Top Reshuffles in DotA 2. Main News and Events in Grand Organizations

After International 2019, many teams immediately began to change their rosters. Endless reshuffles, leaving or inactive players, etc. But the middle of the DPC season is coming. The second major is on the way and needs to be taken more seriously. Many top teams missed the first tournament of the season because of a break after International, but the second one needs attention. 

This article is not about small teams in regions. Let’s talk only about the main beasts of the Dota world.

OG and OG.Seed

Let’s start with the current world champions. As expected, they went inactive as a full team. Last year, “ana” did this and rested for almost the entire season. Now we can see that the whole team is doing this. Nobody knows when they will begin to destroy teams again. Perhaps it will be shortly before TI. But they did a little different. The organization announced that now they will be represented by two teams on DotA 2! 

The main coach will be the captain of the main team “N0tail”. Other members of the main roster will help him. Earlier, we already saw how well-known organizations represented two teams for tournaments at once. Sometimes it even turned out so that the second team was more successful than the main one. Well, this is not such a case. The roster has failed in the qualifications for the Dream League, losing in the game against the Nigma team, which we will talk about a little later – the most delicious for the ending.

Ceb said about the new team:

— “We will share experience, maturity, and knowledge, while they will feed us with their immense motivation, their drive, and passion. We intend to give them the best we can offer and help them achieve their dreams just like we achieved ours. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the ride as much as we will.”

This OG.Seed currently has the following 5 players:

1. “Madara” Omar Dabachach

2. “Chessie” Rasmus Blomdin

3. “Xibbe” Andreas Ragnemalm

4. “Zfreek” Zakari Freedman

5. “Peksu” Petu Vaatainen

After OG comes LGD (as on the TI). 

PSG.LGD lost to FTD.Apollo in 1 / 8 open qualifiers for DreamLeague Leipzig Major in Dota 2. Team Lu Somnus / M Yao left the qualification and will not perform in the second major of the season. Support and captain fy is still inactive after the surgery. So, the situation is not so good for this team right now. It was a great team disaster to lose International 2019, so it is very hard to play this season like the previous one.

So, the Chinese organization announced the restart of the LGD International project. The new Dota 2 roster will include representatives of Southeast Asia. Before the launch of the Dota Pro Circuit system, developers forbade teams with a common owner to participate in the same rating tournaments because of a possible conflict of interest. That’s why many Chinese clubs that previously owned several squads refused additional rosters. However, before the start of the second DPC season, Valve representatives told that the teams of the same club can participate in majors and minors together, the ban applies only on The International.

To the tenth anniversary, LGD presented its new logo (just for you to know). 

Team Secret

So, another team is Team Secret. On November 4th MidOne was removed from the active roaster and Matumbaman replaced him. The current team consists of: 

1. “MATUMBAMAN” Lasse Urpalainen

2.  “Nisha” Michał Jankowski

3.  “zai” Ludwig Wåhlberg

4. “YapzOr” Yazied Jaradat

5. “Puppey” Clement Ivanov

Then comes Team Liquid and Alliance.

Why did I combine these two teams? Because their case is not so simple as for the rest. On September 13, the team captain Liquid announced that the current active roster of the team was leaving the organization and the whole team. This surprised and shocked everyone. Yes, at TI they couldn’t win, but the results were pretty good. Well, we’re talking about the second-best team in the world. However, this didn’t suit them. Kuroky amazed everyone with another statement. He is going to form his own organization. Wait a bit… We`ll talk about it a little later.

Liquid began to look for new 5 players for their DotA roster and they found former Alliance team members: 

1. “miCKe” Michael Vu

2. “qojqva” Maximilian Bröcker

3. “Boxi” Samuel Svahn

4. “Taiga” Tommy Le

5. “iNSaNiA” Aydin Sarkohi

Accordingly, the Alliance faced a similar situation. Their entire roster left the organization and had to recruit new players. They started to look like this: 

1. “Nikobaby” Nikolay Nikolov 

2. “Limmp” Linus Blomdin 

3. “33” Neta Shapira 

4. “Handsken” Simon Haag 

5. “Fata” Adrian Trinks 5

Next, we will go to less interesting reshuffles, but in very well-known teams.

NA`VI

They decided to invite young blood to the team. The captain Sonneiko who made the previous roster left them because of disagreements in the team. And they also replaced the Offliner “Blizzy” with a player of the same position from Virtus Pro «9pasha». The current roster with a young player on 5th position, who has no experience in the pro scene Illias. They found him in the top ladder in Europe at the support position.

1. “Crystallize” Vladislav Krystanek 

2. “MagicaL” Idan Vardanian 

3. “9pasha” Pavel Khvastunov 

4. “Zayac” Bakyt Emilzhanov 

5. “illias” Ilyas Ganeev 

Virtus Pro, after another disastrous performance at the International, decided to change a lot as well. They left only two players who were searching a team team captain Alexei «Solo» Berezin and mid player «Noone». Resolution, the Ukrainian player who played in foreign teams over the past few years, came to 3rd position. They got two young players from the public to 1 and 4 positions. 

1. “epileptick1d” Egor Grigorenko 

2. “No [o] ne” Vladimir Minenko 

3. “Resolut1on” Roman Fominok 

4. “Save-” Vitalie Melnic 

5. “Solo” Alexei Berezin 

The young star player “Ramzes” joined the EG team. This was a surprise for many since the young player has very little English knowledge. Well, the organization took this risk. “Abed” also joined the team. And «Sumail» and «s4» are inactive. “Ramzes” also changed the role from 1 to 3, which was discussed in many interview. According to analysts, the current squad will play mainly on «Arteezy». For a long time, he needed a team playing fully on him. 

Perhaps in such circumstances, the dota star will be able to show himself to everyone. 

 1. “Arteezy” Artour Babaev  

 2. “Abed” Abed Yusop  

 3. “RAMZES666” Roman Kushnarev  

 4. “Cr1t-” Andreas Nielsen 

 5. “Fly” Tal Aizik 

Nigma

Finally, the most high-profile event in the DotA 2 community after the completion of TI 2019 is the creation of a new organization by the captain of former Liquid Kuroky. All the former liquid players will play in this team. After Kuroky left the team with many players, others thought where to go. There were rumors about creating their own organization. So everyone was looking forward to seeing the new team after the official statement.

KuroKy announced e-sports organization for Dota 2 named Nigma. The roster of the team has not changed consisting of Team Liquid former members. This information appeared on Twitter. 

Previously, the team players showed short videos with them looking at a black hole in the sky. In the announcement, the club showed a new video where e-sportsmen teamed up with it. — “The end of one journey is the beginning of another… it’s Nigma,” — they also tweeted.

They lost to the Alliance team in qualifications for the second major of the season. But on the other hand, they entered Wepley minor without any problems. So, they have one more chance to get to the major. Let’s hope they will succeed!

1. “Miracle” Amer Al-Barkawi  

2. “w33” Aliwi Omar 

3. “MinD_ContRoL” Ivan Ivanov 

4. “GH” Maroun Merhej 

5. “KuroKy” Kuro Salehi Takhasomi 

This season, the team reshuffles are much greater than before. All organizations saw the OG miracle last year when the team assembled for a couple of months before TI- and won it. Moreover, a year later, they won it again for the first time in history. 

So, now the teams change players easier and more often. Perhaps during the season, while the OG is on vacation, there can appear a new star. We will hope that soon such monsters as OG will finally have a worthy competitor!