on the grandest DOTA 2 stage of them all.

RattleSnake went in as underdogs, beat Quantic

Before the wild card match between China’s RattleSnake and Russia’s Quantic, most in the community deemed RattleSnake to be the underdog. Most people were expecting the formidable Quantic to take the final spot for this year’s tournament. What happened, however, was the opposite. RattleSnake won 3-1 against Quantic in a best-of-five, even overcoming a draft with Io, a hero that the Chinese first thought weak, but then learned to fear and ban. Although there were certain questionable plays coming from Quantic, it is also undeniable that RattleSnake brought their best game to the table, which eventually allowed them to win and take their rightful spot in this year’s The International. Results, video-on-demand and replays of the series between Quantic and RattleSnake are available here.

Expectations for Chinese domination

Among many things, and even after Alliance winning the G-1 League and Na’Vi winning the Alienware Cup, the expectations for Chinese domination in the tournament were still quite high. This is probably because they have showed steady improvement during the previous two Internationals.

Although doubts started to form during the group stages where Ukraine’s Na’Vi and Sweden’s Alliance dominated both of their groups, said teams were followed by DK and TongFu respectively. Last year’s powerhouses Invictus Gaming (iG) and LGD.cn also joined them in the upper bracket. It must be noted, however, that LGD.cn had to fight and win against Dignitas in a tiebreaker match to determine who was seeded fourth in the upper bracket. All-in-all, there were five Asian teams in the upper bracket: iG, LGD.cn, DK and TongFu from China, and Orange from Malaysia. Partially thanks to the belief that teams don’t reveal strategies in the group stages, there was still hope that the Chinese would bounce back and dominate the main event.

The powerhouse teams shaken, domination shifts

Last year, LGD.cn topped their groups unscathed, while iG was also top of their group with just one loss, but won the tournament in the grand finals nonetheless. This year, aside from being seeded third and fourth, both iG and LGD.cn dropped to the lower bracket after losing to Team DK and Alliance respectively in their first matches in theupper bracket. The match between Team DK and iG currently holds the record for being the longest DOTA 2 match in history.

Following their win against iG, Team DK then loses to Alliance. After Na’Vi beat Orange, TongFu also lost 2-1 against Na’Vi in a rather controversial best-of-three match, which we’ll be getting to later. Anyway, these wins allowed Alliance and Na’Vi to secure themselves not only in the upper bracket grand finals, but also spots for the top three, leaving only one spot for the Chinese teams to fight over. Once again, this is totally the opposite of The International 2012 where the top three spots consisted of two Chinese teams iG and LGD.cn and the European team Na’Vi.

Na’Vi, TongFu and the controversial Fountain Hooks/Faith Hooks

Depending on who you are talking to, the Fountain Hook may either be a strategy or a bug. Basically, it’s a trick done with a Chen and a Pudge in one team. Pudge hooks an enemy and Chen sends him back to base using Test of Faith, thus its alternate name Faith Hook. If timed right and the hook is in mid-air when Pudge is teleported back, the hooked unit, whether a creep or a hero will fly across the map and land right in front of the enemy fountain. Unless you find a way to survive the wrath of the enemy fountain that’s shooting high speed projectiles at you, you are definitely dead. Let me re-iterate that this trick does not work by simply having a Chen and a Pudge in one team. You have to time everything right. Otherwise, it’s going to be a regular Test of Faith on a Pudge to send him back to the base.

Last year’s top Chinese teams fall

Malaysia, Team Orange and the legend that is Mushi

BuRNing

What is next for Asian DOTA?