This article is part of our Dota 2 series.
The eight qualifying teams for the Boston Major have been decided, and for the most part things went as expected. With the exception of the European qualifiers where almost every team was evenly matched, each region's clearly stronger teams have booked a trip to Boston.
Americas
The American qualifiers panned out exactly how most people thought they would. This region has long been criticized for being extremely top-heavy in terms of talent, and these qualifiers only cemented that idea. Apart from a loss to ProDota Gaming, one of the European teams that chose to participate in the American qualifier, and one to Infamous, Team NP didn't lose any other games throughout the entire qualifier. They looked like they were on a completely different level in terms of skill to compLexity, who NP easily beat 2-0 in the playoffs. While Jackie "EternaLEnVY" Mao and his squad haven't faced up against the true titans of Dota like Evil Geniuses, Wings, or Newbee yet, their dominant qualifier run inspires confidence.
The second team to qualify, compLexity Gaming, looked much loss confident and in control of their matches. The games that they did win were essentially David "Moo" Hull, Zakari "Zfreek" Freedman and on occasion Mihai "canceL" Antonio dragging the rest of the team, kicking and screaming, to a win. Many of canceL's issues can be dismissed by blaming the ping from Romania -- watching his stream shows that he certainly has the individual skill to perform. Hopefully this will be enough to secure them at least a few wins at the Boston Major and avoid another MUFC 0-15 situation. The real issue for compLexity is their position one player, Justin "jk" Rosselle. In all their games, jk was clearly the weakest link. If the rest of compLexity was having a bad game, there was no chance that jk would be able to break out of that and lead a comeback. In games where compLexity was ahead, jk still failed to deliver like a carry should. His entire series against Infamous was extremely poor, and quite frankly Infamous lost that series more than compLexity won it. compLexity has by far the most work to do before the Major of any participating team.
Europe
Europe has accumulated a remarkable density of teams that are good enough to take games off most teams, but not solid enough to make the cut at Valve Major events. As a result, the European qualifier was by far the most cutthroat of the four regions.
The first qualifying team, Ad Finem, have been on the rise over the past year. This talented Greek squad gained a lot of fans playing in The Summit 5 and Dreamleague Season 5 but failed to qualify for The International 6. Since then they haven't made any roster changes, preferring to bank on teamwork instead of bringing in a star player. They just barely managed to make the cut for the qualifier playoffs, finishing with a 6-3 record to Vega Sqaudron's 5-4. Once they made it into the playoff bracket though, Ad Finem went on an absolute tear. They secured 2-0 victories against both Team Liquid and Team Secret, two of the favorites to make it though. Watching and covering Ad Finem's games over this past year has shown a clear and consistent increase in the team's performance, and with such a convincing qualifier they are poised to make a name for themselves at the Boston Major.
The second European team to qualify will be the lone CIS representative at Boston, Virtus.Pro. Their new roster has essentially picked out the best young talent in the region and put them under the veteran leadership of Alexei "Solo" Berezin. They only lost one game going into the playoffs, but did suffer a frankly embarrassing loss to an extremely weak Team Liquid in the first round. After dropping to the lower bracket, Virtus.Pro manhandled Team Secret. Despite both games of the series going 50-plus minutes, it was clear that Virtus.Pro was the better team. Finally, Virtus.Pro eliminated Team Liquid in the lower bracket finals to secure the final qualifying spot. This new Virtus.Pro team is essentially an all-star roster of underrated CIS players, and they should be able to do very well in Boston this December.
A major takeaway from the European qualifiers is that this will be the first Valve event ever without Na'Vi or Alliance, and both Team Secret and Team Liquid failed to qualify. Although Na'Vi and Alliance were both extremely weak in the qualifiers, the big surprise is the failure of Secret and Liquid. In my post-TI6 roster shuffle predictions, I said that the changes looked excellent for Liquid. In theory, they now possess the highest combined raw skill and experience of any team out there, but in practice it was a complete failure. The role swapping of Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urplainen and Kuro Salehi "KuroKy" Takhasomi proved to be a failure. Even if KuroKy only played carries like Drow Ranger and Luna that provide team-boosting auras, MATUMBAMAN looked very uncomfortable on support. If Liquid chooses not to disband, which seems unlikely at this point, they have a massive amount of work ahead of them if they want to reach their former glory.
China
China is admittedly the region I'm least familiar with. Time zone differences and the painful lag from trying to watch games on Perfect World servers have made it difficult to keep up on the Chinese scene. That said, it simply wouldn't be a Valve event without Zhang "xiao8" Ning in attendance. Thankfully, his newest squad, LGD Forever Young managed to breeze their way through the qualifiers. They looked extremely strong against Chinese competition in the best-of-three playoffs, winning back-to-back 2-0 wins to secure their qualifying spot. The second qualifying team, IG.Vitality, is more of a mystery. They struggled a bit in the playoffs of the qualifiers, getting knocked to the lower bracket by LGD before managing to rally. They will be coming into the Boston Major as a relatively unknown factor, and if their games in the qualifiers are anything to go on they could be a dangerous team to get upset by.
Southeast Asia
In the SEA region, the qualifiers were absolutely dominated by Team Faceless. Daryl Koh "iceiceice" Pei Xiang's new squad of SEA players plus Dominick "Black^" Reitmeier didn't drop a single game throughout the entire qualifier, and the only game that looked even remotely close was their first match vs WG.Unity. As far as ranking qualifier teams in SEA goes, Team Faceless is the clear frontrunner by a large margin. They haven't played against the invited teams from SEA, Execration and MVP Phoenix, but Faceless looked extremely strong.
The second team to make it through was WG.Unity, a surprise to most people (myself included), who expected Fnatic to secure the second qualifier spot. WG.Unity actually managed to make it through the open qualifiers as well, a serious display of underappreciated skill. After their performance in the playoffs of the main qualifiers, it's a wonder they didn't get invited. The team has a very interesting play-style that revolves around their mid laner, Kam Boon "NaNa" Son, being completely insane and aggressive while Lai Jay "Ahjit" Son plays the more conservative position one. This WG.Unity squad plays a lot like the old MVP Phoenix in that they love to pick aggressive heroes and just run at the enemy. This strategy has worked wonders at Valve Majors in the past, and hopefully for WG.Unity fans it will work again in December.
