Just yesterday, we saw Tundra Esports fall to Team Spirit in a full five-game grand final series at DreamLeague Season 25. This result prevented them from winning three major tournaments in a row, despite looking practically unstoppable after benching Igor “Nightfall” Grigorenko and subsequently acquiring Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov on New Year’s Eve last year.

DreamLeague Season 25: How Hard it is to Stay On Top in Dota 2

This perfectly illustrates just how tough it is to be number one in the competitive Dota 2 scene, and to stay number one as such. Frankly, I hadn’t seen such dominance from a single team since Team Falcons in the previous season, and for a while it looked like they might put in the same results as Falcons over the rest of the year.

Shades of the Past

Alas, they were unable to lock the win streak down, and had to settle for second place instead — against one of the bigger underdogs relative to their own strength as a roster. Honestly, the DreamLeague grand finals looked quite like how Spirit vs. PSG.LGD at the International 2021 grand finals; the disparity in talent was just that large on paper.

But as we’ve all seen before, Dota is as much a mental game as it is a mechanical and tactical one. Indeed, in this case it was about Team Spirit keeping their cool despite suffering through a DDoS attack prior to game 4 of the grand finals — a setback that would have tilted even the best professional teams in the world.

They had to wait three whole hours before the decision was made by the organizers to postpone the rest of the series two days later, which could have completely ruined Spirit’s momentum after going up two games to one. But as we know now, they were able to steel themselves against the odds, and played their best Dota despite the circumstances.

Mental Missteps

On the other hand, the Tundra players weren’t able to keep their mental fortitude in check — which was kind of surprising given how they crushed Spirit in game 4. At that point, it looked like Tundra, the current best team in the world, were ready to lay down the hammer on the series — courtesy of a massive outdraft going in their favor.

Had Spirit just given up at that point, it would have been completely understandable. After all, they had just gone through a huge inconvenience two days before, and were now staring down the barrel of a deciding game 5 against a Tundra with momentum. But no, they simply locked in, and showed the world why the organization has two International titles to its name.

It just goes to show that even when you’re at the top of your game, anything can cause things to get away from you in a hurry. Tundra Esports may have the overall mechanical and tactical advantage against most, if not all teams they play against these days — but that all goes away when you can’t retain your composure and close things out when they matter most.

We first saw this with LGD back at TI8, and now we’re seeing it again with Tundra Esports. Sometimes, just being more focused and in a better mood can get you across the finish line in this game. Conversely, failing to be in such a state can lose you games that you should be winning on paper.