China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2 Participants
China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2 features the best of the best in China. Seven of the eight teams are already known because they’ve been directly invited. The 8th is yet to be decided in a qualifier event.
PSG.LGD Vici Gaming EHOME Elephant.4AM Royal Never Give Up Invictus Gaming Team Aster TBD (Qualifier)
Competitive Format
The competitive format of China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2 is very simple: a single group round-robin followed by a double-elimination competition. Six of the eight participants will advance to the second stage. Four of them will start in the Upper Bracket while the other two will start in the Lower Bracket. All matches are Bo3, except for the Grand Final, which is Bo5. One remarkable thing about this tournament is that its Playoffs will take place offline, in a stadium.
Prize Pool Distribution
The event’s prize pool will be divided among the eight participants in the following way:
1st place: ~$30,000 2nd place: ~$22,500 3rd place: ~$15,000 4th place: ~$9,000 5th – 6th place: ~$4,500 7th – 8th place: ~$2,200
Qualifier Event
As I mentioned before, the 8th team will need to qualify for the tournament and the qualification event features seven teams:
Sparking Arrow Gaming Team MagMa CDEC Gaming Team Sirius Aster.Aries iG Vitality Phoenix Gaming
This tournament takes place just several days before the start of China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2. The main favorites are Team Sirius, Team MagMa, and Sparking Arrow Gaming. The tournament’s competitive format is very simple: four Quarterfinals, two Semifinals, and one Grand Final.
The Big Favorites
Here’s a brief analysis of the four big favorites that have a real chance of winning the cup at China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2:
PSG.LGD
PSG.LGD is the strongest team in China at the moment and the finalist of the last three regional events: China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 1 (1st place), OGA Dota PIT S3: China (2nd place), and CDA-FDC Professional Championship (1st place). All of these tournaments took place after the big roster change. On September 16th, PSG.LGD changed its entire lineup and brought in a lot of strong players, such as Ame and Faith_bian. Initially, people thought that this new roster would not be able to achieve as much as the previous one did. But critics were quickly silenced by its spectacular performances. Going into China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2, PSG.LGD is expected to finish in the top three and there’s a high chance that we’ll see them again in the Grand Final.
Vici Gaming
Just like PSG.LGD, Vici Gaming made important roster changes at the start of this season, bringing in Erica (substitute carry player), 23savage, and old eLeVeN to replace Eurus and Yang. Arguably, the new players are weaker than the superstars that left. Eurus is irreplaceable in my opinion and probably the best position 1 player in the world. He’s now a member of Elephant.4AM, a team that’s also participating in this tournament. Vici Gaming made two important appearances after their roster change. One of them was at China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 1 (3rd place) and the other was at OGA Dota PIT S3: China (1st place). This second event proved that they still have great skills and the capacity to beat anyone in the region. During the tournament, Vici Gaming had to win against Sparking Arrow Gaming, MagMa, Royal Never Give Up, EHOME, Aster, and PSG.LGD. Most of these teams will be present at China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2 as well. The analysts’ expectation is that VG will get a top three result at this event.
EHOME
In spite of having a great roster made up of three former TI finalists, EHOME’s results after the complete roster change that they made in September have been less than amazing. Truth be told, they did start with a 2nd place at China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 1. This happened at the start of October. But then something happened and their performance, at least relative to their regional opponents, began to drop. At OGA Dota PIT Season 3: China they finished 4th. And at the recent CDA-FDC Professional Championship, they did even worse (5th – 6th). In spite of the downward trend they seem to be going through, it’s always a good idea to assume that a team with a formidable roster is capable of great things. Their ceiling is very high, so it’s only a matter of training properly and finding a set of winning strategies for the current meta.
Elephant.4AM
This is the rejects’ club. All the amazing players that either got kicked out or left their organizations at the start of this season decided to create a team of their own. And that’s how Elephant.4AM was created. This competitor has a single weakness: its position 5 support player, RedPanda. He’s the only one who’s not a former world championship finalist or at least a Major champion. The other four guys are legends not just regionally, but globally. Eurus is arguably the best carry player in the circuit. Somnus has four top four results at The International in the last five years, plus many other titles including two Major championship wins. Fy is his former teammate and captain from PSG.LGD. And Yang is a former Vici Gaming player whose accomplishments are well known. So far, Elephant.4AM took part in one tournament: CDA-FDC Professional Championship. And they’ve already proved their skill, finishing 2nd. PSG.LGD barely won the Grand Final with a score of 3 – 2. In the next few weeks, 4AM will probably get much stronger as a result of systematic training and there’s a good chance that they’ll win the trophy at China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2.
