If you’ve got nothing planned for this weekend, treat yourself to watch some good professional Dota 2. Starting on January 20th, the best teams from all over the world will compete in Dota Pit League Season 5 for a prize pool of $136,345 USD. The prize may not be much for a tournament featuring the best of the best, but it will be a very interesting series of matches. Also now that the new patch 7.00 has been released for quite some time now, we will see perhaps a shift in the meta and new, exciting strategies from the best Dota 2 teams. Elements Pro Gaming, DC, OG, Secret, VP, Faceless, Invictus Gaming, and EG will be competing this weekend. Here’s what you should look out for in Dota Pit.

Team Secret

What was one of the best teams in Dota 2, Team Secret has fallen off the scene entirely due to many roster shuffles, bad performances, and team drama. However, with their most recent induction of Maurice “KheZu” Gutmann, the team has been relatively stable, even securing a first place at ROG Masters in November. However, this tournament featured mostly Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams, so it will be exciting to see if Secret finally found the team chemistry needed to perform at a top level again.

OG

Three-time Major winner OG will be at this tournament, and they will be quite the fierce opponent. But when you’re the best in the world, you’ve got a huge target on your back. The other teams will have done extensive research and training to prepare for them, so be sure to look out for all the OG games.

OG Win The Boston Major

Shift in the Meta

When a new patch comes out, it is impossible to tell exactly what will work and what won’t. For that reason, teams start the patch off doing what they’re already used to practicing. But it’s been over a month since the release of the patch, and it is very likely we will start to see new heroes being picked a lot and uncommon items become core. For the better half of last year, all we have seen are heroes like Luna, Drow Ranger, Shadow Demon, Juggernaut, Lifestealer, Sand King, and Slardar. Now that the illusion meta has been somewhat nerfed, teams may try to give other heroes a chance, especially since the new Talent Trees may make some heroes more viable. The patch introduced Arc Warden and Underlord to Captain’s Mode. Underlord has seen a lot of play but Arc Warden has not.

So with many questions and wonders of the patch ahead of us, take some time this weekend to catch Dota Pit, especially OG games. Because when you’re the best team in the world or facing against them, you’re bound to test some new and interesting ideas.