2021 may just be the year of Southeast Asia in Dota 2.
We reported that T1 won the final major tournament in Dota 2 prior to TI10. The SEA team showed that SEA teams can show up in the major stage, beating Virtus.pro with an intense comeback victory Sunday night. Interestingly, T1's carry, Thai player Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon, shows up as the 4th highest in Dota 2‘s European MMR Leaderboards? He's one of the three SEA players in the Top 5 of that list.
From that top 5 list, there are only two Europeans: Ghost Frogs' Crystallis at #3 and Na`Vi's V-Tune at #5. Several hours prior to this article's release, 23savage actually was #3, meaning that for some time, the top 3 players in Europe are from SEA.
Up there at #2 is Evil Geniuses' Abed Azel “Abed” Yusop, from the Philippines. Abed helped the NA team go second in DPC 2021's two Dota 2Majors. While they didn't win a Major Championship this season (EG fans will point to Arteezy's curse as a scapegoat), they still take home the DPC 2021 title for having the most DPC points at the end of the season.
And at #1 is NothingToSay from Malaysia. Originally from EHOME and loaned to PSG.LGD, the Malaysian playing in a Chinese team tops the European leaderboards. With over 12,000 MMR, he's the cream of the crop of Dota 2. He helped PSG.LGD take the WePlay! Dota 2 AniMajor championship. They also went third during the Singapore Major earlier this year.
Of course, as the Dota 2 saying goes, MMR is just a number. But reaching high MMR is still an impressive feat. What's left for these young esports athletes is to convert their ranked matchmaking dominance into an Aegis, as none of them ever won TI before.
Will this be the year a SEA team takes home the Aegis?
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