EPTI found this little gem that I had wrote up to get hired at GosuGamers after EG won the first main qualifier spot through the open qualifiers, so I thought I would share it on my blog.
Evil Geniuses (EG), in recent history, has been a shadow of their former self. This storied franchise, which has consistently been crowned the champion of NA DotA, has evaporated into turmoil giving way for other up and coming NA teams to step up like Complexity Gaming and Digital Chaos. Since winning The International 5 (TI5) the team has experimented with a who’s who of former members of the squad that just never panned out.
First was the Arteezy experiment. In what seemed like an inevitable success story waiting to happen, the star-studded line up ran into a black hole of a problem. Regardless of all the pub star talent on the team, the task of creating space for players of Arteezy and Sumail’s caliber proved to be too difficult a task to accomplish. In the wake of the Shanghai Major, and despite a third place finish, both Arteezy and Universe left the squad to pursue greater success with Team Secret leaving EG with a void that needed to be filled.
In a highly controversial move, EG acquired former support team member AUI_2000 whom they ungraciously gave the boot following their TI5 win. This time around AUI_2000 will be playing the carry role. To replace Universe EG picked up Bulba who had been playing on teams like Digital Chaos and others as well as coaching EG during their TI5 run and more. It seemed like a natural fit for Bulba but as it turned out was not the perfect fit. The newly transformed squad was bounced from the Manila Major along with Team Secret both having to share last place with Wings Gaming and Mineski. Then it was back to the drawing board.
Dota 2 has evolved tremendously over the past year alone. The skill gap between professional teams and players has diminished so extensively that they are nearly unrecognizable. The trending factor separating a tier one team from the rest at this point appears to be cohesiveness. It is far less the case that you see one player tossing the rest of his team on their back and carrying them to victory. Those who play as a team win as a team. This is why you begin to see teams like EG and Team Secret fall and others like OG, Newbee and MVP Phoenix rise.
So, how has EG altered their tactics in recruiting to buy into the current changes in the professional scene? After their disappointing finish at the Manila Major the team relieved Bulba and AUI_2000 from their roles. Additionally, they brought back Universe to the offlane and acquired Zai, coming off his is hiatus from the game to play support as well as moving old man Fear back to the carry position. With TI6 looming, the principal repercussion of their roster change forced them to have to work through open qualifiers just to create a birth in the main qualifiers.
Within the NA open qualifiers the Dota 2 community has bared witness to the result of EG’s latest roster changes and the reaction can be summarized in these words: shock and awe. The squad came out firing on all cylinders making quick work of would beTI6 hopefuls in dominating fashion to claim the first invite to the main qualifiers. It is uncertain how this roster will fair against tier one teams, but their future seems promising.
With respect to those players EG has experimented with in the past, there was never any coordination and an obvious breakdown in communication within those rosters. They simply lacked identity. This team showed zero relation to its previous failures and more so with its successes at DAC and TI5. The team fights were immaculate and the combos perfectly executed with a fairly broad hero pool, something the team just never seemed to have a prayer of accomplishing with Arteezy, AUI_2000 and Bulba.
It cannot be stressed enough that this is just open qualifiers and EG definitely faces a more challenging road ahead. No one is calling this roster a potential TI6 winner just yet, but their performance certainly did enough to severely rattle the cages of those awaiting them in the main qualifiers and maybe even those directly invited to TI6 if we get to that point. Regardless of what may come next, the level of cohesiveness displayed by the squad in their first hurdle to TI6 clearly indicates that EG is back!
