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Well I just decided to make a random pointless blog post on what teams would be competing for TI4 based on current form and roster. There are rumours of a reshuffling coming soon, but we shall ignore them for now. From TI3, there were 6 invites for East, 6 invites for West, 1 international invite (LGD.int), and the 3 remaining slots are filled via the qualifiers. For now, it's a high chance that these teams will auto invited.
+ Show Spoiler +West
Alliance
Navi
fnatic
teamliquid
East
DK
LGD.cn
iG
TongFu
Vici
The last 2 auto invited slot for the West would be fought between Speed, Sigma, RoX.Kis, and Empire. By current performance, Speed and Sigma should have the spots. But this would mean only having 1 CIS team in the tournament, and I doubt that it would happen.
The last auto invited slot for the East would be fought between Mineski and Titan. They are the undisputed top 2 teams in SEA at the moment. However, none of their performances are close to the level of the 5 Chinese teams. I don't think either of them warrant the slot over these Chinese teams.
There's still the international slot that I'm not sure how it will be allocated. There are currently no successful international team around. They could choose to give the slot via a Korean qualifier, but I doubt they want to dilute the tournament as Koreans are just not of a good levels yet. Personally, I would just give this slot to Speed. After all, they have some ties with the Chinese.
If I have my way, the 13 auto invited teams would be:
+ Show Spoiler +West
Alliance
Navi
fnatic
teamliquid
Sigma
Empire
East
DK
LGD.cn
iG
TongFu
Vici
Titan
International
Speed
Now we come to the qualifiers. There would be 8 teams from each region. My personal picks would be:
+ Show Spoiler +West
RoX.Kis
PR
Virtus Pro
EG
Next.kz
Poseidon
Pretty Boy Swag
Mouz
East
Mineski
First Departure
Orange
Startale
Mith Trust
Impervious
HGT
Ledion Dreamz
Well filling up the qualifiers would be hard. Currently, there are not enough established teams in the scene. Good news though is that there seem to be quite a number of free agents around to form teams around them.
+ Show Spoiler ['Free Agents'] +American/Canadian
Brax
Demon
sneyking
1437
Korok
RTZ
Scandinavia
Mini
Mirakel
Pajkatt
Misery
CIS
blowyourbrain
solo
wejuszik
Other Europeans
ArisE
CWM
Chinese
Luo
sydm
SEA
Chuan
Ice
YMT
The most exciting is probably what team Pajkatt and Misery will be built on. I doubt they are willing to let TI4 pass without taking a chance to participate in it. The North American side also have good players to based a team on. Demon have proven himself several times, and RTZ is a top solo mid player. I can't wait to see what the next shuffling would be. I do hope they the established teams at the moment do not change their roster drastically (with the exception of maybe Tongfu).
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Its all moot because iG is going to be in all likelihood a brand new 5 since its losing Faith and Hao to xiao8's new team, plus 430 is pretty likely to go to LGD to replace xiao8 and at that point the team is YYF/Banana. Banana is fairly new to iG and TongFu would be looking for a solo (aka YYF) after losing Mu so...
LGD/DK/Xiao8+4/VG/TongFu are all locks tho IMO, plus likely any iG squad as "past champions" even though there won't be any of the same players (not sure how volvo will handle that actually).
Alliance/Na'Vi are also first-invites as previous champions.
Fnatic/Liquid from the west if liquid sticks together. Sigma/Speed if they stick together as well.
Thats 6east6west. Then 2 each from the qualifiers and GG thats it. Qualifier teams will likely not exist at this point, although some will fly familiar banners (circus.pro, etc).
PS: interestingly, Arteezy will be out of school in time for TI4 but he won't be out of school in time to properly qualify, and Valve is quite strict about not swapping players once you qualify etc, so I'm very curious to see how that plays out.
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It was 7 west (lgd.int was west) 7 east except LGD.cn's spot was opened after they changed their roster and had to requalify.
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On January 14 2014 07:16 Najda wrote:
It was 7 west (lgd.int was west) 7 east except LGD.cn's spot was opened after they changed their roster and had to requalify.
Well thats revisionist history lol Tongfu swapped with LGD. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=411350
It was 6 west, 6 east, LGD.int.
Or, another way of looking at it would be "Last years champs, 6 west, 6 east" where LGD.int was east.
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Okay that makes sense. I just knew there was no "international invite" and was filling in the blanks myself.
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Interestingly, if they do "Last years champs, 6 west, 6 east" again then it starts to get messy.
Giving Alliance the champs spot means that west is
Na'Vi
Fnatic
Liquid
Speed
Sigma
+1
And right now "+1" is veryyyyyy hard to slot anybody in. Of course, it should become a lot clearer between now and TI4 who deserves that slot but you can't say any of EG/VP/Rox.KIS/Empire deserve it in their current states (IMO). Plus there is a slim chance that Speed could go int and be an "east" team but realistically thats highly unlikely because I know for a fact some players were very displeased with their arrangements in china (I'm guessing they didn't quite get the LGD.int treatment).
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Well I didn't know how LGD.int was grouped as. Some of you said they were east, others said they were west. I feel my international spot theory is alright, although I prefer the champions +6 from each region. In this case, it doesn't change a thing for me, as liquid fnatic navi speed sigma empire would be the ones auto invited.
I personally feel that empire has performed the strongest among all the cis teams (except navi of course). At least they would deserve it more than other western teams like eg VP and rox.
Still I think everyone would agree that the competition for spots this year is not as competitive. There's too few teams now. There's still a few more months for teams to establish themselves 
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There was also a lot of theory when they were sending out invites such as 2 NA teams 2 Europe teams 2 CIS teams but I don't know if any of it was confirmed.
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EPT
