EU DPC – Who will make it? | Dota 2

On paper, Alliance are a shoo-in for the Major. They’ve done pretty much exactly what they needed to do all season. Stable performance after stable performance. Nikobaby is still a beast and Limmp has been showing off some truly inspired play. Their crowning achievement came in week 2, when they took down OG 2-0, and they’re the only team (thus far) that has guaranteed themselves a tiebreaker. However, it’s not just clear skies for the Swedish org. If they can beat Team Liquid on Tuesday, they’re golden. Major bound as the second seed and looking good. However, if they end up going into a 4 team tiebreaker, things get problematic for them. To describe why that’s the case, we need to get ahead of ourselves a little bit.

Let’s assume we get a tiebreaker between Alliance, Liquid, Nigma, and OG. Four teams, three spots. In that scenario, Alliance will only have a winning record against OG. And we’re not talking about the EU DPC, we’re talking since the 1st of January 2020. If they get into a tiebreaker, they will have a losing record against Liquid and Nigma. Just beating OG is enough to get through but we don’t feel like it’s a complete lock. Hence we give Alliance a 90% chance of getting to the Major.

Chance of making the Major: 50%

This is a hard one, if for no other reason than the writer being a big Liquid fanboy. Liquid has been inconsistent, at best, so far in the DPC and that’s going to hurt them. They’ve look great winning and they’ve looked terrible losing. And now they have to beat Alliance, a team that has looked as good as they did just after forming in 2019. A team they’re tied with in win percentage going into the series. The one thing speaking for Liquid is their series against OG last week. After getting absolutely smashed by the two-time TI winners, Liquid came back in impressive fashion. And that’s promising. But last week is last week.

Interestingly enough, we’d say that Liquid has a pretty good chance at making the Major if they make it to tiebreakers. They’ll have an advantage against everyone but Team Nigma. But Nigma has an advantage against all teams that are likely to get to the tiebreaker. Still, beating Alliance is no easy task and we’re giving them the same shot at making the Major as their win percentage is against Alliance: 50%.

Chance of making the Major: 85%

The only reason that we’re giving Nigma a lower “score” than Alliance is the fact that Alliance already has 4 wins. We’re taking into account the fact that Nigma might lose to HCE (spoiler: they won’t). But other than that, we see next to nothing standing in their way to the Major. They’ll beat HCE on Tuesday and are very likely to emerge from a tiebreaker at the very top.

If you dig really deep, you could say that Nigma’s three game losing streak in the middle of the DPC is cause for concern but we strongly believe they’ve emerged from that experience a stronger team. Or you could bring out their worrying win rate against OG over the last year. But perspective is important. Nigma went without Kuroky for an extended period of time in 2020. Since then they’re tied at 2-2 with OG. So yeah, Nigma is very likely to make the major, barring a perfect storm scenario.

Chance of making the Major: 30%

We’re going to start looking like OG haters at some point. And we’re really not. We swear. It’s just that OG is in a sticky situation right now. They need to win against Secret on Wednesday to guarantee themselves a tiebreaker. And even if they do, they don’t have a clear advantage against any likely tiebreaker opponent. Let’s go through what needs to happen for OG, in order:

First: Win against Secret OR Liquid loses to Alliance
Here, we’d say the second is a more likely scenario. Yes, Secret has been known to slow down once they’ve done what they need to do, as to not show off more than they have to. But at this point, we’re pretty sure Secret could win with just about any five heroes. So as long as Secret actually shows up for the match, OG will struggle. It’s not an impossible task but it’s unlikely.

Second: Get through via tiebreakers
There are two scenarios here: the four team tiebreaker we’ve been focusing on a lot above. OG would come in as underdogs and would have to rise to the occasion. Something we’ve seen them do multiple times before (TI8 finals, anyone?). It’s definitely possible they’ll do it again. It’s funny, because even though they don’t have a great record against Liquid, Nigma, or Alliance, we think OG would much prefer that scenario compared to scenario #2: a 2 team tiebreaker against Team Liquid. OG has not performed well against Insania and crew… ever. They had a tense game three against Liquid on Saturday but game 2 was just embarrassing to watch. After figuring out what happened in game 1, it looked like Liquid just had OG’s number.

Due to all these hurdles in their way, we’re going to say that OG has a ~30% chance at making the Major.

Chance of making the Major: 5%

Yes, Tundra are still not 100% eliminated from Major contention. No matter how weird that might seem. They are the only team involved in the fight that has no matches this week, meaning they’ll need to rely on other teams to even get to tiebreakers. Tundra needs two out of the three teams above them — Liquid, Nigma, and OG — to lose their games. If that happens, they will make tiebreakers. In that case, it will be a three team tiebreaker for 1 spot in the Major.

But even in a tiebreaker scenario, they will be the underwhelming underdogs. We’ve seen Skiter pull off some big plays, in key moments, during the season. And we’ve seen Nine turn into a very solid midlaner. But that doesn’t mean they’re ready yet. We think that Tundra might be a good competitor in the second season of the DPC but we have a hard time seeing them getting to the Major at this point. Not impossible that they do but it’s highly unlikely.