For those who might have missed the most important news from the past week in the competitive Dota2 scene, here is a short recap.
Tournament news:
Team Liquid become two times Champions of EPICENTER Moscow
After a week of some amazing Dota 2 action, the stage was set for Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid to dazzle the Dota community with a befitting final. While we did see some spectacular displays (mostly from Liquid), all games turned out to be quite the one sided affairs.
Talented casters of Moonduck head to China for Galaxy Battles.
Bringing the action live on site, MoonduckTV has booked a talented lineup, adding some fresh flavor to a well-seasoned palate.
Many fans will be delighted to catch Shannon "SUNSfan" Scotten on hand as he continues to get back into the panelist action.
The entire event will be broadcast in English on the Galaxy Battles twitch.tv channel.
Hot_Bid, Draskyl and PyrionFlax return with the Hot Hub TI Machine
The International 2017 Hub will be hosted at the BTS house and after a two years hiatus, one of the best and most appreciated content creators and interviewers in esports, Ken 'Hot_Bid' Chen comes back in style.
Team announcements:
Living Legend Loda steps down from competitive play, replaced by Era
Replacing the captain/carry and co-owner of Alliance will be Adrian 'Era' Kryeziu, a notable Swedish player most recently seen playing for NiP and Fnatic a few years prior. Era will have some big shoes to fill as he tries to slide into Loda's place.
Alliance current roster for TI7:
Adrian 'Era' Kryeziu
Simon 'Handsken' Haag
Jonas 'jonassomfan' Lindholm
Axel 'Pablo' Källman
Linus 'Limmp' Blomdin
Elements Pro Gaming announces their new roster
Just a week ago, Elements Pro Gaming saw their mid-lane and carry players departing after a long spell of not having any success. With Gordan ‘g0g1’ Proschic leaving just a few days after this as well, the team were in a seemingly dire position up until today. With Duško ‘Boranija’ Boranijaševic filling one of the positions after being in the team as a “tryout”, the other 2 spots were filled by fairly well known players in Ilya ‘Illidan’ Pivtsaev and Roman ‘rmN-‘ Paley.
The Elements Pro Gaming active roster is now:
Ilya ‘Illidan’ Pivtsaev
Duško ‘Boranija’ Boranijaševic
Damir ‘Mitch’ Skaricic
Nikola ‘LeBronDota’ Popovic
Roman ‘rmN-‘ Paley
Valve announcements:
Bristleback and Night Stalker hit by nerfs with the 7.06d patch
Expected by most of the Dota 2 community, the patch pre TI 7 qualifiers has been deployed as soon as EPICENTER: Moscow 2017 concluded. Some heroes got slightly buffed, some have been hit by nerfs, but most importantly, the hero who has been tormenting the public games and the professionals alike in the past couple of weeks, Bristleback has been slowed down a bit with the 7.06d patch and the nerfs applied to its passive bonus damage along with the strength gain are aimed to make him less impactful in the early game. The full patch notes can be found here.