Newbees second place at the International elevates the team to second place in the ranking of Dotas best teams ever. Rank 1 is a far stretch though.
[newbee] has passed [natus vincere] to become the second most successful Dota 2 team of all time. The Chinese now have 88,487 points in total compared to Na’Vis 88,102.
The change comes in the aftermath of The International. Newbee came in second in this years biggest tournament, gaining the 4,682 ranking points needed to throw Na’Vi back to rank 3.
Newbee plays his best year since 2014
This is no surprise: The team around [kaka] and [faith] dominates the Dota scene this year. They led the Dota 2 World Ranking for eight of the nine months in 2017. Plus, they earned nine top3-finishes in major tournaments, winning four of them. Unfortunately, they couldn’t triumph at the most prestigious ones: Newbee lost the finals of the International, the Manila Masters and ESL One Genting.
Looking back at the teams history, 2014 stands out as their best year so far. Back then, Newbee won the International and the World Cyber Arena shortly afterwards. The team which emerged in early 2014, played 79 tournaments so far and reached the finals in 30 of them. Furthermore, they won 15 out of the 30 finals. This puts them up with [team liquid], [orange esports] and [lgd gaming], all of which have 15 victories in their pockets.
Natus Vincere dominated the early Dota 2 competition
Natus Vincere, the team that Newbee just passed, is a legend in Dota 2. The Ukranians won the first International in 2011 and simply crushed the competition in the early years of Dota 2. Up till the end of 2012, they played 25 tournaments and won 12 of them. Na’Vi still holds the record for the most leads in the World Ranking (19) and the longest streak at the top (18 months).
They began to struggle however after [puppey] and [kuroky] left the team after the International 2014 to form [team secret]. Currently Na’Vi has dropped to the 70th rank in the World Ranking and failed to qualify for the International 2017 main event. They ended the tournament on rank 35 after losing in the qualifiers. Their last major victory was at the SL i-League Season 2 in June 2016.
The International changed some more ranks in the all-time ranking: [team empire] passed [alliance] to become the sixth most successful team in Dota 2 history and winner [team liquid] passed [virtus.pro] and [vici gaming] and conquers rank 9.