The International 2018 Predictions: Players
When it comes to player predictions, methodology is going to be very similar to how Team Predictions were made, and will frequently be based on the analysis we already did in the previous part. They are probably even harder to guess correctly, but we will try our best to provide you with some reasoning behind our choices.
If you haven’t read our Team Predictions post yet, I recommend you look through it, since it will be frequently referred to in this post. We also used the most recent stats for aggregates, filtering out data older than three months.
Player with highest kill average
When looking for a player with the highest kill average, firstly we need to look for the teams with the highest kill average and then look for how kills are distributed among the members of the team.
Abed is actually a good guess. Team’s playstyle often revolves around playmaking heroes for Abed, who creates space for
EternaLEnVy to secure lategame. On average, Abed kills 23% more heroes in their games, compared to Envy, making for a big enough difference.
For comparison, there is less than 1% difference between the average amount of kills between jk and
33(w) on Pain Gaming. But there was one more team we mentioned in the previous post, that can fit the “Highest Kill Average” criteria—
Winstrike
The difference in kill average between Iceberg and
Silent is almost 37%, with Iceberg frequently playing space-creating cores. Perhaps even more importantly, he is also an extremely bold player, who often trades his life if that nets his team more in return.
Going with either Abed or Iceberg are both valid options. Personally, I will be going with the latter, seeing how his average kills per game is among the highest across all professional players in all teams and not only across the teams that we expect to have longer, bloodier matches.
Player with most kills in a game
Following the same logic as in our Team Predictions post, we expect the player with the most kills in a game to come from a drawn-out bloodbath match between an aggressive mid-tier team and an aggressive tournament favorite. Long story short—our bet is on AR.Somnus
PSG.LGD is the Big3 team that is most likely to have a long game with a lot of kills. Moreover, on average AR.Somnus kills 20% more heroes than
Ame, so there is a big enough disparity. And while the difference between
Miracle- and
Liquid.MATUMBAMAN is even larger, at almost 23%, as mentioned previously, we do not expect Liquid to have a bloody game, since their playstyle is generally more disciplined and choreographed.
Player with lowest death average
Despite average team results and a messy qualification run, Fnatic.Raven is easily the least dying professional player attending the International 2018. On average, he dies 2.67 times per game.
For reference, AR.Somnus is at 4.06,
Miracle- is at 4.66 and
Aster.Suma1L- is at 4.98. These three players also had higher winrate in their games, meaning that regardless of match outcome, you can bet on Raven to die very little.
Player with highest assist average
From stats alone, there are two clear winners when it comes to the amount of assists: both Nofear and
ALWAYSWANNAFLY have on average above 19 assists in their games.
That is a lot more than the next three competitors: AR.fy is at 17.58,
LaNm is at 17.14 and
YapzOr is at 16.95.
All five players are definitely worth considering when it comes to this prediction and your choice should largely depend on how you feel about particular teams: are their results going to be better or worse on the International stage, how well will they adapt to the new patch etc.
Personally, I feel like experience will allow fy to emerge victorious in this contest—he is experienced, plays on a team that is a clear favorite and often goes for risky, but extremely stylish plays.
Player with most Assists in a game
Following the same logic as we did in Team Predictions post, we expect PSG.LGD to have a bloodbath game and win it, hence as with previous section our money is on AR.fy.
Player with highest Last hit average
Longer games mean more last hits, so we are looking for a farm-oriented team that likes to stall the games, fight little and farm efficiently. XG.Paparazi灬 from Vici Gaming looks like a good candidate. We’ve already placed Vici Gaming as the team to win the longest game and given their playstyle,
XG.Paparazi灬 is definitely a very good guess for this section.
From raw stats alone, he is actually the second in average last hits per game across all professional player attending TI8. First place, with a decent lead, is taken by 悟了, who is currently playing for Invictus Gaming.
Depending on how you feel about the current iteration of iG and whether you believe international competitors will allow them to farm as much as they did in their qualifiers run, choosing either can be rationalized. Despite being a IG.BoBoKa and iG fan I will still bet on
XG.Paparazi灬, as Vici Gaming currently looks like a stronger team, compared to iG and statistics for their games comes from international competitions, so it is more similar to what will happen at TI.
Player with most last hits in a game
Here we are looking for the longest match with farm-oriented players involved and once again, we think XG.Paparazi灬 is going to be the king. We believe his team will win the longest match at TI, he will have the highest average last hits per game and it is only natural to believe that he will have the most last hits in a single game as well.
The only problem is that Vici Gaming don't play Anti-Mage too much, and historically an Anti-Mage game is going to result in a record-breaking amount of last hits. To be fair, no professional players play Anti-Mage much in the current meta, with a single showing from Mineski during the China Supermajor, but it is TI and there is always going to be that one game, where AM gets out of control, ruining our pubs for a week. It can be a XG.Paparazi灬 AM, or it can be AM by someone else and if you have someone in mind, feel free to share your guess in the comment section below.
Player with most GPM in a game
This section can be roughly translated into “which team will pick Alchemist and make him work”. Of all high caliber teams attending this TI, only OG and Pain Gaming tried playing Alchemist in the last three months: OG won one out of two games with the hero, Pain Gaming didn’t win their only game.
If you believe that Alchemist will be victorious in at least one game throughout TI, your best guess will be ana. He is well known for playing the hero and plays for a team that is definitely capable of convincingly winning against weaker teams during the group stage.
If, however, you don’t believe in either OG as a whole or Alchemist specifically, bet on Resolut1on. He has the highest average GPM among all players and has the potential to go completely out of control on many different heroes, getting kill after kill and objective after objective. Moreover, more than any other team, VGJ.Storm is reliant on their star player and generally leave him all the farm.
jk is also worth considering, since he has the same average GPM as
Resolut1on, however latest results show that VGJ.Storm is probably the stronger team.
Player with highest GPM average
Player that plays the most different heroes
There are several players with exceptionally wide hero pools that are going to be attending TI. In the last three months, Aster.Suma1L-,
Abed,
Resolut1on,
Sneyking and
QCY.MSS all played more than 25 different heroes. The question to ask is which of these players is going to be in the tournament the longest.
On top of it, you can also think which team you believe to be strong enough to go deep into the tournament, but not strong enough to dictate the meta and still be forced to occasionally change their drafts and adapt to the opponents.
With this in mind, and taking into account recent The Summit 9 results, Aster.Suma1L- is probably your best bet. Do keep in mind, however, that
Resolut1on knocked EG out of the the International for two years in a row now, so anything can happen.
Now this is a big old game that relies on purely luck to get it right.
Not fully.
Realistically, best we can do is give 3-4 options and be roughly 30% sure than one of these options is going to be correct. Small chance, but infinitely higher than pure random.
Hmm, yeah it's not purely random, but almost completely luck dependent.
To be honest though, I exaggerated a bit, but didn't mean it in a negative way. Still, time to pray to our gods.
EG/Sumail also played a strong Alchemist recently.
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3971673262
I'm afraid of the buffed Alchemist's potential tempo...
Alch is so Op. I remember last year no one was playing Alch but in Ti especially Team Liquid got nice wins with it. This time prob 100 percent ban or pick will happen.
Highest GPM Average, Resolution, no questions xD
Ну в принципе попрет я так и поставил
not a single liquid player? LUL
Wow KawaiiSocks is already a divine :>
when is the heroes and tournament predictions going to be posted?
miracle is the best pos 1/2, kuro is the best pos 5, mc is the best pos 3, gh is the best pos 4. liquid have the best players in 4 possible positions = best team on paper.
VP.Noone? Ramzes? ok
sumail on most different heroes
Sylar for top last hits
Мдааа... Только истинные идиоты будут ставить на игроков из СНГ...
Нави нет - интов нет!
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