With eStar failing to secure visas in time for the World Championship this weekend, China’s #3 team will step in to replace, though not with their original roster.
The absence of eStar from the World Championship was first made apparent when the groups for the crown event were released earlier this week. Their spot was taken by Brave Heart, the team that took third at the Chinese Regional Championship with victories over esteemed Chinese organizations like Newbee and Edward Gaming.
Brave Heart will not be attending Blizzcon with their original roster of Exia, Tresor, Lucien, Bao and Sa, however. Due to part of the line-up failing to secure visas as well, the team will borrow members from the next best team in China Edward Gaming, the official website of Heroes Esports reports.
On itself, this news would likely be far less noteworthy if it wasn’t in the context of existing roster locks for the World Championship, a topic Tempo Storm manager Jared “Zoia” Egleston spoke about on the Town Hall Heroes podcast. Former kings of NA and current struggling team, Tempo Storm recently reported damaging discord within their ranks. According to Zoia, the situation had escalated to the point where “half the team hates each other”, “players are depressed every single day” and that not even monetary fines could revive the motivation of the roster.
Some blame for Tempo Storm’s issue was placed on the roster lock rule for the World Championship. Essentially, once a team is qualified for a regional championship, it cannot change any of its members until after their World Championship campaign is over, lest they risk losing their spot. With Tempo Storm qualifying through the June open, they were essentially locked as five for four and a half months – a period long enough for problems to arise. Should such problems call for a roster change of more than one player, the team would be disqualified as per the official ruleset. Even though one-player swap-out would’ve been possible, Tempo Storm’s roster did not list an official substitute at the time of the June qualifier, meaning this option wasn't really available.
Even though the latest news about the Chinese team is obviously in attempt to keep the 8-team configuration for Blizzcon, the discrepancy between Tempo’s and Brave Heart’s cases is notable. The Americans were staying as five under the threat of disqualification if they made roster changes for Blizzcon. Brave Heart, at the same time, are travelling to the World Championship with multiple members borrowed from a different team.
In addition, Brave Heart already underwent a roster change between the time they qualified and participated in the Chinese Championship. In July, team Brave Heart.Yz finished top eight in the Gold Series Hero League which earned them a spot at the Chinese regional finals. Two days before the local championship, however, Brave Heart.Yz merged with its sister team and let go of Xu “Hy”, Xie ”Rmm” Sgangchen and Wang “Aguai” Yi, three of the members of the original Breave Heart.Yz who qualified for the Chinese championship. Other teams of the Chinese scene have also been subject to roster swaps before HWC China, including fourth place finisher Edward Gaming which in early August let go of support player Liu “sw770” Xuexiang and has been playing with Guo “Gemini” Jiayi in that position since.
At publication time, there’s no info on the exact roster of Brave Heart coming into the World Championship.
