Monday can be a slow, quiet day but I’m certainly invigorated by the yelling and explosions of competitive Dota 2 [official site]. Valve’s second big tournament of the season, the Kiev Major, kicked off its Group Stage this morning. This is two days of Swiss group battling to determine brackets for the Main Event, which will start on Thursday. How’s it going so far? Well! I can tell you that there were wizards, then the wizards fought other wizards, then there were fewer wizards. As ever, the competition is streaming on Twitch and Dota 2’s ace in-game spectator system. The Group Stage sees sixteen teams playing four best-of-three games. Then the Main Event will bring single-elimination brackets with best-of-three matches, culminating in a best-of-five Grand Final. That is a fair bit of Doting to watch. Four matches are in progress as I write this and heck, I guess this will all create enough Dota that you could watch the Kiev Major all day up until Sunday’s final. I haven’t watched pro Dota in yonks so I’m quite enjoying figuring out… whatever the meta is now. I have no idea. Quite different to what I last knew. I’m not even sure who I want to support. The whole shebang is tracked through Dota 2’s in-game Battle Pass sticker album doodad but Liquipedia seems a good source for following in text. Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
