J.Storm are the new champions of the World Showdown of Esports.
The North American team took the WSOE Dota 2 title with a dramatic victory over Team Serenity at WSOE 6. The squad earned a crack at the proverbial belt by navigating a tricky field of opponents in the challengers bracket, last defeating Infamous.
The series opened with a tough loss for J.Storm. Despite a solid laning phase from the team, Serenity managed to take complete control in the mid-game while taking every team fight. Serenity cores Chu “shadow” Zeyu and Zhang “Zyd”‘ Daquan made the most of that, going a combined 27-4 to win a convincing game one win.
J.Storm evened the score in game two, but not without a great deal of effort. Despite J.Storm winning most of the early skirmishes, Serenity clawed their way back into the game with some big plays from Shadow. Serenity seemed ready to complete the comeback and even took a lane of barracks, but J.Storm settled back in and closed the game out.
Serenity reached match point in game three with a thorough victory, but J.Storm forced a fifth and decisive game by clapping back with a similar win of their own in game four.
The deciding game was a brutal 72-minute affair. For 40 minutes, the two teams were dead even. Serenity finally broke away after taking a pair of team fights to open the game in their favor and topple two lanes of barracks. The Chinese side had a whopping 26K gold lead at one point, but J.Storm managed to hold on, winning an even later team fight and charging down the mid lane to steal the victory and take the championship trophy away from Serenity.
The win no doubt feels great for J.Storm.
The team took a punch to the gut last week when it failed to qualify for both the MDL Disneyland Paris Major and the OGA Dota PIT Minor. That was followed by some blowback for J.Storm’s withdrawal from ESL One Mumbai alongside a number of other squads. Taking the top prize at WSOE 6 undoubtedly eases some of that pain, but the team’s performance does raise questions about where J.Storm ranks at this point.
The Park “March” Tae-Won-led squad has been looked at as a high-end outfit all season, but those qualifier struggles raised an eyebrow for many fans.Though J.Storm took first place in Las Vegas, the team looked anything but commanding against a relatively shallow field of opposition.
J.Storm entered the event as the favorites but went the distance in each series at WSOE 6. They worked their way to the finals by beating two recently formed teams in GGNGG and Team Juniper, and ceded a game to an Infamous side that was playing with a substitute.
Still, J.Storm’s victory can’t be questioned and the team now has a new trophy in its case.
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