ESL One Fall 2021: What Should Be Expected From the Biggest Tournament of the Summer?
Yuriy SheremetThe most expected tournament of the Summer is to start in less than an hour. Due to the absence of The International 10, all focus falls on ESL One Fall 2021 which is to start right here.
More than two months have passed since a major by WePlay Esports took place in Kyiv and I don't know what you are feeling but I do miss interregional Dota. I hope that we are going to enjoy it to the fullest in the autumn at ESL One 2021.
We will know if our dreams and expectations will come true pretty soon. And as there is little time left before the championship, let us estimate what we should expect from it.
New patch, new possibilities
We are certainly going to start with an earth shaking topic — 7.30 has been released. And it happened right before the start of ESL One Fall 2021.
Globally, it must have a positive influence. If not on the quality of the tournament, then on the visual appeal.
The previous meta got boring and we have got tired of TV and Moons. Thanks to 7.30, we have a chance to see some forgotten heroes and look at new strategies. It's likely to appear.
And now we are starting a skeptical piece. We cannot be 100% sure that the participating teams have prepared something new.
The patch is only several days old, and one thing is to get to the public and kill everyone on Clinkz, and an absolutely different one is to play against close-knit teams. If their mood is winning, they will always be able to resort to a reliable but a bit nerf classic.
Speaking of motivation to win and the necessity of ESL One Fall 2021. This is another topic which we would like to touch in our discussion.
Conditions of teams and perpetual problem of motivation beyond TI
Dota 2 is a big esports segment. Tournaments of this discipline gather thousands of spectators and prize pools of the biggest events consist of millions of dollars.
Nevertheless, the professional stage is far from the classical understanding of professionalism. The online era hurt esportsmen’s motivation.
The chaos is still breaking loose. If you observe the competitive Dota carefully, you must know what is happening in China: constant «swings», crazy picks, GG till the 15th minute and so on.
And this is happening in one of the most disciplined and titled regions. This is the reason why we need events of the ESL One Fall 2021 type.
Even though ESL One Fall 2021 will be happening online and according to the competitive Dota 2 stage, the prize pool is not made up of huge money, but top teams are happy to participate in such championships. These tournaments are like gold dust in the new covid realia.
Let’s imagine that the teams will be playing as if they are playing for the last time and their motivation and individual skills are skyrocketing. In these conditions we can get an idea who is going to raise the virtual cup and who is going to get upset.
Main favourites of the championship
We are not going to walk around so we are getting straight to the point structurally. A couple of lines about each (subjectively) challenger.
The most obvious and mainstream favourite is PSG.LGD. Or it is better to say “could be”.
NothingToSay, the mid player of the team, will miss the championship due to some visa problems for entering Romania. His slot will be taken by xiao8 who is normally the main coach of PSG.LGD.
PSG.LGD has already played with xiao8 as a substitute in China and felt pretty well there. However, the situation may be absolutely different here.
The second challenger is T1. The team can easily outdo the Chinese players due to the absence of the full roster of PSG.LGD. The roster from Southeast Asia is alright, their performance is high class.
Besides, the Korean duo of coaches, March and Xyun, makes us confident. Taking into account the experience of specialists, I am positive that T1 is going to approach the new patch fully armed.
Covert threat
The list of the main favourites is not limited by PSG.LGD and T1. There are other teams that can easily surprise us.
This category concerns almost all the other clubs. Let us walk you through it.
The European duo Alliance and Liquid replaced Secret and Nigma with OG from the first positions during the season 2021. ESL One Fall 2021 is going to become a good training wheel for teams while they are trying to cement their recently acquired status of teams of the extra class.
This list can be added by Tundra whose game was worthy during the season 2021. Besides, Tundra did not bid goodbye to each other after the sad failure at the qualifiers for The International which says that the morale in the teams is serious.
The next candidate from the list is a duo from CIS and South America. Virtus.pro and Spirit and SG-esports with Beastcoast.
We have not seen «Bears» since the end of the major in Kyiv at all. Apparently, the club was fully focused on the search of the necessary coach who we could see at ESL One Fall 2021.
«Dragons» have no aversion to local championships and after the victory at the qualifiers for The International 10 they often appeared on our screens. This approach to Dota appeals to me and makes me root for Spirit.
We also had a chance to observe the South American colleagues. We saw Beastcoast at BTS Pro Series Season 7: Americas, and SG-esports turned up at Mobius.bet Maestros.
Both of them showed an absolutely typical game for the region. Chaotic and shapeless. I hope that at ESL One Fall 2021 we will see a mode of South American berserkers even though the ping is high.
The group of SG-esports and Beastcoast could be added by Tunder Predator, but we would like to put them to a separate category. Somewhere between «underdogs» and «outsiders».
Even though Tunder Predator got to The International 10 directly and showed a great result at the first major, we could hardly see the players. They did not proceed to the second major, and they did not participate in local tournaments.
It is hard to estimate this team, so that is why this category was created for them.
The main outsiders of the championship
Outsiders’ group is expectedly made up of two teams that have passed to the tournament through closed qualifiers. Team Empire and Creepwave will try hard, but they are unlikely to be able to make it.
«Emperors» scored a big win at the closed qualifiers from Europe but it was not enough. As for other factors, this is the same team of the Tier-2 level which Empire was during the season of 2021.
The situation for Creepwave is more prosaic. We want to believe that «Emperors» will be able to oppose a fight with their morale, but we do not believe in the success of Creepwave at all.
A typical mix that was gathered several days before the qualifiers and managed to make it to the main stage of the event cannot count on a solid show. Taking not the last place in the group seems a hard task for Creepwave.
Are you ready for the start?
The first match will start in an hour, so it means that now it is time for the last preparation. We have shared our expectations and drawn the situation with the tournament. Now we are to enjoy Dota and support our favourite teams.
Yuriy Sheremet – Expert in mobile gaming and esports among shooters and MOBA games.
At EGamersWorld, Yuriy, as in 2020 when he joined the portal, works with content, albeit with adjustments to his area of responsibility.