A year ago, RAMZEs moved to Evil Geniuses – it’s time to admit that another stellar roster did not “shoot”

Kane Dane September 9, 2020 DOOM, Dota 2, eSports NEWS, Game Platforms, Games TOP, News

The transition of RAMZEs to Evil Geniuses is an unexpected result of a reshuffle in Virtus.pro following The International. Having lost Royal never give up in the lower bracket of the Shanghai tournament, the team left the fans in no doubt that the roster will change in the near future. There were many guesses: some saw off Alexei Solo Berezina retired, others argued that Pavel 9pasha Khvastunov got tired of “Dota”, the third reasonably noticed that Vladimir No.[o]ne Minenko speaks good English, and therefore is the first applicant to move to a foreign club.

All these theories were destroyed – Solo and No[o]ne remained in their positions in Virtus.pro, 9pasha found motivation to start from scratch in NAVI, and only RAMZEs (and Vladimir RodjER Nikoghosyan, but that’s a completely different story) suddenly set out to conquer new horizons at EG. The transfer cost, according to Forbes, was about $ 75 thousand. – significantly less than fans initially assumed, but still a lot when looking at the realities of the scene.

At the same time, one of the main stars of Southeast Asia, and also the most successful puber on the planet, Abed, also arrived at the club. So the updated roster of the American club began to resemble a kind of esports “galacticos”collected by Puppey’s developments from 2015. The roster’s ambitions were clear – to take the lead on the stage, which was shaken by the biggest reshuffle in recent years since TI9.

A year later, we can state – another experiment with the all-star roster in Dota 2 did not come true… However, this time it was absolutely not for esports reasons. EG never won a single major tournament, and in the second half of the season they played without their newcomers at all – all because of the borders closed during the pandemic. It is ironic that, in addition to Evil Geniuses, in this situation, apparently, Virtus.pro also suffered, which should have received bonuses if RAMZEs had “played” in the new club.

The situation is paradoxical, since Evil Geniuses are also clearly not happy with such a sudden “economy”. The team has proven from the very first tournaments that it really has potential – even with RAMZEs, who did not have time to get used to the new role, the roster reached the semifinals of the MDL Chengdu Major, and a month later reached the final of ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational Singapore, beating – attention! – Team Secret.

After the New Year holidays, EG only continued to gain momentum and for the first time since The International 2015 reached the grand final of the official tournament from Valve – DreamLeague Major. There the roster met again with Team Secret and really imposed on Clement Puppey Ivanov and his teammates fight – and not everyone can boast of this in the 2019/2020 season. Then it seemed that this would be the key confrontation of the whole season – neither OG, nor Nigma, nor PSG.LGD with Vici Gaming at that time seemed real contenders for the top-1 in the world ranking.

RAMZEs himself also quietly convinced skeptics that the change of role and the move to the United States was not a gamble, but a balanced and, most importantly, the right decision. Kushnarev was initially scolded for a modest pool of heroes – most often he played Doom, a friend from the easy lane – or for the “feed” (or, if you like, “spacing”) on the lane, but there were no direct solutions to macro issues. RAMZEs very rarely dropped out of the game and in most meetings successfully shared with Cr1t- playmaker’s duties – if s4 the team really missed it.

It seemed that after the DreamLeague Major the club’s level of play would continue to grow – by that time the team had practically guaranteed itself a slot at The International, and therefore could devote six months exclusively to preparing for the trip to Stockholm. But then, due to the pandemic, the roster did not play in full for more than three months: Abed found himself locked up in Southeast Asia, and the RAMZEs, as NS said, “returned to Konoha,” where they lost their passion for the game for a while.

Kushnarev’s return to the EG tag only happened in August at the OMEGA League, and the results of the club in this tournament are extremely difficult to assess. Firstly, Abed was never able to get out of the home trap, and he had to be replaced by gpK ~, with whom the roster trained for only a couple of days. Secondly, Arteezy played with a huge ping, and no matter how master of dodging with Manta Style he was, it was difficult even for him to get into timings in such conditions.

Thus, the ambitions of perhaps the most interesting roster of the first half of the season had to be pushed somewhere on the mezzanine for almost a whole year. And with The International apparently postponed until August 2023, there is no guarantee that players will have the proper motivation to participate in tournaments that are out of the rating season… It is not even clear whether EG will finally be able to gather in full force – rumors of a second wave of the pandemic have been circulating for quite some time.

In what condition will Abed return to professional Dota 2? Was the recent post by RAMZEs a hint of a return to Virtus.pro? Finally, Is the EG management ready to wait even longer, unable to even assess the current capabilities of the roster? We will probably find out the answers to all these questions only at the beginning of 2023 – with the first announcements by Valve regarding the new DPC season. Until then, the American dream RAMZEs, unfortunately, will remain suspended in the air.