Natus Vincere release Lebron
Another less promising team decides to let go of their potential to get a direct invite to The International 2018 and make the necessary changes to improve themselves for the potential to not just participate, but win the biggest Dota 2 competition of the year. Natus Vincere, formerly ranked tenth in Dota Pro Circuit, removed Lebron from their roster.
The release didn’t come out of nowhere. Most of Natus Vincere’s Qualifying Points were from Lil who moved from Virtus.pro earlier this season. Their performance this season was undeserving of their standing and they only earned Qualifying Points as a team twice, once for getting fourth place in a Major last year and once for sharing third place in a Minor soon after recruiting Lil. They needed a major change if they want to be a real contender for this year’s Aegis of the Immortal.
Lebron joined Natus Vincere not long after Lil joined. Unlike Lil, Lebron was previously a relatively unknown player, with no experience in playing for teams that fans outside CIS region are likely to have heard of. He will now come back to one of his former teams, Element Pro Gaming.
Another relatively unknown CIS player “velheor” will be playing for Natus Vincere, not replacing Lebron but replacing Lil. Meanwhile, Lil will be the one to play in position five.
This role change might be the bigger news for Dota 2 fans. Lil is known as a player who gets cocky occasionally in his matches and his playstyle is closer to a position three than a position five. He does seem like a much more responsible player since his team change, but this should still be a big challenge.
On the other hand, Lil played for Virtus.pro until three months ago. Solo has probably the best knowledge in wards placement in the scene. Time will tell whether the experience in playing with Solo will also make Lil an amazing warder or not.
To familiarize with each other’s playstyles, Natus Vincere will withdraw from ESL One Birmingham 2018. They will use the short available time to bootcamp and get ready for China Dota2 Supermajor.
Roster lock backfires
It is already a popular opinion that the roster lock is too early, and neither professional players or fans benefit from it. Many popular players and teams are ineligible for direct invites because they are still in the process of figuring out their optimal composition for the best results.
Natus Vincere themselves are the biggest proof of this mistake. Dendi, one of the most popular players for the last decade, has finally got the chance to play with a potentially very strong team that includes Lil, a world class player. It is a shame that they don’t even get to start from the regional qualifiers.
Together with OG, these highly competitive and highly marketable teams will need to start from the open qualifiers, which will most likely be single-elimination, best-of-one games. After not losing there, they will face their next obstacle, the regional qualifiers, where they will play against teams that are weaker than them, but didn’t make roster changes after the roster lock. The previous DPC event’s winner and runner up, VGJ.Storm and Keen Gaming, will share similar fate.
The current system will give direct invites to teams that were strong only in the beginning of the season, but not new teams that are strong recently. At this rate, there is a good chance that The International 2018 will be filled with less wanted teams due to how risky the path to the main event is for some teams, no matter how good they actually are.