dkphobos

Why I love Virtus.Pro right now

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

Continuing my theme of Dota 2 posts, I want to talk about why I love Virtus.Pro so much. Their roster is as follows:

  1. Illidan Stormrage
  2. God
  3. DKPhobos
  4. Lil
  5. fng

This is one of the only rosters where I don’t need to look up the players on GosuGamers or Liquipedia. Usually I know 2 or 3 core players but knowing a whole roster is something that is reserved for only the people I place in the highest esteem and I shall explain why while this becomes a more personal post rather than just a Dota 2 article.

I supported Na’Vi. Everyone did, in the days of TI1 and TI2. In those days I didn’t know what Dota 2 was, so when a friend of mine said “Hey, let’s watch the TI3 Grand Finals where Na’Vi are the fan favourites,” I stayed up until 5am in the morning to watch the finals only to get up at 8am the next day. I didn’t play Dota for a while, it was too hard for me, until a friend of mine who wasn’t the one who coaxed me into watching TI3 offered to teach me how to Dota. One year later and I am a better player than him, though not by much. I got into the competitive Dota 2 scene quite quickly and initially I supported Na’Vi, but, when I got really interested in watching Na’Vi, they were in a time of flux. They had just let Puppey go and had just acquired fng from Power Rangers, and this is where I started supporting VP.

You see, fng was young, new, and full of ideas. I liked how his drafts were both within the meta but trying something new. I liked how he played aggressively but had a plan if it went wrong. I like how he went for his dream with both hands. So, when he was kicked from Na’Vi after only 2 months, I was somewhat torn. I told myself that I would still support Na’Vi, after all, they had Dendi, but when the newly formed NVMI turned Virtus.Pro Polar came to play Na’Vi, I turned coat to support VPP.

I liked fng that much, and it is from him that I have learned to love all of VP. Illidan is a fantastic pub. player who isn’t afraid to take risks. DKPhobos is someone who performs well every game and is the best offlane player in CIS and European Dota in my opinion (2nd best in the world to Zai) God is THE BEST MID PLAYER. He will sometimes lose mid but that is mostly because supports roam into mid to catch him out. Much like Dendi, he harkens back to the days when solo mid was just that; mid got no support and he is so fantastic because of that. I have heard many things about how he used to tilt, and I notice that, nowadays, he keeps his composure and it just shows how far he has come as a player. Then we come to supports.

How can I sum them up? Lil is a pub star that is literally the best Visage in the world. fng is the drafter to end all drafters. He is the new Puppey. Old Dota players won’t lose their edge but fng offers something new. How he moves in game and how he acts in team fights is fantastic. I won’t pretend any member of VP is perfect but fng hits all the right notes when I watch him. He is the support that Illidan needs. He is aggressive, courageous and, much like Puppey, unafraid of risk taking, or even failure. There is phrase that I think of when I see fng play: “either I win or I learn.” Give fng a year or two and he will be better than Puppey.

I know this sounds like an awful lot of optimistic thinking but I really love VP. When they play teams like Secret, EG, LGD or Cloud9, they are always the underdogs, but they don’t act like it. Everyone wants to see something brilliant and, in my mind, more often than not; they deliver. They beat THE favourites in TI5; Team Secret, 2-1. They have beaten all 6 of the teams higher then them on GosuGamers at some point in their lives (admittedly not always with the same roster). With the CIS region there is a lot of competition at the moment. I haven’t written Na’Vi off as some people have, and CIS-R and Empire are fantastic teams but, for me, VP is the one to watch. In my mind the ratings are as such:

  1. Evil Geniuses
  2. LGD Gaming
  3. Team Secret
  4. Virtus Pro
  5. Other scrubs

I am a massive VP fan. I first liked them when they were NVMI because of fng and when Illidan was teamless and I have supported them since they were V.PP. Wherever fng goes, I will go but I really like every played in VP. I will hold a special place in my heart for all of them. I want to play how they do, despite the fact that I am a 2k MMR scrub. 5th in TI5 is amazing and I think they should be really proud of themselves, and I am really glad they kept the same roster after TI5. Here is to another year of amazing Dota from all of them.

Post TI5 Shuffle – Part 2

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

The start of this post is almost anti-news but it made me happy to hear it confirmed nonetheless. Virtus.Pro will keep their current roster. Despite the organisation having been around in Dota 2 for many years, they’ve had a distinctly poor record where The International is concerned, despite always being considered a fairly competitive team with good facilities. In 2012 they failed to qualify and the next year, after being directly invited, they had a terrible group stage and came 13th-16th, knocked out in the first round. Then in 2014, they got to the wildcard playoffs but lost to MVP.Phoenix 2-0 in a Bo3, ending their run at TI4 prematurely without placing. So it fell to Illidan, DKPhobos, God, fng and Lil to break the curse that has followed Virtus.Pro to past Internationals. After a slightly rocky group stage, losing a few matches they should have won, in my opinion, they lost 2-1 in a tiebreak against a Team Empire who displayed unparalleled form unlike anything they showed in the tournament before or after that match. However, Virtus.Pro aren’t one to be kept down and, after a tense Bo1 against Fnatic, they stormed out of the gates, first of all beating Complexity 2-1, a team who, like CDEC, had surpassed anyones expectations despite stating that they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything but 1st. Then, of course, the match which everyone knows about; their victory over Team Secret. The most nail-biting few hours of TI5. I expected them to lose but knew they could win, and with that victory they secured themselves 5th-6th, an incredible achievement which they should be proud of, and evidently their employers are proud of them too.

Next we look to the Chinese scene as CIS teams seem to be keeping fairly quiet on roster shuffles. DK and EHOME are rumoured, and LGD are confirmed, to have an interest in creating an International team, not just keeping their Chinese one. The Chinese team seems, to me, to be very stale as it keeps the same players and same few teams playing each other all year round. I’ve talked about this before but the big organisations are clearly trying to combat this by creating youth squads and, now, creating International teams which, no doubt, will be mentored or at least somewhat connected to their Chinese counterparts. It’s worth speculating as to what free-agents will join these teams, and my best guess is that Black^ will make a return to China after his hasty partition from ViCi Gaming. Then we go to iG, a team that had a disappointing run at TI5 considering the talent they have on their team, finishing 9th-12th. It was said that Chaun might retire if he doesn’t get to play with Ferrari_430 and Burning. Burning is already confirmed to stay at iG and 430 has been in iG all of his Dota 2 career and I doubt he is going anywhere as iG, if he wants to leave, will just pay him more money to stay as he is a part of their brand now.

Now to teams that weren’t in TI5. London Conspiracy, who confusingly had an all-Greek team under their belt who were met with a smattering of successes, have parted ways with their Dota 2 team after the players decided not to renew their contracts with the organisation and have gone on to form Golden Boys. Next to [A]lliance, where news hints to the previously discussed S4 transfer; Pajkatt has left the organisation. V1lat, the popular Russian commentator, has also mentioned that S4 will return to Alliance. However, on the other hand it has been stated that Team Secret have finalised their roster, but have not given specifics yet. With [A]lliance’s record slowly diminishing, undoing much of their past success, they are under pressure to revive the glory days of TI3, and perhaps the insights S4 brings from Secret might do it for them.

Now onto more predictions. EE is teamless and it has widely been rumoured that he will pair with Puppey in the new Team Secret. I am both glad and saddened that Secret is sticking around. Sad because I found their style to be dreadfully boring (sorry to keep saying so) but glad because, with the departure of Arteezy and, hopefully, S4, we will maybe see a more aggressive, entertaining team than the one which previously dominated the whole world, more in line with how Zai played the offlane role. Also, I would like to see Dendi join them, though I highly doubt it. I think him and Puppey play really well together and I think the measured, planned approach they have to the game means they compliment each other. However, I don’t think Na’Vi will want to let the person who is the face of professional Dota 2 go anytime soon, especially since he was their star player in TI5 along with Sonneiko.

The two MVP teams will probably mix and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a few people from Korea and China join the previously all-Malaysian Fnatic. However, I can’t really give specifics on that as I don’t know the scene that well. I can only guess that Fnatic won’t want to stick with only Malaysian players.

Team Empire is also one organisation that is yet to announce what they are planning to with their roster. It could be argued that they underperformed but I think that it might have been the pressure of performing or simply just bad luck. After all, they lost to two Asian teams; LGD Gaming and MVP.Phoenix. If they have played against a team from Europe or America things may have been very different for them. However, if they must shuffle then I predict some intermingling with either Na’Vi or Vega Squadron.

The International 5 – Part XVIII – Pauses

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

Pauses are an expected hindrance in some tournaments, and of course, in online play. However, it is usually a staple that The International doesn’t allow pauses. However, this years TI is taking place in an arena using normal servers and I have seen multiple games where a pause, relatively early on, has completely disrupted the game.

I’ll be clear here and declare that I think pauses are justified. From what I’ve heard most professional players are good sports and play fairly, however, you can’t deny that pausing gives each team a chance to calmly sit back and talk about the game at hand. Of course these pauses vary in length. Some games, in the past, have been completely called off because the players just can’t play properly, whether it’s an internet issue or a server issue or whatever, but some pauses are just because a player dropped his headset and only last 10 seconds. However, when it is a long pause many people will notice that teams tend to play somewhat differently afterwards, particularly if the team was losing.

I’ve just finished watching LGD vs Virtus.Pro and I’m not sure how influential the early pauses were but LGD paused a few times in game 1 and, to be honest, it aided them a lot more than VP. While I see that pauses are necessary I really think that, in LAN tournaments, pauses shouldn’t be allowed. I don’t quite understand why this TI has allowed pauses when the last 3 haven’t but, alas, all teams will have to deal with it and, as seen in one of EG’s matches where everyone had to DC because of an undeclared server issue, not all pauses are unjustified.

Just a short one today and maybe not one tomorrow while the finals are on. See ya later 🙂

The International 5 – Part XVII – Virtus Pro vs Team Secret

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

Only a short one today because I just finished watching Team Secret vs Virtus Pro. A battle for the ages, and possibly one of the biggest upsets in TI5 thus far, and I really can’t describe my sheer elation that (spoiler alert) Virtus Pro beat Team Secret, the favourite of the favourites to win TI5, 2-1.

Game one got off to a bad start for VP. Having drafting an unusual Medusa choice for Illidan, one of his best heroes last patch, he remained tragically underfarmed all the way up until the 30 minute gg call by VP. Fng (who will now be known by me as f-god) also drafted an unusual Magnus offlane and Silencer for God in the mid. He needed, however, some recognisable picks in his draft for those who are only familiar with the current meta, and so snagged a support Naga Siren for himself and a Rubick for Lil. Secret, on the other hand, thought that they shouldn’t fix what wasn’t broken, picking a Lina for S4 and a Templar Assassin for Arteezy, whom once again lane swapped to give S4 safelane and Arteezy the mid. Drafting around their two big cores as usual, Puppey took the Earthshaker for himself and gave Kuroky the Tusk while Zai went to the offlane with a stellar performance as Dark Seer. It’s also important to note, I think, that Virtus Pro banned the Bounty Hunter, having seen how it won Secret their close game against iG yesterday, and proceeded to ban him in both other games they played. Clearly VP had done their homework.

F-god then pulled a bit of a cous de gras by picking Lina and Earthshaker first but making Earthshaker the carry and Lina a support. Lina, of course, is very often played as a carry at the moment, and it seems VP also do this a lot, however, fng took her to the offlane with DKPhobos on the Earthshaker and proceeded to “wreck shit,” for lack of a better phrase. Running a 2-1-2 worked incredibly well in their favour as Secret drafted a greedy Enigma for Puppey who took it to the jungle and then a Shadow Shaman for Kuroky who roamed around the map but mainly hung around mid trying to shut down G on the Storm Spirit, another popular hero this meta. While G died 4 times in the match he ended the game with the highest level, beating S4 on the Queen of Pain by 2 levels and the rest of his team by at least 4. It is also always an impressive thing to see Lil play Visage, a hero for whom which he is considered the best in the world. Secret also managed to shut down Illidan on his Silencer safelane, however, his 7 deaths were not enough to stop him from out-farming Arteezy, who had to face DKPhobos and fng alone in lane, something which, in my opinion, directly lead to Secret’s loss of this game. Zai, once more, took Dark Seer to the offlane and, despite ion shell, could not stop the best carry in Eastern Europe from getting all the farm he needed and helping tie up the series 1-1 and forcing it to a final confrontation.

Secret’s nail in their coffin was the fact that, while last game they had banned the Drow as the last ban from Virtus Pro, this time they didn’t and, once again running with the Visage on Lil, F-god support Lina and Storm Spirit on God, Illidan was given the Drow Ranger and, despite a slightly rough early game, he came through in the end, using the insane push of the Drow Ranger to destroy each building with new assaults. It seemed that, for half an hour, Secret couldn’t leave their base. Arteezy took the safelane with Shadow Fiend this time around and, once again, S4 played the Queen of Pain. With DKPhobos playing an Earthshaker Kuroky, on the Rubick, was guaranteed some good spells to steal and finally that left Puppey with the Dazzle who, throughout the match, landed some really clutch Shallow Graves to save his cores. However, in the midgame, when both teams were strongest, it was VP who came out on top, securing 4 Roshans, intimidating Secret more than anything with the first one and, with DKPhobos landing some game-winning Echo Slams, which Kuroky was never in position to steal, he won them the fights that mattered and, ultimately, allowed for VP to get megacreeps. My buttocks were so clenched for all of the second half of this game that they almost welded together, but very well played to both teams. Secret were incredible and, had VP not got the Drow, it might have been completely different.

The International 5 – Part XIV – So it begins

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

At time of writing the main stages of TI5 start in half an hour. The first match, Team Empire vs LGD, looks to be a tense one, and then CDEC vs Cloud9 in the upper bracket was something no one really expected to see. CDEC look on fire and Cloud9, while they have stumbled here and there, are in form and must have been relatively pleased with their 3-1-3 (Wins/Draws/Losses) group stage result. Team Empire are, arguably, the best the CIS region has to offer and are the only CIS team in the upper bracket. LGD finished the group stages with the most points across all teams and so it is unsurprising that they go into this match as the favourites, but not by a heavy margin.

You see, beyond a couple of matches, I don’t think there are any landslide favourites to win in each match. Of course Secret and LGD and EG go into every match with the most support, and are 1st, 2nd and 3rd in terms of the GosuGamer world rankings for Dota 2. Let us also not count out those in the lower bracket as well. The best of 1 games that it will provide are going to be tense for every team involved. First there will be blood, and then I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw tears.

There’s not much actual content in this post as all the games are due to take place in a little while. 15 minutes now and counting to the Empire – LGD match. I will say this though. With every hotly anticipated clash, where the stakes are high and the difference between first and second is insurmountable, I always feel terribly sorry for the loser. Everyone has the same chances, and naturally there must be a winner in every competition, unless you’re at one of those stupid school sports days where everyone is a winner, but they don’t count! Everyone knows that some teams are better than others, and all teams have bad games and bad days, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling sorry for them. They were so close to their dream, living it, perhaps, but, whether it’s because of decisions they made or because they were just outplayed and outmanoeuvred, someone must lose, and, without sounding sappy, I think they should be happy that they tried.

To quote HyHy from Free To Play; “there’s not many chances in life where you can say that you’re the best in the world at something.” Everyone in TI5 is there because they deserve to be there, and, whatever place they get, I hope they are pleased with what they’ve achieved. TI5 is everything good about esports (besides the ridiculous price tags for merchandise) and anyone there is a shining example of the excellence displayed throughout every game of this series and, hopefully, every game they play. So, finally, to the players in TI5, I say good luck. Have fun.

The International 5 – Part XI – Upper and Lower bracket & Virtus.Pro WHY?!

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

As you may or may not know, the teams that will face off on Monday in the upper and lower brackets for TI5 have been decided now that the group stage is over. As for what I think the outcome will be I can’t really say, first of all because there have been numerous upsets to what people expected already this tournament but also because I think the ones that I can actually predict are fairly obvious. Today I wanted to share my thoughts on the “double elimination” tournaments are run and to try and unpick why Virtus.Pro are not in the upper bracket.

For those of you who don’t know, the TI5 group stages were run by randomly allocating each team to one of two groups. Each group had 8 teams and so each team would play two matches against every other team in their group in a round robin style of play. 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and none for a loss. The four teams in each group with the most point will advance to the upper bracket and those with the least will go to the loser’s bracket. In the upper bracket, if you lose your Best of 3 game (Bo3) then you get put down to a loser’s bracket to play a match. However, any match lost in the loser’s bracket puts you out of the competition.

I think this way of running tournaments is incredibly entertaining, and quite fair for the teams. Those who have played well consistently throughout the tournament get rewarded, and don’t get punished for having a bad day if they were previously playing well. It gives good teams who mess up another chance. Of course, it’s still a competition, and you can’t give people infinite chances, and I think the pressure of the loser’s bracket at TI5 is enough to bring out the best teams, revealing whether they crack under pressure or go on to succeed.

However, when your favourite team gets put into the loser’s bracket, it can be somewhat irksome. A part of me doesn’t mind too much that VP are in the loser’s bracket as I am not at all certain that they would beat most of the teams in the winner’s bracket. 6 of the 8 teams in the upper bracket have an 80% chance of beating VP. I think my optimistic YOLO goal of 4th for VP can now be considered ridiculous. I think VP play well under pressure but I am not sure how far that will take them this time around.

Their match against EHOME yesterday was painful to watch. They needed a draw and that was all, but they lost 0-2. I only saw the first match but Illidan Stormrage, playing his patented Anti-Mage, seemed to play almost without a brain. He is known for having an incredibly aggressive playstyle but he’s also known as being one of the best, if not the best, farmers in the CIS scene, and yesterday he did not show it. This obviously isn’t the end, not by a long shot. Illidan was clearly having a bad day, and he definitely played a lot better in the tiebreaker match against Team Empire, but he just didn’t seem to play like he usually did.

I think it’s also worth, at this point, expressing my dislike for carry-Lina. I think a position 4 support Lina is really powerful. All she needs is a Eul’s scepter to really start doing damage, but if you expect Lina to be your first or 2nd position then the only benefit you get from that is a very quick Aghanim’s Scepter. As a pos. 4 she can get her most important item by, hopefully, 15 minutes. Then she can hone in on level 11 to get her upgraded ultimate ability and then she can either keep giving way to her more farm-heavy carries or she can transition into more of a carry role. Position 3.5 if you will. Support Lina’s can be tricky too though, as her main asset is burst damage rather than controlling your enemies or keeping your team alive.

I think that, on Monday, we will see a very different Virtus.Pro. It seemed to me that, come the group stages, they had changed their playstyle quite a bit. Hopefully now they will start playing like the old Virtus.Pro that I remember. Ultimately though, I think Virtus.Pro have been fairly treated. Allegedly their group was the harder of the two but I personally don’t see it. I think both groups were evenly matched, and when you see CDEC and Complexity in the top 4 of their groups you have to wonder how important the perception of these “giants” like Secret and EG really are. I like both their attitudes; they go into each game with the same head. They do their homework on the teams and they go in ready to play their best dota. I would like to see them do well because they really deserve it.

The International 5 – Part IV – What does TI5 mean beyond Dota 2?

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

As the name implies, and as I’ve mentioned previously, this is the 5th annual TI. Each year it has taken on more or less the same format with slight changes year on year to how to get involved with the tournament and the first TI being rather a surprise to the Dota 2 scene and esports as a whole.

Valve released a free documentary called “Free to play” which follows three players during the first International. I think it’s rather entertaining and, to a certain extent, shows how unexpected The International was. You can watch it here. Basically, the surprise was the amount of money on offer. Suddenly, by offering a $1 million grand prize and a $1.6 million prize pool, Valve almost singlehandedly legitimised esports as a career choice, albeit a difficult one. It helped, of course, that the eventual winners of TI1 stuck together, performed very well for a number of years and, overall, were very personable, almost becoming the face of the Dota 2 pro-scene.

It took a few years to really start raking up the tempo but in 2013, after TI3, Dota 2 was suddenly a much bigger business than it had been during TI1, and many other esports were aided by this. Before 2011 esports, in the west at least, revolved around LAN finals and the people that paid the price of admission to watch in person were your audience. Streaming services like Twitch and Valve’s own service in the Dota 2 client greatly increased the number of people able to watch and, since Valve was more than just Dota 2, they could advertise their competition a whole lot more than the esports organisations could do on their own, thereby getting more people to watch and be interested in Dota 2 and substantially increasing a players ability to do this as their full time job.

Now we come to this, a $17 million prize pool at present and Valve announcing The Majors a few months ago, which are going to be seasonal competitions run by Valve, though less big than TI. Valve, with TI1, greatly increased the interest in esports and, I would argue that, without something like this, esports in the west would have floundered and very slowly ramped up, but it is because of this that Valve and Dota 2 got on mainstream news sights and TV stations. Suddenly esports and MOBAs weren’t something for shut-ins and nerds but were mainstream, with real people behind the screens and competitions with the scale of the World Cup.

However, the unfortunate thing is that games don’t last forever. While I think both LoL and Dota 2 have a lot of mileage left in them, especially since Riot completely control their pro-scene and so are much more capable to react to fan requests, I think there will eventually be a decline in interest, very similar to how we see WoW’s playerbase slowly slipping off with peaks and troughs surrounding the expansions. I worry that, with The Majors, Valve with oversaturate the Dota 2 market and people, like myself, who watch a lot of esports, just won’t have time to keep track of it all. There are also many pro-gamers who simply can’t make a living from it because their games aren’t widely watched. Call of Duty and World of Warcraft leap to mind, both having pro-scenes watched by a handful of people but with nothing like the money that Dota 2 and LoL have behind them. 

Blizzard said that they wanted WoW to develop a bigger pro-scene but, unfortunately, WoW just wasn’t interesting to watch. Dota 2 and LoL, while much more complex and deep than CoD or WoW or any fighting game that you can name, are far more watchable because of a number of reasons. Firstly, that they have spectator-mechanics built in. Spectators can see things the players can’t like how much money everyone has, where everyone is on the map, where both teams are focused etc. I tried to use examples that meant you didn’t have to play Dota to understand them, but there are much more. Moreover, you can see a lot of the map in spectator mode, unlike in CoD where you have to look through the eyes of one of the players. Also, if you are unfamiliar with Dota, the casters help provide an insight into how it is played. I watched TI3 while knowing almost nothing about Dota 2 but thoroughly enjoyed myself watching it in the early hours of the morning. It also helps that every hero, ability and item in Dota 2 have very recognisable and unique designs.

TI5 itself is obviously going to be big. It features almost double the prize pool of The Masters, one of the four big golf tournaments, which awards $9 million in prizes. The winner will get more than Australian Cricket team got for winning the World Cup and what’s more important is that 90% of the prize money came from the community. It tells the world at large that esports is thriving, perhaps more so than more mainstream sports. It also tells the gaming industry that people want more of these kinds of games. Not MOBAs especially, but competitive focused games, and we can already see signs of this with the release of games like HotS and Smite. While Dota 2 will have its day, esports will continue to thrive for at least the foreseeable future.

The Inernational 5 – Part II – Virtus Pro

Posted on by cloudvstheworld

Throughout TI5, and since about Christmas this year, I have been supporting a team called Virtus Pro. Well, sort of. Over the year the squad that it has become now has gone through many iterations, first being called NVMI (A Russian acronym which translates as “we’re lucky; we’re playing) when they were newly formed then Virtus Pro Polar, when they were picked up as a 2nd squad for the esports organisation Virtus Pro, then on to ASUS.Polar and then finally to Virtus Pro when the organisation merged their two squads. As it stands their squad is currently comprised of

1. Illidan Stormrage

2. God

3. DKPhobos

4. Lil

5. fng (Captain)

I have, as is the standard in Dota, arranged them in order of “farm priority.” Illidan, as a 1st position carry I find sometimes underwhelming. He’s very capable of getting farmed and his hyper aggressive play-style works well in some situations but, in my opinion, it often leads to near misses and lucky escapes. However, I think he is the perfect player for this team as, overall, they boast a very aggressive lineup, with God and DKPhobos just waiting for the starting pistol a bit longer than Illidan. That’s why I think Illidan has struggled over the years as a professional Dota player as, often, his team have not played the required way to back him leading to almost half of his titles coming while I have supported him. He has been with this iteration of Virtus Pro since they were formed as NVMI. His Drow Ranger (one of my favourite heroes) play has also been questionable in the past.

Next we have God, who was brought onto the team when VP and ASUS.Polar merged. He is their midlaner and, on some days, he is the best midlaner in the world, recently having often out farmed Illidan in their games. In the current meta I would argue that your midlane player is the player who can make or break the game for you, especially at such a high level of play. From what I understand, he didn’t used to be the refined professional that he is now, often “tilting” in his games. Tilting is where, once you start doing badly, you become aware of it and then start doing worse and you become aware of that, and then the cycle continues.

DKPhobos only recently returned to the world of esports, first retiring in 2012 he started with NVMI and, after briefly playing for team Na’Vi, he returned when they were still called ASUS.Polar. It is difficult for me to judge offlaners as I think it is the most difficult position to play in a team. Your basic role is to not die in lane, as you will be laning against the enemy carry and you do not want to give them more farm than they need, however, you still need to play an active role in contesting the lane. That said, he is one of the more sought after offlaners in the CIS region and so many people think he is one of the top offlane players.

Lil boasts the best Visage stats in the world, and also plays a more than stellar Rubick. He first started playing professional Dota 2 when NVMI was formed and is now respected by Dota players world wide, particularly on said heroes. Again, I think he is a great player and, while I thought his style was rather timid at first, being new to the scene, he quickly became comfortable playing against strong opponents and fng often drafts around Lil’s Visage.

Finally we have fng, my favourite player. Originally playing for Power Rangers, also as captain, he left to join Na’Vi last year but, after a string of bad results which, from an outsider’s perspective, I put down to a generally low mood and lack of coordination and companionship in the team, he was removed and replaced by Goblak (who had an even shorted tenure on Na’Vi) From there he became one of the founding members of NVMI and still captains the team. It was he who first attracted me to support Virtus Pro and his drafts, often a little on the experimental side, often impress me. He’s not afraid to do what he knows works but, if he wants to try something out, he knows that his team will give him all they can.

I guess here we come on to why I support Virtus Pro. When I started watching professional Dota 2 I support Na’Vi. The first thing I watched was TI3 and my friend said Na’Vi were the fan favourites and so I decided to support them. They came second in TI3 and then I didn’t really think about Dota 2 for another year and then a friend of mine mentioned that TI4 was coming soon, so I once against supported Na’Vi and watched a lot more Dota around that time, eventually leading to the current obsession I have with playing it. Na’Vi hadn’t been doing well for a while before TI4, I had discovered, and a lot of changes happened to their roster during the last year. As an aside, I think they have a very capable roster at the moment and they seem to gel very well together. But moving on.

When fng was captain I thought that hsi drafts were very impressive. He showed an understanding of the game mechanics that was greater than most captains of the time and, having watched him play, I liked his style. Unfortunately Na’Vi wasn’t the place for him and I continued to support Na’Vi for a while because, in my opinion, following one team closely is the best way to learn about the professional scenes of any sport that you have little to no prior knowledge of. Na’Vi, later in 2015 under Goblak’s leadership whom, in my opinion, has not adapted well to the ever changing face of Dota, lost to a little known team called Virtus Pro.Polar whom, to my surprise, had fng in it. After watching VPP go on to come 2nd in the tournament; Starladder Series XI, I decided to turn my coat on Na’Vi to follow VPP. VIrtus Pro aped the old, more successful Na’Vi style but with more focus on the meta-game at hand. Aggressive, exciting and, for the most part, reliable, they can contest with the best in the world, and perhaps call themselves one of them.

The unfortunate thing is that, while I would like to see Virtus Pro in the finals of TI5, I think that their lack of experience playing against Chinese teams, who have a drastically different style of play, will hinder them, though they have shown that they are more than capable of beating any Western team, including Team Secret, the current 1 team in the world. If I had to predict which place they will come then I would say 4th. The could do better but they could do much worse and I think 4th is a rational prediction, though it’s possible that they could go all the way.