Esports / Dota Pro Circuit

The MDL Changsha Major

PSG.LGD win yet another major and look especially strong since a great showing at DAC, winning their second major back-to-back (and don’t forget, placing second in DAC, only losing to Mineski in a 2-3 series).

Credit: Wykrhm Reddy

PSG.LGD secured the 4th TI8 direct invite slot when they secured top 4. However, winning this major catapulted them into the 2nd place in DPC points, leaving Mineski, Vici Gaming, Newbee, and VGJ.Thunder to be teams to yet secure their points, but will likely be the invited teams.

China proves to be surging yet again as 3 of the top 4 teams hail from the region. Here are the standings:

Place $ USD DPC Points Team
 1st $400,000 750  PSG.LGD
 2nd $200,000 450  VGJ.Storm
 3rd $130,000 225  Vici Gaming
 4th $85,000 75  Newbee
5th-6th $40,000 –  Mineski
 Team Secret
7th-8th $25,000 –  OG
 TNC Pro Team
9th-10th $17,500 –  Invictus Gaming
 iG Vitality
11th-12th $10,000 –  Infamous
 Vega Squadron

Upcoming Major: ESL One Birmingham 2018

Right after MDL Changsha we immediately have ESL One Birmingham starting off this Wednesday, 23 May. With the same 1 million dollar prize pool, we’ve the following teams competing for points:

  1. Virtus.pro
  2. Newbee
  3. Evil Geniuses
  4. Team Liquid
  5. Vici Gaming
  6. Mineski
  7. OG
  8. LGD.Forever Young
  9. Fnatic
  10. OpTic Gaming
  11. paiN Gaming
  12. Replacement for Na’vi (Na’vi has been disqualified as they’ve removed LeBronDota from the roster)

Scccuh

What used to be a skit from the Bucharest Major featuring Newbee is now a reality. Newbee sold Scccuh Blue and Scccuh Pink over the course of MDL ChangSha.

The products sold out almost instantly – selling 600 units in 30 minutes. I assume this is because of the meme-ability, as well as the pretty legit packaging it comes with.

 

Ranked Medal Reset

The new Ranked System features a 6-month season that gives a soft reset to your medal ranking. It was released last November 22, 2017 – and the 6 month mark will be this coming May 22. A soft reset means that your new MMR will be based on your previous season’s MMR, however with the chance to get a boost, or get lower MMR depending on how well you do for your placement matches.

BattlePass

10 Million

The TI8 Prize Pool has hit $10 million – with 97 days to go. Amidst early displeasure by fans at the reward tiering, it seems likely that we’ll be breaking the records yet again. Hopefully Valve makes it easier to get those prized hats without having to break the bank.

Baby Roshan

Last year’s reward for reaching Level 2000 was a figurine Baby Roshan – which /u/Mr_Cj has shown that the quality of the figurine is far from as advertised.

Valve has since issued an apology on their blog, and promises to give a better produced version as soon as possible. This year’s Level 2000 BattlePass reward is the same, so Valve should deliver to appease the fans. Additionally, there’s been concern that if the Baby Roshan is the same every year, and not themed, that it will not be collectible. We’ll see how Valve intends to handle this. Their statement:

It has come to our attention that the physical Baby Roshan reward for last year’s Battle Pass has had poor production quality yields. We apologize to our fans for that, it is well below the quality we expected. We are going to start from scratch on new production for the statue, and prioritize delivering it as soon as possible to every customer that reached level 2000 last year.