On December 17th, serenity ushered in its first appearance after the new version - Chinatop National Cup. Although it is only a small competition, the organizer can be a national brand, plus the name of "National Cup". As the strongest team in China today, Serenity has an unshirkable responsibility.

A total of four teams were invited to participate in this competition, serenity, Newbee, DC, and EG. The format of the tournament is a single-elimination tournament, with four teams competing for the championship after two rounds.

In the end, serenity and Newbee defeated EG and DC respectively to successfully meet in the finals, and after two slightly dull games, serenity won 2:0 and won the first championship of the new version. However, the attention of this competition is extremely low, and it is rarely reported by the major Dota 2 forum communities in China. (How many people don't know about this game?) ）

Three days later, the 7.01 update patch was released, just 10 days after the last update.

Unlike most heroes' painless tweaks, the changes to the two heroes can be called "significant".

The first is Lena, a level 15 talent in version 7.00 - 25 seconds off the respawn time, which has been further enhanced to 30 seconds after this update. Since the updated version, the passerby has begun to frequently appear in the mid-laner Lina's style of play, and this change has pushed Lina's positioning to the regular mid-laner again.

As we all know, in addition to not being strong enough to survive, Lina has almost no shortcomings, and she was not favored by mid-laner players before, largely because this hero was too easy to die in the early and middle stages.

So what is the concept of "minus 30 seconds to resurrect the CD"?

Compared with version 6.88, 7.00 has already made changes to the hero's respawn time, and the gap between the early and late stages is not large, but at level 10-20, the hero respawn time of version 7.00 will be shortened by about 10 seconds on average at each level.

The normal respawn time for level 15 is 52 seconds, and if Lena at level 15 dies, then her actual respawn time is only 22 seconds, including talent. It doesn't seem too outrageous, but don't forget that there's one more piece of equipment - the Bloodstone.

Bloodstone has 12 initial energy, each energy reduces the respawn time by 3 seconds, and also reduces the hero's death loss gold by 25* energy points. Let's say that level 15 Lena just dies as soon as she makes the Blood Essence Stone, what will be the loss to Lena?

The answer is to lose 4 points of blood essence energy, which may use up the CD of TP, but the resurrection time and death gold loss are 0!

That's a lot of significance!

You know, today's Blood Essence Stone also has a function of sacrificing itself, that is, actively using it to commit suicide on the spot, and then recovering 500+30* energy points for the surrounding allies within a range of 1675!

If this wave of team battles is not far from her own defense tower, Lena can take the initiative to commit suicide depending on the situation on the battlefield, use the blood essence stone to instantly recover nearly 1,000 HP to turn the tide of the battle, and return to the battlefield in seconds.

You know, with Lina's laning ability and ability to farm money, it is not difficult to make blood essence stones at level 15!

Lena has become one of the most popular midlaners in the version, rampant in the passerby game, and her performance can be called a ladder tumor, and at the same time, to the opponent's great headache, this hero can not only be used as a midlaner, but also can be turned into support depending on the opponent's hero choice, which is simply unguardable.

Another hero who has suffered a major adjustment is not surprising, and that is the Great Sage, whose first sword fell on his head after only 10 days.

It's no wonder that the 7.00 version lasted for just 10 days, and the Monkey King's win rate in all segments was 56%, you must know that this is a hero that everyone grabs, and almost every game will appear, and it can still maintain a win rate of more than 55%!

Such an outrageous win rate also caused the Great Sage to be quickly sanctioned, and after the designer's first knife was chopped down, the Great Sage's lifesteal of the Golden Hoop Staff no longer ignored armor, and the duration of the passive was reduced from 15 to 10, so that the Great Sage's ability to suppress melee heroes in the lane was slightly weakened.

In addition, the one-skill stick hit the earth has been balanced from 200% of the critical hits of each level to 140/160/180/200%, which greatly weakens the explosive ability of Monkey King at low levels, and also makes the operation threshold of the "elevator blood" that can be easily achieved before become higher, at least not like before, as long as you reach two or three units after playing the buff, you can instantly lift the full amount of blood.

'16 is coming to an end, but the '16-'17 season is just coming to a climax, and after '17's New Year's Day, a large number of events will follow.

As the team with the best results after TI6, serenity has naturally become the object of invitation from the organizers of these events.

These competitions over the years, as long as Serenity nods, they can go if they want.

The organizers of the ESL ONE Genting Finals held from January 6 to 8 at the famous resort mecca of Genting, Malaysia, sent invitations as early as the end of the Pinnacle League in October, and reconfirmed with the serenity team leader as soon as the tournament kicked off.

The organizers of the fifth season of the Abyss League, which will be held from January 19 to 22 at the Spalladium Stadium in Split, Croatia, are eager to tie up the entire Serenity team right now.

As a warm-up for the new version, although the gold content of these two events themselves is not high, they are indeed of great significance for the second half of the 16-17 season, because the results of these two events will be related to the places in the subsequent events.

There will be two hugely important tournaments in April, the Asia Invitational at the beginning of April and the Kyiv Major at the end of April, both of which will be major-level competitions. Although there will be some big and small events in the future, it is no exaggeration to say that these two majors will be directly related to the direct invitation of TI7.

The second half of the season becomes, the more competitive the teams will be, and with the exception of EG, the dominant player in the Americas and the VP of the CIS region, even the serenity in the middle of the season, will be careless.

Who dares to say that TI's direct invitation is stable?

In the case of serenity, although their first half of the season was extremely impressive, if the next tournaments were not successful, the members of serenity dared to guarantee that TI7 would have to fight for a place through qualifying.

What's more, Dota 2 has undergone such a major update, and the pace of the game has changed dramatically, how can you be careless about the game? Starting with the first event of the new year, the ESLONE Genting Finals, the whole team of Serenity has been striving to give it their all.

On January 3, Serenity, who had adjusted her mentality, embarked on another journey and landed in Genting Highlands, Malaysia. There are a total of 8 teams participating in this competition, namely Serenity, Newbee, WG, XctN, DC, Fnatic, VP, and NP.

After the eight teams are divided into two groups, they will first play a double-elimination match within the group, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the knockout round. It is worth mentioning that the first round of the group stage is a highly fortuitous BO1 format.

In the hotel arranged by the organizers, old friends and old rivals gathered again to divide into groups. After the grouping was completed, Newbee, VP, NP, and Fnatic were divided into group A, and serenity, DC, WG, and XctN were in group B.

The first battle of the new year is about to begin!