Road to TI12: Team Liquid

The International 12 is scheduled to take place in October and will feature the best 20 Dota teams of 2023. Among them, Team Liquid is definitely one of the strongest.

The Western European crew finished Dota Pro Circuit in 1^st place this year, with a total of 2150 points. Despite the many losses they suffered in Grand Finals, their results were remarkable.

Team Liquid’s results

Team Liquid had good results at every single Dota 2 tournament this year, with one exception: DreamLeague S20, where they finished 15^th-16^th. Apart from that disappointment, everything they did was a big success:

• Tour 1: 1^st place
• Tour 2: 1^st place
• Tour 3: 4^th place
• Lima Major: 2^nd place
• DreamLeague S19: 2^nd place
• ESL One Berlin Major: 2^nd place
• Bali Major: 2^nd place
• Riyadh Masters 2023: 2^nd place

They lost five Grand Finals, which probably hurts a lot, but they proved to be incredibly consistent. At The International 12, Liquid should easily finish in the top four, unless of course they’re unlucky enough to run into two formidable opponents that manage to defeat them before they get to that stage of the tournament.

Team Liquid’s strengths

Liquid have many strengths. First of all, the roster hasn’t suffered any modifications since the start of the season. And even then, only one player was changed. Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen retired and his place was taken by Michal “Nisha” Jankowski from Team Secret.

Prior to this roster change, Liquid had played with the same people for more than a year. In fact, three members of this team have been here since the end of 2019. This means that the core Liquid roster has more than three and a half years competing as a unit.

🥳Happy birthday @zai_2002❤️ pic.twitter.com/Jyt5CfzAN1

— Chloe/Elya (@LiquidElya) August 5, 2023

At the highest level of Dota, this is a strength that’s very hard to match. It takes months and even years to forge a strong roster in which people know and trust each other. Optimizations happen over time, experience is gained in the same way.

When you’ve been playing with the same people for years, you know exactly what to do in every situation. These guys probably have somewhere between 5000 and 8000 hours of experience competing as a team. Most teams have only a few thousand hours, because they regularly change their players.

Another strength of Liquid is that of the individual players. Some of them, such as Nicha and Ludwig “zai” Wahlberg, are among the best in the world at their roles.

Header: Team Liquid