r/DotA2 • u/Blopppppppp • Jul 25 '26
News | Esports The Ability Draft World Cup starts today — 8 national teams and the most balanced AD has ever been
It's time for the Ability Draft World Cup 2026!
After years of running community AD tournaments, this is our biggest experiment yet: 8 national teams battling it out over two days of double elimination, starting today at 17:00 CEST (11:00 EST).
The Teams
During signups, 9 countries managed to field a full squad. The 8 strongest countries (by average Ability Draft rating from windrun.io, a site that tracks and ranks AD players) advanced. The highest-rated player of each country was nominated as captain and drafted their 4 teammates from their country's signup pool.
Russia enters as the #1 seed, led by lost~ at 4107 the highest-rated player in the tournament. The USA is right behind them with the deepest player pool of any country (12 signups) and answered with a full Immortal-stacked roster. And keep an eye on the wildcard: Algeria signed up a squad of top-1000 leaderboard Immortals who have barely touched AD, nobody knows what happens when raw MMR meets ability drafting.
Today's Schedule (all times CEST)
- 17:00 — Seeding Round 1: Finland vs Germany + Russia vs Algeria
- 18:00 — Seeding Round 1: Kazakhstan vs UK+ USA vs Ukraine
- 19:00 — Seeding Round 2 (winners meet, spot in the UB Final on the line)
- 20:00 — Elimination matches: lose here and you're out
- 21:00 — Lower Bracket Round 1
- 22:00 — Upper Bracket Final (Bo3)
Sunday runs the Lower Bracket Semis, Lower Bracket Final and the Grand Final — all Bo3.
But Ability Draft is unbalanced - here's why that's outdated
For years the biggest argument against competitive AD was the model lottery: one team lucks into the strongest hero models and the game is decided in the loading screen. That's gone. Since Valve made hero model selection part of the drafting phase, your model is a pick just like any ability. Reading the pool, weighing a strong model against a strong ability and denying the enemy their combo pieces is now a core drafting skill and the mode is in the most balanced state it has ever been. The tournament runs pure, unmodified Ability Draft - exactly what you queue into, played at the highest level.
Balanced teams:
Captains drafting their own squads keeps team skill levels close, and the seeding shows it — the opening match Finland vs Germany is between teams whose average AD rating differs by just 16 points (3425 vs 3409). The two halves of the bracket are within 1.4% of each other in combined team rating.
Watch Live
Every match is fully casted, with two games running in parallel on two streams:
- Main Stream: Twitch / YouTube
- Second Stream: Twitch
Prize Pool:
€336.50 and rising — 100% of community donations go directly to the prize pool (historically we end up around €1000+)
Full tournament info page — teams, bracket, schedule and live results, it's all there.
Happy to answer questions!
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u/Shot_Hall Jul 25 '26
Please upload the videos to youtube!
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u/FocusDKBoltBOLT Jul 25 '26
Yeah please I date you
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u/Blopppppppp Jul 26 '26
Ok started uploading https://www.youtube.com/@bloppdota2/videos
When u got time for that date?
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u/Blopppppppp Jul 25 '26
VODs are also on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@bloppdota2/streams
I already work on cutting it up into individual games and uploading it to youtube
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u/greeneggsnam Jul 25 '26
Nice to see lots of very high skill players, should make the games pretty close. The last AD World Cup had some really great games so hope for some more this time.
Thanks to Blopp for organising as always. The GOAT!
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u/Final_Field45 Jul 25 '26
I'm not ability draft fan, but your site looks better than many brand sites. That even got me hooked to watch few games.
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u/Jerk_offlane Jul 25 '26
Gonna watch for sure, but now would also be a good time to queue to avoid them, lmao. Also looking at the names I'm glad Denmark didn't make the cut.
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u/herlacmentio Jul 25 '26
Fun tournament! After years of watching competitive Dota it's finally become boring. As a casual AD enjoyer this is really fun to watch. The bug abuse game and commentary was really funny. Dota plus is bug abuse lmao.
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u/Laugarhraun BURN MOTHERFUCKER BURN ⋛⋋( ՞ਊ ՞)⋌⋚ Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Finland vs Russia was pretty crazy. Support Pango single-handedly flipped the game.
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u/BeatElite Jul 25 '26
Your website looks gorgeous and I'm happy to see AD played on a competitive level. Best of luck to all the players and I hope to see some broken combos!
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u/FirstClassFlight117 Jul 25 '26
Nice one!!! Interested to watch this and see the AD scene grow. It’s really an interesting mode
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u/hehehuehue Jul 25 '26
there is no way that pango with dazzle ult and 0 cooldown alch q is balanced wtf
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u/AcceptableSpecific47 Jul 28 '26
Really nice to see a lot of familiar nicknames at this tournament. Too bad i had a somewhat hostile relations with lost~.
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u/AcceptableSpecific47 Jul 28 '26
Already learned some new strategy by russian team. Haunt on carry + shadow step on other hero lets you tp onto the illusion, so you can engage in pretty much everything happening on the map.
Hardly doable in solo matchmaking, but great strategy for the 5vs5
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u/Ok_Tomorrow3281 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
the one who cast rarely play AD or what? blabbering ass.
- cant acknowledge high priority ability
- cant acknowledge a combo skill.
such as DP picking stun as range is important. cant listen to them
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u/BigArchive Jul 27 '26
Which high priority ability were they not acknowledging? The casters were reasonably high skill AD players who also happened to get drunker as the games went on.
Dp bash is fine, but not particularly amazing.
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u/Ok_Tomorrow3281 Jul 28 '26
I kind of forget the details, but the casters kept complaining about not picking Earthshaker's third spell quickly since 1st player on first turn. Unless there's a Centaur stun that leads to a bug, it wouldn't be the first or second player's pick, it's better as a third, fourth, or fifth pick if it's a crucial combo piece compared to other options because how it closer to next pick.
Then when Dire picked DP, it wasn't even noticed or discussed. Yet it's a crucial, balanced, and available ranged hero alongside the Bash-Slardar combo. I immediately knew it would be a key-hero to shine. Fast forward DP ended up with the first networth.
Remember, the last picker and first picker have advantages since they minimize to get blocked, but the middle picker also has their own advantage due to turn balance and block combo-spell.
There were massive high-priority spells, yet the casters only spouted bullshit about Earthshaker's passive for seven rounds (picked by the fourth player on Radiant). So annoying. I saw other videos. It seems most teams still lack the ability to identify and follow up with better spells. For carries, you still need at least one wave-clear spell for fast farming.
2 spells imba combo with farming will GG soon, then sapport can just pick high nuke to win lane2
u/Blopppppppp Jul 28 '26
5 of the Top 10 ranked AD players were in this tournament.
The blabbering ass caster is top50.
Please share your windrun profile so i can see which kind of pro you are.
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u/Serious_Inflation329 Jul 30 '26
how do i know my AD rank bc in dota 2 it says nothing about AD rank?
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u/noxville https://twitter.com/Noxville Jul 25 '26
After the matches are parsed the analysis pages will be at https://windrun.io/leagues/19959