Even though this week was not as intense as we thought it would be, plenty still happened. Slowly but steadily, the teams are finishing up their last roster configurations ready to begin the new DPC.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from this week.
Monday
Mushi Leaves Keen Gaming
Keen Gaming was one of the most interesting Chinese teams prior to TI 9. Despite that, they were completely blown away in the actual tournament. Likely due to the poor result, the organization decided to part ways with some of its players after the tournament ended, resulting in a massive roster change. One of the new players was Chai “Mushi” Yee Fung, one of the most respected Dota 2 players in the world. However, even he was not enough to raise KG from the ashes. Instead, the team completely crumbled in the qualifiers for MDL Chengdu.
It seems like this was enough for Mushi to decide that he didn’t want to be a part of the team – and just days after the qualifiers came to an end, he announced his departure.
Geek Fam & iG withdraw from ESL One Hamburg 2019
One of the biggest changes in this years’ DPC was the hosting of a single qualifier in order to avoid visa issues. While this might work for the DPC events, it seems that the other tournaments might go “under the radar” again.
Two of the participants have announced that they won’t be able to attend the tournament, with both citing visa issues. Luckily, the organizers managed to find replacements pretty fast. Alliance will fill in the gap left by Geek Fam, whereas iG will give up its place in favour of Wind and Rain.
Wednesday
Winstrike has no Dota 2 team
Winstrike was one of the strongest CIS teams at one point last year. Despite the fact that they did not qualify for most of the DPC tournaments, they were still a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, the organization decided to make a couple of unsuccessful roster changes.
The team went into the MDL Chengdu qualifiers with hopes of success after they’d recently added another player to their roster. However, it turned out that those qualifiers were absolutely disastrous for them, and as expected, the organization announced that they would release the entire roster and start from scratch.
In order to help them with the gargantuan rebuilding task, Winstrike added Arsenij “ArsZeeqq” Usov to their roster – the coach of Virtus.Pro until a few weeks ago.
Thursday
VP will not take part in the Summit 11
Visa problems strike again as the CIS legends are unable to attend the first Minor of this DPC. This was not expected, especially after everything VP had to go through. Hopefully they will be able to resolve the problem for the next tournament.
Friday
DreamLeague Season 12
Even though it’s not included in the DPC, the first big event after TI 9 has finally begun. Six of the best teams in the world will go face to face for that $250K prize pool. As you know, four of them deserved the direct invite, whereas the others had to go through regional qualifiers. By the looks of it, the strongest team is Alliance. That said, we are yet to see if they have what it takes to win.
If you want to learn more about this event, check out our DreamLeague Season 12 preview.
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