From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

During the two weeks of training, Gu Ran lived a very regular life, waking up at seven o'clock in the morning. This was a habit he had developed since he started school, waking up at the same time every day, unless he stayed up very late the night before.

After getting up, he stretches his muscles a little, has breakfast, and then starts streaming. His viewers know that Gu Ran is going to participate in the TI qualifiers and have expressed their support. However, he still has to stream, and if he doesn't make it, he will have to come back and continue streaming. So he chooses to stream from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. every day, which gives him five hours of streaming time. He also occasionally streams when he doesn't have time to train in the evening.

In terms of training, he would start a solo challenge in the morning, such as doing five push-ups after dying once, or doing 30 squats in a row. This way, he could have a good show effect and avoid sitting for too long. There were quite a few training equipment in this party house, including barbells. He had even tried lifting barbells, but he almost pulled his hand once, so he stopped. After all, safety comes first. He had heard stories of professional players breaking their hands while arm wrestling during matches in the past, which affected their performance.

In the afternoon, I usually play solo queue with my brothers. Occasionally, there will be some practice matches scheduled in the afternoon. After the practice matches, we will review them. Su Xiaoman can't stay here because of her studies, but she will occasionally participate online. She will watch the recordings of every practice match carefully in her spare time and then give some targeted advice.

Evenings are when they have the most practice matches. The teams they play against are mostly the remaining professional teams in China. Occasionally, they can get a few teams from Southeast Asia through some connections. At first, they lost more than they won, but they played better and better as the competition progressed. Before the start of the qualifiers, even some other teams were reluctant to play practice matches with them, for fear of affecting their confidence in the competition.

Two weeks passed, and the open qualifiers officially began. This year, there were eight teams that could participate in the TI China qualifiers. In addition to the three directly invited teams, HG, Roar, and Butterfly, five teams could be selected from the open qualifiers. There were quite a few teams that signed up, mainly teams composed of combinations of players from the Immortal Cup, such as Refuser, which was centered around Refuser; Sword Comes, which was centered around Xiao He; Team Master, which was centered around Flyfly; and Brothers, which was centered around Gao Zu, etc.

There are also many streamer teams, such as OB's Five Old Stars team, the Radiance Project's fan team Team Yaobie, and there are also sniper teams specifically formed to target streamers.

Everyone is actively participating in this annual DOTA2 event.

Gu Ran and his team submitted the name "Zhenhunshi" (振魂石), and just in case, they also prepared an English name: Team Soul Booster (队魂博oster).

Their team swept through the first round of qualifiers, securing the first ticket to the TI qualifiers. The five brothers were not surprised by this result. Their opponents were mostly either casual teams or teams they had easily defeated in scrims. After the qualifiers, they only briefly reviewed the replays of their potential opponents in the first round before continuing to immerse themselves in solo queue and training.

The night before the qualifiers started, the team didn't get many practice matches, and Wang Chunyu was still solo queuing as usual. Gu Ran decided to open Bilibili to browse some videos, and just then, the system recommended a video with a very high number of views—a preview of the TI qualifiers.

Enjoy DOTA to your heart's content, and check out the Radiance Plan now and then!

Hello everyone! With the exciting conclusion of the TI17 China qualifiers, the eight teams participating in our TI qualifiers have been freshly determined. In this video, we'll provide a preview of this year's TI qualifiers, discussing the new faces and some interesting anecdotes from the qualifiers, as well as a brief introduction to the teams that received direct invites.

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[Next up is the Soul Stone team, the first team to emerge from the qualifiers. Their number one player is XS, whom everyone is familiar with, but the other four players may not be so well-known. Let me introduce them to you one by one and let's see who the players are in this team that swept all their opponents in the qualifiers to advance.]

[Firefly, the mid-laner, was reportedly just a streamer with a 10,000+ MMR a few months ago, but his skill skyrocketed after participating in the Dota 2 Pokémon tournament. His longtime fans say he was practically cheating. Later, when Team Soulstone participated in the Immortal Cup, he was initially considered a liability, but he improved dramatically as the tournament progressed, even managing to solo-kill Refuse in the finals. I would call him a god of improvement. He has a deep hero pool and seems like an all-around mid-laner who can play almost anything.]

Huaqiang, a young offlaner, reportedly has a MMR of 15000+. He reportedly tried out for HG recently but declined, feeling he wouldn't get playing time. Overall, he's a young and energetic rookie. His hero pool basically covers all the popular offlaners in the current patch, and he has several standout heroes, such as Lycan, Doom, and Timbersaw.

[Shikamaru, the position 4 player, is a younger position 4 player who also worked as a streamer for a while. He has a deep hero pool and delivered some impressive performances in the qualifiers.]

[Old Fang, playing position 5, is a veteran player. His professional career can actually be traced back more than ten years, but because he has been struggling in second-tier teams, most people probably haven't heard of him. His performance in the qualifiers wasn't particularly outstanding, but it was decent and overall he's a very stable player.]

[It's said that this team prepared for the TI qualifiers after winning the Immortal Cup. In the qualifiers, they showed tremendous dominance against many opponents they had faced in the Immortal Cup. For those who haven't watched the Immortal Cup, I highly recommend checking out the replays. They used a variety of different team compositions in their playoff matches and executed them effectively, making for very exciting games, and their fanbase is growing rapidly.]

[Some people have even compared them to Wings, and I feel that if they were to play HG in the qualifiers finals, their support rate would likely be higher than HG's.]

Finally, let's talk about our old friend HG. They've reportedly been training in Europe with some second-tier teams and just returned to China a few days ago, so we know nothing about their current form. However, HG has actually underperformed many times this year, and many domestic viewers don't have high hopes for them. Adding to this, they barely missed out on a direct invite to TI, leading some radical fans to even think they shouldn't have gone to TI at all, and that the spot should have been given to other teams with a better chance.

[Alright, that concludes our TI qualifier preview. Tomorrow, we'll officially begin the TI China qualifiers, and I'll be streaming with you all. Please tune in! Tomorrow's schedule is shown in the image: four best-of-three matches from 12 PM to 9 PM.]

Gu Ran and his team's first-round opponent is Team Master, who also came through the open qualifiers. The match is tomorrow at 6 PM. Although it's a big no-no to celebrate beforehand, this team has basically never beaten them in scrims. Their main problem is that their hero pool is relatively narrow, and they only have one or two strategies, which were all exposed in the open qualifiers. After all, they are not a real professional team, so they are relatively easy to deal with.