It’s more than just a warm up before The International 2018
Player Images © BeyondTheSummit
The good guys from BeyondTheSummit have delivered us an action-packed Dota 2 action before we head on to Vancouver, Canada later this August for the biggest Dota 2 world championship of the year—The International 2018.
If you’re craving for some high-tier Dota 2 games, that we are being deprived of from quite some time now, but don’t want to stay up too late because you live on the other side of the world, here are five reasons on why you should give the DOTA Summit 9 a try.
1. The International 2018 Meta Preview
The DOTA Summit 9 may play a vital role in establishing The International 2018 meta. This is the first tournament that will feature The International 2018 attendees playing in the latest patch which was released after the regional qualifiers—7.18.
During the duration of The International 2018 regional qualifiers, we saw the rise of Windranger, Warlock, and Skywrath Mage. These three heroes saw minimal usage during the China Dota 2 Supermajor, the last Major tournament of the Dota Pro Circuit that concluded four days before The International 2018 open qualifiers began, but significantly contributed in the process of determining which teams will fly out to Vancouver, Canada this August.
Five out of six teams in the DOTA Summit 9 will be participating in The International 2018 and the DOTA Summit 9 will be a good avenue for them to dictate which heroes or strategies will be used to win this year’s biggest Dota 2 tournament.
2. Crazy Strategies
Alternatively, if The International 2018 participants decided to just hide their already formulated strategies until August, we can still be treated to the most eyebrow-raising Dota 2 strategies that we normally see on our pub matches except, this time, they are pulled off by our favorite professional Dota 2 players.
Although not that crazy, Virtus.pro, the defending champions of The Summit and leaders of the Dota Pro Circuit, won the grand finals of the DOTA Summit 7 against Team Secret by picking five different heroes in all five games of the best-of-five series. They were directly invited for The International 2017 shortly after that victory.
In an interview, Godz affirmed that they used to worry about teams experimenting on their tournament, but now, they just welcome it. Afterall, it still has a $100,000 prize pool.
So far, the craziest thing that happened in the DOTA Summit 9 was VGJ.Strom picking Techies for SVG against Evil Geniuses. (They lost horribly and I honestly think they deserve it.)
3. SumaiL vs ppd
This tiny scuffle between North America’s most successful Dota 2 stars sparked in a tweet made by ppd before The Dire was acquired by OpTic Gaming.
Some free advice @EvilGeniuses kick @Arteezy or @SumaaaaiL. Not @UniverseDota who is a godlike player, especially on the big stage. Here's hoping he joins another NA team and dominates! #Bleedblue
— Peter Dager (@Peterpandam) December 20, 2017
Knowing how The King won’t ever stand back from a fight, SumaiL responded to ppd’s Tweet like how a king should.
if only your team was capable of winning tournaments, you wouldnt have to tag others to stay relevant in the scene, its a shame..
— Sumail (@SumaaaaiL) December 20, 2017
After a short series of replies from both sides, the former social manager of Newbee, who is popularly known in the Dota 2 community as a meme god, decided to step in and drop this gold:
Good, good. Keep it going. Need filler entertainment before Rick & Morty season 4.
— Newbee (@newbeecn) December 22, 2017
As much as we crave for the fourth season of Rick & Morty, waiting for it is now futile because we have the DOTA Summit 9 that can serve as the next round for their fight. Evil Geniuses are set to play against OpTic Gaming in the final day of the group stage.
4. More Abed Meepo
Before Abed got historically recognized as the world’s first 10K MMR Dota 2 player, he was this wunderkind from the Philippines that is lethally known for his masterful Meepo plays. We saw how Kyle’s dream of playing for The International 2016 got destroyed when they slipped on Abed’s Meepo during the tournament’s Wild Card qualifier.
But because of how competitive meta works, seeing Abed play Meepo is now rarer than encountering a Meepo smurf in your ranked matches. EternaLEnVy would rather give Abed a boring Viper, Death Prophet, or Templar Assassin—maybe an Invoker if we’re lucky enough.
The case is different in DOTA Summit 9, however, because after eight months, EE-sama finally granted Abed his Meepo—twice in one series! It may be their warm-up for the next The International or maybe just an experiment, but either way, seeing Abed playing Meepo will always be a treat for his fans.
5. Great Dota 2 Games
This reason alone should be enough to make any Dota 2 fan watch the final tournament before the grandest Dota 2 world championship. It’s been a whole month since the last time we’ve witnessed a high-level Dota 2 action in The International 2018 regional qualifiers, and frankly, aside from the Immortal III shitposting from The International 2018 Battle Pass owners and the occasional drama, there’s really nothing to talk about in Dota 2’s subreddit.
With the DOTA Summit 9, we can now fill r/DotA2‘s front page with the coolest plays from EG, VGJ.Storm, Fnatic, OpTic Gaming, paiN Gaming, and Let’s Do It and, of course, the chillest contents from BeyondTheSummit.
