Commentary
First I want to talk about a misconception, I keep hearing. NaVi was not slumping going into TI3. NaVi was the one of the favorites to win TI3. TI3 started in early August. NaVi entered the mid June DreamHack on a 24 match win streak. Thats the longest consecutive win streak I have on record. NaVi sure as hell wasnt slumping prior to mid June. NaVi ended up losing in a hotly contested 2-1 series at DreamHack (single elimination bracket). That was a tight series with Sneyking playing out of his mind on a mid Doom in game one and a great comeback from Dignitas in game 3. Losing a close series 2-1 is not a slump.
In July NaVi had three first place finishes in the three tournaments NaVi played in. What a slump. The team won the Alienware Cup against the top east teams (NaVi performed poorly in the group stages that were almost entirely inconsequential to the elimination phase) and won the Defense 4 and Raidcall Season 3 (both tournaments featured the top western teams like Alliance). NaVi sure as hell wasnt slumping on the 24 game June win streak and won every tournament it played in July against the top eastern and western teams. NaVi won its group at the TI3 in August. There was no slump.
NaVi was 41-20 from the mid-June DreamHack to the beginning of TI3. A .672 win rate. Slightly less than the teams overall win rate of .716 but on par with its against TI3 Teams win rate of .672 (remember that in July NaVi played a lot of TI3 teams.
THERE WAS NO PRE TI3 SLUMP.
NaVi is 19-24 in the past two months, has not won an offline event since January and hasnt won an online event since April. For a team with the pedigree and expectations of NaVi, thats a slump.