Na'Vi: The struggling champions Na'Vi is under pressure. Yes, they just won GosuLeague, but that was one first sign of hope again after a series of troublesome events. Since DreamHack Winter 2012 Corsair Vengeance Cup, where the team lost against Evil Geniuses, they also lost at the ASUS Final Battle of the Year against two contenders of these StarLadder StarSeries finals: Both Empire and Virtus.Pro defeated the TI2-runner-ups.
Just on Tuesday, Na'Vi also lost against fnatic in The Defense round 3. This means although Na'Vi won GosuLeague Season 5, the latest matches against the SLTV contenders have not gone well for them. Na'Vi is the defending champion: All three previous SLTV Finals in Kiev have gone their way in April, in July and in October. Na'Vi has not lost a tournament at Kiev in 2012 - until last week.
Puppey said that the 6.76 playstyle with many 5-man teamfights doesn't quite fit them yet, but if this metagame is going to change already at SLTV finals? Slight hero adjustments have been there, but only few massive changes, especially for the captain's mode. In the team's first game on 6.77 version against Shz in GosuLeague, Na'Vi has been struggling massively again, and only won due to smart late game decision making that's not really metagame-depending.
Na'Vi goes into SLTV finals as the main round's first placed team, so they will face against fnatic, the fourth placed team, in the first round.
Na'Vi Recent Tournament Results:
The International 2: 2nd place (final against Invictus Gaming)
DreamHack Winter 2012: 5th-8th place (lost in quarter finals against Evil Geniuses)
ASUS FBOTY: 3rd place (lost in semi finals against Empire)
GosuLeague: Season 5 1st PlaceNa'Vi
TeamLineup
Na'Vi Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov
Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin
Alexander 'XBOCT' Dashkevich
Sergey 'ARS-ART' Revin
Dmitriy 'LighTofHeaveN' Kupriyanov
Signature Heroes
Puppey
Dendi/
LighTofHeaveN
ARS-ART
XBOCT/
Empire: First tournament victory is sacked, what's next?
Empire has been maybe the most memorable team of the fall season. Scandal's Templar Assassin might be a bit weakened now with the 100 MP costs of Refraction, but it still should a more than viable pick for Scandal. Funn1k said it himself: To his mind, Clinkz is broken, but he's definitely the one player in the world to let the sneaky Flaming Arrow shooting hero shine.
Lately Empire had some downsides with Wisp/Chaos Knight combination games, losing against teams like fnatic or mousesports. However, their play with this hero combination still should be expected at the StarLadder StarSeries finals. Empire has reached their goal last week, finally. They won an offline tournament. Ever since TI2, the majorly very young team has shown really good results, but never got the big points: SLTV Finals 3, DreamHack Winter, didn't play at Thor Open. It was the CIS-only tournament ASUS FBOTY to give Empire what they searched for.
Now the question arises if there will come more. They are familiar with the arena now, but that count's to Na'Vi and Empire as well. They have strong signature heroes, but the key to success for Empire at SLTV Finals 4 will be discipline: Too often the young players over-eagerly run into bad fighting positions. The 30-53 match against fnatic was hilarious to watch, bit it also showed that Empire doesn't have the strength yet which once was Na'Vi's main advantage: Never to get caught out of position.
As the second placed team of the StarLadder StarSeries main round, team Empire has to face Virtus.Pro in the first round of the tournament.
Empire Recent Tournament Results:
ASUS FBOTY: 1st place (final against Virtus.Pro)
GosuLeague: Season 5: 2nd placeEmpire
TeamLineupx
Empire Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov
Vladislav 'blowyourbrain' Morozyuk
Airat 'Silent' Gaziev
Gleb 'Funn1k' Lipatnikov
Artur 'Go[blin]' Kostenko
Signature Heroes
Scandal/
Funn1k/
Silent
Go[blin]/
blowyourbrain/
Virtus.Pro: The silent successors
Virtus.Pro hasn't caused much of a stir and still was very effective in the main round of StarLadder Starseries. Second most wins, second place, decent results lately also in the ASUS Final Battle of the Year. In that tournament, Virtus.Pro managed to defeat Na'Vi in the group phase and reached the grand final against Empire, where NS and Co. lost 0-2.
The team might go to Kiev as the underdog: Never won something big, unlike Empire and fnatic with the latest two offline tournaments. They got an intelligent captain, already gained offline experience in this composition during the ASUS FBOTY tournament, they might use the situation to their advantage.
6.77 will be a deciding factor here as well. They probably had the fewest official matches scheduled in this week between the two Kiev tournaments. In theory, they should have had the most time to prepare for the slightly changed playing conditions due to the patch changes.
As the main round's second placed team, Virtus.Pro will face Empire first in the Russian duell.
Virtus.Pro Recent Tournament Results:
ASUS FBOTY: 2nd place (final against Empire)Virtus.Pro
TeamLineup
Virtus.Pro Yaroslav 'NS' Kuznetsov
Alexandr 'Santa' Koltan
Sergei 'KSi' Kuzin
Oleg 'Crazy' Kolesnichenko
Ilya 'Airman' Pivtsaev
Signature Heroes
Crazy/
NS
KSi
Airman
Santa
fnatic: From Hontrash to Kiev champions?
fnatic looks amazing these days. Right when we thought NoTidehunter would be the new Western European team to beat, fnatic comes along, takes victory in Stockholm's Thor Open tournament against said team NoTidehunter and continues an astonishing winning streak against top teams in Dota 2.
For fnatic, the situation is exactly opposite to Na'Vi: The team comes from basically nothing (in Dota 2), as they didn't completely throw away their HoN ambitions for a long time of the year, even winning DreamHack Summer 2012 in Heroes of Newerth. The team and the players got their nickname 'Hontrash', but they have proven all critics wrong:
With discipline, training and unconventional, aggressive playstyle, you can reach the top within half a year. Na'Vi, Empire, NoTidehunter: In Europe fnatic has defeated almost any contender in December. The team is just ready for the real final battle of the year: Not ASUS, it's SLTV.
As the main rounds fourth placed team, fnatic has to start the tournament in Kiev with the match against Na'Vi.
fnatic Recent Tournament Results:
DreamHack Winter 2012: 3rd/4th place (lost in semi finals against )
Thor Open: 1st place (final against NoTidehunter)fnatic
TeamLineup
fnatic Adrian 'Era' Kryeziu
Tal 'Fly' Aizik
Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein
Kalle 'Trixi' Saarinen
Kai 'H4nn1-' Hanbueckers
Signature Heroes
H4nn1/
Fly
Era/
Notail/
Trixi/
StarLadder StarSeries Season V: Downsizing for success
StarLadder StarSeries is coming to a close with these fourth offline finals in 2012. In some way, this final tournament is a downsized version of previous ambitions. The first three seasons had American teams in the main round, they even qualified for the finals, but never made the investment into the intercontinental travel.
The number of participating teams has also changed during the cause of the year: Starting with the first SLTV finals in April, four teams were invited, just as for the fourth season now. For season 2, it were 6 of the 16 participating teams to be invited to Kiev, only five appeared in the end. For season 3 it were even 8 teams invited, but only 7 could make the trip eventually.
Season 3 was also when v1lat somewhat promised the tournament would get it's prize money doubled to $30,000 which never got reality. Even without this prize money doubling ever happening, SLTV's main success of the year was the consisency. It takes a lot of dedication, some compromises and the right concept to really hold four offline tournaments a year with 120 online matches in advance of each finals every time.
Even though Na'Vi was responsible for a bit of a sidedness in the winner's record, all tournaments were always a success, with different casting situations. From Thursday to Sunday it will be SLTV time again now, with 6 matches of Dota 2 coming up from the Cybersports Arena in Kiev, Ukraine. Prepare yourself, the top European teams contest for StarSeries title!Final Standings SLTV Season 4 Main Round
#TeamScorePoints
1 Na'Vi13-239
2 Virtus.Pro12-336
3 Empire11-433
4 fnatic11-433
5 NoTidehunter10-530
6 mousesports8-724
7 Absolute Legends8-724
8 3DMAX8-724
9 El.Pride7-821
10 We haz Asian7-821
11 Shz6-918
12 dd6-918
13 XX55-1015
14 Pulse5-1015
15 Ilum3-129
16 Fubar0-150
Draft Example:
VoDs: Na'Vi vs. Empire casted by Sheever & EternalEnvy Game 1, Game 2Na'Vi vs. Empire
Previous Encounters
ASUS FBOTY15 Dec Na'Vi 0-2 Empire
SLTV Season 414 Nov Na'Vi 1-0 Empire
GosuLeague Season 512 Nov Na'Vi 1-1 Empire
joinDOTA Masters9 Nov Na'Vi 0-2 Empire
SLTV Season 3 Finals21 Oct Na'Vi 3-1 Empire
SLTV Season 3 Finals18 Oct Na'Vi 2-0 Empire
SLTV Season 321 Sep Na'Vi 0-1 Empire
Draft Example:
VoD: Na'Vi vs. Virtus.Pro casted by SheeverNa'Vi vs. Virtus.Pro
Previous Encounters
ASUS FBOTY13 Dec Na'Vi 0-1 Virtus.Pro
SLTV Season 419 Nov Na'Vi 1-0 Virtus.Pro
SLTV Season 3 Finals18 Oct Na'Vi 2-0 Virtus.Pro
SLTV Season 31 Oct Na'Vi 0-1 Virtus.Pro
Draft Example:
VoD: Na'Vi vs. fnatic casted by EpiNaVi vs. fnatic
Previous Encounters
The Defense 317 Dec Na'Vi 0-1 fnatic
SLTV Season 413 Nov Na'Vi 1-0 fnatic
SLTV Season 32 Oct Na'Vi 1-0 fnatic
Empire vs. fnatic
Previous Encounters
The Premier League18 Dec Empire 0-2 fnatic]
SLTV Season 46 Dec Empire 1-0 fnatic
RaidCall D2L1 Nov Empire2-1 fnatic
SLTV Season 32 Oct Empire 1-0 fnatic
Virtus.Pro vs. fnatic
Previous Encounters
SLTV Season 413 Nov Virtus.Pro 1-0 fnatic
The Premier League17 Oct Virtus.Pro 2-0 fnaticEmpire vs. Virtus.Pro
Previous Encounters
ASUS FBOTY16 Dec Empire 2-0 Virtus.Pro
SLTV Season 49 Dec Empire 0-1 Virtus.Pro
The Premier League1 Nov Empire 1-0 Virtus.Pro
SLTV Season 3 Finals18 Oct Empire 2-0 Virtus.Pro
HardMode Cup30 Sep Empire 2-0 Virtus.Pro
LostWorld Cup24 Sep Empire 3-0 Virtus.Pro
Prizemoney Distribution:
1st place: $8,000
2nd place: $4,000
3rd place: $2,000
4th place: $1,000
Previous Winners:
SLTV Season 1 (April): 1st: Na'Vi, 2nd: Moscow 5, 3rd: CLG
SLTV Season 2 (July): 1st: Na'Vi, 2nd: mousesports, 3rd: Moscow 5
SLTV Season 3 (October): 1st: Na'Vi, 2nd: Empire, 3rd: GD B-Team
StarLadder StarSeries Event Page with all matches, drafts, casts and news
