EG and Secret Fall Apart, OG and Newbee Dominant
The Manila Major is well underway and has seen some incredible Dota. The groupstage was a success, but the playoffs have shown that we have not seen everything yet.
EG and Secret with no improvement
The attention was definitely drawn towards the lower bracket with numerous big names present. Evil Geniuses and Team Secret were teams that--despite weak performances going into the Major--still had some fans and experts believing in them. The weak performance of the groupstage continued for both as they were eliminated by VG.Reborn and Team Empire respectively.
Neither line-up showed any promise of improvement whatsoever and it eventually led to a very sudden roster change, as Universe has now been announced to leave Secret for EG, switching places with Bulba. Simultaneously, rumors arose about zai returning to EG to replace Aui_2000.
While Team Empire has been eliminated in the meantime, Vici Gaming Reborn is still in the running and seems to improve with every performance.
NADota drops out early - SEA still fighting
Digital Chaos was the North-American hope in the upper bracket, but they were unable to capitalize on the momentum they had gained in the groupstage. The team was able to take a game off of Newbee, but ultimately dropped to the lower bracket where they lost to Vici Gaming Reborn.
CompLexity Gaming displayed a strong fighting spirit and took out Wings Gaming in a bo1, but ultimately stood no chance against Liquid and got eliminated 0-2.
South-East Asia may have lost Mineski early on vs Alliance, but both Fnatic and MVP.Phoenix are still in the running. MVP in fact eliminated Liquid in two quick games, but were eliminated just as quickly by OG. Fnatic won a nail biter vs LGD-Gaming--including a 
Terrorblade and 
Medusa pick in game 3 by Fnatic--but stood no chance against Newbee.
OG, Newbee and Liquid still favorites
Liquid may have been dropped to the lower bracket early on, but the team showed that they are very well capable of performing their best after taking out compLexity 2-0. OG and Newbee cement their positions at the top by walking through the upper bracket with ease. OG especially is strong, not dropping a single game and their star performer Miracle has yet to die a single time in the playoffs.
Playoff Meta
The playoffs has seen different picks already, with more and more Terrorblade pickups. An early 
Dragon Lance seems to work wonders on the hero and makes him even more fearsome.
A hero that seems to be a go-to hero in playoffs of big events is 
Tidehunter. In the entirety of the groupstage, he was picked 8 times and he has now been picked 9 times in the first three days of the playoffs. Similarly, 
Death Prophet was picked only 8 times during the group matches and is now one of the top picks in the playoffs with 13 appearances. This increase in pickrate has however affected her winrate as she is only successful 46% of the time as opposed to the 87% winrate before.
As for the top heroes going into the event, 
Beastmaster and 
Lifestealer are still very much up there, though 
Lion and 
Doom have dropped off quite significantly. With only 6 and 5 picks respectively so far, both heroes seem have fallen quite heavily out of favor, likely to 
Disruptor and Slardar.
THings to look out for
Both Fnatic and MVP.Phoenix can technically face one another in the lower bracket finals, if both advance--which would ensure at least one SEA team in the top 3. OG and Newbee will be a rematch of Epicenter: Moscow’s lower bracket finals, which OG took home 2-1. Both teams look incredibly strong right now and should make for some great dota.
Na’Vi and Liquid could be a one-sided match, however with the crowd on Na’Vi’s side, it could make for a great encounter.
94 heroes have been picked and in the current meta, heroes like 
Omniknight, 
Warlock or 
Ogre Magi could still be picked in certain scenarios. Or maybe Na’Vi will give the crowd what it wants--a 
Pudge pick.
Headline Image by: Epicenter.gg
this turnament is SO much fun to watch
Universe is back to EG?
abandoned LUL
So if EG is now shit, will it get worse if Artour comes back? 4Head
5th . .
6th ^^
should give them some respects, hope they can come back in future games
Didn't Newbee win the LBF at Epicenter, not OG?
10th? not bad
I have a feeling sumaiL is done on eg. I would love to see DC take off and perhaps they could use sumaiL. I feel like during secrets prime they played really well with EEnvy because he played very aggressive heroes like ember and slark. sumaiL could definitely bring some of that to DC considering they obviously have secret players now. W33 is fantastic don't get me wrong. I'm just saying he has a very limited hero pool and his pool consists of very flashy heroes rather than physical cores that escape extremely easy.
Woot! Vici Reborn!
Make fear carry = win ti6 LUL
Feels great to see all DotA's douchebags being pwned, namely RTZ, PPD and Puppey
GG compendium predictions. I'm done with Secret. I tried to stick it out. Sorry Puppey but this fail-fest has broken me.
I'm pretty sure Newbee won the lower bracket finals in epicenter moscow
All of you wishing negative things towards EG / Secret are all a bunch of haters.
EG won last TI, and has always placed on top 3 / top 5 in latest tournaments except the very last couple, With Arteezy they have an EXTREMELY high win rate, they literally won 2 games for every match they lost, which if you do the math averages to many series wins.
Secret are the champions of the last major before this one!! if that holds no weight, then why would you or anyone give a single fuck about this major?
Once they work through the roster changes and learn to play together as teams, EG and Secret will be shitting on all those chinese / european teams.
This patch is DEF a weird one. Life stealer is extremely op with 83% win rate in play offs, and that hero is boring as fuck to play.
Just my 2 cents,
TLDR: Stop hating on EG and Secret they will revert back to being great and they wil shit on all your fav teams.
(OG FAN HERE) Just think it's so lame to see haters of EG and Secret for no reason. you are haters and prob not even 5k
You probably have no understanding of dota, LOL (haters)
Yolo swag u noob shhhhh
YOLOSWAG YOUR EXPLANATION IS TOO GAY..GET A LIFE MAN
For me I am loving the current Navi line-up. I love how they are building off each other instead of just getting rid of players. Honestly it takes ages to make a good team you cant just keep swapping players on a regular basis. But what do I know, im just a low mmr pleb who plays to enjoy games.
i agree with you @yoloswag.........
Newbee will win this tournament, I guarantee it
just an edit. The Medusa & Terrorblade game from fanatic v LGD was in game 2 not game 3
#VoteWipsArcana
@YoloSwag i think u might actually be retarded.
So what if eg and secret were good? They're shit now and thats all that matters. NaVi won the first ti. Does that mean they're still the best????? Shitty logic. Most of the popular teams have won a competition or two.
""Once they work through the roster changes and learn to play together as teams"" <<< The fact that they can't even play as a team is what makes them shit and causes them to lose game. Of course if they work through it they'll be good. They're an all-star team after all. However, the undeniable truth is that they're shit now because of puppey's messing around when they had such a strong Shanghai major team with w33 and misery.
""""This patch is DEF a weird one. Life stealer is extremely op with 83% win rate in play offs, and that hero is boring as fuck to play.""" OK. So what you're saying here is that a fun hero makes the patch normal??? Then are all the patches "weird" because the at least 10 mins am need to farm before he can dominate the game is boring???? Boring heroes doesn't make them shit. Well, unless you think all supports and hard carries are shit. Lifestealer's high win rate and pick rate isn't for no reason. His infest bomb nukes most int or agi cores down.
TLDR: You're actually ignorant af and thinks you're the best like all other 1k scrubs lol
YoloSwag (EG SECRET FAN) here. i just think that theres something wrong with you m8. the two teams are shit now and you can't really argue that. tbh the "haters" are probs fans of eg/ secret that are disappointed with them. Og fans won't even give a fuck about those teams.
Btw ""Just think it's so lame to see haters of EG and Secret for no reason. you are haters"" Of course they're haters if you're talking to the haters
Well, at least Universe is back with EG. Should make for immediate improvements, although if they still insist in aui being the carry I don't see them defending their title.
Secret will forever be haunted by that team shuffle after winning Shanghai. I follow other sports and one thing holds true regardless of the sport, one of the most bone-headed things team management can do is break up a winning team and expect them to take off from there.
I think secrets worst decision was to replace W33 with Arteezy. Arteezy is more of a carry player than a mid, and doesn't have many signature heroes in the lane. The first thing I realized after the roster shuffle was that, we would no longer be seeing a mid earth spirit which was extremely devastating to teams playing secret on multiple occasions. They also lost the threat of a meepo, a hero which many teams have been banning against DC. I just feel that this roster change limited secret in what they could play, and the threats that they had in their pocket.
lololpolololololololooololololololo
Cyka blyat!
You could tell Universe did not like playing with EternalEnvy
NA ''Dota'' LUL
HAHAHHAAHHAAHAHA UNIVERSE KNEW THAT THEY HAD 28% WIN RATE WIH THEIR CURRENT ROSTER SO HE ABANDONED SHIP HAHAHAHAHA LMAO RTZ CURSE! A NEW MEME IS COMING BOIS!
Никто все равно не поймет что я напишу,поэтому,сосите писос,иностранцы,ну конечно все кроме стран СНГ. :)