WePlay Dota League Season 3 Winners Spotlight – MVP Phoenix
For four days, Kiev was the battleground for eight teams fighting for the WePlay Dota League Season 3 championship title and a share of a prize pool of $208,239. This was also the first Premier tournament played in the new 6.87 patch.
The winners were MVP Phoenix, whose dominant play was no match for the other teams in the tournament. The Koreans lost just two games out of 11 and left no doubt that they were the best side there.
Having had an impressive performance in Shanghai, where they finished 4th, the SEA team’s achievement wasn’t much of a surprise, particularly as it followed good play over the last couple of months. This included winning the Dota Pit League Season 4 back in March.
The team played a qualifying round for Kiev, but eventually got an invitation from organizers WePlay due to their strong form.
Road to the Grand Finals
To reach the Grand Finals, MVP had to overcome EG, Ad Finem and Vega Squadron in Group B. Their first encounter with the Russian-Ukrainian side saw MVP defeated in a best-of-one 30-minute affair as Vega successfully contained MVP’s early aggression. This setback didn’t deter MVP though as they managed to go through to the Winners’ Bracket after beating Ad Finem and EG.
They then played against home favourites Na’Vi in the semi-finals. In the first match, their greedy line-up paid off as MVP were able to resist a stronger early game Na’Vi side before winning in the late game. The key to this was the strong performance from QO’s Alchemist, who picked up 1034 GPM, the highest GPM in the tournament.
In the second match, MVP had to come from behind having spent much of the encounter on the back-foot. Their success was largely down to Bounty Hunter Track kills, which helped them stay in the game in the beginning and gain advantage later.
Having successfully navigated past Na’Vi, MVP then faced Vega Squadron in the Winners’ Finals in a best-of-three rematch. Here, MVP won two highly competitive games, coming from behind in the latter stages of both with what seemed to be line-ups more suited to the early game. This was largely down to their excellent execution and a couple of bad team fights from Vega.
The Grand Final
This win sent them straight to the best-of-five Grand Finals, where they had to wait for the winner between Vega Squadron and EG in the Losers’ Finals. The CIS team proved the ones who wanted it more and went on to face MVP for a decisive third clash between what were clearly the two strongest teams in the tournament.
Game one started with MVP having the better draft on paper, getting their hands on Slardar (which had proven key in their previous encounters), while Vega relied on the Lone Druid getting its radiance and avoiding early fights. MVP applied pressure from the start, while Slardar had room to farm for his key items. The crucial point in the game came around the 20th minute, when thanks to the Aegis from Roshan, MVP managed to team wipe Vega and gain an unassailable advantage (MVP Phoenix 1 – 0 Vega Squadron).
The draft for the second game promised a more competitive affair, with Vega picking a strong team fight line-up including Gyrocopter, Void and Puck, while MVP similarly offered a team fight composition adapted for early game pressure with Earth Spirit, Venomancer, Nature’s Prophet and yet again Slardar.
Right from the start, everything that MVP tried proved to be successful, with rotations, ganks and tower pushes exposing weaknesses in Vega’s ability to gank.
MVP went for Roshan around the 14-minute mark after wiping four of Vega. Vega committed two more heroes with buybacks, who died without accomplishing anything. The CIS team managed to deter MVP’s 16th minute high ground advances by pulling a very strong 5vs5 team fight, but this wasn’t enough to get them back into the game and MVP were able to secure their second consecutive victory (MVP Phoenix 2 – 0 Vega Squadron).
Vega Squadron didn’t despair and decided to go for an early aggression line-up in game three.
This time they had Slardar and their line-up had a good ganking synergy. MVP went for an offensive trilane featuring Juggernaut, Witch Doctor and Jakiro and this performed well, managing to secure them an early five-minute bottom tower takedown. However, Vega started forcing more and more fights with their Earth Spirit and Disruptor and decimated four MVP heroes in the 12th minute. They destroyed three more and had a tower takedown in the 13th, and secured a team wipe in the 14th. By the 18th minute the team wipes stood at three and MVP’s suffering finally ended when Vega started a careful mid high ground push around the 28th minute which saw them to victory (MVP Phoenix 2 – 1 Vega Squadron).
Vega started game four on the Radiant side with confident picking. Their line-up consisted of strong early pushing heroes and featured Drow Ranger and Nature’s Prophet.
This offered them little room for error as they needed to gain a significant advantage from the start as leading was important for their strategy to work. This did not happen. MVP countered with a greedy line-up featuring mid Venomancer and a safe lane Alchemist as the main core. Just as the draft suggested, Vega applied early pushing and were initially very successful until a tier 2 top push around the 11th minute ended in the worst way possible for them. The tides of battle turned from this moment and the Alchemist started building significant gold advantage, which by the 20th minute was out of control.
Vega didn’t have the damage to kill him, nor the sustainability for team fights, and were beaten in 24 minutes (MVP Phoenix 3 – 1 Vega Squadron).
Where MVP impressed
MVP demonstrated their wide hero pool by using 27 heroes throughout the tournament, including some rarely picked ones such as Bristleback and Zeus. Nevertheless, tactically they were quite one-tracked, as they tended to use line-ups that are good at applying relentless pressure from the start. MVP showed that they can win against more aggressive early game rosters (for example in game 1 vs Na’Vi), but that they are at risk of receiving a taste of their own medicine too (for example in the losing game 3 vs Vega in the Grand Finals).
The most used and successful hero for MVP in the Main Event was Witch Doctor (6 wins, 1 loss), while QO’s Slardar instilled fear into Vega Squadron’s ranks (3 games, 100% win rate) in the Winners’ Finals and in the Grand Finals. Axe (3 wins, 0 losses) and Alchemist (2 wins, 0 losses) were another two cores whose successful performances proved instrumental for securing wins.
Hero pick/ban rate (Main Event + Qualifiers):
| Top 5 Hero Picks | Top 5 Hero Bans |
| 1. Witch Doctor 11
2. Invoker 7 3. Bounty Hunter 5 3. Tidehunter 5 5. Ember Spirit 4 |
1. Chen 7
1. Enchantress 7 1. Bounty Hunter 7 4. Clinkz 6 5. Beastmaster 4 |
Main Event
Highest win rate – 81.8% (9 wins, 2 losses)
Highest Team KDA rating – 4.28
2nd best Average Team GPM (2218), behind Team Empire (2241)
Highest XPM – 2135
Highest overall average GPM – QO (657)
2nd best KDA rating – MP (9,59), behind No[o]ne (9,99)
