Azure Ray qualifies for The International 12

Unfortunately for Western Dota 2 fans, Sumail “Sumail” Hassan, also nicknamed The King, will not compete in this year’s edition of The International. Team Aster was eliminated in the Chinese qualifier for the tournament by one of the underdogs, Team Bright, and the competition was won by Azure Ray.

For anyone who is familiar with Azure Ray’s story, this result is not surprising at all. After all, this team includes some of the biggest names in the history of the game. Players like Lu “Somnus” Yao and Xu “fy” Linsen finished The International in the top four in four different years!

With these kinds of results, the only thing that’s surprising is that they had to compete in a qualifier to get invited to the great event. The causes that led to this participation are easy to understand. Azure Ray was formed only in May this year, so there was no way for them to get a direct invite to TI12.

Azure Ray secure a slot at The International Dota 2 Championships 2023 from the China Regional Qualifiers. Congratulations. #TI12 #Dota2 pic.twitter.com/LysgBrkPW5

— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) August 21, 2023

Azure Ray’s path to victory

The qualifier featured 13 teams, but only four of them had realistic chances of winning: Team Aster, Azure Ray, Invictus Gaming, and Xtreme Gaming. Among these four, Aster and Azure were regarded as being much stronger than the rest.

Under normal conditions, they would have met in the Grand Final. But unfortunately, Aster had two bad matches. One against Xtreme, in the upper bracket, and one against Bright, in the lower bracket. Their elimination made Azure’s mission three times easier.

The team led by fy started the tournament with a 2-1 victory against Bright, who proved to be really tough to beat despite losing the first game in just 18 minutes. In the next round of the upper bracket, Azure had to face Invictus Gaming and won in two relatively quick games, using heroes like Terrorblade, Lycan, and Templar Assassin.

In the upper bracket Final, Azure lost game 1 against Xtreme and gave the impression that they might lose the entire match. But thanks to brilliant drafts that featured Invoker, Puck, and Witch Doctor, they managed to win the last two games and qualify for the Grand Final.

Here, they once again played against Xtreme. But this time they were much better prepared and chose to play lineups that can easily trap one enemy hero and kill him quickly. The score was 3-1 and all three games were won using Clockwerk.

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