RAMZES666

Last year VP rose from a relatively fresh group of players who had struggled to make it out of the tier 2 pit of CIS talent to the symbol of the entire region. This year there was no period where VP caught any teams off guard or unprepared and yet throughout the DPC we saw them crush their opposition and earn the most points by far. Ramzes has been awarded with best carry of the year for the second year in a row as he once again had incredible performances throughout the year. Over the last 12 months he has played a wide array of heroes including his Broodmother which became a first-phase-ban-or-lose hero for anyone VP was playing against. His patented Lifestealer which helped him gain notoriety remained among his top heroes and sported an 80% win rate on top of a nearly solid 10.0 K/D/A.

It is easy to forget but Ramzes is still only 19 years old. While we’ve been used to seeing him compete at the highest level for awhile now he is also one of the youngest competitors in the game and what he has managed to accomplish in the two years he has been with VP has been incredible. While there are always players who hit a peak and then eventually trail off, Ramzes has remained at a consistently high level for not just one year, but two, and for that we believe he is more than deserving to be named best carry of the 2017-2018 season.

Runner Up: Ame

Maybe

Image credit: Valve
No one can dispute Maybe’s ability as a midlaner. While he may not have been as successful throughout the DPC season as No[o]ne or Miracle, Maybe was equally as consistent but suffered from not having a stable roster until a few months after TI7. Despite PSG.LGD’s slow start to the year Maybe never failed to impress in his games. At MDL Macau despite his team having some pretty immense issues that clearly needed to be worked out, he delivered. Once Fy moved back to support and had Chalice and xNova join the team, we saw PSG.LGD become one of the best teams in the world with Maybe at the center.

In the run up to TI8 we saw Maybe claim a 2nd place finish at DAC 2018, win Epicenter XL, win the MDL Changsha Major, and then finish 3rd at the Supermajor before becoming the runner-up at TI8. The level of consistency Maybe showed throughout the year across different patches and on a multitude of heroes is what makes us believe he is deserving of the title of Best Mid of the 2017-2018 season.

Runner Up: No[o]ne

9Pasha

If you aren’t noticing a trend right now, the VP roster played extremely well during the 2017-2018 season and Pasha was no exception. The Russian offlaner has played with No[o]ne and Solo for quite some time now, winning ESL One NY back in 2015 when all three played on Vega Squadron. Perhaps it is due to how long they’ve been playing together that Virtus Pro usually seems to play with one brain, when Pasha initiates a fight they are all ready to jump on whatever opportunity he has given them. Despite how many victories VP have gained off the back of Pasha’s initiations, lane domination, or counter-plays in a team fight he is often regarded as one of the quieter players on a team full of shining stars. While many may talk about Ramzes’ ability to carry, No[o]ne’s mid dominance, RodjER’s insane 4, or Solo’s great leadership and self-sacrificing 5, Pasha’s offlane is rarely mentioned by comparison yet he performs such a vital role for the team.

By no means are we saying people underrate or undervalue Pasha though, it’s just that we have come to expect him to make the insane plays he does on a regular basis and therefore find them to be ordinary. Who else could make OD blow out his microphone. We’ve also seen some plays that could have come straight out of iceiceice’s playbook from Pasha this year. There is no doubt that VP have consistently been the best team this year, and Pasha has been consistently putting out performances worthy of a team of that status. No matter how much pressure Pasha is under, he always fulfills whatever his team needs out of his hero.

Runner Up: MC

RodjER and Solo

Image credit: hexhaven
It’s no surprise to see RodjER and Solo takes this category. For most of the year no one had any answer on how to deal with these two players (and VP as a whole really). RodjER joined the team early into the season to replace Lil in a move many considered to be a even trade at the time, and who could blame them? VP had already set themselves apart as one of the best teams in the world and Lil was an integral part of getting them there. However the addition of RodjER pushed VP even further. His Earth Spirit and Chen were required bans for many months but no matter what was banned against VP, RodjER always found a way to have high game impact.

The other part of this pair, Solo is the captain at the helm of VP’s ship. He navigated his crew to the #1 rank in the DPC season and they took home more Major trophies than anyone else. His sacrificial “position 6” support style has gone out of favor lately but he manages to make it work when combined with the extraordinary talents of his teammates. RodjER and Solo have proven to be a terrific duo who empower their cores to carry games and you can’t ask for much more from your supports.

Runner Up: Fy and xNova

Redeye

You know it’s always going to be a pleasure when Redeye is on screen. His charisma is sufficient to carry almost any event solely by himself, and the scene was fortunate enough to have his presence at several events this year. While he was less omnipresent this year than he was in some past years at tournaments, that is more due to the expanding talent pool that Dota has to pull from and the absolutely massive amount of tournaments we had than any knock against Redeye, who has complained about being overworked on occasion in the past. He brings a level of charm to the hosting gig that is inimitable. While we have seen the rise of a couple of fantastic hosts from both inside the Dota 2 community and outside coming in, it is still Redeye that they will inevitably be compared to. He not only created the bar that we judge Hosts by he has helped pave the way for the next generation and given them a perfect example of what a good host can do with any panel in any event.

Chalice

Image credit: Valve
Every year, there appears to be a breakout player that simply inspires awe in everyone. There is little doubt that Topson had the biggest tournament performance this year, but for us, Chalice provided a true breakthrough story for Newcomer of the Year. Having previously been on a lesser-known T2 Chinese team in Team MAX, he was picked up by LGD along with xNova back in December of 2017, allowing fy to shift back to pos 4 while he took over the offlane. Being a relatively new roster at the time, LGD failed to obtain much in terms of results outside of a few qualifier wins, culminating in a disappointing 9th-12th place finish at ESL One Katowice. However, the team grew into the dominant force in a brutal region as teams took games off one another all the time, and they found themselves coming in 2nd at DAC 2018.

DAC 2018, this event was where Chalice truly made his mark. Having played in no tournaments outside of China until Katowice, it was coincidentally in China that he truly impressed. He is perhaps best known for the incredible Uberlord play into the Rosh Pit leading to a massacre of VP, completely turning the game on its head as they went from being two raxes down to outright winning the game as a result. Throughout the event, he displayed an admirable measure of skill for someone so young, often making key plays on Beastmaster and fulfilling his role on utility heroes such as Underlord and Tidehunter. While he arguably failed to perform to the best of his ability at the Grand Finals of DAC and TI8, it was clear that without him, LGD would not have made it to the Grand Finals of either tournament at all.

While DAC was where Chalice made his mark, EPICENTER was where he showed the world that he was here to stay. The tournament in Moscow was one of the fastest evolving tournament metas as we saw the change from true solo offlane sacking develop into the domineering force that is the dual offlane we so often see nowadays. While almost every other team was swept up by the fierce and aggressive playstyle of FlyToMoon permeating the tournament meta, PSG.LGD and Liquid held on and adapted accordingly. No, PSG.LGD went the extra mile and took out both of the top two DPC teams at the time, defeating both VP and Liquid in the Upper Bracket, followed by their sensational Grand Final 3-1 against Liquid, denying them their 3rd consecutive EPICENTER trophy.

ODPixel

Casters have become such an integral part of every Dota 2 Tournament as they work tirelessly to give us fans and spectators memorable lines (immortalized through the chat wheel) and insights when necessary. As our first repeat winner ODPixel takes this year’s “Voice of Dota”-Award for his outstanding performance throughout the year.

It seems only a short while ago that he burst onto the scene with the infamous 3 hour long game between Scaryfacez and C9 back then. But 3 years have past by now and ODPixel has improved his vivid play-by-play caster each and every year past. While other prominent casters such as LD or Merlini (with that TI exception) left the scene, ODPixel has stuck with Dota 2 and brought his casting to the next level. While casting is never a solo job and Fogged deserves a lot of recognition for his work as well, ODPixel has been outstanding. As brawls unfold on the big screen our favorite Brit (maybe there is an argument for RedEye) never loses track of the surroundings and guides us through even the most chaotic fights with speed, accuracy and hype.

Subsequently given the chance to cast the TI Grand Finals together with Fogged and Merlini, we really could not have asked for a better play-by-play caster to guide us through only the second Grand Final to go all the way. The finals of this year’s International really had it all, amazing storylines, insane plays, comebacks and to top it all off the best caster of the year or could you see anyone else giving us “CEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!!!”?

Team Liquid vs. Virtus.Pro, Game 5 Supermajor

The best match we witnessed during the regular season took place in the last game of the last Major between two of the best teams of the year. This match had all the ingredients that a good old “Clásico” needs, including record-breaking scenarios for both teams. Virtus Pro could become the team with the most Majors in the bag while Liquid could finally claim one for themselves.

Maybe the match lacked some more dramatic stakes regarding the DPC standings, but it was compensated with fantastic game play. Most of the time a great match is filled with madness; the thrill of unpredictability and the chills triggered by a game deciding move will usually burn into the memory of a spectator easily. But this case is different; this game is one of the rare cases of a great Dota match that happened to be an almost perfect game from both sides. At the end of the day one has to win, and a couple of mistakes from VP’s side gave Liquid the chance to close out the grand finals in their favor.

Core Io + Medusa WESG 2018 Australia vs Malaysia

The 2017-2018 Season debatably saw the most changes in Dota 2’s ever fluid metagame so far, with the incorporation of talent changes, various reworks to multiple heroes, and significant differences in mechanical things like the regeneration formula, buybacks, and creep benefits in the laning stage. The patch to replace TI’s, 7.07, was one of the biggest patches that brought several changes to the game and how it was played. Among the greatest changes was to the strength of Io in its talents in spite of nerfs to his basic skillset: Attack Tethered Ally’s Attack Target. Surprisingly enough, this talent was rarely seen.

That being said, Seventh Heaven, representing Australia in WESG 2017, brought to the community what we perceive to be the most innovative strategy of the entire season. In their Quarterfinal match vs Malaysia, represented by Fire Dragoon, of the APAC Qualifier, they drafted a strange lineup involving a safelane core Io and a mid Medusa, fully capitalizing on the potential of Io’s then Level 20 Talent. We saw the Io build Satanic and Desolator, both items that greatly enhanced the damage of the hero in its capacity as a Strength hero as well as providing raw damage, meshing well with the Split Shot of Medusa upon getting the talent.

This strategy shone its brightest when Malaysia, on the brink of winning the game, tried to force heroes back into the fountain as Io was respawning, ultimately dying back on multiple heroes into a Ravage and the combined power of the Io + Medusa, giving Io an Ultra Kill and conceding the game as a result.


DotaBuff
This strategy helped realize the true power of Io late game, as we soon saw the emergence of the now infamous Gyrocopter + Io duo, and Fnatic’s incredible base race vs Evil Geniuses at the opening match of ESL One Birmingham 2017, in which EternaLEnVy’s DD max agility Morphling and Dj’s Desolator Io decimated the EG T4s and throne through backdoor in a matter of seconds.

This strategy, in our minds, is without a doubt the most innovative of the 2017-2018 season and truly deserving of this award.

LGD vs VP DAC 2018 - Uberlord into the Rosh Pit

We’ve seen plenty of outplays this year but this one stands out. Virtus Pro of all teams found themselves dancing in PSG.LGD’s palm as they set one of the most creative traps we’ve seen. With VP in control of the map and PSG.LGD down a rax in mid and bottom, they all took the Uberlord straight to the Rosh Pit with VP unaware outside of it. The result was a game turning fight where a two man chrono set PSG.LGD up for a good fight, and then a 3 man static storm from xNova who was still hiding inside the pit turned it into a great one. This set PSG.LGD up to push down mid and end the game. It was truly an incredible play to make and a great call in the heat of the moment.

Abed’s Fountain Dives

The elimination match between Fnatic and Mineski reached a point in which throwing the lead of Fnatic was a stunt that not even Jacky Mao was capable of pulling off. This is when the young star Abed, playing on Huskar, took the place of the legend himself and ended up not once but twice in the enemy’s fountain before his team could secure a second set of barracks.

But, there are always two sides of the story and this play is not an exception. As we look at the play to elaborate, we can see that Moon blinked away from the Life Break two times; intentionally pulling Abed close to the fountain. The first dive involved a lot of bad luck for Abed since it has an Aegis expiration, ethereal saves and some evident miss clicks. We've all been there, just not with the same amount of pressure on us to perform.

Grand Finals, Game 4

Long have we waited for a Grand Final that can outshine the TI3 one; and we got the best contender this year. A lot of factors make this game stand out compared to the others – which were also very good, but the buildup, the tension of this match makes OG’s comeback, or resilience in this case, more impressive. PSG.LGD just took two consecutive and very clear victories over OG, everything forecasted the end of the miraculous run for the Green Dream as the tradition of Eastern year was meant to be kept.

And pretty early, the game suggested that a Chinese team was going to lift the Aegis as the Top Lane, in which both carries were, didn’t have a clear winner but Somnus’ Blood Seeker destroyed Topson’s Invoker with amazing ease in the mid lane. Only Ceb on the bottom lane with his Axe was having a nice time Against Chalice Brewmaster, who decided to take a piece of Topson’s cake and grab some easy money.

Time came to take care of the only lane that was not going according to PSG.LGD’s plan; the bottom lane in which Ceb was happily farming. As the top CS in the map, getting this kill into Somnus was going to skyrocket him into an unstoppable force – but he did hit a big red mountain. A failed gank into Ceb’s Axe meant a dead Somnus and a signal of what was coming. Nobody could believe it.

Time after time after the mid game, Ceb was ready to get the crucial Berserker’s Call on the key target, setting up comeback-sun strikers for Topson or giving space to Ana and Jerax in their PL + Io combo. Even when PSG.LGD looked like finally having a solid lead, a great Call from Ceb punishes Ame’s greediness as Ceb disabled the Morphling who was looking to put Ana’s PL on a game-ending dieback status. It was enough to give his carry the time he needed to become the strongest hero in the map, despite being two barracks down later on. The comeback was real.
This match is far from being as well played as our pick for the best overall game of the year. This one is way, way messier but the amount of momentum changes from one side to the other, with so much on the line, with such an unexpected hero and with such a big impact is definitively a TI classic match.

Ana

Image credit: hexhaven
While it is somewhat of a cliché that a core always wins the post-game MVP awards in the dota client, Ana is definitely deserving of overall MVP for TI8. Not just for his flashy dodges on PL and Ember in the grand finals, but for overall amazing play in both a strategic and mechanical sense.
His Spectre was incredible, which is a somewhat rare sentence. Spectre is Spectre, I would normally think – not much difference between a T1 or T2 carry on the hero. He farms and presses r when his team asks him to, with some variance on the farm. PSG.LGD vs OG upper bracket finals game 3 proved me wrong. OG came out of the laning stage down 6k gold at the 13:30 mark. What follows is a masterclass on how to stall a game, and how to take advantage of a stalled game. LGD spends much of the game chasing Spectre around almost aimlessly, which is a pattern that repeats itself in one of the later matchups between the two. He was able to successfully dictate the terms of the game to his opponents, and demonstrated this capability multiple times throughout the tournament. This shows an incredibly high mastery and understanding of the game.

This mastery was on clearest display in game 1 of the Grand Finals, where his Spectre was first picked. Spectre is a notoriously easy hero to punish when picked early due to its laning. The laning was punished by LGD, with OG being down 5k gold at the 10 minute mark. Ana was 4-4-4 by the 12 minute mark, marking that he was being exceptionally active on the hero early on, in contrast to the typical play style of the hero. At the 15 minute mark, LGD is chasing OG uphill after a fight has gone poorly for OG and OG is trying to disengage. It looks like everything is going perfectly for LGD – they easily take Topson’s MK down, and an uncharacteristically poor fissure from Jerax seems to have blocked N0tail’s WW into death. Then, when Maybe zips into tower range, he gets stunned by an Enchant totem and almost instantly killed by a haunt from Ana. The important part here is that Ana had haunt available for the entirety of the chase. He just wasn’t using it until the timing was absolutely perfect – had he not been able to take Storm out entirely in the short duration of enchant totem, then Storm would have easily gotten away. So Ana had to wait for his team to whittle through Maybe’s HP pool, all while the situation looked terrible for his team. A haunt at any point earlier in the sequence would probably have saved some of his team, but it wouldn’t have gotten any kills for them, especially not on as high value of a target as Maybe.

Consistently throughout the tournament, Ana somehow always managed to get more from a lane than he should have, applying to basically every hero he played. This is something of a change from his tenure on the previous OG, where he was occasionally criticized for being a poor laner. He was always a phenomenal late game player, but he stepped up all parts of his game for this tournament.

Runner Up: Fy

OG

Image credit: Yamato
To be fair, we were probably too harsh on OG when we ranked them dead last coming into Vancouver, but it made their fairy tale run to the championship that much more exciting. With hindsight now ruling supreme everyone and their mothers “totally” saw it coming, but did they really?

Sure enough the beginning of the DPC had been good for the Green Dream but lasting success was not to be had. With 2 subpar performances at two Majors Resolut1on was cut and Ceb became part of the active roster. A clear downgrade it seemed and the following nosedive throughout the season apparently confirmed that. But there was still worse to come. As TI drew closer Fly and s4 decided to cut their losses and abandon ship.

The news detonated on the scene like a bomb. The long-standing friendship between Fly and N0tail was over as the captain left the bridge. Disemboweling OG at such a critical time right before the qualifiers for Vancouver began was considered by many to be the death knell for OG. Thrown right into the thick of things N0tail & Co. rebounded and decided to put their trust into Ana (once more) and the unproven young gun Topson.

Although both players certainly had the potential to compete, the question remained whether or not they would mesh in time. Ana had been inactive for the better part of the year and Topson was mostly famous for his pub performances, not exactly aces you would like to pull out of your sleeve.

Defying the world that wrote them off, they took the EU qualifier spot to make it to Vancouver. But even then many (including me) wrote them off simply as beneficiaries of a weak region and gave them little thought.
As the tournament started OG played their role in that script and were lurking on the lower end of their group stage table for the first 2 days. Inching just above the Upper Bracket cutoff I thought them once more lucky and bet my prediction tokens on VG.J Storm thinking it an easy guaranteed windfall. In what turned out to be only the first of many surprises along their way to their championship OG crushed Group B’s first seed.

Surely their “luck” was bound to run out, or so I did think. But OG in Vancouver became the living embodiment of “never give up, never surrender”. Repeatedly going up against “on paper” stronger teams and in many maps facing networth disadvantages from 5 to 10k+ the Green Dream was indomitable despite all the odds. Prevailing against the Curse of the Chinese year OG and their rebirth from the ashes were easily the surprise of the tournament.

The other surprise of this tournament linked to OG’s crowning achievement was the demise of China. In all the years past the rule that “China shows up during TI” held true, but TI8 marks the first time that only a single Chinese team is present among the 8 best teams in the world.

Fy’s Snowball Saves - Grand Finals Game 4

Every year we gather at TI to witness the pinnacle of play and every year the pros deliver in spectacular fashion. Canada was no exception and we were lucky enough to be forced to choose between several massive plays.

In the end we decided to give this award to a player who has now cruelly lost twice in TI-Finals, fy. Throughout the entire tournament the star support player for PSG.LGD had been absolutely stunning in his performances. Not only successfully roaming in a meta where roaming was nearly dead, but also time and again putting the team on his back. The specific play we honor are his multiple insane Snowball Saves during Game 4 of the Grand Finals. WIthout his standout performance on Tusk, there would have been no PSG.LGD comeback that almost snatched victory away from OG. With superb positioning and timing fy turned a picture-perfect initiation on Maybe and Chalice by Ceb on its head. He successfully saved his teammates and buys enough time for Brew to get his Primal Split off, turning the game into the favor of the Chinese team in the resulting teamfight in which they rout OG.

Although the play was not enough to take down OG entirely (or even only that game 4), the calm demeanor as fy just goes in for a game-changing play deserves to be credited as absolutely outstanding.

Topson

Source: Valve
It would be exceedingly difficult to not give this award to Topson, merely for being an almost entirely new face to the scene while being on the team that won TI. However, his play more than justifies him the award. He was more than a mere warm body OG found to fill the seat of their mid, Topson was an integral part of OG’s victory at TI.

His somewhat unusual hero pool aided in limiting opponent’s drafts. While Invoker was not exactly a rare pick at TI, the style Topson played definitely was. Most of his games were played with a quas wex style that has grown increasingly rare since its glory days at TI2, to the extent that his usage of a Quas Exort build during the grand finals came as a total shock to casters and viewers. Monkey King was a hero that was 2-8 at TI, with both of those two wins coming from Topson, forcing out some crucial bans for the hero later on in the tournament, including the Grand Finals with bans from PSG.LGD. While his Arc Warden had an unimpressive winrate(1-2), the sole win he had left deep scars on PSG.LGD, as they banned the hero in 4 of the grand final matches. Topson’s most well known hero is definitely his invoker, but his deadliest was one that we saw far less of. His Pugna was 9-0, going back to the TI qualifiers, and he was only able to show it off 3 times at TI proper. It was banned every game of the Grand Finals by PSG.LGD. While his hero pool was not exactly gigantic – he only played 9 heroes at TI8-his out of the meta heropool was a massive aid to OG.

He also just didn’t tilt. This is one of the most difficult parts of the game for any player, be they a pro or pub player. The additional pressure added by playing at TI can make even the staunchest of resolves falter. We’ve seen pros who have had notable success at other, smaller LANs, suddenly crack under pressure at TI and begin making uncharacteristic mistakes. Topson was a relative unknown before TI, with little LAN experience at all. OG’s style was such that they started the majority of their games from behind – and not just slightly behind. Routinely coming back from being down 3-5K at the 10 minute mark was something of a hallmark of their play. This quality of Topson’s was most evident in game 4 of the grand finals. While his team did not wind up being terribly far behind after laning stage due to Ceb free-farming, Topson was 0-4 by the 6 minute mark and was level 4 vs a level 7 bloodseeker, having lost his tower. In spite of this, Topson came back to be the highest net worth by the 35 minute mark, and managed to constantly stay relevant throughout the game through sunstrikes while farming to catch up. He even enabled a miraculous 2v5 hold through some clever creep cutting with forge spirits. This was in an elimination match in the finals of TI, where OG were already down 1-2.

While there were the occasional hiccups such as an ill-timed tornado saving opponents from an RP, he was able to match any of the TI Caliber mids put against him, with the occasional shocking solo kills. He played more like a seasoned veteran than he did a newcomer, and for that reason he’s given the award.