Season 2 of the Dota 2 DPC 2021 is finally over, and that means the qualified teams are now preparing for WePlay AniMajor.
To be held at the WePlay Esports Arena in Kyiv, the first set of matches starts June 2 with the Grand Final on June 13. The prize pool is $500,000 with total DPC Points of 2,700.
Tournament Format
Before we look at the teams, let’s take a quick look at the format. The WePlay AniMajor starts with the Wild Card Stage from June 2 to 3. Six teams fight in a single round-robin all at best-of-two. Only the top two teams will move to the next stage while the rest gets eliminated.
Next is the Group Stage from June 4 to 7. Here, eight teams participate in a single-round robin at Bo2 as well. The top two teams will advance to the Upper Bracket of the Playoffs as the next four teams will go to the Lower Bracket. The bottom two teams get eliminated.
Playoffs begin June 9 played in a double elimination and best-of-three. For the Grand Final, all matches are played in best-of-five.
It’s pretty much like the previous Major and again the prize pool and points allotment isn’t that fair. To get a share of the prize pool and DPC Points, teams need to reach at least round two of the Lower Bracket.
Teams
With the format out of the way, let's see which teams qualified and what their current placements are. To get better context, we’ll put in what their placement was in the previous Major (in parenthesis). The teams are:
- Wild Card
- Team Nigma (Wild Card)
- Team Secret (Playoffs)
- Vici Gaming (Wild Card)
- Invictus Gaming (Playoffs)
- Execration (Did not Qualify)
- AS Monaco Gambit (Wild Card)
- Group Stage
- Team Liquid (Wild Card)
- PSG.LGD (Wild Card)
- TNC Predator (Did not Qualify)
- Team Spirit (Did not Qualify)
- Evil Geniuses (Playoffs)
- beastcoast (Playoffs)
- Playoffs
- Alliance (Group Stage)
- Virtus.pro (Playoffs)
- Team Aster (Group Stage)
- T1 (Wild Card)
- Quincy Crew (Group Stage)
- NoPing e-sports (Did not Qualify)
Regional Results
For Western Europe, North America, and China, the same teams qualified but as you can see above, the differences are the placements.
In Eastern Europe (formerly CIS), VP retained the top position and Spirit managed to secure the second spot. Finally, ASM maintained the third position to join the Major at the Wild Card. In South America, NoPing started strong, winning the first six games. It lost to beastcoast resulting in a tie-breaker, however, NoPing won that match and secured a playoffs placement.
The most disappointing though would be the results in SEA. In Season 1, it was Fnatic that took the region’s top spot. The team had some difficulty in Season 2 and still had a chance to be part of the Major. Yet they lost the tiebreaker to Execration.
So what do you think? How is the tournament going to play out?
