In what was the most entertaining grand final best-of-five outside of Moonduck’s Elimination Mode, Virtus.pro took home a second consecutive victory at The Summit and $42,500 in prize money.
After receiving some criticism for having a limited hero pool, Virtus.pro took it upon themselves to experiment with the plethora of heroes available in Dota 2. Until the fifth game of the grand final, Virtus.pro didn’t pick a single hero more than once. The series featured some pretty spectacular losses, but was equally impressive when Virtus.pro was winning. A few of the picks didn’t work, support Brewmaster and ‘carry’ Monkey King both disappointed, but this was a learning experience. Team Secret put up a commendable effort, and certainly made Virtus.pro work for their win, but in the end they were simply outclassed by their Russian/Ukrainian opponents. I won’t go into much detail about the individual matches because I don’t want to spoil them before people have a chance to watch.
If there was any doubt about Virtus.pro’s International 2017 invite, the win here has put that to rest. The team looked weak at EPICENTER: Moscow, where they were eliminated in the first round of playoffs by Team Liquid, but that shouldn’t matter very much, especially considering Liquid went on to win EPICENTER.
Team Secret still remains on the fence for a direct invitation to The International 2017. They had a poor showing at the Manila Masters where they were eliminated by Team NP, finishing in last place, but quickly bounced back with a top four finish at EPICENTER. The team’s performance at The Summit was certainly impressive, but the quality of their competition makes a direct invite based on this result unlikely. VGJ, Na’Vi, Team Empire and Digital Chaos are all weaker teams, meaning Secret’s only real competition at The Summit 7 was Team NP, LGD and Virtus.pro. Secret’s recent form has certainly been enough to secure them a spot in the European closed qualifier, which they should be able to win easily.
Jack Ballenger 