Thoughts on The International 2015: Group Stages

The International's group stage finished Thursday. With that, here are some of the highlights and my thoughts on the group stages.

• It came down to the wire in Group B for first place and Fourth place. EG was dependent on CDEC dropping a game against EHOME, which they did, for first place. Virtus.Pro and Empire played a best of 3 to determine who would capture the coveted 4th spot.
• Complexity surprised everyone with a third place finish in Group A. 
• Complexity and EG, among others, displayed the power of Techies. Saints preserve us in the pubs.
• I didn't get a chance to watch all the games, but from what I saw Secret and LGD are playing on a different level than the rest of their group. Granted, their group was weaker, however they still made it look easy. 
• While Evil Geniuses didn't dominate their group (and almost didn't get what everyone thought would be a gaurenteed first), they showed flashes of brilliance and dominance reminiscent of the DOTA Asian Championships (DAC) rather than The Summit 3. 
• Invictus Gaming (IG) is, as Winter put it, "lost in the woods." The team has a lot of experience (winning TI2 and all) but their kills per game is the lowest among all teams and this TI is definitely about fighting.
• Cloud9 is playing some of the riskiest DOTA of all time. The sneaky Rosh plus Divine Rapier Anti-Mage was a novel enough strategy to kept them in their game against LGD. However, they still can't finish.
• CDEC, a wildcard team, finished second in group B, besting other, seemingly stronger teams like Virtus.Pro, Empire, Vici Gaming (VG).
• VG is struggling. Maybe dropping Black wasn't such a great idea...
• Newbee showed up to play. They took games off EG, VP, and Empire which counts for a lot in a best of 2 format. However they are facing arguably the strongest SEA team in MVP Phoenix so it could go either way.
• Na'vi was the poster child for TI but they have a very tough round one match against Vici Gaming. Their KDA, GPM, and EXPM over the group stages have been lower than VG. Senniecko is going to have to play out of his mind and Dendi is going to need a few more 20 kill games.

Here are the stats from dotabuff in case you haven't seen them. 

Games resume tomorrow at 1:00 P.M. Eastern time with LGD and Empire.