The Smite Summer Split concluded with an incredible, explosive LAN at DreamHack Valencia. Team Dignitas finished the split as first seed and went into the LAN as favorites to win. All three of their sets were interesting to watch and they outshone all expectations and came out as the overall victors. In doing so, they proved themselves to be the best team in the Pro League right now.

Quarterfinals - Team Dignitas VS Black Dragons

Team Dignitas’ first matchup of the DreamHack LAN was against the Black Dragons, the LATAM Team present at the event. Both games were dominated by Team Dignitas for a very simple reason: they won the drafts. While they didn’t always get the strongest meta gods, in both games Team Dignitas got some of their favorite gods for each role. In Game 1, Arkkyl was on Rama, Zyrhoes was on the Morrigan and Trixtank was on Fafnir. All three of these are signature gods for Team Dignitas, which meant that they were exceedingly comfortable through all phases of the game. Similarly, in Game 2 we saw Arkkyl on Jing Wei and Variety on Bellona. Black Dragons obviously didn’t do enough research into Team Dignitas’ playstyles as they let through so many strong picks. This was only amplified by them not being keep pace with Team Dignitas’ ability to transverse the map and control it. In Game 1, Arkkyl was out of control, going 7/0/5 as Rama and totally running the game for Team Dignitas. On the other hand, Game 2 was entirely QvoFred’s, as he went 5/1/10 on Ravana jungle and controlled Black Dragons at every point throughout the game. This set the scene for the rest of the weekend, which would see QvoFred being crowned MVP by the end of it

Semifinals - Team Dignitas VS NRG eSports

In perhaps the most surprising set of the entire event, Team Dignitas smashed NRG, the reigning world champions, in three decisive games. In both Game 1 and Game 3, NRG put up quite a good fight, taking the games to the 50-minute mark and keeping up with Team Dignitas kills wise. Game 2 was completely different, with Team Dignitas being in complete control for the entire 18-minute duration of the game. Even if NRG could keep up in kills in Games 1 and 3, they could never keep up with Team Dignitas’ pace and the speed at which they rotated around the map to secure objectives. A highlight of the set is QvoFred getting a 5-man stun off his Mantle of Discord in Game 3, securing a teamfight for his team. Overall, this set was dominated by QvoFred. In a recent interview Trixtank said that QvoFred was going to be amazing now that he finished school and it was an accurate prediction. In Game 1, he went 9/1/6 on his now signature Ravana jungle. The other top performer for Team Dignitas this game was Arkkyl, going 6/8/9 on Rama and keeping Emilitoo in check the entire game. In game 2, Qvofred contributed to 15 out of 18 total kills, going 8/0/7 as Camazotz. Finally, while game 3 saw stellar performances from all members, Qvofred, Zyrhoes and Variety really shined, using their combined crowd control and map pressure to push Team Dignitas to the win in Game 3.

Finals - Team Dignitas VS Team Rival

This set may go down in history as one of the greatest sets of competitive Smite of all time. Every game was its own entity and predicting the outcome was near impossible. The only way to truly describe it would be to go game by game. Game 1 went Team Dignitas’ way quite comfortably. A 41-minute game with only 19 kills overall meant this game was a lot of posturing and objective dancing. This bloodless objective play is Team Dignitas’ forte, so it is no surprise they took this game with ease. Game 2 was pretty much the exact same, except with more kills on both sides. As of this point during the set, it looked like Team Dignitas was going to win very easily and without much resistance from Team Rival. However, Games 3 and 4 proved that this was not the case. Game 3 saw the appearance of the now legendary “Areswalker”, as Team Rival’s Deathwalker pulled out the niche Ares solo and dominated the game with the help of KalaS on Athena support.

Game 4 saw KalaS return to Athena and Iceicebaby play Odin again, both of which helped Team Rival manhandle Team Dignitas again and secure their second win. With the scores tied, the stage was set for an epic Game 5. Sadly, this was the only disappointing game of the set. Team Dignitas returned to what they do best: objective control. The relatively small number of kills in this game was due to Team Dignitas playing how they liked to play and not trying to engage Rival in non-beneficial fights. The game was won on a risky Fire Giant call that could only have been made by a team with the tenure of Team Dignitas. They pulled it off with ease and after that, Rival’s chances for winning the set were almost completely gone.

Every player on Team Dignitas shone during this set. Variety was either destroying lane or giving Deathwalker a fight if he wanted to win it. Zyrhoes on Chronos and Sol showed why both these gods are downright overpowered in his hands. Trixtank solidified his ability to play both aggressively and passively, peeling for his team but also initiating as both Sobek and Terra. Arkkyl continued to show why he is one of the best ADCs in the world right now, playing lights out on Rama, Hou Yi, and Jing Wei. But the most impressive player was QvoFred. Rival could not ban out QvoFred because his god pool is so vast, which meant that QvoFred got a comfort pick every game, be it Ravana or Camazotz. This lead to him dominating even the games that Team Dignitas lost, which is what led to him being given the title of MVP for the entire event.

This LAN represented the end of the beginning of Team Dignitas' journey. They finally have definitive proof of being the best team in the world right now and have shown everyone that they are here to stay. Whatever the future holds for them, expectations will be high after their amazing performance at this event