The Dota 2 Asia Championships group stage finished with a fair number of surprises. Empire and OG are the western teams to have secured an upper bracket seed. Newbee and Invictus Gaming are the two Chinese representatives joining them.
The third and last group stage day of DAC concluded disastrously for NA Dota fans, but there’s great news for the CIS region as Team Empire managed to secure a draw against the TI6 champions, Wings Gaming, and claimed the second spot in group A. In group B, the Chinese squads prevailed and the top two places were claimed by Invictus Gaming and Newbee. IG secured their top seed of the group at the end of day two, while the second place in the group was basically decided in a Chinese vs NA battle.
At the end of day two, NP was sat in second spot and needed only a draw score against Newbee to make the upper bracket dream come true. EG’s winning condition was to swipe through IG with a 2-0 victory, but none of these things happened. Both Evil Geniuses and NP had lackluster performances on last day of the group stage, where sloppy plays and questionable decisions got them in trouble. Third place in the group was important as well, as it gives advantage of choosing opponents in the first lower bracket round. Unfortunately for NP, they lost the tiebreaker with Team Liquid for that one as well.
For the main event double elimination bracket, the winners of each group got seeded against the team placed second in the other group. The lower bracket pairings were made according to the third place finishers choices. The first round in the lower bracket is a best-of-one match and because LFY, placed third in group A, picked iG Vitality for their first round, while Liquid picked Team Faceless, an interesting TI5 vs TI6 champions matchup will occur on the first day of the main event. Wings Gaming and Evil Geniuses are bound to fight each other for their tournament lives on the 1st of April.
The DAC 2017 main event will kick off with the upper bracket series followed by the lower bracket matches. The entire first round of the lower bracket will be played on the opening day.
1st of April schedule:
03:00 CEST: OG vs Newbee
06:00 CEST: Invictus Gaming vs Team Empire
11:00 CEST: LFY vs iG Vitality
12:30 CEST: NP vs VG J
14:00 CEST Wings Gaming vs Evil Geniuses
15:30 CEST Team Liquid vs Faceless
