This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

　　The team that impressed the most during the qualifiers so far has without a doubt been LGD. As the Chinese juggernaut set themselves ahead of the pack losing only one game during the groups, to the split-pushing Naga Siren of Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier, handing CIS an important victory that helped them ultimately tie for second place.

　　CIS ultimately clinched that second place by edging out TongFu.WanZhou in a game where again Black^ was put onto an illusion based hard carry, as they realized TongFu's draft was weak against Phantom Lancer. Indeed, TongFu played a very passive game, a 5-ignore-1 if you will, as they focused on farming up their core heroes while doing nothing to stop the greedy early Radiance from Black^, which ultimately ended up costing them the game.

　　After a solid day one favourites DT^Club struggled during day 2, giving up games to LGD.CDEC, CIS and LGD proper. Still, they managed a 5-4 score which put them on par with LGD.CDEC and HGT for the 4th place finish. And when it came to the tiebreakers DT finally came alive, crushing HGT with a Tiny Io pick and using Morphling and Razor to send LGD's academy team packing.

　　Stand-out performance of the qualifiers goes without a doubt to LGD.CDEC, who were most ready to dismiss out of hand and who struggled during the first day. However, after a close game against their older brother LGD, they started to turn things around with Yao 'Maybe' Lu taking up drafting duties. Their challenge for the top 4 ultimately came up short, but it was a wild ride while it lasted and promised good things for these young players.

　　The greatest disappointment of the tournament was HGT, who continue to struggle to integrate Tianyu 'Cty' Chen into their team. On paper, HGT was a fan favourite, especially with Gong 'ZSMJ' Jian returning to the carry role. But in practice, having two such greedy farming players on the same team was a huge problem, as they were unable to make room for both to succeed and instead ended up with both failing to carry the team to victory.

Groupstage Results

　　Brackets by BeyondTheSummit.