Dota 2 Tournament Preview: EPIC League Division 1

EPIC League Division 1 is a Dota 2 event of great importance. Given its prize pool and participants, it’s probably the most significant online tournament of 2020. And since it offers 45 Bo3 matches just for the Group Stage, you’ll be able to enjoy some high level Dota almost every day, for an entire month. Given the current state of the professional scene, this is a dream come true.

EPIC League Division 1 Tournament Details

EPIC League Division 1 is scheduled to start on November 12^th and last until December 13^th. The competitive format for the Group Stage is round-robin and as I’ve said before, that translates into a lot of amazing matches.

EPIC League Division 1 offers a prize pool of $500,000. Given that this is a regional tournament that brings together the best teams in Europe and CIS, I think we can call it a regional Major. Standard Dota Pro Circuit Majors have prize pools of $1 million and 16 participants. This event offers half of that amount and has 10 participants. But keep in mind: instead of 6 regions, it only encompasses 2.

The exact format for the Playoffs Stage is not yet known, but given that we have 10 participants, I assume it’s going to be a double-elimination bracket with 8 participants. That would mean that the 9^th – 10^th place teams would get eliminated after the Group Stage.

Teams

EPIC League Division 1 features a total of 10 teams. And these are by far the strongest competitors in Europe and CIS.

• Team Liquid
• Natus Vincere
• Team Secret
• Alliance
• OG
• gg
• mudgolems
• pro
• Team Nigma
• Just Error

These names should sound familiar to you. There’s only one team that’s new, and that is Just Error. This competitor is made up of some of the biggest names in the game: SumaiL, RAMZES, No[o]ne, Solo, and Zayac. With the exception of Zayac, who has yet to prove himself at this level, the roster looks incredible. One TI winner (SumaiL), 4 Major winners and a good mixture of experience and skill across the board. So I think we should expect big things from this team, even at this competitive level.

Overall, the big favorites of EPIC League Division 1 are Team Secret, Team Liquid, and OG. Others might surprise us as well and to be fair, the skill difference between most of these competitors is quite small. But I still don’t see how anyone could overcome all of the top contenders, apart from one of them. Perhaps Just Error proves worthy of this task, but I think it’s too early for them to have such ambitions. First they need to play as a unit.

 

Photo credit: Valve