Since the dawn of Dota 2, there has been a myth that has circulated and repeated itself time and time again. In the odd years, the a western team wins. In the even years, a Chinese team wins. This has been the story told since the beginning in parts both jokingly and seriously. However in the recent years of Dota 2, the strength of Chinese Dota 2 has fallen in decline relative to the rest of the scene for numerous reasons. With The International 8 coming up in a few months, it was unclear if any Chinese Dota 2 team could break into the top mold and be considered a championship contender. One finally has and they are PSG.LGD.

To understand the enormity of being called the best Chinese team in the world, we have to look to the past. Throughout the years of Dota 2 play, China has always been consistently at the top or challenging for the top from its inception to about TI5. By that point, things had started to change. The game was evolving in ways never previously imagined. Chinese players were being given ludicrous amounts of money to stream and it became harder to shuffle teams between orgs or have younger players break into the top of the Chinese Dota 2 scene.

It was different in the west as leaders like Tal “Fly” Aizik, Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi and Peter “ppd” Pandam kept bringing out younger and more skilled players that had never had high level competitive play before. Examples included players like Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan, Ivan Borislavov “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov, and Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi. At that point in time, the greats of the previous generation of Chinese Dota 2 were losing motivation and for whatever reason the Chinese Dota 2 teams couldn’t focus throughout the year on practice. Kyle Freedman once famously called out Bai “rOtK” Fan for that attitude and once boldly predicted that NA and SEA were going to rise up above EU and SEA because of that commitment to practice.

While that never happened, the teams that continued to grind and put in the hours did succeed. From 2016 onwards the best teams in the world were all Western with teams like OG, Virtus,Pro, Secret, and Liquid. The only Chinese team that could challenge the West in 2016 was Wings, a team made up of young players who had stuck together for years and had a burst of incredible form, skill, and strategy to win TI6. It was an incredible run, but it wasn’t to last. They soon declined and outside of Newbee (who had the skill, but consistently choked under the pressure), Chinese Dota lacked any consistent team that challenged for the best. When it came to TI the Chinese teams were incredible, but outside of it, they lacked focus and drive.

So when the Dota Pro Circuit was announced, that changed a bit of it. With points on the line, it incentivized teams to focus throughout the entire year and we have had a resurgence of numerous Chinese teams as they tried to win tournaments including: PSG.LGD, VG, VG.J, and Newbee. But even then it wasn’t enough as Virtus.Pro, Liquid, and for a brief time Secret had ascended to a level of pay that was just unmatched throughout the entire Dota 2 scene. Some teams could upset them (EG upset Virtus.Pro multiple times, Newbee beat Liquid in a bo5 finals), but no Chinese team could match the level of play they consistently put out against the entire scene. At least until now.

The current roster of PSG.LGD includes: Wang “Ame” Chunyu, Lu “Maybe” Yao, Yang “Chalice” Shenyi, Xu “fy” Linsen, and Yap “xNova” Jian Wei. Ame is the hard carry of the team, the player that is funneled the most amount of gold to carry the games. Maybe has been the franchise player for PSG.LGD since 2015 and is still one of the best players in the world. The two of them were the star players that the previous iteration of PSG.LGD built around and were able to get to top 4 at TI7, only losing to Liquid, the eventual winner.

In typical Dota 2 fashion, the team broke up and the team decided to rebuild the team with Chalice, fy, and xNova. Among the three of them, the only known factor was Fy as he was a legendary player in Dota 2. He was once the best 4 player in the entire world and his spellcasting and aggressive roaming set the pace for every team he was a part of. But by the time he came into this lineup, he was broken. His last team was VG.J, a team that piled on disappointment after disappointment in terms of results and play. It felt like his time was over and so when he transferred to PSG.LGD he decided to take up the offlane role as that was the team needed and he needed to try a new look as a player to refind himself.

The role switch failed and in the end the team needed to find two more players and they eventually ended up being Chalice and xNova. Both of them had been bumping around in lower end teams, Chalice in China and xNova in SEA. Both became important role players within the system. Chalice took up the offlane position and became a strong player within that role and this in turn freed up fy to go back to the 4. xNova was the 5 player and he had good synergy fy and did his role well.

With the roster set, they started to dominate the local qualifiers in China in the first few months. They actually had to if the wanted any chance to get enough DPC points to get into TI8 without going through the shark pit that we call the qualifiers. They started off slowly with their first LAN having them bomb out of ESL Katowice. It wasn’t a surprising result considering that two of the three members were new to this level of play and as a five man unit they had yet to play together on LAN. A month later they played at Dota 2 Asia Championships and became the hometown heroes.

Each time they took to the stage and made a huge play, the entire arena erupted. Each time they failed, the arena went silent. In that tournament they beat Liquid and Virtus.Pro to make it to the finals, to only fall down at the last hurdle against Mineski in a bo5 series that went the whole way. As a team, their strategy was clear, it was to get Ame farm and have the rest of the players create space, get picks, and run interference. There was a clear idea as to how they were going to play each game and they could play at the blistering pace of the Western teams like Virtus.Pro and Liquid and the more traditional slower style that characterized old Chinese Dota 2.

But in the end it was not enough as Mineski played ascendant at Dota 2 Asia Championships, got a favorable patch, and coach Yang “71” Wenyi had out strategized them in both encounters at the tournament.

One month later and with new patches, PSG.LGD came to EPICENTER. In this tournament they made it out of group stages in second and once again defeat Virtus.Pro in a bo3 series. What was surprising about this victory was the third game where they outdrafted Virtus.Pro and showed a different kind of style that was built around the high mobility of both Slark and Storm Spirit.

It was reminiscent of the days when Fy led VG in 2015 as a highly mobile aggressive team. That kind of style had them weave in and out of the fights, constantly doing damage, while being unable to be shut down. This style showed up against Liquid in the upper bracket finals where they outplayed in the same way with incredible play from all of the players. The two teams then rematched again in the finals of the tournament where we got to see their adaptations against each other. PSG.LGD won the first convincingly, and the following two games were about Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi’s invoker. In the second game, Liquid were able to play around him and win while in the third game LGD were able to shut him down.

It was clear throughout the series that both teams felt the pressure of the finals. For PSG.LGD, this should have been reminiscent of their recent loss in the finals at DAC. But the fourth game ended with PSG.LGD betting the farm on Ame’s Slark. Liquid had drafted for strong team fight and put on their classic early game pressure, but PSG.LGD weathered the storm and got Ame the space and farm he needed to eventually take over the game.

At this point now, PSG.LGD can rightly call themselves the best Chinese team. Newbee has fallen off. Vici and VGJ.Thunder still have serious consistency issues in terms of performance. LGD on the other hand have had two top finishes at two high profile LANs and have guaranteed their ticket to TI8. They have beaten the two biggest juggernauts in the scene in Virtus.Pro and Liquid. They have won EPICENTER. They are the pride of China and will carry the hopes of China on their backs as they heard towards The International.

“But from here on our goal is TI8. TI was always the main goal, now that we are fourth in the DPC ranking all our focus is for The International 2018.” – Maybe, from VPesports interview.

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