The Dota 2 Arlington Major is about halfway done but we already have an idea of which teams are joining The International through a direct invite this early. There are actually six of them, and adding the four that already made it, we now have 10 teams ready to be part of TI.
Most of the teams managed to get the necessary points by simply qualifying for the Arlington Major. One of them is Beastcoast and it can be mainly attributed to their consistent performance throughout this DPC Season.
Meanwhile, two teams were able to get a spot by being in the upper bracket; they are Team Aster and Team Spirit. That’s because even if they lose their next two matches, they’re guaranteed at least 515 points.
BOOM Esports was also able to get some much-needed points after defeating Team Liquid. They already had a good placement in the DPC Rankings heading to the Arlington Major and the guaranteed 360 points earned them that direct invite.
Western Europe
An interesting thing in all this is related to two teams in Western Europe: Gaimin Gladiators and Tundra Esports. Gaimin Gladiators wasn’t able to qualify for the Arlington Major while Tundra was eliminated after the group stage.
The initial impression was that these two teams may need to go through the qualifiers. However, both teams earned the needed points to be part of TI. The simplest explanation is that the teams below them didn’t do so well so they got better placement in the rankings.
Then There Were 10
These six teams mentioned have now joined PSG.LGD, OG, Thunder Awaken, and TSM. That means there are now only two direct invites left for The International 2022.
A Curious Case
As of this writing, if you look at the current DPC Rankings, you’ll see that the remaining two direct invites are being fought over by four teams which are Evil Geniuses, Outsiders, Fnatic, and Entity. Of these teams, only EG has been eliminated from the Arlington Major.
However, it’s still difficult to see which one will make it. Outsiders and Entity are still in the running, and they could earn more DPC points depending on their final placement. The pressure is on Entity since they need more points.
The situation is likely to get a bit clearer once we know the result of the Fnatic versus Beastcoast match. It’s the first game on the third day of the playoffs so watch out for it.
What do you think so far of the teams joining The International 2022?
