Tier 3 - the real dark horses of TI8

Tier 3 - the real dark horses of TI8
posted by joinDOTA Staff,
18 teams are heading to Vancouver to launch into two weeks of non-stop Dota 2 action. We have ranked them all in four different tiers. Will we be right in the end, or can the teams prove us wrong? Here is the ultimate joinDOTA The International 2018 power rankings.

OG



What a surprising end for OG - at least for the legendary duo Johan 'BigDaddyN0tail' Sundstein and Tal 'Fly' Aizik. The captain left OG's offlaner Gustav 's4' Magnusson to join the weakened NA giant Evil Geniuses - only two players and one stand-in coach were left at OG.

The entire season was not like OG expected - after two dominating years in the old Major Championships, OG was not able to win a single Major in the Dota 2 Pro Circuit. The addition of Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok ended in a small disaster for the European squad. In the end, only Johan 'BigDaddyN0tail' Sundstein, Sebastien 'Ceb' Debs and Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka were left.

Former OG star Anathan 'ana' Pham joined together with the talented Finnish carry Topias 'Topson' Taavitsainen. N0tail switched back to his old support role and the Frenchman switched to offlane - what an experience! In the European Qualifier not a single team was able to beat OG, but for TI they're still a dark horse. For the first time in TI history they are not a favourite - maybe that role fits them better.

Lineup OG
au Anathan 'ana' Pham
fi Topias 'Topson' Taavitsainen
fr Sebastien 'Ceb' Debs
fi Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka
dk Johan 'BigDaddyN0tail' Sundstein

DPC points: 795 - not eligible due to player swap

Team Serenity



If we're talking about dark horses, we need to consider Team Serenity. Everybody is talking about them. The Chinese squad could be the next Wings Gaming - or even a step higher. Nobody had heard about this young Chinese squad before TI Qualifiers - they haven't attended any big tournaments so far.

However, in the qualifier they beat all the top teams in China who had to go through qualifiers. LGD.Forever Young and Invictus Gaming were not able to stop Serenity. We can't say if they will be able to pull off another upset at TI - but everybody has money on Serenity when it comes to the dark horse. We'll soon see how good they really are.

Lineup Team Serenity
cn Jin 'flyfly' Zhiyi
cn Zyd
cn Zhao 'XinQ' Zixing
cn Han 'pyw' Xiong
cn Xiao 'XCJ' Chaojian

DPC points: 0

OpTic Gaming



OpTic Gaming were super close to getting a direct invite for The International. In the end, they were just 135 points short of surpassing VGJ.Thunder. Star drafter Peter 'ppd' Dager and his squad had a decent second half of the season.

Per Anders 'Pajkatt' Olsson L. finally managed to win his first ever Dota 2 LAN and they were close to winning a Major, but in the end fell short to Virtus.pro at ESL One Birmingham 2018. They had it in their own hands to reach eighth, but they lost again to Virtus.pro in Shanghai.

While DOTA Summit 9 was a bit of a disappointment for OpTic fans, TI could still be a chance to end this season better - the second TI win for ppd remains to be seen.

Lineup OpTic Gaming
se Per Anders 'Pajkatt' Olsson L.
us Quinn 'CCnC' Callahan
il Neta '33' Shapira
se Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg
us Peter 'ppd' Dager

DPC points: 1800

VGJ.Storm



OpTic is not North America's only dark horse for TI8 - Forward Gaming could be another great hope for the region, especially thanks to their Ukrainian import Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok, who had already surprised as a stand-in for Team Empire in 2017.

VGJ.S are the only team able to attend two Grand Finals in eight days: first they won at the GESC E-Series: Bangkok Minor, and then reached the Grand Finals of the Mars Media Dota 2 League: Changsha Major. A lot of travelling affected them at China Dota 2 Supermajor, where the North Americans lost to TNC. With Reso and Sumail 'SumaiL' Syed Hassan's brother Yawar 'YawaR' Hassan in the team, VGJ could finish in the top 8 - that would be a success in itself. The lineup at TI8 is very strong.

Lineup Forward Gaming
pk Yawar 'YawaR' Hassan
ua Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok
us JingJun 'Sneyking' Wu
us Arif 'MSS' Anwar
us Avery 'SVG' Silverman

DPC points: 1,350 - not eligible due to player swap

Fnatic



Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao provokes discussion like just a few professional players do - and this season he's finally provoking with good results in the game again. He finished first with Fnatic in the Southeast Asian Qualifier. The NA-EU-SEA-mix seems to finally work.

Fnatic were unable to win a single DPC event, but were able to pull off some great top four results: two fourth places at ESL One Birmingham 2018 and ESL One Katowice 2018 and a second place at DreamLeague Season 9 were the best events for the squad so far.

Fnatic is not considered a top-eight team for The International 2018, but it wouldn't be too surprising if they could pull off some surprises and finish in the top eight.

Lineup Fnatic
ca Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao
ph Abed 'Abed' Yusop
us Saahil 'Universe' Arora
ph Djardel 'DJ' Mampusti
se Johan 'pieliedie' Åström

DPC points: 1,276.5

On the next page we'll take a look at five teams who could really be a threat to the kings of Dota 2.

Photo credit: Valve

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