Sixteen eSports organizations are fortunate enough to appear in the biggest eSports tournament in history – The Dota 2 International Tournament, but the more jaded viewers know that not all teams are created equal. Certain teams just don’t have a shot.
That said, it’s rare for that less-optimistic sentiment to come from a player, particularly one on a team at the tournament, but that appears to be the case with Lee “Forev” Sang-Don, offlaner for Digital Chaos. Forev thinks that team LFY will be represented in the finals, but, when GameRevolution suggested that they could be facing Digital Chaos during that round, Forev could only laugh.
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This sentiment is especially surprising for anyone on Digital Chaos, who actually split their best-of-two series with the top-seeded LFY, making up one of only two games that LFY lost during the entire group stages. But, Forev doesn’t feel like LFY was bringing their A-game during their second match.
“Their lineup wasn’t good – Omniknight mid, offlane Pugna,” Forev said. “I think, to be honest, they already qualified for the upper bracket. They probably just drafted [heroes] randomly because they didn’t want to show their strategies.”
While the team “Digital Chaos” did place second in the International 2016, but that was with an entirely differnet roster. Digital Chaos has an entirely new team, and Forev is the newest member, joining in May of this year. Forev doesn’t diminish the accomplishments Digital Chaos has made so far, especially as a new team, battling through the qualifiers to make it to the group stage, and then fighting through the group stage to avoid premature elimination.
“I’m really proud,” Forev said. “We made this TI through the qualifier. We’ve had some discussion about what we’re going to do against some teams in the main stage, and I can tell them my opinion about everything. We’re half worried, half hyped.”
Indeed, it isn’t all pessimism, and Forev admits that he still “hopes,” Digital Chaos can go all the way. That said, Forev seems to put a lot of the team’s success or failure on his own shoulders.
“Sometimes I play awesome, sometimes really bad,” Forev said. “I want to be more consistent. If I play well, we can win this tournament.”
More than anything, Forev is cognizant of the long road ahead. Digital Chaos has to play through the lower bracket, which means one loss will eliminate them, and their first game is the dreaded best-of-one format, meaning there is zero margin for error, so their tournament may be over just as quickly as it begins.
Their first match will be played later today against iG.Vitality, who also struggled in the group stage, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.
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