The current DPC (Dota Pro Circuit) season within the CIS region has been filled with nearly all teams making their rosters around or with heavy inclusion of new talent – an exciting prospect after years of shuffling the same, tried players.
The titan of CIS Dota – Navi, have formed their new roster around the tried captain of Sonneiko and last year year’s newcomer Crystallize, filling the position of mid player with pubstar Magical, offlane with Vega’s Blizzy, and four with Chuvash. Other teams either followed or decided to include talent of European players that spoke Russian – such as the case of Team Spirit.
Many long standing talent such as V1lat see the region’s focus on upcoming talent much healthier for the region but note that he doesn’t see any of the current rosters as tier 1 and able to stand beside the likes of Virtus Pro.
Most of those within the CIS region view the current rosters as band aid solution and the overall situation heavily mimics NAs struggle for talent just few short years back. The prediction amongst many is that smaller organisations or rosters that fail to see much success will seed talent for bigger orgs or those who are in need with small replacements for their potential of tier 1 success. These lower tiered teams will likely showcase and build up some promising players who will be sought by bigger orgs fronting big cash for them, sustaining those smaller orgs and giving them an alternate purpose.
Looking at current set of promising rosters, here are set of predictions for changes within the individual teams (note: opinion is based on my personal knowledge and comments made by high profile CIS players and talent)
Virtus Pro – beside the announced change of coach, they are unlikely to make changes as there is little potential improvement in terms of raw skill and talent
Winstrike – will likely disband and funnel into existing rosters if they don’t find tier 1 success. If that is the case then it wouldn’t be surprising if Nongrata replaced Blizzy in Navi.
Navi – Blizzy is voiced as highly inconsistent player beyond the laning stage and is so far the weakest link of the team, if there are replacements then he will likely be the first choice.
Elements Pro Gaming – unlikely to make any changes for a while as they have been a consistent tier 2 team.
Espada – iLTW has once been hailed as new NoOne but haven’t found much success, he has chance of making addition to Odium to replace GeneraL (if the new stack feels the need for change). If Misha proves to have real potential for captain role, then he will likely be picked up for bigger team as there is real lack of captain leadership within the region.
Vega – a bit of dark horse and hard to predict. Flow might be a point of replacement due to his health issues and ongoing recovery from surgery.
Team Empire – another dark horse. Maden might be replaced with Miposhka if his switch to position 3 doesn’t work out. Chappie could be replaced by someone from Winstrike or rest of CIS list of carries as he is known to have poor attitude and short temper.
