SEA Qualifiers! TNC and Fnatic secure TI8 spots
Today marked the end of TI8 SEA Qualifiers with two teams qualifying for The International 8 from the SEA Region. Team Fnatic was the first from SEA qualifiers to mark their spot in TI8 by a full sweep domination in Upper Bracket over Entity Gaming in Round 1 and TNC Pro Team in round 2 of Phase II.
Phase-II lower bracket qualifiers happening today, Entity Gaming vs TNC Tigers turned out to be a matchup of aggression with wits. Entity gaming having fallen down to the lower bracket after getting knocked down 0-2 by TNC Pro Team had a bad day trying with Black^ not getting enough time to reach the golden time for his farm specific heroes.
Match-I of Entity against TNC Tigers saw farm dependent heroes like Medusa, PL, and Tinker with an even distribution. Entity showed its metal with their farming start and map utilization to score their first win against heavy matchup of TNC tigers. While Match-II started with the same note of Entity aiming for getting fat on Spectre but TNC took the match up a notch by not competing for high mid game hours and rushing it with their heavy push heroes(Lycan, Lina, Jakiro). This secured their win before 25 min mark making the match points at 1-1 between TNC and Entity.
Team Entity had still to make up for their prev game and they again went for Antimage which seemed pretty well suited for their matchup but it got destroyed by the same start of TNC picking Meepo at last minute. Combined with their lineup boosting Meepos skill set, TNC Tigers secured their win against Entity Gaming with 2-1.
Lower bracket finals with TNC Pro Team vs TNC Tigers showed a huge roller coaster ride with game switching paces every timeframe. TNC Tigers with 1437 showed their mettle against his ex-team TNC Pro Team, destroying their tanks like Bristle and Axe in long-range shackles and Magnus’s RP.
Blood was spilled and in Match-II, TNC Pro Team got their hands on Bloodseeker being played by none other than rampager Armel securing a win against agile(ms) heroes like Razor, Lycan, and DP.
Match-III was a complete flipside on different lanes with TNC Tigers heavily dominating the top lane with the three hero lineup of PL, Tusk, and Silencer. While in the middle lane, Armel’s Bloodseeker had his vanilla time having net worth going north smoothly against Tiger’s Death Prophet. With game reaching 30 min mark, Tigers showed good dominance with 18-9 leading to huge gold and exp advantage.
Two sides mega(Top and Bottom) and the game seemed moving way bad for Predators but one mid lane fight for mega creeps hit Tigers hard and helped Predators balance the exp and gold disadvantage. A huge net worth slide and Tigers lost its edge being pressured to lose top and middle barracks and having to defend heavy barrage at bottom lane.
74 min mark and Predators achieved their comeback victory against TNC Tigers securing their spot in the TI8.
Here are the teams qualifying for TI8 in Regional Qualifiers:
- NA Region: VGJ.Storm, EG , TBD (Complexity/Optic Gaming/Immortals)
- SA Region: Pain Gaming
- Europe Region: Qualifier winner: OG vs TBD (Wind and Rain vs Blinkpool)
- CIS Region: WinStrike Team
- China Region: Serenity Gaming, Invictus Gaming
- SEA Region: Fnatic, TNC Pro Team
Above Qualified teams will be joining in with the Direct Invites from 2017-2018 Dota Pro Circuit top 8 teams.
Dream TI8 is here and the hype is going north of 16 Mil $ with a good pace. TI7 had marked a milestone for eSports event reaching a prize pool of over 22 Mil. $ and TI8 is hoped to cross the mark and mark another glorious moment in the History of DOTA 2.
Event Date: August 20 – 25, 2018
Event Venue: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, BC, CA
