All you need to know about The International 3 East qualifier

Written by: ReiNNNN With the western qualifier coming to an end, it is now time for the heavily stacked Eastern qualifier. Set to begin tomorrow, GosuGamers is proud to present you this article consisting of all you need to know about the Eastern qualifier. Do take a read as we bring you our thoughts on what the teams will do, an interview with the GoDz and also predictions from the pros. The International 3 Coverage Hub It's the holy grail of The International 3 coverage!

Table of Contents

1. The Match-Ups 1.1 Group A 1.2 Group B 2. The last minute changes

3. GoDz on their new studio

4. Brax, dabeliuteef and iceiceice prediction

5. What do YOU think?



The Match-Ups

Group A Rattlesnake vs. First Departure Undoubtedly, RattleSnake is the favourite going into the first match of the eastern qualifier with their high risk style of play and unorthodox drafts. Despite showing signs of weakness in the mid-game against Rising Stars during RGN League yesterday, Rattlesnake, known for their first pick Clockwerk (Kabu), is still quite a force to be reckon with and is highly respected among many professional Asian teams. First Departure on the other hand, had really bad runs in various online tournaments recently, losing a lot of games they should have won and sometimes, tier two teams. It almost seems like the pro teams around them have analysed their playstyle and have proper ways to counter the split push strat they always do, not to mention, the split push strat is pretty outdated now. However, it is up to the young Singaporean players to rise up to the occassion. LGD.cn vs. Dreamz Both Dreamz and LGD.cn are late entries to the qualifier and how fitting that both of them are going up against each other on the first game. Yesterday night, LGD.cn showings against TongFu in Dota 2 Super League proved to the world that they have settled their shenanigans from a few weeks ago and is playing good now. Their recent Kunkka pick up was also the main reason of the win against TongFu yesterday to which Xiao8, the players playing the Kunkka received praises from Icefrog himself. To be crude, Dreamz is the ninth team of the qualifier. Their entry to the qualifier is mostly attributed to their stability - last roster change was like a year ago - and their recent second place finish in Pinoy Gaming Festival. After they received the invitation to the qualifier, Netolic.SG challenged them to a showmatch but was politely declined stating, "we want to keep our strat a secret". Pinoys are known for creating great pocket strats on big occassion. Who could forget the world hating the Pinoys when they invented the Bottle Crow strat. Group B Rising Stars vs. MiTH.Trust Rising Stars as their team name proclaimed is the rising team from China and funny enough, the team was relatively unheard of a few months ago and they are now one of the top contenders for The International 3 invite. In a video interview with DPM, xiaotuji mentioned that the team is hard in training, perfecting their strat and plays at almost every waking moment in their gaming house. However, Rising Stars is the clear favourite going into the match-up. In their previous encounter - during G-1 Champions League Asian qualifier - Rising Stars destroyed MiTH.Trust in straight games. However, the Thais looked solid in their game against Zenith yesterday and nearly took down the direct invitee with an early push strat. Many said that MiTH are easy to figure out due to tendency to stick to certain drafts and MiTH really have to pull one out of the hat to upset Rising Stars. Vici Gaming vs. Mineski Vici Gaming pride themselves in their high individual skills and when we speak of individual skills, only Cty comes in mind. Cty has been phenomenal in Vici's recent games at Dota 2 Super League and he is devastating to face on the mid lane. As seen in their games of late, Vici has a rather similar style to LGD.Int which requires them to dominate the early phase and transition their advantage in gold and experience into mid-game. One thing Mineski can exploit though, is ZSMJ's tendency to lose concentration of the map which resulted in most of their losses in recent games. Besides that, Vici Gaming also tend to run the Io - Chaos Knight combo to perfection and it will be silly for Mineski to let those through unless they have some OMGWTFBBQ counter to it. Mineski will probably run the Skywrath Mage solo mid.

The last minute changes

LGD LGD.cn was once a direct invitee to The International 3 but due to a roster change that came after the invitation was sent, they have been relegated to the qualifiers due to a rule breach. Now, the third placer of the last TI will have to weave through some of the best Asia have to offer in order to secure their air tickets to Seattle this year. Although some might say that their performance has been a little shaky recently - losing 0-2 to Vici Gaming mostly due to drafts - it was reported that LongDD is now back in LGD's gaming house to direct the team in drafting and trilane versus trilane situation. In an interview we had with the Chinese legend, LongDD stated that their chance of winning The International 3 Eastern qualifier is 99%. We are sure a lot of teams will disagree with that but we will have to wait and see. Also, do we really have to whip out LGD vs TongFu yesterday to prove a point? FINE HERE. Dreamz When Neolution.Int disqualification from the TI3 qualifiers was unofficially announced, many people especially the Pinoy community has raved about how Dreamz should take their place. We posted a poll on our old website a few days ago asking users to vote on the teams worthy to take Neo.Int's place and undoubtedly, Dreamz took the first spot by a big margin of more than 50% of the votes. Netolic.SG, For.Love and Joenet were close contenders for the spot but it was Dreamz's second place finish in the recent Pinoy Gaming Festival which secured them the qualifier spot. The Pinoy team has been rather stable the last few months, having no roster change and has been performing well in several local and South East Asian tournaments. However, they do have big shoes to fill, placed in the same group as former second runner-up of The International, LGD, and rising Chinese team, Rattlesnake.

Brax, iceiceice and dabeliuteef predicts

Braxton 'Brax' Paulson BraxtonPaulson



L GD and Rattlesnake are the top contenders in group A, I believe LGD should win this group with ease. Group B is a little more of a toss-up with VG being the favorites but both MiTH and Rstars have a chance to take games off each other. I do think it'll be LGD > VG in the finals. The reason why I think LGD will win is because LGD is still a more experienced and well developed team. VG have been pulling up decent performances and they do have a chance to pull off a victory but I don't think it's very likely Jun Liong 'Dabeliuteef' Loh Jun LiongLoh I think LGD.cn will take first and Rattlesnake will take second in Group A, then VG takes first in Group B followed by Rising Stars. It's mostly because they are Chinese. I honestly don't think Dreamz and First Departure will stand a chance against them. Besides that, I scrimmed with MiTH and the Chinese teams often, the difference is just incomparable. LGD.cn current team is also the team that won third in TI2.



Daryl 'iceiceice' Koh DarylKoh LGD, RattleSnake, First Departure, Dreamz for group A and VG, RisingStars, MiTH and Mineski for Group B. Overall winner should be LGD first and Rattlesnake second. Reasons? No reasons, they are just better. I support Singaporean teams but I think it's very hard.

GoDz on their new studio

Hello David. How are you holding up. Heard you and LD are busy fixing up the studio? Is it ready? It's ready for the TI3 East qualifiers! I believe that every show or broadcast, be it Dreamhack, The International, The Superbowl, or just a random online tournament cast always has room for improvement! So you can be sure anything we have we'll look to improve upon. But the studio is intact. Not sure about my sanity though.

I always heard that LD is not sleeping to fix up the studio. What about Lumi? Is he a massive slacker? Not at all! Lumi does all we ask of him and has helped lots with brainstorming ideas and helping cover games while we set up the studio! He just needs to stop forgetting to switch his overlays in xsplit! Good thing we'll have a producer for the qualifiers.

Whoa a producer? So TheGDStudio have all their map, stats breakdown and these posters of statman's hairy chest. What can we expect from BeyondTheSummit for the Eastern qualifier? Well, can expect a huge step up from what we've had over the past few months in terms of stream production. We have some great TI-3 themed content and overlays, and hope to blow everyone away with everything. I guess they'll have to tune in and see haha.

Sounds exciting already. In any case, I think a lot of people are very excited for the Eastern qualifier. Which games in the groupstage are u most excited for? Rattlesnake vs LGD. Assuming both teams win their round 1 match, which they should. The performance of LGD in this match will be a very big sign as to whether or not they are the team who is favorite to win the qualifier as most people expect or if they are in for a real fight with the other Chinese competitors (and hopefully a SEA darkhorse or two!)

Speaking of LGD, they obviously got relegated to the qualifier after having a roster change. Lots of people came with pitchforks saying that the qualifier is now significantly harder. Do you share the same sentiment? I think it's actually just as competitive as it ever was. LGD is a bigger name and brand than Tongfu, especially to the Western scene, but I'd compare them to someone like EG. Strong in name, doesn't make you strong in performance necessarily. Tongfu, Rattlesnake, Vici Gaming, and Rising Stars can all go head-to-head with LGD, and LGD may even be in for a struggle in the qualifier. I guess whether it's harder or not comes down to whether or not you feel LGD or Tongfu are the stronger team. Right now Tongfu are the stronger team.M given more time, by TI3 LGD would have been stronger than Tongfu, but it's now up to them to prove their worth, and prove it now. They don't have that time any more.

Maybe on the driver seat noob. Photo by Armaggeddon. Alright, Dreamz was also announced to replace Neolution.Int a few days ago due to some roster issues. Do you have any idea on the whole fiasco? Neolution.int changed their roster by removing Ninjaboogie and lost their invite to compete in the qualifier as a result. The team Valve selected to replace them in the qualifier was Dreamz. I don't think there's much more to the fiasco than that! Plenty of drama I guess if you look into reasons behind the roster change, and teams getting upset about missing out on invite (same thing happened last year with POTM Bottom, and this year with Kaipi). But there wasn't much to it, it was really as simple as team getting replaced for changing their roster, the other stuff doesn't matter much.



As you mentioned, Valve selected Dreamz to replace them, probably the bigger favourite really. However, there were also a lot of other Asian teams out there such as Netolic.SG, For.Love, Joenet, and Invasion. What makes you think Dreamz stands out from all the others? Hmm, I personally believe all those teams are strong and it's hard to differentiate. ForLove and JoeNet seem to lack stable rosters perhaps, with KingJ leaving, and Minerva being known for his time playing for Chains Stack (rather than JoeNet). Netolic definitely stand out as a very strong new team. As for Dreamz, they have a long proven run as a stable competitor in the SEA scene, I can't even remember their last roster change, possibly over a year ago, more than can be said for any western team!

Since I've asked some pros about this already, I wanna know your take on who will make the top two of Group A, Group B and the overall winner. I think Rattlesnake and LGD will top Group A in that order without much contest. Group B will be more interesting, but should be taken by Vici Gaming and Rising Stars. I'm torn on this matchup, but think VG will take it. Overall winner I predict to be Rattlesnake. They are drafting some awesome, unique strats, and playing some really impressive games lately.

Unique strats. I think Fear mentioned to me in an interview before saying that Rattlesnake have a high risk, medium reward strat (similar to EG) which I guess did not work out well for EG. Care to elaborate some of these unique strats you speak of? They've recently been favoring Alchemist as a solo-mid hero, going for utility items, Zenith even first-banned it in a game 3 against them recently. Additionally running heroes like visage in trilanes, and some unusual carry options makes them a very unpredictable team.

Ah alright. So really no hints on what's coming up for us on the broadcast? Maybe a picture? Nope! Kappa

Alright thanks for the short interview David and good luck with impressing us for the qualifiers! Would you like to shamlessly plug a shoutout in? Big thanks and shoutout to my parents who I'll see at TI-3 and my sisters(sorry, Emmi, I forgot to call you yesterday on your birthday!). Also a big thanks to our latest sponsor iBUYPOWER and finally TwitchTV for all their support, we wouldn't have a studio today if it wasn't for TwitchTV supporting us from Day 1 over a year ago!

What do YOU think?

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