This article is part of our Dota 2 series.
As of Sept. 18, all team rosters are locked and are set for the upcoming major season. This roster lock season has further undone the concept of regional teams, leading to some spectacular rosters pulling stars from other regions. Now it's time to break down these changes and figure out who came out on top of the post-International shuffle.
North America and Europe
compLexity
Subtractions:
Linus "Limmp" Blomdin
Rasmus "Chessie" Blomdin
Simon "Handsken" Haag
Additions:
Mihai "cancel^^" Antonio
David "Moo" Hull
Justin "Justin" Rosselle
After getting eliminated from The International 6 Wild Cards by Execration, change was imminent for compLexity. The moves came fast and swift as the three Swedes decided to leave the team, Handsken and Limmp transitioning to a new team, Alliance, while Chessie opted to stay with compLexity, only as a sponsored sponsored streamer. In their place Kyle "swindlezz" Freedman has assembled one of the most interesting new rosters of this major season. The team will now be truly North American, with four players from the United States and cancel^^ from Romania. The only one of compLexity's new additions with relevant competitive experience is Moo, fresh off a second place finish at TI6. Justin, a skilled American pub-star, and cancel^^, a well-known streamer, round out the unorthodox group. Although these changes may look underwhelming at first, the fact that swindlezz is moving to position five support is a massive win for compLexity. swindlezz isn't the most mechanically skilled player, leading to some seriously terrible offlane performances and crippling the team. With this move, he will be able to focus more on where his talents lie: captaining his team and calling shots in-game. This adjustment makes this one of the most exciting roster changes of the season.
Digital Chaos
Subtractions:
David "Moo" Hull
Additions:
David "Moon" Tan
Of the teams at The International 2016 who made changes, DC made the fewest. Their single roster move is also the most surprising, considering Moo's performance for DC. While Moo did an amazing job at TI6, helping secure second place, this change is a definite upgrade. Moon brings considerably more experience and diversity to the team given his time spent competing in Europe with OG. He also has a larger pool of heroes than Moo, including a few out-of-meta heroes that give DC even more drafting flexibility. DC's new roster looks extremely strong, and ready to compete in the upcoming major season.
Alliance
Subtractions:
Gustav "s4" Magnusson
Henrik "AdmiralBulldog" Ahnberg
Joakim "Akke" Akterhall
Additions:
Linus "Limmp" Blomdin
Jonas "jonassomfan" Lindholm
Simon "Handsken" Haag
Gone are the days of El Classico and the Million Dollar Dream Coil, but Alliance lives on with a round of fresh Swedish faces. The only person actually leaving the Alliance brand is s4, as AdmiralBulldog and Akke both confirmed that they would remain with Alliance, but not as part of the team. Their replacements are the remains of the old Ninjas in Pajamas Dota 2 squad that was disbanded in 2015, plus both Jonathan "Loda" Berg and Jerry "Evil GeniusesM" Lundkvist, who remain on the team. While jonassomfan has been mostly inactive or playing in tier two teams and Limmp and Handsken found limited success in compLexity, it is hard to underrate Alliance after years of watching them win out of nowhere. Since its inception, Alliance has placed a lot of value in maintaining an all-Swedish roster for the sake of communication.
Team Secret
Subtractions:
Sam "Bulba" Sosale
Artour "Arteezy" Babaev
Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao
Additions:
Pyo "MP" No-a
Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng
Lee "FoREV" Sang-don
Of all the professional teams, Secret's performance has been the most varied. Clement "Puppey" Ivanov has captained this team since 2014, leading it through more changes than most organizations see in a lifetime. When this team is hot, they are unstoppable, but when they aren't playing well, it's an absolute joke. After absolutely bombing at The International 6 and finishing in last, Puppey opted to change all three core positions. As with all Team Secret player transfers, Puppey's new lineup has absurdly high potential. Both MidOne and FoREV have proven themselves to be top tier mid and offlaners respectively. MP is an excellent player, but on MVP Phoenix he didn't have a concrete role, swapping between middle and safe lane depending on their lineup. How he fits into Puppey's gameplan remains to be seen, but once again Secret is fielding a roster brimming with raw talent. This could be said about any of Team Secret's previous roster though, so take it with a grain of salt.
Evil Geniuses
Subtractions:
Clinton "Fear" Loomis
Peter "ppd" Dager
Additions:
Artour "Arteezy" Babaev
Andreas Franck "Cr1t" Nielsen
The news of Fear's retirement rocked the Dota scene when he announced it, but Evil Geniuses fans can rest easy because Fear will be coaching their new lineup. Although it feels like a huge loss taking Fear out of the game, this move should make Evil Geniuses even stronger this season. ppd stepping down also comes as a major blow to the team, especially since he hasn't said if he plans to take up a coaching role alongside Fear or not. If ppd does choose to coach, Evil Geniuses will have by far the best support staff of any team in North America. Replacing the two Evil Geniuses legends are Arteezy and Cr1t. Arteezy returning to Evil Geniuses came as a surprise to approximately no one, as the cycle continues and Arteezy returns home. The last time Evil Geniuses fielded a team with Arteezy and SumaiL it didn't go well, but that was a year ago and a year is a long time in Dota. Evil Geniuses' new captain will be Cr1t, who is moving from position four to five and has some very big shoes to fill. While Cr1t is without a doubt a talented player, his captaining and drafting skills will be put to the test this season. While Evil Geniuses' lineup looks very strong on paper, there is a lot of adversity for them to overcome.
Liquid
Subtractions:
Adrian "Fata" Trinks
Jessie "JerAx" Vainikka
Additions:
Amer "Miracle" Al-Barkawi
Sam "Bulba" Sosale
On the surface, these changes look excellent for Team Liquid. Although Fata was a stable option on Team Liquid for a long time, the past few months had been rough for him. Nerfs to some of his best heroes like Death Prophet hurt him, as well as the insanely open metagame that allowed almost any heroes to be playable. The weaknesses were evident during the meta chaos of TI6, which tore Liquid apart. Replacing him is Miracle, probably the best individual player in the game right now. This change has already dramatically increased Team Liquid's hero pool, in addition to being a pure skill upgrade in the middle lane. Couple that with the move to replace JerAx with Bulba, and you now have a group brimming with upside and veteran leadership. Combined with Kuroky, Liquid certainly appears to have the the most raw skill and experience of any team this season.
OG
Subtractions:
Amer "Miracle" Al-Barkawi
David "Moon" Tan
Andreas Franck "Cr1t" Nielsen
Additions:
Anathan "Ana" Pham
Gustav "s4" Magnusson
Jessie "JerAx" Vainikka
Although this may look like a raw deal for OG, these trades aren't as bad as they seem. The most obvious loss is Miracle, and it's impossible to say right now if Ana will be able to fill his shoes. Ana is a skilled young Australian player who has played for Invictus Gaming in China before, but doesn't have much competitive experience. If this sounds familiar it's because it should; this is very similar to what people were saying about Miracle when he first joined (monkey) Business with n0tail. The loss of Moon and Cr1t doesn't seem as bad, especially when considering their replacements. Moon's space-creating play style was a large part of what let Miracle and n0tail have such excellent games, and s4 fills that niche well. In Alliance, s4 was basically playing position three middle, letting AdmiralBulldog and Loda carry the game. He gets to do the same thing with OG, but actually start in the offlane. The swap of Cr1t and JerAx seems to be a similar story, although with one critical detail. Both these support players filled the roamer role, and maintained a similar hero pool. The most important difference here is that JerAx was not an Io player, while Cr1t was. According to Dotabuff, JerAx has played one professional game as Io. This could end up hurting OG, as other teams could forgo banning Io against them, or the team will be forced to shift roles around to have n0tail play the hero. The loss of a player like Miracle is a difficult hurdle for any team, but the new OG looks very strong on paper.
Team NP
Additons:
Kurtis "Aui_2000" Ling
Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao
Arif "MSS" Anwar
Avery "SVG" Silverman
Theeban "1437" Siva
NP is EternaLEnVy's team, consisting of what he called on Twitter "mostly unknown players". With names like Aui_2000 and 1437 on the team, it's difficult to call this roster unknown. MSS and SVG are lesser known around the world, but both are skilled American players with a competitive history. SVG was most recently the coach for Evil Geniuses, accompanying them to a third-place finish at The International 2016. While this team doesn't look very exciting on paper, it should be interesting to watch them develop in the upcoming major season.
