FISSURE Playground Belgrade 2025: The Best Teams at Play

It’s been more than a month since the last major Dota 2 tournament, which means that tier 1 teams have gotten plenty of rest over the holidays. But that rest period is now over, as FISSURE Playground Belgrade 2025 is upon us. Taking place from January 24th to February 2nd at the Sava Center in Belgrade, Serbia, this will be the first LAN of the new year, but still within the 2024-2025 season.

16 world class teams will play for their share of the $1 million prize pool at the event, as well as brownie points with Valve when it comes to who gets invited to The International this season. The top squads will have to make sure they shake off the holiday rust if they want to succeed here—something which the clubs with less overall roster strength will be keen to take advantage of.

But enough about the holidays—it’s time to get into the power rankings of FISSURE Playground Belgrade.

BetBoom Team

Although they lost to Team Liquid in the lower bracket final of ESL One Bangkok, I still have BetBoom Team as the strongest of the lot at FISSURE Playground Belgrade. Sure, they’re very prone to tilting themselves off the face of the earth when the pressure is on, as we’ve been both in Bangkok and at ESL One Birmingham, which is one hundred percent their biggest weakness. That’s exactly what happened against Team Liquid, after all.

But their understanding of the metagame is crucial and they’re more than capable of beautiful execution of their own brand of Dota, which we’ve seen time and again in playoff games. This is still there when they’re rolling. And when they are, they can be nigh unstoppable.

I just hope they can keep it together when things aren’t going their way like they’re normally used to by now.

PARIVISION

I have PARIVISION second on this list for one pretty big reason: Remco “Crystallis” Arets has been benched in favor of taking on carry player Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov — who enters the roster on a loan from Team Spirit. The 17 year old star seems to be rated super highly by PARIVISION, who now see it fit to sideline one of the players that helped them win ESL One Bangkok, in favor of said star.

Satanic might be an upgrade to Crystallis in terms of skill, but certainly not in terms of experience. PARIVISION’s lineup is still really, really good on paper, but it remains to be seen how well they’ve integrated Satanic heading into FISSURE Playground Belgrade — so I’m just a tiny bit down on them in terms of the power rankings.

But if I were to remove that uncertainty, PARIVISION would easily be in first place on my list. Winning ESL One Bangkok the way they did was extremely confidence-inspiring, and if they had Crystallis around still, they’d be the heavy favorites going into this event.

Team Liquid

Could Team Liquid be well and truly back? Appearing at a major grand final this year certainly leads me to believe that they are, but they’ll need to be more consistent for the next month or two before I’m ready to call them true perennial threats again. At least their chemistry with Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek now seems to be in order, which is a great sign moving forward.

It’s entirely possible, therefore, for them to crack the top 3 at FISSURE Playground Belgrade. It’s just as likely that they place in the top 8 at best as well, though, so they’ll need to keep their momentum from ESL One Bangkok going if they want to avoid another disappointing result.

Tundra Esports

Although the organization hasn’t won a LAN in years, this new look Tundra Esports has been doing pretty well in the 2024-2025 season. Not only is Neta “33” Shapira back and playing just as well as ever, but now they’ve also got the multiple major champion Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov in the mix as well. He replaces Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko as the team’s carry, and what an upgrade that is, really.

The same goes for Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov, who replaces the outgoing Artem “lorenof” Melnick in the solo mid slot. Though he may not be as big of an improvement as dyrachyo is to Nightfall, his talent as someone formerly from Creepwave (the same team that Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf and Crystallis are from) is undeniable too.

With these two now in tow, Tundra could very well push for another grand final appearance here. They are absolutely capable of doing even greater things this season, and this could be the starting point.

Team Spirit

Oh baby, Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk is back. Taking Satanic’s place in the roster, one of the best carries of the last few years returns home to Team Spirit, after taking a short break from competitive play following Spirit’s disappointing 12th place finish at TI13. And make no mistake about it: this guy is still able to hang with the strongest position 1 players in the world right now.

Team Spirit is significantly better for it. They’ve been flirting with grand final appearances throughout the season so far, with DreamLeague Season 24 being their best result this year at third place. With Yatoro now in the mix, I think they’ve got a real shot of joining BetBoom, PARIVISION, Team Liquid, and Team Falcons on the list of squads that can win a major LAN at any time this season.

Team Falcons

Speaking of crushing everyone in sight, I thought at the beginning of this season that Team Falcons would do that again like they did in the previous one. Seeing them win BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024 and DreamLeague Season 24 consecutively will do that to a person. But over the last two months, they’ve not looked like their usual selves.

Eighth place at BLAST Slam 1 and sixth at ESL One Bangkok are both definitely unusual for a team of their caliber. There’s just so much talent on this roster that one look at their lineup will make you think they couldn’t possibly lose to anyone, yet here we are — they do bleed after all.

I’m still of the opinion that they can turn it on whenever they wish. Will they do that at FISSURE Playground Belgrade? That’s going to be up to them for the most part, but other teams have since caught up and may have a much bigger say in the matter than they would have last year.

Xtreme Gaming

As China’s last hope given how many legendary Chinese organizations have since folded up their Dota 2 branches recently, Xtreme Gaming is not a squad that anyone should underestimate. They might not have the marquee talent of the teams above them on this list, but their collective experience throughout the years combined with a seemingly unwavering determination to keep their region afloat is something to behold.

Are we about to see the reemergence of China 🇨🇳🤔 pic.twitter.com/uYJXU0Jti4

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) November 29, 2024

Their best result this year has come in the form of a fourth place finish at BLAST Slam 1, which was honestly more than I ever expected from them going into that event. Where every other Chinese club has quit on Dota, XG stood firm and jumped right back into the fray. I think they’re the biggest dark horse at FISSURE Playground Belgrade, and if I were a betting man, I’d certainly put some money on them.

Gaimin Gladiators

Here’s another team that has been down in the dumps for most of this season, but has managed to bounce back somewhat in order to generate some momentum for themselves. Formerly one of the most consistent teams in all of Dota, and maybe even all of esports, Gaimin Gladiators are on a quest to get themselves back into regular title contention at major LANs.

They haven’t quite done that this year, having only placed sixth at BLAST Slam 1 at best, but there was a certain energy about them at that event that made me think that they might have figured a few things out lately. They’re still a far cry from where they were in 2023, so they’ve got a lot of work to do still. Given that they placed respectably at BLAST Slam 1, they will be eager to continue their comeback efforts at FISSURE Playground Belgrade.

The Backmarkers

Beyond the first eight teams though, there isn’t really much else to write home about. AVULUS and Yakult Brothers get honorable mentions, with the latter in particular receiving a massive upgrade at the carry slot in the form of Wang “Ame” Chunyu, who replaces Jin “flyfly” Zhiyi heading into this event. We all know what Ame is capable of on a game to game basis, so it’s possible that Yakult Brothers might just pull off a few upsets here and there.

AVULUS, meanwhile, most recently placed sixth at ESL One Bangkok — a very respectable result for a team that hasn’t been around for that long. The players have, of course, but the roster only formed about four months ago.

The rest are just playing catchup, if I’m being honest. Shopify Rebellion could be another dark horse here, but their inconsistency as a unit can really bite them when it matters.