Lima Major Fantasy Guide February 22 Group Stage day 1, best players
With Lima Major upon us, the next Fantasy league is also here. And while the current league doesn't feature interesting rewards, it still can be fun to compete with friends and try to get on the leaderboards. Let's think about the possible rosters on the first day of Group Stage.
As usual, we start with some general rules and tips.
- Regardless of how many series the team will play, only two best maps will count. But even considering that, picking a team which plays more matches in a given day might be beneficial. This way players will have more opportunities to gain a better score.
- To do well, you need to pick players from teams that expected to play a longer series and win in it. The winning part is especially important for cores, as supports get most of their points from warding and stunning even if they lose.
- On average, regular card of a stronger player is better than silver or gold of a weaker one.
- For Core slots carries are must picks. Ignore offlaners, unless you don't have any carries left to use this day. Even losing carry can earn more than winning offlaner. For Supports it's much better to pick a support who does most of the warding for the team.
There are four teams who will play one best-of-2 on the first day. It's Evil Geniuses, EHOME, Knights, and beastcoast. The rest will play two matches.
Picking good teams on the first day of the first Major is extremely hard. While there are some obvious choices, it's impossible to predict how good the teams from different regions will be relative to others. Still, we can try to guess some favourites and note their opponents on the Day 1:
- Team Liquid: HellRaisers, BetBoom Team
- BetBoom Team: Shopify Rebellion, Team Liquid
- Team Spirit: TSM, Gaimin Gladiators
- Gaimin Gladiators: Talon, Team Spirit
- Tundra Esports: Execration, EHOME
- Aster (?): Shopify Rebellion, beastcoast
- PSG.LGD (??): Evil Geniuses, TSM
- Evil Geniuses (one match): PSG.LGD
As we can see, most of presumably good teams are playing against each other on the first day, except Tundra. That alone makes skiter a decent pick, even tho Tundra wasn't showing a solid game during DPC. But they are playing a very slow and methodical game, which allows their supports to earn a lot of points even when they lose.
PSG.LGD drastically changed its roster, and experimented a lot in the DPC, so I wouldn't pick its players until we will see more of the team playing on the Major. Aster would be a more reliable pick.
With how dominating Liquid and BetBoom were in their regions, they are a good pick. But teams will be preparing to them a lot, and Spirit's Mira thinks, for example, that it won't be a piece of cake for Liquid.
Lima Major Day 1 Feb 22 who to pick:
Cores:
Nisha is a no-brainer pick, who will earn his points even if Liquid will lose. Other good options are dyrachyo, Monet, watson (Entity are playing against two mid tier teams), skiter and Pure. Yatoro usually doesn't earn much points, but you can pick him if you really want. Pakazs is always a solid player, but picking him in a day where he plays one match against PSG.LGD is a risk, and you should decide if you want to take it.
Mid:
MiCKe and Stormstormer are two good WEU options. Gpk is another solid mid player. Kiyotaka is very good on his heroes, but he might be handicapped by the fact that HR are playing with a stand-in. If you want to take a risk, Darkmago could earn you a lot — the risk is, his team is only playing one match, against Aster.
Supports:
Insania is way ahead of his WEU opponents by average points. Saksa, tOfu, and Kataomi are the better ones in their teams. EEU supports didn't earn good points at all in this season for some reason. 皮球, or Siamese.C, is the best among Chinese players, and Matthew is better than other supports in South America.
