TGP 2023 Preview - Global Finals

By Seliathan, picc0 — Aug 18 2023 16:02 UTC

The Great Push Global Finals of 2023 are almost upon us! Six teams managed to come out ahead in the competition, and after a month and a half of the fiercest competition in TGP history, all the work and preparation will culminate in an epic final event this weekend. The two best teams of each of the three groups earned themselves a direct qualification to the finals, but the path was much more challenging than many had initially anticipated.

Today, we will be taking a closer look at the six teams that made it to the Global Finals, and who will not only compete for a total prize pool of $300.000 USD but also the title of 2023 TGP champion.The Global Finals start at 10 AM PST / 7 PM CEST and you can watch it live over on the Warcraft YouTube Channel, or the Warcraft Twitch Channel. If you aren’t able to tune in, we’ve got you covered with LIVE updates and highlights all weekend long over on the MDI Highlights page!

Road to the Global Finals
Meet the Teams

Predictions
Language Streams

Road to the Global Finals

This year, The Great Push (TGP) followed the same format as it did in Shadowlands. It all began only six weeks ago, as the Proving Grounds for the 2023 TGP ran from July 5th to July 10th. Anybody could sign up for this stage of the tournament, and we’ve seen thousands of teams sign up to compete. Over the course of five days, teams were asked to push two pre-assigned dungeons as high as humanly possible, and the Top 18 teams then moved on to the next stage of the tournament.

This year’s Proving Grounds turned out to be incredibly exciting already, a promising start to the entire tournament. For once, the reigning TGP champions Echo did not manage to claim the top spot in the qualifying stage, although they did shape the results in an unexpected way due to their reveal of some incredible strategies in Freehold. You can read more about what exactly transpired throughout the Proving Grounds in our Proving Grounds Recap.

Ultimately, only 18 teams out of thousands were able to move on to the next stage of the event – the group stage. Three groups of six teams each battled it out in 15-hour long weekend events, playing five hours each day. The weekend would start with 4 pre-determined dungeons and sets of affixes for each dungeon, playing up each of the keystones as high as possible, and the results were tallied up at the end of the day.

By the end of each of the first two days, the team with the lowest combined keystone level or slowest combined timers, in the case of a tiebreak, was eliminated. Each day also added another dungeon, leaving only four teams to play in six different dungeons on each of the final days. Whoever remained at the top of the leaderboard after the final hour elapsed would move on to the Global Finals.

The TGP added a small twist this time around, as each of the weekends had one of the Dragonflight Season 1 dungeons in it to add a bit more dungeon variety to the mix. Group A got to run Azure Vault, Group B got Algeth’ar Academy, and Group C got Ruby Life Pools, on top of five more dungeons from Dragonflight Season 2.

When the smoke cleared, only six teams were left standing: Perplexed, Mandatory, NA’s Last Hope, Legendary, Echo, and Last Minute.

Meet The Teams

Those who have been following the developments of the MDI or TGP in previous seasons will recognize many of the names of the players and teams that will be competing for the $300,000 USD prize pool this weekend.

Four of the six teams also took the Top 4 spots in last season’s MDI: Echo, Mandatory, Legendary, and Perplexed. They are joined by NA’s Last Hope and Last Minute, two teams with a deep trove of experience in pushing high keys on retail. Many of the players also appeared in both the MDI and previous TGPs, although as part of different teams or not in the same constellation. Let’s take a closer look at each of them!

We have also prepared short, introductory videos for each of the teams, so, if you just want to learn as much as possible about each of the teams in under 60 seconds, make sure to check them out on our Raider.IO YouTube channel.

Perplexed are coming in hot this time around, having claimed the #1 spot during the Proving Grounds, and finishing first in their group as well. The team has been around for pretty much as long as competitive Mythic+ gaming has existed, and they are not done just yet.

It’s been a long time since the European team claimed a trophy, but this time might just be the one. Then again, we have been saying that repeatedly over the last couple of years, and while the team has been around for longer than any of the others, including the reigning champions, they never quite managed to stay consistent throughout the whole event.

On the back of their first place finishes, including a 1 point lead over Mandatory in Group A, they might’ve finally found that form they need to take it all the way home.

Mandatory have cemented themselves as one of the strongest teams of WoW Mythic+ esports in recent years, and it is great to see them back in action once more. Previously known as team Monka, Mandatory have had a tough start to this year’s TGP. Their performance in the Proving Grounds was far from excellent, coming in as the 12th seeded team, but this might’ve just been a fluke or lack of time to truly play during the Proving Grounds. All that mattered was that they made it to the group stage.

The moment that the group stage began, Mandatory showed why they have consistently been the number one team to give Echo a run for their money in both the MDI, as well as the TGP in Season 4 of Shadowlands, where Monka came incredibly close to beating out the reigning champions. In a very close finish on the last day of Group A, Mandatory took the second spot to the Global Finals, although they came very close to losing this spot to FSY.

With almost five weeks to practice, they had plenty of time to come up with new strategies and find their way back to their old form, making them a mandatory inclusion in the list of favorites for the Global Finals, especially as the team has always shown up when it mattered most.

As the name suggests, NA’s Last Hope are the only remaining team from North America, with all the remaining teams being either fully or largely EU-based. This makes them a fan favorite, and they earned that through incredible performances in both the Proving Grounds and the group stage. They came in third during the Proving Grounds, and finished on top of Group B with a 1 point lead and a World Record performance in Uldaman.

Group B was a tightly contested one, and with NA’s Last Hope proving themselves to be a step ahead of the competition, they are coming into the Global Finals very strong and highly motivated. While the team is only one of two teams that has not already been playing together last season, they are not to be underestimated, with many of their players having plenty of competitive experience. Global Final jitters are not something we expect from the NA veterans!

As the Last Hope of the North American region, many are rooting for the team to take the championship for themselves against the combined forces of the Emp… European teams!

Legendary came in third in last season’s MDI after making it through the Last Stand qualifier, and the team has plenty of experience in high-stress scenarios. However, they had a rocky path to the Global Finals, winning out over Last Moment in Group B by only 3 minutes and 40 seconds. They have been locked into a battle with NA’s Last Hope since the Proving Grounds, where they finished a place below their NA competitors, a situation that repeated itself for Group B as well.

Performing well in an environment such as the Global Finals is tough, especially when a mistake on a single boss can quickly cost your team 30 minutes or more. Legendary’s performance so far has not shown any signs of weakness, as the team has been very consistent all throughout, only struggling towards the very end of their group. Since their last showing on stage three weeks ago, they have surely added a few more tricks to their bag.

While their road to the globals was a rocky one and they ended up in second place behind NA’s Last Hope, their timers were only seconds apart in all of their keys, and Legendary are striving to make it to the top of the podium this time around.

Do they even need an introduction at this point? The tale of Echo knows no end, as the multi-champion of the MDI and reigning champion of the Great Push are seemingly unbeatable.

Seemingly, because it looked like they were wearing some seriously thick plot armor during the Group C tournament, where they ultimately ended up coming in first after a relentless struggle with some of the other teams of the group. While the team did finish at the top once everything was said and done, Echo was relegated to second and even third place for the majority of Group C, being over three minutes behind right up until the very end.

In typical Echo fashion they clutched it out and made it look easy, and while some may call it lucky, Echo have now managed to summon Fortuna over half a dozen times, with six consecutive MDI victories, as well as the TGP championship in Season 4 of Shadowlands. At some point, luck is indistinguishable from skill.

Echo have always been able to turn things up to a whole new level when it mattered most, but in Group C we’ve seen the titans bleed. With the Global Finals being more stacked than ever before, a day one elimination is almost as likely as another championship title, and we’re excited to see which one it will be.

The biggest surprise of this year’s TGP so far has been Last Minute, no doubt about it. While the team only came in eighth during the Proving Grounds, they have practiced and prepared incredibly well, and from the very beginning of Group C, they managed to glue our eyes to their screen whenever it popped up.

After an early lead in Group C, Last Minute retained this lead until the very last minute (this one wasn’t even intentional, I swear!), and only Echo’s plot armor allowed them to win out in the end. Not really, of course, as Echo had an incredible performance in their last key, but the fact remains that Last Minute had a strong lead over the rest of the competition all throughout Group C, being ahead by over a minute in some of the group’s dungeons. This stellar performance by Last Minute ended up eliminating one of the favorites of the tournament, Sheeesh and all eyes are on them for this weekend’s finals.

Predictions

Making a prediction for this year’s Global Finals is all but impossible, as all six teams are more than capable of performing at the absolute highest level possible. With Echo as the remaining champions struggling to even make first place in both the Proving Grounds and the group stage, anybody is able to take it home this time around. Most of the victory tweets by the teams were far from confident, as all the teams that qualified for the Global Finals felt the heat and pressure from the teams they left behind to make it this far. This, more than anything, is the clearest indicator for how much pressure and stress the teams will be under for their final 15 hours of the 2023 TGP.

Based on previous tournaments performances, as well as the overall level of play in the Group Stage, both Echo and Last Minute are looking to come in incredibly hot. Perplexed have also been more consistent than ever before, and while the team has never quite managed to reclaim their old glory in the MDI, maybe their first TGP showing will end up being the one.

This also applies to the other end of the board, as it is nigh impossible to make any predictions as to who might be going out on the first day of the tournament. It will almost entirely depend on the consistency of each of the teams in playing up their keys, as even a single missed 3-chest in one of the early keys could end up being the deciding factor for an early elimination.

Our personal predictions would ultimately look like this:

Perplexed
Last Minute
Echo
Legendary
NA’s Last Hope
Mandatory

Putting Mandatory, a team that has been showing one incredible performance after another in the last few years of competitive Mythic+, on the last spot, shows how stacked the field is in our 2023 TGP Global Finals.

Despite the changes to all of the meta classes, we do not expect there to be any changes in comp, and we will likely see Guardian Druid, Holy Paladin, Shadow Priest, Fire Mage, and Augmentation Evoker for the majority of the tournament. However, we have seen some Protection Warrior being played in Neltharion’s Lair, as Spell Reflection can be leveraged for massive boss DPS and tank survivability on both Ularogg Cragshaper and Dargrul, the second and final bosses of the dungeon. If we end up getting the last remaining Dragonflight Season 1 dungeon, Nokhud Offensive, for the Global Finals (please don’t!), we might see some more Warrior being played after all.

Language Streams

All of this year’s MDI can be watched on either the official Warcraft Twitch.tv or YouTube channels. In addition to the official English production, you will also be able to follow the event in multiple other languages:

About the Authors

Seliathan has been playing Rogue for over half his life, since the initial release of WoW over 18 years ago. After a long career of Raid Leading, Theorycrafting, and pushing Mythic+, Seliathan enjoys creating all kinds of PvE content on Twitch, co-hosting the Tricks of the Trade Rogue podcast, contributing to Raider.IO as Staff Writer, and writing guides for Icy Veins.

Picco is an old-fashioned WoW gamer that started back in Vanilla and has played ever since. She is a healer by heart and is currently maining Restoration Druid. She loves Mythic+ and has a great passion for events like the MDI and TGP. Picco is part of the KeystoneMasters team and enjoys jiggling around with ideas for fun new formats of community tournaments. She is also a Mod for several streamers and guilds, particularly during the RWF. Outside of WoW, Picco is a Sprout in FF14, where she explores with her Lala Summoner.