Less Than 20 Days to Go

You wish.

Vici has been down for quite some time now. I don't think they'll go far, unfortunately.

Personally, I will be looking forward to see what team Empire can do. They've had many ups and some downs this season.

There is zero team diversity in the pros tbh. There is (say it like Chris Traeger) literally a QoP, SF, Clockwerk, Storm Spirit in every game. Picked or banned.

Diversity in the hero pool in the context of competitive games doesn't mean 10 new heroes in each game. That's unrealistic because likke in all competitive games, a meta game exists which makes certain heroes much better and much more reliable picks that others.

A diverse competitive hero pool is where one where the number of viable options is in and of itself large, and that you see more of these unique 4th and 5th picks. It can also be that the number of largely picked heroes is actually quite large as well

Not expecting a competitive game to centralize around certain heroes in a give patch is being a little short sighted.

This patch does have a pretty diverse hero pool of heroes that gets a lot of usage. Definately bigger than 6.84, and there's less centralizing around 2 heroes like there were in that patch.

TL;DR expect some diversity of picks, but remember there is still a lot of money on the line, so there will be a tight focus on the metagame

Why do you expect everything that was true in previous tournaments this year to exist at TI? All teams(especially the most hated ones like Na'Vi or Newbee) understand, that whatever was there before this tournament, whatever amount of time you failed miserably, it just doesn't matter. It means nothing, nobody will give a **** about your performance throughout the whole year if you win TI, or at least get in top3. So there will be some pocket strats for sure, and some teams may skyrocket suddenly while favorites may show disappointing results... like it was in TI4.

You mean qop SF or lesh :P (and tusk)

The obvious finalists would be secret and EG, but VG was the best team before they decided to participate in every lan, i hope that their pre TI rest has done them good!

I dont see empire go that far unless yoky plays out of his mind since he is their wildcard player.
The problem with empire at every TI was that they are always good but never exeptional, and that just isnt enough in the tournament where everyone gives their all.

Navi fans probably dont expect them to so that amazingly, i think they should be very happy if they manage to defeat teams like VP and empire.

Newbie will probably just end very low unless they suddenly got their **** together, i dont see them busting out new strats since xiao8 is on LGD, which is a very scary team BTW, i wouldnt be suprised if they go really far.

What do you guys think of Virtus.Pro?

They've been on a losing streak lately, but are still capable of beating teams like Na'vi and Empire.

VP has been doing pretty well lately, they are playing as i would expect. A good tier 2 team.
They have lost to the really good teams like EG, and beat the rest of the teams. I think they can beat teams like newbie, empire and teams like that.
Especially G has been playing insane, hes one of the best mids there is.

Best teams right now imo are Secret, EG, iG, VP and Empire.

VG hasn't been good since Black^ left. Their team relies a lot on individual decisions and Hao just doesn't have the game sense for this kind of team.

Newbee also hasn't been good since their post TI4 shuffle.

The one team that went from tier1 top team to lower tier2 is Navi. Without Puppey and Kuro they can't do anything. Their core players are extremely inflexible in their playstyle which makes winning extremely hard without a superior draft.

Cloud9 is pretty solid like always, but not top tier right now.

Among the rest I don't find any particulary noteworthy.

From all the teams the best drafters are the most likely to lead their team to victory.

C9 are I think the team to watch. Because they are the team that iirc all the top teams say they hate playing. Because they are incredibly unpredictable. On a bad day they forget TP scrolls and lose racks to rats as a result. On a good day they can go head to head and probably beat any other team on the world. And thus I think if any team other than EG can win a series against Secret, it's probably C9.

I say series, because I think almost every team in the main event can take a game off them with a bit of luck, but winning a series is a whole other thing.

Oh and I'm not a Secret Fanboy or anything hyping the team to death. I just legitimately believe they are the best team in the world by a long margin of both team-work and individual skill. And I think the only reliable way to beat Secret is to out-draft them, not outplay them because that's not something to count on happening a lot. And out-drafting Secret is really really hard.