MDL Chengdu Major - Event preview

The Chendu Major will be the teams’ first chance to secure DPC points in their campaign to secure qualification to next year’s International 10 (TI10), which will be held in Stockholm, Sweden. The tournament will offer up 15,000 points and boasts a prize pool of $1,000,000 USD.

Like the previous seasons, there are some notable teams missing from the lineup for this tournament. Teams that you would expect to see dominate the DPC circuit like Secret, PSG.LGD and OG have announced that they will miss the first Major of this season.

Dota2 Announcement:

1. Yao '357' Yi leaves the team and we send him our most sincere wishes.

2. Xu 'FY' Linsen will return to the team after 3 month rest due to eye surgery.

3. PSG.LGD will miss first Major event of the new season.
Full Story: https://t.co/HWQpJSYaCK #LGDWin pic.twitter.com/nkpnzuZyZi

— LGD Gaming (@LGDgaming) August 29, 2019

This leaves the field more open for the likes of Evil Geniuses and TNC Predator to put their best foot forward and bag themselves almost 5,000 DPC points. A win in China would almost guarantee the team’s invitation to TI10.

As expected, MDL Chengdu will feature a plethora of Chinese talents with China making up 17% of the representation of players at the event. More surprisingly, the next two most represented nations are the Filipinosand Peruvians, making up some 25% of players (excluding The Dota Summit winners).

MDL Chengdu favourites

With the absence of dominant teams Team Secret, OG and PSG.LGD, Evil Geniuses (EG) and Vici gaming are by far the favourites to take home the trophy at Chengdu even with their recent roster changes. To put it simply, both teams will be disappointed with anything other than a win at MDL Chengdu.

The North American qualifiers saw EG go undefeated through the group stage and only dropping one map against hopeful startups Quincy Crew. The two new recruits ‘Abed’ and ‘Ramzes666’ posted impressive numbers with 9.25 and 7.27 KDA’s respectively, over their first nine matches with the new team. Expect these two players to improve as the team continues to play together.

Vici’s journey to the major was certainly not as clean as EG’s, dropping games to Team Aster and EHOME, but they still managed to qualify top of arguably the strongest region in the current Dota Pro Circuit. ‘Pyw’s first time as acting captain saw Vici Gaming qualify for MDL Chengdu, but a lacklustre performance at ESL Hamburg saw the Chinese powerhouse fall to South American team Beastcoast. They’ll be looking to re-establish themselves as the strongest team in China and will have the home crowd advantage at the Major.

Another team continuing their great form from TI9 is TNC Predator. The SEA team recently won ESL Hamburg after dominating group B and easily making their way through the upper bracket of the playoffs. The new additions of ‘Kpii’ and ‘March’ add Australian and South Korean players to their list of nationalities and seemed to have improved their overall gameplay.

Teams to watch

Alliance’s new-look roster centres around Bulgarian carry ‘Nikobaby’ whose recent performance at TI9 with Mineski thrusts him into the spotlight. His success has continued with the new Alliance roster as they won DreamLeague season 12 and secured a third place finish at ESL Hamburg. Expect another strong finish from the European lineup.

Another strong team to keep an eye on is the latest reincarnation of Fnatic’s SEA team. This team combines the veteran experience of players like ‘iceiceice’ and ‘DJ’ with the explosive talent of ‘23savage’, whose recent run with Team Jinesbrus saw them narrowly miss out on TI9 qualification. Fnatic will be looking to cause some upsets in Chengdu.

Fighting Pandas are an almost entirely Canadian team with ‘Sneyking’ being the only exception. This team also sees the return of fan favourite ‘Aui_2000’ to a player and captain role. Mixed with Major winner ‘moonmeander’ and community bad guy ‘EternalEnVy’, Fighting Pandas are going to be an interesting team to watch at this Major.

Meta Updates

Kunkka was a highly contested pick in the qualifiers being the most banned hero with 216 bans across all games. When he did get through the bans, Kunkka had a strong win rate of 60%. Faceless Void was another contested hero with similar levels of picks and bans but had a higher win rate at 62%. You can expect these heroes to be a core part of the meta as we approach the Major.

The MDL Chengdu Major begins on November 14th until the 26th. The 16 teams will be competing for their share of $1,000,000 USD and the 5,000 DPC points. You can catch all the action on the MDL Chengdu Stream live.