MDI Global Finals Preview

By VitaminP — Jul 9 2020 08:30 PDT

This weekend, the eight best MDI teams from around the world will be battling in the MDI Global Finals! The action will get started on Friday July 10th, and will end on Sunday the 12th, with matches beginning at 10 a.m. PDT / 19:00 CEST on YouTube.

The Story So Far...

Team Wunderbar, formerly known as Method EU, are the defending Blizzcon champions. As the first seed from the EU & Asia region, they have put up some truly absurd times in multiple different dungeons during the three MDI Cup weekends, including a ridiculous sub-ten-minute Atal’Dazar run.

However, in the final EU & Asia Cup weekend in early May, Perplexed toppled the reigning champions Wunderbar and made it clear they are a force to be reckoned with. Perplexed secured the number 2 seed from their region with a bang, but now they need to prove that they can replicate those results in a tournament with much higher stakes.

The Americas & Oceania region is sending a formidable roster of teams to the Global Finals as well. With the first seed, GG, formerly known as Method NA, will attempt to repeat their success from one year ago, when they won the Spring Global Finals in Sydney, upsetting their European counterparts. The rematch at Blizzcon did not go in the Americans’ favor, but since then, their roster has evolved and they’ve looked absolutely dominant within their region, not dropping a single match.

An Oceanic team, Ethical, has catapulted themselves into the second seed of the Americas & Oceania region. The only team to play Alliance on the live servers, they’re perfectly at home in the MDI environment where everyone uses that faction to get access to Shadowmeld, Stoneform, and the moral high ground.

The third seeds from both regions are volatile teams with potential for greatness and tragedy in equal measure. From EU & Asia, Deplete from Beyond have fought some incredibly close matches against the top teams, but they somehow also found themselves in close matches against the lower seeded teams that failed to make it to the Global Finals. However, they’ve been improving every weekend and went from a disappointing sixth place finish in the first EU & Asia Cup all the way to third place by the final regional Cup in May.

World-first raiders from the American guild Complexity Limit enter the Global Finals as their region’s third seed. This team has also shown a few sparks of brilliance throughout Cup play, but they also had many disappointing series and the upwards trend they were aiming for never really materialized during the three regional Cup weekends. However, with the skill of their roster and their ability to dedicate themselves to practicing and perfecting their skills over a weeks long practice marathon, this team is in their element going into the Global Finals and could put together something truly impressive.

The Boys are the fourth seed from the EU & Asia region. They made it into this tournament after a tiebreaker series against Self Reliance after the last Cup. Like most of the other teams from the EU & Asia region (and unlike the teams from the Americas & Oceania region, interestingly), this team is full of players who push high keys on the live servers, and they have built up an impressive amount of synergy after playing together for such a long time.

Finally, the fourth seed from Americas & Oceania is Goosy Bad. They are a team of raiders from the American guild <vodka> and they will be playing the role of the scrappy underdog trying to make something special happen. That something will have to be very special indeed, as their position in the bracket has them up against the BlizzCon Champions Wunderbar in the very first round!

Strategies to Look Out For

Here are some highlights of the 3rd Regional Cups from early May of this year to get you hyped for the Global Finals this weekend. Thanks to Tamir and Liryn for their help on this project!

Wunderbar’s huge pull in Freehold

Wunderbar pulls the middle pack in addition to all four obelisk mobs on top of Harlan Sweete in this epic play. Perplexed also managed to perform this same pull, but suffered from two deaths which they managed to salvage the pull with Hunter pet taunts and two clutch engineering resess.

Ethical outsmarts Goosy Bad in a game of map-banning “chicken”

In all the matches before the semi finals, every team chose to ban the Waycrest map due to its challenging affix combination of Necrotic + Bursting + Fortified. Therefore, most teams in the competition were not well-practiced in Waycrest. Ethical seemed to purposely go out of their way to ban Waycrest in an earlier match of the Cup to make people think they hadn’t practiced it. However, it turns out that they probably did practice it, since they pulled out a solid Waycrest performance against Goosy Bad in the Lower Finals. This probably won’t be the last time we see this kind of a strategy for map banning and deception!

Perplexed activates 2 pillars simultaneously

After killing Raal in a Waycrest Manor map against Wunderbar, Perplexed activates 2 obelisks at the same time to kill Samh’rek and Urg’roth before heading downstairs towards the final bosses.

Wunderbar cleans up a whopping 42% trash count in one sweep

In this massive pull, Naowh of Wunderbar manages to group up and survives against 42% trash count, which his teammates clean up with the first cannon in Tol Dagor:

Self Reliance negates the mechanics of Trixie and Naeno in Junkyard

In a Mechagon: Junkyard map between The Boys and Self Reliance, we saw a nice boss strat from Self Reliance where they pulled Trixie and Naeno behind a wall with the trash in order to negate the mechanics of the fight while giving the Unholy Death Knights enough mobs for their funnel single-target damage into the bosses. Self Reliance was the team that innovated this strat and we’re sure to see it used again in the Global Finals!

Wunderbar manages to salvage a huge pull gone wrong

After gathering a big pack after Mchimba in Kings’ Rest, Naowh gets melee’d in the back when the Brute spawns and instantly goes down. The team makes a great snap-decision to drop combat with Shadowmeld and Feign Death in order to save the combat res and do the pull again. They start over and manage to salvage this big and very dangerous trash pull

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About the Authors

Vitaminpee mains a Brewmaster and loves to do competitive Mythic+. She is the Social Media Manager for BDGG and is attending Graduate School to pursue her Masters of Business Administration. She is a partnered Twitch streamer and Discord Partner who plays all tanks at max level and loves pushing keys with her friends. Feel free to message her via Twitter for any business-related inquiries.

Dratnos hosts the The Titanforge WoW Podcast. He’s also an Officer in the World 36th guild poptart corndoG, and a commentator for events such as the MDI and the Race to World First! He streams on Twitch, where he likes to review his friends’ logs.