This is my Buy and Sell Edition for the new Dota2 season. Imagine for a moment that each team was a stock. I am the stock broker trying to make money so I have to buy low and sell high. In other words I need to buy teams whose stocks I think are low so that the return is better whereas I need to sell stocks of teams I think have hit their maximum potential.

Buy

Aster

Roster:

Liu “Sylar” Jiajun

Deng “Dstones” Lei

Lin “Xxs” Jing

Ye “BoBoKa’ Zhibiao

Lu “Fenrir” Chao

On paper, this looks to be the second best Chinese team going forward after PSG.LGS. Sylar was probably the second best carry in last year’s DPC and is an incredibly stable player. He rarely if ever makes mistakes. He should be the carry of this team and a constant win condition. From there you can have either Xxs or BoBoKa join him as the other win condition. Between the two of them, I think Xxs has the higher potential just because I’ve seen him play at a high level through more patches, but BoBoKa certainly showed his potential back when iG won DAC in 2017/ Fenrir is a tenured support player by now and while he hasn’t been a revelation in terms of being a captain, he’s been solid. The only question mark here is Dstones as I’ve never seen him play, so it will come down to the structure and identity of the team. Overall, I think this is a good combination of newer talent and veterans. Given enough time, I think this team should be playing around the top 4-6 range.

NiP

Roster:

Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard

Adrian “Fata” Trinks

Neta “33” Shapira

Martin “Saksa” Sazdov

Peter “ppd” Dager

The man who was meant to make America great again has gone full European. After OpTic got top 8 at The International 8, the entire team exploded and went their separate ways. Among the players, only two have stuck together, 33 and ppd. I think those two together is already a good foundation for a team. 33 is arguably the world’s best offlaner and can be a star player. Ppd has already shown he can construct an entire team and strategy around him.

After that, we have Ace, Fata, and Saksa. I think Saksa has proven himself to be a good support player throughout the different teams he has played in the last few years, most notably in DC. So the real question for me is Ace and Fata. Both of them were playing on Secret prior to joining this team and neither looked particularly good. Ace played a ton of heroes, but wasn’t a carry player. Fata did his role well enough in the offlane, but couldn’t shine. There are a lot of different ways this can go and like OpTic, I think this will ultimately come down to ppd’s leadership. He already made that team perform above what should have been the expected value, so now we’ll have to see what he can do with this team. For now, I have them as a top 8 team with a higher floor than the previous OpTic.

Fnatic

Roster:

Pyo “MP” No-a

Abed “Abed” Azel Uisp

Daryl “iceiceice” Koh Pei Xiang

Djardel “DJ” Mampusti

Anucha “Jabz” Jirawong

This is almost a perfect SEA All-stars team and what I like about is that it isn’t overloaded with talent. There are three clear win conditions the team plays around: Abed, iceiceice, and DJ. MP is a consistent carry player who can do his job and Jabz will be the leader and help in the early game. In terms of raw skill, having Abed, iceiceice, and DJ together is enough to ensure that this team will likely top the SEA region. After that, the most important thing will be to see how the team play and strategy works out going forward. I can see this as a consistent top 8 team, but with a better ceiling than the old Mineski/Fnatic lineups of the last circuit.

Sell:

Mineski

Roster:

Thiay “JT-” Jun Wen

Kam “Moon” Boon Seng

Damien “kpii” Chok

Kim “Febby” Yong-min

Chai “Mushi” Yee Fung

This is an odd choice as I think there are a lot of positive aspects of the roster. Kpii proved himself to be a great offlaner during his time on Newbee. Mushi is certainly versatile enough to take on the 5 role and play support. But the reason I have to sell this team is because there are too many unknown factors that the team has to get over. I don’t know how well Febby will play with Mushi or the others. I look at this team and it doesn’t scream caveman Dota at me, so how well will Febby do in a team that doesn’t play that style? Can he adapt to the world of modern man?

Then we have JT- who is a coin toss. We’ve seen multiple times in Dota2 history where a newer player does well when coming into a new team, but those were usually established teams with pedigree. Outside of kpii and Mushi, I’m not certain I see it. Finally, I don’t rate Moon well as a midlaner and I think he was one of the biggest flaws in the previous Mineski lineup. While there is some potential here, I’ll go ahead and say sell this team.

Liquid

Roster:

Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen

Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi

Ivan “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov

Maroun “GH” Merhej

Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi

This may look like a strange pick until you remember the premise of this article. Buy low, sell high. This Liquid lineup has been together for almost two years now. We’ve seen them win The International and in last year’s DPC they were among the best teams. That is an incredible achievement in and of itself, but I also think that is their limit.

At this point in their careers, everything should look uphill for them. Everyone has played them for over an year now so if Liquid want to achieve the titles they desire, they will have to reinvent themselves in some drastic way. Unfortunately, the number of teams I’ve seen do that and succeed this far into their lineups history can be counted on one hand: Wings from Dota2 and Virtus.Pro from CS:GO. As for the recent losses in the qualifiers, I can chalk that away to burnout. This is one of those teams that had been traveling all year and so I don’t consider that to be their actual level of play. Overall, I think this team can stay within the higher echelons of play, around a top 4-6 level, but in order to profit, it needs to be a top 1-2 team. As I don’t think that’s likely, I say sell now.

Virtus.Pro

Roster:

Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev

Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko

Pavel “9pasha” Khvastunov

Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan

Alexei “Solo” Berezin

The reasoning for selling this team is similar to Liquid. Last year they were the best team in the entire DPC and dominated the circuit. They can literally go no higher, so they have to go lower. However unlike the Liquid choice, I think this one is more of a gamble. If the patch reverts back to them being able to win game through lane, then this team could still be the best team in the world. Even then, I think this team has potential choking issues or at the very least, a certain inflexibility in their style of play with this five man unit.

In a world where Liquid, EG, PSG.LGD, and OG exists, I can’t believe that Virtus.Pro will dominate the DPC like they did last year. So I’m saying sell them now while the price is high.

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