The International 2015 Awards August 30th, 2015 16:52 GMT Text by Julmust Graphics by fusefuse, Nixer The International 2015 Awards





About a month ago this years version of TI ended with EG proudly lifting the aegis. But is it right that they should be the only ones getting an awards after such an amazing tournament? We here at LiquidDota certainly don't think so. Therefore we decided to, yet again, hand out awards to the players and teams of TI5!



THE INTERNATIONAL 2015

LIQUIDDOTA AWARDS

Award Categories



Best Strategic Game | Most Entertaining Game | Most Valuable Player

Best Newcomer | Hero of the Tournament | Best Streak | Biggest Play

Biggest Surprise | Biggest Series Upset



Liquipedia



Focus Mode Turn off Focus Mode [x] Reveal All Award Categories Best Strategic Game Best Strategic Game EG vs. CDEC

Upper Grand Finals, Game 2

As game 2 of the grand finals began, CDEC faced a big problem. In game one, EG let CDEC have Leshrac, arguably the most overpowered hero on the tournament- for free. But instead of handing the tormented soul over to Shiki, and placing him mid as most teams would, Q decided to give the hero to Garder and play him as a position 4 support. A huge mistake. EG, led by SumaiL on a 10-5-7 Storm Spirit, decimated CDEC. Something new had to happen in game two. And it did.



Realizing that they could not let SumaiL play around with his favorite heroes in mid, CDEC banned three of SumaiL's signature heroes, after their standard first round Naga and Techies ban, while picking up top tier heroes like Lesrac, Tusk, and QoP, along with a surprise Visage. With one pick left CDEC had not given away much of their laning phase. Could this be a QoP midlane, a trilane with Leshrac farming, leaving their offlane open? Or was Tusk meant to go offlane, Leshrac support, thus leaving CDEC needing a mid or safelaner, depending on where QoP then went? As you can see the possibilities were endless and PPD must have been sweating quite a bit in his booth. His guess was that CDEC was looking for a midlaner, so he banned the Dragon Knight. As Q picked up Broodmother, the crowd thought that PPD had misjudged his opponents. PPD probably thought so himself. But everyone had misjudged Q's sneaky mind.



As the hero picks began, we saw the biggest mind game the tournament had seen so far. Xz picked up the Black Arachnid, seemingly for the offlane. Q, Garder and Agressif picked up Visage, Tusk, and QoP for what seemed to be a very strong trilane. This left Shiki with Leshrac for the midlane. But as the horn blew, we got to witness a curveball of epic proportions. We not only saw Broodmother in the midlane, a lane you very rarely find her in, but players on CDEC were switching roles.



Agressif took the QoP offlane. Xz, the offlaner, instead occupied the midlane, and botlane we saw Shiki safelane farming Leshrac. EG tried to adapt by changing their lanes not once, but twice. As the match drew on, CDEC just kept on pulling further and further ahead until EG had to admit defeat. No one knows if this is something CDEC had practiced and prepared as a pocket strat, or if this was Q's mind showing off it's potential. But the surprise Broodmother pick combined with the unique laning, in a incredibly important game 2, makes this our pick for the best strategic game of TI5.



Most Entertaining Game Most Entertaining Game Cloud9 vs. Vici Gaming

Lower Bracket Round 2 Game 1

In the loser’s bracket of TI, two fan favorites would be squaring off. Tensions ran high as both teams knew they would have to pull out all the stops in order to stay in TI and preserve their chances of taking the aegis this year. The stage was set for an fantastic series of epic plays and throws, and the two teams would not disappoint.



Cloud9 would go for their distinctive Io and Bane support picks in conjunction with FATA’s Shadow Fiend and Envy’s Gyrocopter, while VG opted for a global strategy oriented around Spectre, Clockwerk and Ancient Apparition. But, as we all know, the real game winning pick of the game would be the Rubick, played by VG’s fy. The early-mid game would be a constant back-and-forth of rotations and ganks, with VG gaining an early lead, and Cloud9 equalizing the score with some choice fights, utilizing their two supports’ offensive capabilities to get the better end of most of their engagements. C9 would eventually be able to pull ahead and seize a lane of barracks 33 minutes in, giving themselves a huge gold lead. However, in typical Cloud9 fashion, their lead would not last. Two minutes after their rax fell, VG was able to get up an Aghanims for both their Rubick and their Ancient Apparition. The pickup of these two items would be the first steps towards a miracle comeback on the side of VG.



C9 would actually show a fair amount of discipline at this point; they were steadily and slowly pressuring VG, seemingly resolved to avoid the throws their team was usually known for. After a brief standoff at Roshan, they instead chose to push down the middle lane to get a second set of rax, fearful of attempting Roshan against the global strategy of VG. However, this would prove to be just as big of a mistake. With two Aghanim's Scepters now up on their supports, VG were hungry for a fight. Sensing weakness, fy immediately pounced on FATA’s Shadow fiend with a Telekinesis, giving the rest of his team the opening they needed to pull a one-two combo with their Laguna Blade and Aghanim’s-enhanced Ice Blast on the helpless Shadow Fiend. After some wizardry on fy’s Rubick, VG would be able to take a 5 man wipe and stay in the game. Following this, the team would leverage their powerful pickoff ability in order to continue to go for the win and actually be active on the map, despite their gold deficit. The moment C9 split up, VG looked and found a pickoff on EE, which allowed them to defend their base and ignore FATA’s aegis. This wasn’t a team playing to survive; it was a team playing to win. Even after losing an engagement and being down two heroes, they managed to successfully contest and steal Roshan. With the momentum on their side and C9 powerless to deal with their powerful teamfight ultimates, VG slowly and steadily took control over the game. With a foiled last futile backdoor attempt by C9 with a relocate on the Gyro and Boots of Travels level 2 on FATA, VG were able to take the game, and with it, one of the most exciting comebacks in all of TI5.

Most Valuable Player Most Valuable Player PPD

Captain, Evil Geniuses

Maybe we’re victims of recency bias, but did we just see the best performance by a captain in the history of Dota 2? Peter “PPD” Dager just finished wrapping up an incredible season of Dota. After Team Secret deprived EG of both their 4-role support player, Zai, and their young phenom, Arteezy, many community members seemed to put EG on the backburner. However, they miraculously replaced Arteezy with an even younger Doogie-Howser-esque mid-player from Pakistan, Syed “SumaiL” Hassan. The 16-year-old is already a legend, and it is clear that his incredible play over the last seven months could not have occurred without the leadership of PPD (although some might also point to Fear’s, or even manager Charlie Yang’s, influence in the teenager’s life).



But that’s not all, folks! Behind door #2 was another newcomer in former Cloud9 player, Canadian Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling. He stepped right in and filled the Zai-sized gap helping PPD support their three core players over the last seven months. “Leadership” is one of those hot-button words referring to a trait as immeasurable as it is valuable, and PPD’s guidance through this transition places him amongst the world’s premier eSports captains.

Even with a change to 40% of their lineup, the North American squad never lost a step. We have learned in recent days of apparent internal strife that has culminated in Aui_2000’s removal from the team, but that only further legitimizes PPD’s value to the team as a leader and drafter. Even with dramatic social struggles within the team, their leader administrated the North Americans all the way to the top of the Dota 2 world.



Evil Geniuses had scrimmaged against CDEC before the group stages, as well as in between the group stage and the main event, so they felt strong going into their upper bracket bout with the suddenly-monstrous foe. PPD’s drafting seemed to be on point, but a small misstep by their teenage midlaner lead to them losing midlane barracks in what had previously been a dead-even match and turned into a relative snowball of a finish.



Going into their Grand Final, best-of-five rematch, Captain Dager felt confident in his team, in spite of their 2-0 loss the previous night—so confident, in fact, that he was willing to give up the lusted-after Leshrac to CDEC knowing (read: hoping) the majestic play of his adolescent would continue. TL;DR? It did. If you haven’t yet, watch

Maybe we’re victims of recency bias, but did we just see the best performance by a captain in the history of Dota 2? Peter “PPD” Dager just finished wrapping up an incredible season of Dota. After Team Secret deprived EG of both their 4-role support player, Zai, and their young phenom, Arteezy, many community members seemed to put EG on the backburner. However, they miraculously replaced Arteezy with an even younger Doogie-Howser-esque mid-player from Pakistan, Syed “SumaiL” Hassan. The 16-year-old is already a legend, and it is clear that his incredible play over the last seven months could not have occurred without the leadership of PPD (although some might also point to Fear’s, or even manager Charlie Yang’s, influence in the teenager’s life).But that’s not all, folks! Behind door #2 was another newcomer in former Cloud9 player, Canadian Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling. He stepped right in and filled the Zai-sized gap helping PPD support their three core players over the last seven months. “Leadership” is one of those hot-button words referring to a trait as immeasurable as it is valuable, and PPD’s guidance through this transition places him amongst the world’s premier eSports captains.Even with a change to 40% of their lineup, the North American squad never lost a step. We have learned in recent days of apparent internal strife that has culminated in Aui_2000’s removal from the team, but that only further legitimizes PPD’s value to the team as a leader and drafter. Even with dramatic social struggles within the team, their leader administrated the North Americans all the way to the top of the Dota 2 world.Evil Geniuses had scrimmaged against CDEC before the group stages, as well as in between the group stage and the main event, so they felt strong going into their upper bracket bout with the suddenly-monstrous foe. PPD’s drafting seemed to be on point, but a small misstep by their teenage midlaner lead to them losing midlane barracks in what had previously been a dead-even match and turned into a relative snowball of a finish.Going into their Grand Final, best-of-five rematch, Captain Dager felt confident in his team, in spite of their 2-0 loss the previous night—so confident, in fact, that he was willing to give up the lusted-after Leshrac to CDEC knowing (read: hoping) the majestic play of his adolescent would continue. TL;DR? It did. If you haven’t yet, watch PPD’s draft analysis of each of the four Grand Final matches. It was only four matches, but it gives a glimpse into the genius of Peter Dager, and a few of the reasons we at Liquid give him our International MVP award. Best Newcomer Best Newcomer SumaiL

Midlaner, Evil Geniuses

It’s been a fortnight since we saw the passing of the midpoint of summer (winter in the Southern Hemisphere) as well as the grandest of all eSports events. Each year, Valve exceeds the standards created by previous Internationals. With more companies, resources and money invested, anyone would assume the quality of play would improve. And, a few naysayers aside, it most clearly has.

Before his 16th birthday had passed, Syed “SumaiL” Hassan, the newcomer to North American Dota, already possessed four top-3 finishes in tier-1 tournaments, including his now-infamous Storm-Spirit-sealed, $1.2 million Dota 2 Asia Championship.



In a tournament so wide open that a qualifier team (a qualifier!) almost won it, viewers were sure parity would rule the day. With the Chinese qualifier CDEC going through the Main Event upper bracket without losing a series, pre-tourney favorite Vici Gaming having to start in the bottom bracket (and winning four straight series), normally-faithful teams like EG & Secret weren’t to be trusted with one’s rares. Unless the Newcomer of the Year was involved. Based on his clutch play in February, Dota2 fans expected results. But would SumaiL deliver?



The six matches against CDEC—two in the upper bracket final and four in the Grand Final—tell the tale. In game one of the UB final, his Shadow Fiend play was simply incredible, handily winning his lane over Shiki’s Templar Assassin. In fact, his net worth was tops in the match from the 2nd creep-wave until the 27-minute mark when his 15k net worth was 4k clear of any other player, and it wasn’t until a buyback at 42 minutes that Agressif’s Ember passed him in net worth. A slight misstep he made at a key point earlier in the match had effectively handed a permanent lead to CDEC, but it was a miniscule error of milliseconds from which he still almost escaped. In the next game, a crafty CDEC Bounty Hunter took down his courier, bottle in tow, at the 6:00 mark, and Shiki’s Lina gained the advantage on the teenager’s Queen of Pain as a result. Until that point, he had been handily winning a match-up that normally favors the Lina player (in the current meta-game).



In the Grand Final, we would see glimmers of his DAC coming out party—SumaiL had been given the Storm Spirit. There were times in the laning stage of game one where it seemed CDEC were tri-laning mid. Three deaths later, was SumaiL overrated? Fans wondered if they were seeing the beginning of a championship choke. However, as soon as the focus of CDEC’s gaze shifted away from the mid lane, SumaiL found his farm. As quickly as those three deaths had accumulated (all by the five-minute mark), his discernment and synergy with his American-based squad saw him gain a two-level lead over the enemy’s highest level; even more impressive was the timing on his Orchid: at 15:49 it was the fastest of the entire International. Maybe CDEC should have tried a quad-lane.

CDEC would win game two on terrific team-play--they were in the Grand Final for a reason. EG would quickly re-focus. In his post-TI draft analysis of this very series, EG’s now legendary captain had this to say of SumaiL:



“I think SumaiL’s ability to play mid is a lot higher than Shiki’s ability. I think that Sumail is just… an amazing player, especially on the heroes he likes to play like Ember and Storm Spirit. And…we can generally send him mid versus any match-up and he’s going to at least split the lane or even win it by a large margin… it’s not even a surprise factor; it’s something we expect out of him.”



There may not be any higher compliment than such implicit trust from his captain and International MVP. Not only is SumaiL an early favorite for TI-6 MVP, he’s also this year’s Best Newcomer.

Hero of the Tournament Hero of the Tournament Techies

Oh Techies. The most hated of heroes in pubs... and finals of TI. During this years tournament we saw Techies, a very gimmicky hero, play a huge role in the drafts throughout the group stages and the main event. Thanks to Evil Geniuses picking the hero and subsequently beating CDEC with it, not just once but twice in the group stages, PPD managed to scare the Chinese team to such an extent that in the finals CDEC first round banned Techies in every single game of the grand finals. This, just like a feeding support, created an enormous amount of space for the B O Y S in blue in the drafting phase. There is no doubt that Techies had a huge impact on the tournament this year, even if he was only played in 8 out of the 163 games.



Outside of the impact in the finals you cannot escape the fact that Techies is a really fun hero to watch. It's a hero that allows underdog teams to upset established teams, as in the game between Complexity and Invictus Gaming. It's also a hero that makes the game fun for the spectator (albeit not necessarily for 9 of the players in the game). We believe Aui_2000 said it best, after EG's win versus EHOME: "I think he's really good and I guess I love Techies now".

Best Streak Best Streak CDEC's Tournament

While Agressif, Shiki, Xz, Q, and Garder fell just short of the Aegis this year, no one can deny that their run in TI5 is one of the most impressive runs we've seen in the history of Dota. Before this year the most successful team to come from the play-in tournament was Team Liquid who, in TI4, managed to get up to 9th-10th place. Before this years tournament, teams coming in through the play-ins were seen as jokes. Filler teams. Tourists. But after CDEC's showing this year, no one will ever underestimate a play-in team again.



CDEC not only had an impressive run; their ultra-aggressive style of Dota dictated the meta during the tournament. Teams tried, but ultimately failed, to copy the style of the Chinese newcomers. Thanks to this they managed to take second place in the groups after two losses to EG and their Techies, a hero that turned out to be a big part of their downfall. But once they came into the main bracket they showed the world what they could to. 2-0 vs. Cloud9, 2-0 vs. LGD, and 2-0 vs. EG. Suddenly the former development squad of LGD saw themselves in the final of the worlds biggest esports tournament, and they were the favorites. Everyone was ready for a fairytale ending. But this is real life, and we all know how the story ends. Sometimes Cinderella doesn't get the glass shoe put on her foot. EG had figured CDEC out in the finals. CDEC got decimated over 4 games and left the stage with their heads hanging in shame. They shouldn’t be ashamed, however- CDEC had the most incredible run of TI5. And no one can ever take that away from them.

Biggest Play Biggest Play Fy's Rubick

Vs. Cloud9 Game 1

On his signature Rubick, reputation preceded fy. When Vici Gaming picked up Spectre for Hao (a hero that is seldom picked by anyone else in 6.84) and selected Rubick and Ancient Apparition for fy and Fenrir, expectations from viewers ran high. For the the first 35 minutes, it looked like the game would be a letdown, as C9 controlled the game and built up a 20 thousand lead in net worth. C9 even broke high ground and took one lane of barracks after a big team fight win. But fy would not disappoint, and with a little bit of “artistic assistance” from Cloud9, he produced the biggest plays of the tournament in the second half of the game. The ball started rolling when Vici Gaming scrounged up enough farm to build two Aghanim’s Scepters on Rubick and Ancient Apparition to see if they could pull the game back.



The first thing Vici Gaming did was a masterful combination between fy, Fenrir, and Super to disable and burst down the heavily farmed Shadow Fiend around their middle Tier 2 tower. iceiceice, on Clockwerk, sacrificed himself as the lowest networth hero on the team to secure the kill, as both bOne7 and EternalEnvy popped their BKBs and ultimates. In a bout of indecision, Cloud9 idled around after the initial exchange finished off one of their damage dealing cores and expended multiple cooldowns. That was all the opening fy needed to pounce. He first stole Supernova and then blinked into the EternalEnvy and bOne7 duo and laid down the stolen ultimate in their face as Super and Hao engaged. By the time Cloud9 realized that they needed to run, it was too late. fy punished them hard. His spell steal of Bane’s Nightmare right after coming out of the Supernova caught the retreating Cloud9 heroes and stalled them long enough for Vici Gaming to clean up three kills.



In the next big fight, fy completely stamped his mark on the game. Just like in the prior fight, it would be iceiceice that served as the sacrificial lamb whose cogs and blademail drew out BKBs and clogged up Cloud9 before dying. Once again, Vici Gaming stalled out the fight long enough that Cloud9‘s BKBs went down. At that point, Vici Gaming and fy went to work. Super and Fenrir landed their Ice Blast/Laguna combo on EnternalEnvy; fy added a stolen Fiend’s Grip with the Aghanim’s upgrade that also cleared out Misery’s Bane as collateral damage. Cloud9 collected kills on Super and Fenrir in exchange, but had nothing left to continue the fight. In a very strange sequence of events, fy nullified Bone7’s Linken’s Sphere by popping it with Spell Steal, went back to a teleporting Shadow Fiend and stole Requiem of Souls, blinked back once again to a teleporting bOne7, landed a Telekinesis and Requiem combo for a kill, and then found that Shadow Fiend had cancelled his teleport. fy subsequently outraced the Shadow Fiend to the invisibility rune and tanked all of the razes to allow Hao’s Spectre to complete an unexpected team wipe.



As the game progressed, fy farmed up a vanity Octarine Core to reduce his Spell Steal cooldown to 1.5 seconds and declared no spells on Cloud9 to be safe. In closing out the game, it would be the bread and butter Blink-Telekinesis initiation that put the curtain down on Cloud9 in a series of hero pickoffs. At the very end, Cloud9 was forced into a short-handed base race attempt that was not particularly close to being threatening.

Biggest Surprise Biggest Surprise CDEC

For most fans, CDEC came out of nowhere to place second in the tournament. Even if you were familiar with the team and its performance in China in the summer months, the placement on the podium is a complete and utter surprise. First of all, this team was not guaranteed a place in the main event prior to August. They had to play in the wildcard playoffs to earn their entry into the final sixteen teams. But they earned their place and entered the group stages as a dark horse which most pundits put in the middle or bottom of the pack. CDEC would prove them wrong and surprise us all.



The five members of the CDEC team were already characterized by strong rapport as the team essentially broke into the international Dota 2 scene together. As a well-unified team, they trusted each other, highlighted their strengths, and covered each other’s weaknesses. It also helped that each player showed off signature heroes that were strong in the 6.84 patch. From Aggresif Gyrocopter, to Shiki Lina, to Xz Dark Seer, to Garder Bounty Hunter, and to Q Visage, CDEC picked heroes and succeeded at such a rate that they shifted the entire metagame of International towards their heroes. During the group stages, they would score 2-0 victories over MVP HOT6ix, Vici Gaming, Empire, and Newbee, and sit on top of Group B going into the final day.



Even as detractors assured themselves of CDEC’s overachieving wildcard team status as they dropped two Techies-filled games to EG and slid back into the second place after a split series with EHOME, CDEC would continue to surpass all expectations. A dismantling of Cloud9 would secure CDEC a spot in the upper bracket semifinals. An overwhelming victory over parent and sister team LGD would secure a Winner’s Bracket finals appearance. CDEC’s amazing run culminated in a 2-0 sweep of EG where CDEC secured the fastest victory of the tournament, overrunning EG on the backs of a curveball offlane Bounty Hunter. Although CDEC would show weakness in the Grand Finals, where some inexperience with the big stage and some limitations in playing heroes took their toll, CDEC completed the best run ever by wildcard team in International history. The previous strongest wildcard performance was a comparatively pitiful 9th/10th finish by Liquid, last year; CDEC smashed teams all the way to second place. Whereas wildcard teams were often after thoughts and first to be eliminated in TI2 and TI3, CDEC flew beneath the proverbial radar and showed that even second place teams in the qualifiers can make a strong run at the Aegis of Champions.



Now CDEC is back home as the highest placing Chinese team and millions of dollars richer. Even now, CDEC is panned as having wildly overachieved. It remains to be seen if they can maintain their strong team unity, expand their hero pool, and become a new generation of professional Chinese Dota players.

Biggest Series Upset Biggest Series Upset Virtus.Pro vs. Team Secret

VP versus Secret isn't exactly the most exciting game played in professional Dota. Unlike Alliance vs. Na'Vi, there isn't a storyline spanning across lots of patches with plenty of exciting games, no matter what state the teams are in. Unlike EG vs. coL, there isn't a history of trouble between players. And unlike MVP Phoenix's match against Vici Gaming, in the same round, none of the teams seemingly over-performed by still being in the tournament at that point.



Before The International, the two teams had only met 12 times, with VP only managing to win 2 games. Neither of those victories had amounted to a series victory over Team Secret. Sure, Secret looked a bit weaker than what we had gotten used to leading up to Seattle, but most fans still believed that Secret would be able to bounce back and go on a run in the lower bracket. And since VP had "only" beaten Fnatic and coL in their lower bracket run, while Secret eliminated iG, the odds seemed stacked against them. But as a famous space captain once said: "Never tell me the odds".



Game 1 went pretty much as everyone had expected. Secret rolled over VP in a little less than 30 minutes. But then something magical happened. VP decided to fall back on a 4 hero combo in the two remaining games. On the backs of Lina, Earthshaker, Visage, and Storm Spirit combined with Silencer and Drow Ranger, respectively, the CIS underdogs outdrafted and outplayed Secret. VP's win over Secret is, without a doubt, the biggest single series upset of this year’s International.



Credits:

Contributors: Julmust, Bluething, SuperCletis, TanGeng

Editors: tehh4ck3r

Art: fusefuse, Nixer About a month ago this years version of TI ended with EG proudly lifting the aegis. But is it right that they should be the only ones getting an awards after such an amazing tournament? We here at LiquidDota certainly don't think so. Therefore we decided to, yet again, hand out awards to the players and teams of TI5! Administrator I'm dancing in the moonlight