Gaimin Gladiators was the hottest Dota 2 team in 2023. The team’s dominant run included three major wins, but their attempt at Aegis of Champions was denied by Team Spirit, who Quinn praised on a livestream yesterday.
While watching a Dota 2 replay, Quinn was talking with his chat and answering questions. The conversation led him to Gaimin’s TI 2023 run, which ended on a sour note versus Spirit.
“If Spirit was a little bit worse, or someone else knocked them out, we would have won TI for sure,” Quinn said.
Confirming that Spirit was on another level, Quinn believed that winning the three majors didn’t affect them negatively. In the Dota 2 world, winning majors during a competitive year is considered to be a curse, as major winners often underperform at TI.
While the statistics confirm the major-TI curse thesis, a reasonable explanation exists. Major-winning teams often solve the first meta of the year quicker than others and become the masters of certain heroes and a play style.
Those heroes then get nerfed multiple times until TI, causing the early adopters of the meta to relearn everything like the rest. Though Gaimin kept its dominant run going even after a major gameplay patch, 7.34, it also happened to be a comfort patch for another team, Spirit.
Compared to Gaimin, Spirit performed below expectations at majors during the whole year, but a late-season revival heading into Dota 2’s TI 2023 saw them winning Riyadh Masters 2023 and DreamLeague S21.
Sadly, Dota 2 fans won’t see these two teams clash again soon since Spirit withdrew from Dota 2’s ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 due to player health concerns. TI 2023 champions were directly invited to the event alongside Gaimin, LGD, and Azure Ray. Their slot was handed over to the Western European region as an additional qualifier seat.
