Heroes and Zeroes: A Closer Look At Group C and D
The Shanghai Group Stages have come to a close. New stars have risen to the occasion while other players fell well below expectations under the immense pressure. In case you missed the matches, here’s a lowdown of the Group C and D action. We also get to breakdown the greatest ‘heroes” and ‘zeroes’ from each group.
Group C
Frankfurt Majors Champions OG carried their momentum from Germany all the way to China. While OG ended up topping the group their journey was far from easy. Group C featured two formidable sides from China (Newbee and LGD) and North American team on the rise in Team Archon.
Image taken from teamliquid.net
Arguably, the most exciting series in the group was OG against LGD. Star powers clashed with 8k MMR player Amer “Miracle-” Barqawi and Johan “N0tail” Sundstein leading OG against top tier Chinese players Liu “Sylar” Jiajun and Lu “Maybe” Yao who banner LGD Gaming. The match up went the full distance of three games. LGD and OG exchanged solid blows and the series was up in the air until the Throne’s destruction. Game 2 was particularly one of the best games in the tournament. OG had the better end game execution and they came out on top. LGD was forced to settle for 2nd place in Group C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EghAFOAOnuc
Hero of Group C
Image taken from teamliquid.net
| Games | KDA | GPM | Hero Damage | |
| OG.Miracle- | 5 | 7.3 | 685 | 11587 |
Miracle easily takes the cake for his performance in five matches in Group C. He was extremely consistent and garnered his team an impressive 80% win rate across all matches in the Group Stage. Expectations were high for this pub star when he finally turned pro last year. His career had a shaky start but since joining OG, he is finally living up to his potential. If he performs this well in the Main Event, OG will be very hard to beat.
Zero of Group C
Image taken from monkeys-forever’s Twitter account
| Games | KDA | GPM | Hero Damage | |
| monkeys-forever | 4 | 1.3 | 290 | 6588 |
The Mid player’s performance is crucial to springboarding any team to victory. As Team Archon’s Mid player, Jaron “monkeys-forever” Clinton’s disappointing performance across the NA team’s four games was highly inefficient. monkeys-forever’s KDA is the third lowest in the tournament only ahead of two support players teammate Simon “Handsken” Haag and Vici Gaming player Lu “Fenrir” Chao. If Team Archon hope to climb out of the trench of the lower bracket, monkeys-forever and the rest of his team needs to step up their game.
Group D
American powerhouse Evil Geniuses proved once again that they are a team that can win it all. They topped Group D in convincing fashion with stellar play from Saahil “Universe” Arora and Artour “Arteezy” Babaev. Group D featured CIS mainstay Virtus.Pro, North American side compLexity Gaming and European side Team Liquid.
Image taken from teamliquid.net
Fellow North American side compLexity Gaming was surprisingly EG’s most hard fought series in the Group Stages. CoL went the whole three matches against EG but fell short in the end losing 2-1. EG asserted its dominance of the NA Dota 2 scene once more.
Hero of Group D
Image taken from dotablast.com
| Games | KDA | GPM | Hero Damage | |
| Universe | 5 | 5.3 | 502 | 8307 |
None other than the man behind TI5’s famous six million dollar Echo Slam himself, Universe takes the Hero of Group D award. He has been an extremely efficient Offlaner across the Group Stages. His KDA of 5.3 is the highest among all Offlaners at Shanghai. His high Hero Damage and Tower Damage (2442) just improves his stock all across the board. Maybe at Shanghai, Universe will coin the three million dollar Chronosphere.
Zero of Group D
Image taken from teamliquid.net
| Games | KDA | GPM | Hero Damage | |
| Handsken | 5 | 1.1 | 225 | 3519 |
The Hard Support is one of the trickiest roles in all of Dota 2. The rock of any team’s success is reliant on the proper warding and rotation from the early game and proper decision making in the end game. Former Ninjas in Pyjamas captain Handsken’s costly mistakes may have caused compLexity Gaming’s poor run at the Group Stages. If a Support can’t save his teammates from ganks and gives his opponent extra kills, the Cores will definitely have a bad time.
The Shanghai Majors offers a hefty prize pool of $3 million (142 million php). There will be a short break of two days before the action resumes on Wednesday, March 2 for the Main Event. Stay tune on eSports by Inquirer.net for the latest in professional gaming news and features.
All statistic are taken from datdota.com
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