Execration can’t make Witch Doctor work, get eliminated from Esports World Cup 2025

It’s an elimination weekend at the Esports World Cup Dota 2 competition, and the first to bow out are Execration.

Twelve teams entered the gauntlet bracket at Esports World Cup, but only four will advance to the playoffs. It’s a brutal single elimination tournament stage and unfortunately for the Southeast Asia Dota 2 fans, both their representatives at EWC, Execration and Talon Esports, landed in the gauntlet bracket.

Execration came to the tournament with quite unique ideas, but struggled to adapt quickly enough to the tournament meta. That placed them at the bottom of Group B and pitted them against Xtreme Gaming in the first round of the gauntlet. They started the series having to play into a Medusa from Xtreme’s Wang "Ame" Chunyu, and learned quite fast that they stood no chance at dealing with him.

Ame kept dodging any engagement for the first 20 minutes, not showing on the map from the early stage until he got his Butterfly, around the 20-minute mark. Five minutes later, he already had Eye of Skadi as well and started to push with his team to end the game with nearly 25k gold advantage.

Win lane, lose game

With their backs against the wall, Execration tried to find a solution to XG nearly perfect map control and team fight executions and went with a position 4 Bounty Hunter and a Witch Doctor position 5 to complement the team fight potential they had aligned between a Mars and a Monkey King.

This was the third time Execration attempted to make Witch Doctor work at the Esports World Cup. They picked it twice before, against Gaimin Gladiators in the group stage, and lost both games with it. So far, they are the only team to have drafted Witch Doctor, a hero that is rather strong through the laning stage, but fades away in the late game. That was the case against XG as well.

Execration started the game strong, disrupting all three lanes for XG and taking an early lead on the kill score, gold, and experience. However, XG had Ame on a carry Nature’s Prophet, on which he rushed Hand of Midas and did a perfect job at keeping the net worth even, although his team was having troubles dealing with Execration’s early aggression.

Ame went for a high DPS build, with no survivability items, which cost him his life a few too many times in the team fights and gave Execration the possibility of extending the game up to 50 minutes.

“It was the Bounty Hunter and Monkey King that gave me serious troubles through the entire game,” Lin "Xxs" Jing said in the post-match interview when he was asked if he was worried that he had to lane against Witch Doctor. He also mentioned that Xtreme never felt threatened by Execrations’ overall strategy, and admitted that they made a few mistakes that allowed their adversaries to take a bit of a lead at times.

Although it was the SEA team that was able to breach the high ground first, once Xxs had Assault Cuirass and Ame completed a Satanic, the game went totally downhill for Execration, and they became the first team to be eliminated from the Esports World Cup.

They head back home in the 13th/16th place with $50,000 for their efforts, but also with a lot of much-needed LAN experience.

What’s next for Execration

Unfortunately, the SEA team didn’t qualify for The International 2025, which makes the future even more uncertain for the current roster.

“We’ve been learning a lot at this tournament, we got to scrim with the biggest teams,” said captain Bryle "cml" Alvizo in his exit interview at EWC and expressed his hope that everyone sticks together, despite the result in Riyadh.

Three more teams will fall this Saturday, July 12, at the Esports World Cup. Up next are Shopify Rebellion, the only North American team at the event, fighting for survival against Team Yandex. SEA’s last hope, Talon Esports will be up against HEROIC later in the day, while the first round in the gauntlet bracket will be closed by Team Falcons taking on Virtus.pro. So stay tuned to rdy.gg for more news and updates from the Esports World Cup 2025.