ESL One Bangkok: The Five Best Players So Far

The ESL One Bangkok group stage is almost over now, with just one more day of matches remaining. Though the tournament has produced more or less the results we expected so far, seeing the players perform at their best has nonetheless been thrilling.

So, we’d like to highlight five of the best players at the tournament thus far.

ATF (Team Falcons)

We’re sure all of you knew this was coming, so we’ve decided to put him first to get him out of the way. Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf is far and away the best offlaner in the world right now, and it shows in just two days of play at ESL One Bangkok. His confidence is still sky high as always, and his flashy playstyle never fails to amaze even the biggest Team Falcons haters.

He makes these plays so effortlessly 😭 #ESLOne pic.twitter.com/J51mk40bjM

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) December 10, 2024

I’ll let the play above do the talking for me.

SumaiL (Nigma Galaxy)

At the start of the Day 2 series between Nigma Galaxy and Team Liquid, caster Austin “Cap” Walsh mentioned that he asked SumaiL if he still considered himself the “king of the middle lane”. SumaiL apparently replied by saying, “Bro, I haven’t won a LAN in eight years. Don’t ask me that.”

*queues up bkb* 💀#ESLOne #dota2 pic.twitter.com/fuqaOxBKXO

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) December 10, 2024

Well, even though Nigma Galaxy are just dead even in map score right now, SumaiL has seemingly been working his way back into royal status. His performance as Lina in their second game against BetBoom Team was utterly insane, and very reminiscent of his prime as a teenager.

kiyotaka (BetBoom Team)

Gleb “kiyotaka” Zyryanov is one explosive midlaner, and nothing at ESL One Bangkok shows that quite like his performance in Game 2 against beastcoast in Day 2 of the group stage. Seriously, who the heck gets a KD/A ratio of 28 in a 21 minute game as Monkey King?

This guy completely slaughtered beastcoast every chance he got, averaging almost one kill per minute of elapsed game time. The man is a star and he knows it, and BetBoom Team are definitely enjoying watching him go to work. And considering they’re second in their group right now, we think they’re in good hands moving forward thanks in large part to kiyotaka.

Miracle (Nigma Galaxy)

It’s kind of like cheating to put two players from the same team on this list — even more so when you consider the fact that they’re both cores. But Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi has been on a mission to finally get Nigma Galaxy out of this long, painful slump they’ve been in for what feels like five years at this point.

"Shaker could always work!" – @NigmaMiracle

Not sorry to ruin your pubs😎 pic.twitter.com/hpn9KfFhfE

— Nigma Galaxy (@NigmaGalaxy) December 10, 2024

I’d like to think that the soul of former International champion is still inside of him, and that it just needs to wake up from hibernation in order for him to regularly put up highlight reel plays again. Just look at that Earthshaker game against BetBoom Team. Carry ‘Shaker has never looked this good.

No[o]ne (PARIVISION)

Can someone check what year it is? This has so far been a tournament where SumaiL and Volodymyr “No[o]ne” Minenko are currently fighting for the title of best midlaner of the competition, something that would have been common in 2017 and not 2024.

But anyway, No[o]ne is just doing what No[o]ne does. It’s kind of crazy that he’s been this good for this long, and is perhaps the foremost reason why PARIVISION is one of the hottest teams at ESL One Bangkok and in the world right now. If he keeps this up, he may just carry his team all the way to the grand finals.