The uncrowned king of The International has returned for another attempt at claiming the much-wanted Aegis of Champions.
“China is back!” the entire Dota 2 community thought in December of last year when Azure Ray took home the championship title at the first LAN of the new season. It was during ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 when Wang "Ame" Chunyu also announced his intention to return to competitive play.
Little did we know back then that, in fact, three of the Azure Ray members had already made up their minds and would leave the organization to join Ame at Xtreme Gaming. Immediately after they claimed the trophy in Kuala Lumpur, Xm, XXs, and XinQ left the team, regrouped under the Xtreme Gaming banner, and began the long quest of making sure Ame gets to TI again.
Xtreme Gaming roster
Wang “Ame” ChunyuHongcheng “Xm” GuoJing “Xxs” LinZixing “XinQ” ZhaoCong “Dy” Ding
coach: Wang "Maps" Yutian
Ame’s return
photo credits: PGL
Ame pulled a “Chinese retirement” after ending TI11 in the lowest placement of his career, top 6, and stayed away from the competitive scene for a full year. He began to trust himself again after being pulled into the Hangzhou Asian Games, which took place in an Olympic format at the end of 2023. He took the Gold medal there, alongside some of his old LGD teammates, including XinQ.
After his first official matches in the 2024 competitive season Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk praised Ame, posting on Telegram the following: “After watching 10 minutes of Ame's game on Naga, I can officially say that this is the most beautiful carry game I've watched in the last year.”
For the Dota 2 fans, that marked the beginning of a Yatoro-Ame bromance that lasted for the whole year so far and for sure will be carried onto the TI stage as well.
While Ame himself stays humble and even said to us in an interview at DreamLeague Season 22 that he doesn’t think he is as good as Yatoro says he is, his teammates also pointed out that he is a changed person and a different player now.
After claiming the title at Elite League in April, Xm mentioned in an interview with Perfect World that he sees “a change in personality” for Ame and that he is now “more mature.” With his return, Ame has also started to have more in-game responsibilities and is now making decisions for the whole team and is more vocal.
Xtreme Gaming are heading into The International 2024 as one of the directly invited teams and one of the favourites at the title. They claimed three trophies this year, with the last one being at Clavision: Snow Ruyi, which was held during the first days of the 7.37 patch. While each of the Xtreme members has about 30 different heroes played before TI, their strategies almost always relied on early distraction provided by the mid and the offlane in order to give Ame the space needed to farm.
Xtreme Gaming’s most successful hero pairings before TI13
The X(inQ) factor
While Ame is without a doubt one of the strongest carry players in the scene, Xtreme also benefit from having one of the most atypical position 4 players. XinQ has an interpretation of his own of early aggression.
He can test everyone’s limits with a Monkey King that for the first 10 minutes can stay at level 2 Tree Dancing between the enemy towers or even in the enemy base killing every single courier on the map. He can also entirely destroy any team’s safe lane duo with a Hoodwink, Marci, Mirana or Dark Willow, or he can go full beast mode and transition into a full-fledged core on an Earthshaker, Tiny, or Muerta. It almost feels like XinQ has an infinite hero pool, while excelling at any hero he might end up with in the draft. He is for sure one of the most hard to read players and that’s what makes him a great asset for Xtreme to have.
The team has already shown that they intend to play the 7.37 meta rather than trying to counter it. They claimed the Snow Ruy championship title with Ame playing 15 different heroes, including Lina, Muerta, and Broodmother. While it’s unclear how the teams will address the 7.37c patch that just dropped on August 29, all the Xtreme players seem pretty committed to fast paced, zoo type of games.
This might very well be Ame’s last attempt at getting his name engraved on the Aegis of Champions. Throughout his career, he reached the grand finals twice, he placed third once and has one top 4 and one top 6 finish.
Probably one of the best stories of The International 2024 would be to see an Ame vs Yatoro grand final, and if that happens, for many of the fans, it wouldn’t even matter who wins anymore, as for sure we would witness some of the best Dota ever played.
More team profiles
- TI13 Cloud9: How to Tame the Beasts
- TI13 Aurora: Finding the perfect Nether Swap
- TI13 1win: The Gale Force from the east
- TI13 Heroic: Learn to Tango
- TI13 Team Zero: Out of the Shadow Realm
- TI13 Team Liquid: Can they Pierce the Veil?
- TI13 nouns: Rearm and try anew
- TI13 Talon Esports: The return of Iron Talon
- TI13 beastcoast: A youthful Savage Roar
- TI13 G2.iG: The Unstable Concoction
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