We may not have ever seen a group stage quite like the one we just experienced at PGL Wallachia Season 8. Past champions eliminated, an entire underdog region through to playoffs, and a new meta emerging that is turning the potential pre-TI power-rankings on their head.
If you’ve missed any games, you might be wondering where Tundra Esports and Team Yandex are? Why South American Rejects are one of the most feared teams in the tournament. And why there’s a suspicious amount of bears appearing in these games (and unfortunately, we don’t mean Ursa).
Here’s our guide to watching a hectic and hard-to-predict PGL Wallachia Season 8 finals!
Here are the current win/loss odds for PGL Wallachia Season 8.
Image Credit: PGL
It’s been a crazy group stage, as we hope we put across in the introduction, but just in case you missed it here’s some of the biggest stories.
Eliminations aren’t always something to write home about in major tournaments, but when two of the biggest teams in the scene are eliminated in last place, and they’re defending champions, it’s worth mentioning.
We already explained in our dedicated piece, but Team Yandex, winners of PGL Wallachia Season 7, and runners up at ESL One Birmingham, and Tundra Esports, winners of ESL One Birmingham and DreamLeague Season 28, both exited the tournament in the group stage. Not only that, they did so unceremoniously, crashing out in last and second from last place respectively.
It throws our earlier predictions into disarray, but honestly, if that was the strangest thing from this tournament so far, we’d not be too worried.
Image Credit: PGL
Beyond two of the tournament favorites being eliminated, the fact that not one, but two South American teams are headed to the playoffs, is the strangest thing we’ve seen so far. Meanwhile, China is looked dire, with Xtreme Gaming and Vici being clouted out the tourney at the end of groups.
South American Rejects are playing with a chip on their shoulders. And Heroic look straight up solid. We’ve seen strong SA teams before, but rarely more than one. The constraint grind of tournaments, the indignity of having your roster dropped, and some helpful, normally off-meta heroes being in prominence has lit a fire in SA that we love to see.
What off-meta heroes? Well Lone Druid has taken over this tournament. The odd hero has seemingly been absolutely buffed into the sky by the recent 7.41 patch series. Normally a niche hero for specialists, almost every carry in the tournament is having to pick up the man and bear combo to be able to be effective.
And this hero is straight up broken. As we mentioned, this is normally a niche hero, for one tricks and specialists. But we saw Team Spirit’s Yatoro dominate with the hero, using it to great effect to end a 75-minute game with a backdoor-BKB-stealth throne push. The bear is a PROBLEM and hopefully it’ll be banned, nerfed, or otherwise put out of contention before either the end of this tournament, or before TI.
Image Credit: PGL
With that in mind it’s time to give our picks for the playoffs. We’ve taken into account the
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