Dota 2: ‘Dark Horse’ Serenity defeated the ‘olds’ at TI8 China qualifiers

It wasn’t IG, LFY, or iG.V that made it to the China closed qualifiers, but an unknown number called Team Serenity.

Serenity was established right before the DAC 2018 qualifiers and won a place in the open round. However, in the closed qualifiers, the team finished 4th in the group and that was the first and last time we saw them, until now. As a team of pub talent, Team Serenity took a break from DAC to TI8 open qualifiers to refine their strategy and prepare for an unexpected journey. The team’s carry, Jin “zhizhizhi” Zhiyi, is one of the names that some of you already know. He played for Keen Gaming last year when the team finished in the top 6 at ESL One Hamburg. However, zhizhizhi was dropped from the squad in January 2018.

Zhizhizhi is one of the 9K MMR players, but the community calls him the weakest 9K player. Now, he carried Serenity in the China qualifiers, bringing his team to the top of the group after the first two days of competition. Interestingly, the Chinese community also still has ‘bad’ words for Serenity’s offlane.

Zhao “XinQ” Zixing is considered one of the most promising young talents, but is known for his laziness and his contentment with “small amounts of money.” XinQ’s way of playing is slick and some people think that he only appears to show off his skills, not to play with the team. Regardless of what the community thought of the Serenity players, the truth was that they beat Invictus Gaming, iG.Vitality, CDEC, and LFY. These boys only need to win two more matches to have a ticket to The International 2018 in Vancouver.

#Dota2 Team Serenity vs LGD.Forever Young , [The International 2018] pic.twitter.com/SyYSJmJcmC

— Dota 2 Auto Stats (@AutoDota) June 19, 2018

Meanwhile, the other two teams’ dreams of attending TI8 have come to an end. iG.Vitality and CDEC were at the bottom of the group, CDEC had a forgettable performance 0-6 and iG.V was 2-5. The teams still competing for the playoff spot are For The Dream (FTD), LGD Forever Young (LFY), Invictus Gaming, Keen Gaming and Young Dumb. For those who don’t know, Young Dumb consists of TI2 champion, Ferrari_430, and owner Newbee, playing as support with the nickname Zei9.