DreamHack Austin was almost a dream come true for Cloud9. But despite an impressive run, the team couldn’t take home the win, losing to a resurgent Naventic in the grand finals.



For most of DreamHack, however, the story around the Heroes of the Storm stage was “Cloud9 is back.” After a run of messy qualifiers resulted in an 8-seed for the reigning Blizzcon world champions, Cloud9 steamrolled every team they faced leading up to the grand finals. They appeared to be unbeatable after a 2-0 victory over tournament favorites, Naventic, in the group stage.

But Naventic wasn’t finished. After taking a dominant set against Panda Global, the team crawled back into contention. Somehow, we wound up with a Naventic vs. Cloud9 grand finals.

(Photo: Blizzard)

The grand finals set was a back and forth affair going to a full five games. With Cloud9 up 2-1, the comeback began on Battlefield of Eternity where Naventic ran an Illidan composition with both Kael’Thas and Li-Ming for burst damage. They dominated, in part due to the surprise choice of the Falling Sword heroic on Johanna. Stafford ‘McIntyre’ McIntyre admitted to Yahoo Esports that the decision to take Falling Sword was actually an accident that worked out into their favor.

The set saw a lot of ban trading centered around Tassadar, who had a near 75% win rate heading into the grand finals. The majority of the compositions in the tournament focused on “protect the Illidan” and Muradin + Tyrande stun-centric drafts. Notable draft trends included less of a focus on Zeratul, Greymane, and Kael’Thas. Sylvanas is a very high priority hero (again), and Kerrigan is slowly creeping her way back into the meta. The crowd was also very pleased to witness a newly buffed Rexxar see play.

One of the biggest surprises of the tournament, at least to those on the outside looking in, would be Tempo Storm’s exit in the group stage. Tempo was the very first team to qualify for the event, which placed them in the easier group. But the team fell hard in the group stage, losing to both Astral Authority and COGnitive Gaming. Taking their place in the top four was Gale Force Esports, the Heroes of the Dorm all-star team featuring Michael Udall at the helm.

The DreamHack Austin event stood in stark contrast to the European regional which recently took place in Leicester, UK, essentially the “Dignitas” show. There is more than one good North American team, with first-place going to either Cloud9 or Naventic depending on the day of the week, the weather, or McIntyre fat-fingering his talents.

Dylan Walker is on Twitter @dyluux.