Just the sheer balls it takes to pull out the carry Io told me all I had to know. It was all OG repeat after that... No one else came at the game with that type of creativity.

Don't try this at home, unless you are looking to get into the low priority queue. That is almost certainly a 4 report game for you. Only try it when you play with Jerax, NoTail, Ceeeeeeeeeeeb and Topson.

Look like Open Ai win human. But congrat OG .

So many people trying to detract from OG's win by saying all they did was spam the chat wheel, spray and taunt to tilt the other team.

^that's bullshit. You can just mute all of them (as for spray and digging, can't help that)

OG's play (on finals) doesn't looks like they are on the number 1 tournament of the world.
They looks like they just...having fun in pubs with fountain dive, crazy build and always find wars.

It's wonderful...

I beg to differ. OG cared about the meta very much. On all the games they were not throwing (techies come to mind) they use extremely strong meta heroes. The difference with other team? Topson, notail, jerax and ceb can interchange their lineup. You have no idea how extremely difficult to draft heroes against this strategy. On top of that OG has an extra io ban; so it's extremely difficult to counter ban og;Just ask liquid....

On side note, I think liquid was trying a counterplay... Releasing io to slow down the tempo of the game... Well that was an extreme blowback....

@Le Rubber Ducky God

You can't say it wasn't part of their strategy though. it's not the only reason they won, sure they weren't the only ones doing it, but it still leaves a bitter taste. Some of it can be ignored by the players by muting (at least one member still has to be able to communicate), but other stuff (taunts, placing trees, spraying loser) is inescapable. It's abundantly clear, despite what any of the OG members say, that it was meant to tilt. In a high pressure situation like TI, of course it's going to work.

We have this huge reporting system that puts toxic players through h e l l for their actions. You can elect to avoid players on your team. Kuku was banned from a tournament because the team tried to cover up his cross of 'the line' IN A PUB MATCH. Na'Vi tried this stuff at TI 1 (arguably in a kinder manner) and it very likely contributed to the separation of team booths. But this? THIS is allowed?

You bet your rubber ducky butt people are angry at this inconsistent stance from Valve.

lol nice joke with og eg :)

Aside from the joke, There was quite a bit of TI5 EG in them, where EG has to force opponents 2 bans of Techies and Naga Siren, OG forces opponents to ban Alch, Magnus and Io since they are just too good with it, freeing up space for a strong 1st pick meta heroes such as Enchantress, ET or even Tiny for themselves.

And as we see in game 4 of grand finals, just how effective OG plays their peak hero timings when you let Io through the 1st ban phase.

And next year OG go farm money on TI

How sad ... The Team that abuse chatweel so hard has won. I Hope in the next ti will BE Rules against that abuse or i will never buy a Battlepass again.

lol how tf is abusing chatwheel abuse? jesus fuck the salt is real

@+ NEET Luke + [K] abuse chatweel? XDDDDDDDDDDdddddddddd

the only team that can beat OG is OPENAI

How sad ... The Team that abuse chatweel so hard has won. I Hope in the next ti will BE Rules against that abuse or i will never buy a Battlepass again.

It was pretty clear from the get go that OG had their own ideas about the game. They obviously enjoyed playing. The Topson/Ana combo worked better than ever and no one could match their speed and aggression. Topson is the ultimate space creator. His Tiny and Monkey play was insane. That is not even taking into consideration that Ceb is one of the most reliable offlaners (the guy can have a crappy start and then he is still up there in net worth) in the game and Jerax is still a genius. Secret seemed to fade out as the tournament went. Liquid did the opposite but their best is not close to OG's. LGD was just overwhelmed.

Maybe, after seeing OG with this second TI, teams will start thinking outside the box and come up with their own metas. Dota is such a rich game there are plenty of carry Io type things waiting be discovered.

Well done Og ..GJ ...still hate the fact that u beat my Rtz :/

bae notail <3

Bane with 1.5 scnds CD brainsap still undiscovered, with exp gain talent he can easily reach lvl 25 where his power spike so hard, and ofc it piercea BKB. yet no one wanna experimented with it.

Valve has actually gave many updates that allows many heroes to be really powerful, yet everyone just pick the generic hero like pudge, lion, or sf ta mid.
I can't list all the powerful build I have found while experimenting, but this IO ana is actually broken in midgame

@Aqua - The problem with Bane 1.5 seconds brainsap is that it becomes online only when he reaches level 25. For the game to go long enough for Bane to reach level 25 is a gamble. And then too, it is not viable when other heroes at level 25 are able to burst enemies much faster in the late game. I'm sure the pros would have considered these builds and decided they don't fit their style of play in professional settings.

The mental aspect of the voice calls and taunts can't be understated, but at the same time many are overstating their importance, saying "it's the only reason OG won".
No, OG won because they are the best Dota team in the world, first 2-time champ, first back-to-back champ. In terms of team skill and synergy, nobody was close. I was a long-time OG detractor as well, but they've proved themselves. 2 of the 3 majors(Frankfurt and Manila) in the TI6 circuit, 2 of 2(Boston and Kiev) in the TI7 circuit, won TI8 from the Open Qualifiers after struggling the entire 2017-18 DPC season, took a break and were average in the 2018-19 DPC season, and won TI9. They are deserving champs. Congrats for winning 5.5 million dollars EACH within the span of 2 years. n0tail is rolling in cash, because he's been with the team through all their wins

beg u being archon becoz ur enemy spam chat wheel alsooooooooo

Dota is a mental game. As long as they don't insult about private things and dont use too vulgar language, it's simply part of the gameplay.

@ETdAWESOME

Think you're hanging a lot of accolades on past iterations of the team that shouldn't be contributed to their 'best team' status (thus overstating their importance), but you're not wrong that people are tending to gloss over one aspect or another of their victory.

You do bring up some interesting points about their victories however. Getting a victory through the qualifiers has been a strat in the past, if I remember correctly EG and LGD did it and got pretty far in the tournament. It's risky for sure, but it proves what tons of pro players have always said: the season doesn't matter. You can skimp by on points and still end up on equal footing during the groupstage, negating all the hard work other teams did to maintain their consistency. OG did both.

What it means is a TI victory doesn't brand you as the best team in the world, it just means you were the best 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵. Therefore TI is placed on a weak foundation, but it wouldn't take too much to make the tournament results more consistent with the upcoming year:

1. Remove the groupstage. As I said before, you can be 12th or 1st in groupstage points and it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot. A better situation would be to directly go to playoffs, but extend them to bo5. Less matches every day would be played, but you'd have more time to play them. Your DPC points directly affect your seed position in the playoffs, and getting 1st rank gives you the choice of opponent, just like it does now.

2. Regional qualifying teams play a round robin bo1, bottom 2 teams go home, rest go to losers bracket round 1. This means you can't play poorly all year and expect to make a run through the upper bracket. Consistency throughout the year should mean something.

3. DPC points are given a far more even spread that dips further into the minors. This would assure teams like Gambit wouldn't have their year long records erased by a single tournament as easily, and require teams to mind their placement across all majors and minors a little more.

4. Spread the money a little more. Part of what makes teams so stressed is how hard it is to earn a living wage playing Dota, and while the hardest working teams who win the most do indeed make a lot of money, OG earned more at TI than Secret has earned in their entire existence. That consistency isn't properly rewarded if that can happen.

5. Compendium earnings should be spread across the entire DPC year. See point 4.

@Brock Hall, u pointed something interesting, but lets discuss.
1. This will be total unfair. For better or worse, TI is entirely new competition in a season. Though I got your point that DPC result almost means nothing, but I think it is the best that every team has the same starting point. Maybe changing the concept of the group stage? Make the qualifier and bottom of DPC draw for the group, and the top, lets say, 4, pick which group they want to in? This makes every team has equal footing but the top DPC earner still get their privileges.

2. Same with point 1. This is once again, an entirely new competition.

3. While I do agree with you, I think it is a bit problematic. Minor here works as qualifier for Major. Means, top team that has qualified for Major wont participate. If the point given is too high, it will be problematic. Lets see the Minor as a qualifier for Major with extra bucks and point added, and it is already special. Though, add some point will not hurt.

4 and 5, well, I do agree. But that is the risk of the job. Perform well, you get paid. Underperform, maybe you will only earn from your youtube channel. I do want to see more uprising player, believed that e-sports, and dota in particular, is promising for the job. But we see how OG play this TI. I sense that they enjoy the game to the fullest, and that is how game should be. Another point, it means battle pass should come out in the beginning of the season, to spread the prize pool. Am I getting it right?

@Decarabia

Before I get into this, know I don't have any desire to insult, just care about the future of this esport and want it to put its best foot forward.

1 and 2. To me, and I would argue to Valve, this is not a new competition. It is the culmination of an entire year's worth of work, and this is supported by the fact that the DPC points are what qualify you for TI and the fact that the points reset directly after TI. The majors and minors should have everyone on an even footing each tournament because proves to be a better gauge of a teams' ability to consistently perform over a long period of time. But right now the reward for that consistency is....nothing. We could quibble over the details of what that reward should be, and I would be most willing to hear alternatives to point 2 for that, but to me it's almost insulting that all those won tournament placements put you in the same boat as a team that lost all season but got 7th in the final major of the season. Conversely, it's insulting that a team can qualify with a single first place finish, ignoring the rest of the tournaments.

3. Currently there are already some points earned for being in the minors, but the bottom is 20 points. You get 3800 for a Major title. The minimum and maximums almost don't matter so long as the point increase for each placement is relatively evenly gradual, but right now it's very much top heavy. The points difference for placements in minors is between 10 and 30 points per tier:

7-8: 20pts
5-6: 40pts (+20)
4: 70pts (+30)
3: 90 (+20)
2: 100 (+10)
1: 120 (+20)

The points earned per tier is oddly inconsistent here, and I won't go into the Major point jumps but they range from 75 points to a whopping 1950 points. I'm ok with the majors having a noticeaby higher minimum earning, it's the reward for playing there, but a smoother graduation of points would put better value towards each team's achievements, and reduce the chances of a team overearning for 'getting lucky' during a single game (like when kyxy accidentally denied aegis at TI3).

4. This is mostly about cultivating a healthy pro scene, which it's clear you agree with. Again, not saying it needs an egregious adjustment, but if players feel like they can gradually get better over time rather than being good RIGHT NOW OR I DON'T EAT THIS MONTH, more players will stick around. Perhaps the scene isn't financially mature enough for that as it would probably necessitate a minor league for farm teams that cannot sign up for major league tournaments, but it's feeling like there are more teams trying now than ever before, and keeping them interested and invested bodes well for the future.

5. I'd be ok with having a year long battle pass. Integrate it with Dota Plus. This would again be about relieving some of the pressure of TI to finance teams for another year of playing, teams could be a little more stable and consistent in their earnings, providing more checkup points throughout the year to assess their situation.

I am not going to go into the DPC system, since we still don't know how it's going to look this year, but there are a couple of things I would REALLY like to see changed in the International.

1. No more BO1 lower bracket round one. That is just wrong. I get it, upsets can happen, a lot is at stake, excitement though the roof and all that, but drafts are becoming important and testing the waters against a team that comes from the other group is necessary.

2. Scheduling, so that teams don't have to play two series in a day. Certainly not when they have to play LB finals and GF on the same day. I understand the idea of upper bracket advantage, but this TI Team Liquid looked tired, understandably so. It was good for the competition, probably, but maybe there is a chance they would have played better if they didn't have rough games 1 and 2 vs. PSG.LGD right before the grand finals.

I would really like to see a push from the community for these thing to be resolved. Valve can give us an extra day for the biggest esports tournament of the year

^ Absolutely perfect

@KawaiiSocks

I've seen a few players express their frustration with the sheer number of games required for each step of the overall season, some suggesting the major and minor qualifiers be held at the same time. If they did that, it would severely reduce the number of games played throughout the season, and leave the players a lot more ready to play a few extra games at the main event. That could lead to a longer main event like you are wanting, and if they can ensure more games per team at the main event, single day ticket sales might increase enough to justify the extra day or two or three of stadium rental.

I love this discussion.
Anyway, I was sort of compared it with how football works. For club, the biggest competition is UEFA Champions League, in dota it is comparable for TI. Club qualifies in UCL due to performance last season, comparable to DPC. Some club get into UCL from qualifier, comparable with, yeah, qualifier. What happen in UCL? Top performer last season is put as top seed from each group. But that's it. They start from slightly better position (get in the group with weaker team), but they all do start from group stage.
I know this might not be the best for dota, but I still prefer all of the team start from the same starting position. Simple thinking, consistent performer should be capable to perform and adapt well, even though reality is not that simple (VP syndrome, yea).

I got your point though, and agree with the enormous number of match teams have to play needs to be reduced. And yeah, bo1 lower bracket should be abolished (poor Alliance).

@Decarabia

I don't follow any foot based sport so I might be wrong about this, but a cursory glance at Wikipedia told me the champions league lasts an entire year, so that's all that team would do that year. You qualify for it, then you play it but nothing else. I view all of the DPC season as that, where at the beginning everyone is on even footing and working towards getting a good position at TI, but none of your performances from last year matter, you have to go through the qualifiers just like everyone else.

@Decarabia
I was thinking that, I think TI could have more groups to be it more like Football. By that the teams with more DPC point will have bigger advantage.
@ MM.Ugh Brock Hall
No you play both your national league and Champions league. If you perform badly in your national league you won't play in next year Champions League (if you don't win it, if you do you are automatically qualified)

@[TRB]houdic

That sounds a little more akin to MLB (2 leagues, three divisions, top earners in each division plus best #2 team go to league playoffs, winners face each other in World Series. Some interdivision play, something like 4/160+ games are interleague play) To me for that system to work in Dota, everyone would have to play only against their region for regular season play (national league), and then the top performers go to playoffs where they meet up against other teams they don't usually play against (champions league). That would mean each region would get their own Minors, with winners going to Majors.

Personally I wouldn't be for that because we already see problems in terms of skill levels across regions. We allow teams to qualify to at least give those regions some sort of extra chance to prove themselves (see Infamous), but those teams get the 'last spots' available. I think a lot of people would rightfully complain that some very worthy teams would get shafted, missing out on valuable extra points. If we had that system this year, we might not have seen Liquid and OG make it to enough Majors to earn their slots, while Complexity could have earned enough in their dry stale region.

I mean I know this is all just a bunch of fluff talk, but it's definitely fun to explore all the different ways to go about the next DPC. Who knows, maybe we will once again see some Swiss style qualifiers for Majors and Minors. I'd love that.

OG was so fun to watch

@Brock Hall
is there any denying that OG are the best team in the world right now, though? They dominated the group stages, ran through the upper bracket with ease, and clowned on Liquid in the finals. They did similarly last year, apart from 2 breathtaking series with LGD, with the exact same roster.
I do agree with some points about the DPC though, but is there any way to quantify skill throughout a year? Can't really, not with the ever-shifting balances. The only way for that to happen is if Valve maintained the same patch, from the start of the next DPC tournament, until the end of TI10.
Anyways, we also forget the prize pools of the majors and minors from this season and last. We merely viewed the majors and minors as a means towards the end goal of hitting the jackpot at the end. These tourneys had their own rewards, independent of what happens. It was the mentality and mindset of people. it should be for playing and succeeding in a tournament, with the added benefit of HELPING on the road to a greater goal. The focus was too centralized on the idea of The International, rather than each tournament as a standalone entity.
The "most fair" system I can think of, would be no direct invites to TI. Each major and minor helps teams jockey for position come TI qualifying time, with higher seeds having some advantages, maybe direct seeding into later rounds of qualifying.

Yes. Or no? Of course yes.

@ETdAWESOME

Oh I definitely think there is denying them status of 'best team in the world', in part because that's suuuuch a subjective question and in part because, specifically for OG, it's a hype driven opinion.

TI is everything in the eyes of the players, and in the eyes of the viewers. For many viewers, this means how you perform at TI is the be all, end all measuring stick. Talk to pro players, often they will stress how all that hard work leading up to TI is thrown away, and how the worst Dota is played at TI. Bigger mistakes happen at TI, they say. The DPC as it stands right now serves as an opportunity for you to put your business card into the TI fishbowl and hope it gets drawn. If the pros are heavily stressing how you have to be lucky to find the correct strategies and hope the opposing team is just a bit more driven to mistakes through stress, we can't really make such an extreme and resolute opinion based on the results.

That's never going to change, though. Cinderella stories need to be possible because Dota is a dynamic competition that does not completely rely on skill. No competition with any sort of playoff does. We want this to be present because it requires those consistently good teams to continue to perform; it can't be a cakewalk. But as we have seen, we don't want the rest of the season to feel superfluous either. Providing a larger opportunity to the teams that show they are able to succeed no matter what the patch throws at them during DPC would make their TI victory feel EARNED, not drawn. On the same side of the coin, any team that bare scratches their way into TI that wins would also feel like they earned their victory because of how much more work they had to put in during the competition.

We get into different ideologies here, as I prefer TI be the culmination of all the work leading up to it, where you would rather see the tournaments be standalone. Really this is the most preference based opinion of the discussion because it's just about what you like. I like the idea of a big, year long story, where I can check up on my teams to see how they are faring, hoping they do well enough to progress. If Valve continues monetarily and competitively incentivizing those smaller competitions, it means they prefer it as well. All I can really say is that I like this part of the system and hope it doesn't diminish. Your concept of teams seeding into later rounds of qualifying is basically just a different name for direct invites, but to me it reduces the importance of the Majors and Minors. I think TI is more exciting when it directly references past performance as a basis for its setup, and the stronger that is the better. Otherwise, it's just an all star match: fun, but meaningless.

Kawaii I completely agree with you about the scheduling, currently it seems vastly biased towards upper bracket teams,

If you look at the number of games Liquid played (and potentially could have played if they hadn't swept their way to the LB finals) it was significantly higher than OG, and OG's rest periods, and planning periods, were also therefore much longer.

Upper bracket shouldn't give that much of an advantage, the final really should be even footing, OG were clearly playing an exhausted Liquid who weren't anywhere near the level they had been in days 1 - 5. The Upper bracket already gives players the advantage of having two chances of elimination as well as automatically skipping the BO1, and if you make it to the final you've only had 3 series. The lower bracket is 6 series with each one being potential elimination.

The balance is wrong and I think it showed in the finals, game 1 was amazing, both teams had very good chances to win and threw them before Liquid came out on top, thats the sort of Dota I think we all wanted to see for for 5 games and we may have had a finals series that good if both teams started the day afresh. What we got felt a bit like TI4s finals instead which was a shame after the rest of the tournament was possibly the best TI yet. Its not really a shock is it that the best TI grand finals, TI3 and TI8, were both contested by the teams in the upper bracket finals.

The other issue I had with this TI was patch 7.22; I loved the meta until the last day but by that point it had been worked out. There were some heroes that are broken, namely Alc, Io, Ench, ET, Tiny & Lesh. There are a few other super powerful meta heroes but those ones, especially the first 3, are totally broken.

I know heroes there are often OP heroes at TI but its rare that there are so many; especially the first 3 that feel like auto wins. The problem with 7.22 was it was such a major patch launched just 3 months before TI without many competitive games before the main event. Icefrog was never going to sample enough games to balance it. Its not surprising something as broken as carry Io didn't get noticed with other things like Clinkz being even better to start with in that patch, it takes time for a major patch to settle and all of the broken things to be weeded out. March should probably be the latest a major balance patch is released before TI with all the tournaments in between being used to find the broken and underpowered things and balance them. If that had happened then maybe there'd be only 3 or 4 super powerful heroes as oppose to 6 and then they could mostly be banned in drafting to give us fun balanced games.

This was a great TI and there's so much that went amazingly, there are also things that they can learn from that weren't as great. I look forward to seeing how they improve it for next year. TI10 should be epic.

Little dick head

Your TI9 predict sucks

,putang ina mo bobo