The International 2016: 10 teams to watch out for

#5 LGD

Mr. LGD himself will be looking for yet another TI victory

With incredibly decorated captain Xiao8 at the helm, LGD is a team everyone should fear coming into such a high stakes, high pressure, stressful tournament. This is not a team that will choke under pressure and this is specifically the type of team that is expected to play at their peak potential when it’s absolutely the right and only time, which is now. It’s a curious thing that LGD don’t have a very definitive playstyle in this patch as of yet, possibly due to missing Esl One Frankfurt and not showing if their 4th place at The Manila Major where they defeated MVP 2-1 was a fluke or not. I’m incredibly interested to see if this team can contend with Team Liquid who knocked them out of Manila and Newbee who recently knocked them out of Nanyang Championships. Considering Xiao8 has led his team to top 3, three internationals in a row, you can expect a top 8 finish minimum for LGD.

Player to watch: Maybe

If Miracle is the ultimate, Maybe is the penultimate. In my eyes, Maybe is the second best player in the world and is absolutely in contention for best mid players of all time in DOTA 2. This is a superstar player boasting some of the best Timbersaw, Invoker, Dragon Knight, and puck plays in DOTA right now. Not only is Maybe a threatening presence on his own, but it's very often that Agressif plays a more early game oriented carry in order to allow Maybe to scale bigger and better into the Lategame. This is a strategy and playstyle akin to that of OG, the best team in the world right now.