While the world continues its global lockdown, the online Dota keeps on coming. Presented and produced by Beyond the Summit, the BTS Pro Series kicked off on April 10th with a nearly two week group stage for both South East Asian and American regions. The SEA region features most of the top rated teams in the region as well as some newer exciting stacks like the T1 organization’s new roster and a team put together by Mushi. The Americas side of things combines both South and North American teams to flesh out their roster.
Business Associates sit at the middle of the pack of the Americas Region at BTS Pro Series. (Photo courtesy Beyond the Summit)
Fantastic Fnatic
Coming into the event, Fnatic has looked like a tier above the rest of SEA and the group stage seems to lend credence to that hypothesis. With a 7-0 series record and a 14-3 overall game score, Fnatic beat everyone they were expected to. Only dropping one game each to TNC, Adroit and Geek Fam, Fnatic generally executed a cleaner and more consistent game than the competition.
Despite Fnatic’s dominance, SEA continues to be one of the most closely contested regions. Before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, teams like Adroit, BOOM Esports, TNC, Reality Rift and Geek Fam had all shown a great deal of promise. It’s not too surprising then that all five of those teams put on good showings during the group stage play. Even T1, who finished with a 2-5 series record, ended up with a 8-10 game score, narrowly missing the playoffs on a head to head tie-breaker with Geek Fam. The region feels wide open heading into the playoff bracket where Fnatic have had plenty of upper bracket woes in the past. It also bodes well for SEA Dota fans going forward if six or seven teams consistently challenge for the top slot in every qualifier or online event.
The final standings for group stage play were as follows:
- Fnatic
- Team Adroit
- BOOM Esports
- TNC Predator
- Reality Rift
- Geek Fam
- T1 (Eliminated)
- CR (Eliminated
The BTS SEA playoffs begins on April 23rd with great contests between Fnatic vs. BOOM and Team Adroit vs. TNC Predator in the upper bracket.
A Messy America
Normally, any North American regional play revolves around who will take second place to Evil Geniuses. The team has been consistently dominant in the region since 2015 and though some promising teams have challenged EG, in more recent years no stable challenger has ever really solidified themselves. The BTS Pro Series: American region presents a bit of an interesting puzzle for EG to solve. The team, consistently meme’d on for having a majority of non-American players, finds themselves with an offlaner stuck in Russia and a mid player in the Philippines. As a result, coach Bulba returns to competitive play as EG’s offlaner while long-time North American grinder Ryoya handles the mid lane. This hodgepodge roster seems to have left the door of opportunity open for a possible dethroning of North America’s long standing champion.
For a long time, North and South American Dota has been looked on with heavy skepticism by the international Dota community and with pretty solid reason. Rarely does a North American Major Qualifier field more than three teams with official sponsors while South America has only recently broken the streak of last place finishes at major events. With that in mind, the roster of teams put together for the BTS Pro Series: Americas has looked surprisingly competitive.
After twelve days of BTS group stage play, Quincy Crew, formerly CHAOS, claimed the top spot heading into playoffs by out dueling CR4ZY, a new organization in Dota 2 that signed the rebuilt remnants of the Fighting Pandas lineup. Evil Geniuses put together a respectable 4-3 series record, 9-7 in games overall, despite looking outmatched against both CR4ZY and Quincy Crew. Rounding out the top four is Business Associates, the former J.Storm lineup who continue to be a consistently inconsistent team in the region. The final two teams to make the playoffs are Thunder Predator and Cloud9 who will both start in the lower bracket.
Thunder Predator were the only bright spot for South American fans with both Beastcoast and FURIA going 1-6 and 0-7 respectively in their series, including several forfeit losses due to high ping. All games were playing on US East servers which heavily favored the North American teams in these cross regional matchups. In that context it’s a bit hard to get excited about the 3-4 series record from Cloud9 who made the playoffs but only won series against Beastcoast, FURIA and surprisingly Evil Geniuses.
While the Dota in the Americas region wasn’t particularly clean, it was certainly entertaining in the very snowbally meta of current Dota 2. Heading into the playoffs the group stage standings are as follows:
- Quincy Crew (CHAOS)
- CR4ZY (Fighting Pandas)
- Evil Geniuses
- Business Associates (J.Storm)
- Thunder Predator
- Cloud9
- beastcoast (Eliminated)
- FURIA Esports (FURIA)
The BTW Americas playoffs kick off on April 23rd and should feature some fun contests of former teammates and old rivals.
