Who will qualify for TI? – Hotspawn’s Predictions

It’s that time of year once again where we all want to know who will qualify for The International, the premiere Dota 2 event in the entire calendar. This year, TI will come to Hamburg, Germany where 16 teams will fight for the opportunity to be called the best team in Dota 2.

Now, here at Hotspawn.com, we like to try and make some fun content that gets everyone involved. So we had the idea that our Dota 2 experts would make our predictions separately and then come together in one big, beautiful article and find out who was right. That was the theory. The practice was that we made the exact same predictions apart from just one team from South America.

So here they are! Hotspawn’s official predictions for who will qualify for TI14.

Eastern Europe — Aurora Gaming

Unfortunately, in terms of overall entertainment value, Eastern Europe might turn out to have the most cut-and-dry result of the six regions. Aurora Gaming have been on the rise lately, with their most recent outing at DreamLeague Season 26 ending in a nice fourth place finish — which would have been third instead if they didn’t run into a hotter-than-usual Flipster Talon in the playoffs.

Having plenty of experience alongside great talent will do that. International winners Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek and Myrslav “Mira” Kolpakov bring the championship pedigree, while the rest like Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko bring a steady presence that the squad needs in big tournaments. And although I don’t think they’re going to win the whole thing in Hamburg once TI14 does happen in September, it’s entirely possible for them to come close if they can hit their stride then.

There’s a reason why teams like Virtus.pro, who would otherwise play in the EEU qualifiers, opted to go somewhere else in order to give themselves better chances. No one (except Na’Vi, apparently) wants that smoke with Aurora, and it’s easy to see why given their growing momentum in recent competitions.

South America — OG.LATAM

I’m not really the best person to ask about South American Dota, so I’m gonna go out on a limb here and trust in the region’s propensity for creating chaos. HEROIC did it against Team Falcons at PGL Wallachia Season 2 last year, which leads me to believe that the area is one of those “anything can happen” type situations — kind of like Southeast Asia which we’ll talk about later.

So, I’m thinking OG.LATAM might just take the lone South American slot for TI14. They don’t have the outright star power on paper to make it past Edge and HEROIC, but I’m a huge sucker for pure carry players like Héctor “K1” Rodríguez. Sven and Wraith King happen to be pretty good in the metagame right now, and K1 loves playing Sven and Wraith King. So as long as he doesn’t get targeted by the other team’s bans too much, I think it’s possible he might pop off on the hero just enough to get OG.LATAM over the hump.

That said, it is still an uphill battle for this team in particular. Edge and HEROIC are both very, very capable as far as South America goes, so the veterans in K1 and Joel “MoOz” Ozambela will have to help the less experienced members of OG.LATAM steady themselves going forward.

Editor’s note: This is the only place Patrick and I disagreed! It’s been a while since their PGL Wallachia Season 2 win but I believe in the power of HEROIC – Wisper is a formidable foe in the offlane and with Scofield supporting him, I think this roster has a real chance to make it to TI.

China — Yakult Brothers

Not a very bold prediction, I know, but it’s difficult to see anyone other than Yakult Brothers or Xtreme Gaming coming out of the Chinese regional qualifiers. Stability is king in this region, and Yakult Brothers just so happen to be the best team from CN not named Team Tidebound. Tidebound already got invited directly to TI14 for doing well this year relative to their home region’s overall strength, so naturally the next best team is most likely to snag the regions’ qualifier slot.

There is a bit of a catch here, though: Xiang “Beyond” Zhenghong, who played for Yakult Brothers at DreamLeague Season 26, just left the squad. Replacing him in the offlane position is Ren “old eLeVeN” Yangwei, which is a name I’m sure you haven’t heard in a very long time. While not a massive roster change by any means, there’s only been five days as of the time of writing since the move — so they’ve only had that much time to integrate him into the team ahead of the qualifiers.

Whether or not this factor will actually come into play has yet to be seen, but it does leave at least a slight opening for other teams in the qualifiers to exploit. Old eLeVeN is one of the most experienced Chinese players still playing today, though, so personally I’m not too worried in this regard.

North America — Shopify Rebellion

I’d be very obviously lying through my teeth if I said anything else about the North American qualifiers. Shopify Rebellion will just crush everyone else in the tournament, with the remote possibility of Wildcard maybe upsetting them as they inevitably meet in the grand final. 

No other squad present in the qualifiers will even get within striking distance of the one slot given to the region, so this prediction is very easy to make.

Southeast Asia — Flipster Talon & BOOM Esports

Here’s where things get really interesting, even though the picks seem like the obvious choice. Southeast Asia TI qualifiers will always and forever be a total dogfight between each team each year, so it’s difficult to accurately predict which squads will actually survive the gauntlet.

The likely top two include Flipster Talon and BOOM Esports — the two SEA orgs that have hung around tier 1 Dota this season. They both have the overwhelming talent and experience advantage over the rest of the field, and it wouldn’t be shocking at all to see them meet in the upper bracket final. The team that loses that one is also likely to just destroy whomever they face in the lower bracket final.

But take it from a resident of the region: it doesn’t f***ing matter if a SEA team is down by 1,000 gold or 20,000 — they never give up until the Ancient is down.

If you’ve been watching the NBA Finals, SEA teams are basically like the Indiana Pacers, except they’re not really as good as the Pacers are versus international competition. But since the qualifiers will pit SEA versus SEA, that last bit won’t come into play. Therefore, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that we’ll see at least one of Talon or BOOM get caught by surprise by a team that refuses to go down.

Western Europe — AVULUS & Nigma Galaxy

The Western European qualifiers for The International always come down to “can Nigma Galaxy actually get through this time?” This year is no different, and given that they’ve been staying kind of afloat in tier 1 tournaments lately, they should be the easy pick for this region. Granted, they’re probably just going to trip over themselves at TI14 in September, but that’s obviously not what they should be thinking about right now.

Nigma actually have another qualifier to play before this one, since at DreamLeague Season 26 they weren’t able to gather the ESL Pro Tour points necessary to earn an invite to Riyadh Masters at the Esports World Cup. It’s true that the EWC MESWA qualifiers aren’t nearly as competitive as the TI14 WEU qualifiers, but at least they’ll be able to warm up before the more important one later on.

As for AVULUS, they’re more or less in the same situation as Nigma are. They’ve shown up at a bunch of different LANs and online tournaments this year, and are perennial midfielders wherever they go. That new MOUZ roster with Azel “Abed” Yusop and Melchior “Seleri” Hillenkamp is interesting, but personally I don’t think that particular squad is going anywhere until they form a bit of chemistry with each other first.