EGamersWorld/News/Dota 2/Review of EPIC League Season 2 Division 1

Review of EPIC League Season 2 Division 1

The last battle is over, Virtus.pro earned a great monetary reward and it means that it's time we summed up the Dota 2 championship. Unlike many other tournaments, the history of EPIC League was full of various unexpected turns of events, however, there were a lot of trivial things too.

For example, Yellow Submarine, that made it to the first division, finished their participation at the 7-8 place. The team showed a great game in the Play-In stage, beating Just Error with 2-0, but joined the lower bracket of the final stage of the championship. There the team had to fight with OG and lost the battle while the European became the finalists and took second place at the event. YeS’ efforts brought the team a monetary reward of $25,000.

As for OG, this team beat Yellow Submarine, passed the lower bracket clearing their way to the final kicking out such teams as NAVI, Team Liquid, and Vikin.gg. The last obstacle on their way to the victory was Virtus.pro. The opponents seemed invincible for the current world champions but the team coped with the enemy and ended the battle with the score of 2-3. As a result, OG took second place at the tournament bracket. It is not The International of course, but $100,000 was worth fighting for. This was OG’s yield for becoming silver finalist of the championship.

Natus Vincere, the team that has a multimillion fan base, managed to show great results only in the group stage. There NAVI managed to take third place, they got defeated by OG, Virtus.pro, and Nigma. The team provided themselves with a slot in the upper bracket and that was not the end of Natus Vincere’s victories. At the upper bracket of the playoffs, the team could not beat Vikin.gg and dropped down to the lower bracket where they faced OG. If in case with Vikin.gg the team showed a great battle and won one map from the opponents, at the meeting with OG they were unable to take even one map. We can’t say that the game was dictated by the Europeans as Natus Vincere fought back, but, nevertheless, the battle was lost. NAVI took 5-6 place in the championship and their reward was $30,000.

Who else got 5-6 place like NAVI? Unexpectedly enough, this time the answer is Team Secret. Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov and his teammates seem to be tired of winning and this time decided to share the laurels with another team. The gamers mentioned in their interviews they had a lack of motivation to play Dota and MATUMBAMAN confessed that he spent a lot of time on the released update for WoW, Shadowlands. Was it a joke or not, but it was the Finnish esportsman’s statement. As we can judge by the results of the tournaments, it is likely to be official. Team Secret made it to the upper bracket putting in a lot of efforts. At the group stage they had to fight with Nigma в Play-In for fourth place to make it to the upper bracket and Puppey managed to beat their former friend and teammate, KuroKy. At the playoff, Team Secret met with Virtus.pro and, winning no map, moved down to the lower bracket where they got defeated by Liquid with the same score, 0-2. Perhaps, next time we will see better results from Secret but this is a different story.

By the way, KuroKy was behind Team Secret in the tournament bracket, at the 7-8 place. However, it is not a surprise as Kuro ‘KuroKy’ Takhasomi was recently inactive due to his health condition. Now he is back but he still needs time to get back in shape and blend in the team again. Recently KuroKy promised to make an interesting announcement and then many fans thought that he was going to finish his career as a gamer but the German esportsman announced that he was returning to the fight and he was ready to defeat his opponents. This time he managed to take 7-8 place but we are sure that in the future he will be able to achieve better results. At EPIC League Season 2, he got $25,000.

Team Liquid made it to Top four teams and earn a quite good monetary reward. At the group stage Liquid had a bad performance and as a result, their placement in the tournament bracket was higher than Secret’s and NAVI’s that showed a good game at the initial stage. Liquid showed the way out to Nigma and to Team Secret. Fighting with OG, they showed a great game and opposed a serious fight to the European opponents but they were stronger and beat Liquid 2-1. The fourth place brought $40,000 for miCKe and his teammates.

Vikin.gg continued showing great performance again and again and this championship was not an exception for the team. The guys kept leadership in at the group stage till the very end and only when they were getting closer to the end of the group stage, they passed their position to the players from Virtus.pro. In the playoffs, they showed that they were going to perform well at all stages of the championship. When they got to the upper bracket, they started with a win 2-1 over NAVI, after that Vikin.gg got bad luck twice. At first it happened at the final of the upper bracket where the Europeans were unable to beat Virtus.pro on any map which resulted in a loss for them. Later they lost a Bo5 match against OG at the final of the lower bracket, again winning no map. The third place is also great and $50,000 must help the team to recover after the defeat.

Don’t miss esport news and update! Sign up and recieve weekly article digest!

The main discovery of the tournament is definitely the gamers from Virtus.pro. VP’s fans like to say: “Glamazda beat everyone again”. The general manager of Virtus.pro Sergey Galamazda made a series of responsible decisions that appeared to be right. At first he released the players from the previous roster and VP.Prodigy started to represent the tag at championships as a starting lineup. Now we can see that they are in great shape and their abilities are enough to win tournaments for Tier-1 teams. During the quarantine it was clear that Tier-1 is a blurred category, however, the European division is one of the strongest in Dota and Team Secret, Liquid, Vikin.gg, OG, and Nigma are some of the brightest representatives of this division, and all of them were present there. We can’t say that it was a hard journey for Virtus.pro. The team gained momentum from the very beginning and defeated all their opponents. At the group stage, VP lost only a battle with Team Liquid and Vikin.gg, and at the playoff they came back to the trend and destroyed their rivals. At the first battle they beat Team Secret with 2-0. These opponents are favorites at almost each tournament. Later VP lost no map against Vikin.gg and made it to the grand final. The final battle against OG was very interesting and intriguing. It was held in the Bo5 format. The European won two maps from VP but as a result, the CIS roster won 3-2. Virtus.pro gained the main money prize of $200,000 and we again saw that the roster with epileptick1d is really capable of many things.