What’s happening to Team Spirit – in replays the team was unrecognizable, it was terrible

Group stage ESL One Birmingham 2024 in Dota 2 has ended, and Group B gave us the most surprises, where we were the outsiders Gladiators And Team Spirit. About the problems of Anton’s roster dirachyo We talked about Shkredov in the previous article, now it’s worth focusing on Yaroslav’s team Miposhka Naydenov. What happened to Spirit in the final part of the group stage will be discussed in the material.

Spirit had a relatively satisfactory performance in the main group stage, with five draws. However, problems began in the replays, which, by the way, could have brought the Miposhka squad into the upper bracket, but in the end left them without the playoffs. There, Spirit has three losses in three matches and an extremely weak game.

Let’s start with the card against Heroic. Hector’s team K1 Rodriguez actually became some kind of kryptonite for Team Spirit: out of five maps played in a month, the CIS roster was able to win only one. At the Elite League, the Miposhka lineup played the worst match against Heroic, and it happened now – this meeting turned out to be the most incomprehensible from Spirit. What was the problem?

Spirit took Beastmaster on the last pick, a hero who can set a high tempo. Coupled with the aggressive “four” represented by Tusk and the mid Windranger, which has a high potential for quick kills, it seemed that Spirit was simply obliged to play as number one and crush the opponents, until they had Faceless Void and Leshrac in the late game. In addition, Beastmaster collected Helm of the Overlord as the first slot, and not the conditional Aghanim’s Scepter or something else. That is another good reason to take active action.

However, something strange was happening on the map: Spirit was simply farming, and no faster than her opponent. Until the tenth minute, the team had intentions of taking active action, but once they failed to cope with Pugna a couple of times, who saved his teammates out of focus, and Spirit simply went on the defensive. Absolutely blind defense. That is, the team did not come up with any more unexpected attacks or change the gameplay in the fight, but, in fact, signed up for defeat already in the tenth minute. Then there were 15 minutes of mutual farming with rare successful frags, but from Heroic. K1 was completely satisfied with this state of affairs: Faceless Void turned out to be the richest character on the map and confidently entered the late game, where, with the support of Leshrac, he had no equal.

The fight looked even more ridiculous, which after 15 minutes of calm Spirit decided to take on: having lost a support in advance, being on enemy vision and being in disposition. It seems that in matches with Heroic the Miposhka roster simply turns off and acts by inertia. Because otherwise such a team fight, where Spirit players don’t even deal damage, but are simply given over to their opponents, cannot be explained.

Obviously, after this, the game completely lost any meaning, but the result became obvious. So Spirit gave away the first series in replays. And this match clearly shows that the team now has certain problems with macro decision-making and a strategic approach to the map.

Well, okay, unsuccessful team fights, when the situation on the map is no longer in your favor, are partly understandable. But when complete disorganization begins during leadership, and solid leadership at that, this is already alarming. In the second replay match – against Tundra Esports — Spirit had everything to win. A 10k gold advantage and two very rich core heroes with high pushing potential is an ideal situation.

It is noteworthy that, having Templar Assassin and Luna, the team never took Roshan. But if you got the Aegis team, even the first one, for any of these two heroes, you could instantly demolish all the external towers and, probably, even take a quick look at the CG, increasing your advantage by another 5-7 thousand gold .

Instead, some completely awkward team fight occurs: larl escapes from Zeus, Miposhka flies in the other direction, Luna only runs to her teammates, Dragon Knight, who arrives last to the battle, will have no ultimate at all. How Spirit places itself in such unfavorable conditions is categorically unclear.

Again, this one disastrous team fight was enough to completely shut Spirit out of the game. Then the team completely wilted: larl would die alone somewhere again, Miposhka would give himself up for nothing, and in addition the advantage would disappear, and Tundra would calmly see things through to victory.

And the problem is not specifically in larl or Miposhka’s unsuccessful burst, but in the fact that the team generally performed in replays as if without voice communication. We are used to seeing the highest level of mutual understanding and macro-play from Spirit. All this is now gone. Spirit seems to give up emotionally and fizzle out by the 20th minute after one failure.

Match against Xtreme Gaming It also turned out to be quite strange. First of all, Spirit seemed to outsmart itself in the draft. The team managed to take one of the most coveted heroes of the tournament to the first pick – Pangolier, who does not get out of the ban and ranks first in this indicator. But the Chinese already had an answer in the form of Grimstroke. And then Spirit decided to change the position for Pangolier, sending him to the offlane. That is, instead of having larl perform on the character, for which it is a signature hero, in such a difficult game for Pangolier Collapse should have performed on it – and he did not show the hero on the professional stage for two years. Perhaps, within the framework of laning, such a swap was important and even justified itself:

It was only then that Spirit’s plan stopped working. An interesting point: in the 20th minute the score was 4:7 and Spirit was leading, and after 16 minutes the team’s throne will fall, and during these 16 minutes the pick on the left will only be able to make two kills.

Without a full-fledged offlaner, Spirit became difficult to play in the late stage. As soon as Collapse had one unsuccessful ride near Roshan, the team immediately lost the key battle. Although here it’s worth returning to the topic of Spirit’s decision making. In that most important fight, the Miposhka roster will spend all its resources, but will not make a minus, but will not want to give up Roshan. Although this is just the first Aegis, which does not provide a gigantic advantage. Spirit will throw his last strength at Roshan and eventually die there with the whole team. But this will seriously tip the scales in favor of the Chinese, and after this the Miposhka roster will no longer be able to fight on equal terms with the opponent.

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Now Spirit’s problems are not in drafts (although this Snapfire is not encouraging at all) and not in personal performance, but in complete team loss and out of sync with actions. The decision making, both strategic and practical, in team fights leaves much to be desired and certainly doesn’t match what we saw last season. Spirit needs some serious shake-up and a rethink of its approach to the game. We hope the new patch will help the team with this.