Every few years China’s Dota 2 region tries to build a star-studded roster strong enough to wipe out opposition on the international stage.
Just like any region and any professional team in Dota 2, winning The International is the ultimate goal, but for Chinese teams it always felt like it wasn’t just a dream or goal to work towards, but more of a true obsession.
In all nine previous TI editions, this region has always had 2 to 3, sometimes even 4 teams in the top 6 of TI. Aegis have gone to China three times and up until 2018 and it has become a pattern to have a Chinese team winning everything in even years.
TI8 is where something has been disturbed forever. Not only did the OG stop the pattern, but their “against all odds” race and overall story heading towards TI and winning as they did could be the major factor in Chinese teams’ shift in mindset. Add to that the fact that they did it again in 2019 when they were once again the underdogs, and you might better understand the brutal shuffle that took place in China in the summer of 2020. It was then that Team Elephant was formed in a big loss for both PSG.LGD and ViCi Gaming.
Leaving the past behind
Looking at the Elephant roster it is obvious that this is the new dream team from China. However, some details in their training and the motivation behind the organization and the players might be slightly different.
After TI9 it became quite clear that PSG.LGD players are going through very difficult times to recover from the losses they suffered in 2018 and 2019. Some of the Chinese players have this superstition of changing their nicknames after a series of unfortunate events. “Change of name, change of fortune”, they say. In 2020 they took this to another level and changed the teams as well.
Elephant’s foundation has always been Lu “Somnus / Maybe” Yao, Xu “fy” Linsen from PSG.LGD and Zhou “Yang” Haiyang and Zhang “Eurus / Paparazi” Chengjun from VG. When they decided to leave their organizations they did so because their desire to play together was so great that no money could stop them from joining under a new banner. At the same time, 4 Angry Men (4AM), a PUBG-focused Chinese organization, and Elephant, a talent agency focused on influencer management, saw this as their biggest opportunity to enter the Dota 2 scene and see their names at the record prize pool tournament, The International.
A messy start
Unfortunately, what happened in the first few weeks of Elephant.4AM’s existence was just a huge mess. The team announcement featured Liu “Sylar” Jiajun, as the organizations did not have enough money to pay the transfer fee for Eurus. But they ended up ditching Sylar just 24 hours after the announcement, and engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth discussion with VG about the transfer of Eurus, who ultimately accepted a pay cut from his salary for Elephant.4AM to have the money pay his transfer fee. The latest blow was the inability to bring former VG coach Bai “rOtK” Fan to the team after he was promised a contract and a salary. This resulted in red taking a break for the entire first season of the 2021 Dota Pro Circuit. The drama ended just six weeks after the announcement of Elephan.4AMt with the exit from the 4AM deal.
Forced to play without a coach, Elephant’s early tournaments brought mixed results, but a second place finish at the CDA-FDC Professional Championship Season 2, followed by a China Dota2 Pro Cup Season 2 championship title, which was held on LAN in China, and another title secured at OGA Dota PIT Season 4: China has given Elephant and his fans a lot of hope for the 2021 Dota Pro Circuit.
There is often talk of crowds and fan pressure. For Chinese teams and players it has always been extremely high, and more often than not this is their main concern. They really put their fans first and the fear of letting them down is extremely real for Chinese players. Given the high profile of Elephant’s roster, fy and Somnus are some of the most beloved players in their country, when the first season DPC arrived and the team had a negative performance by only finishing fifth, many expected to see some changes in the roster.
That didn’t happen, but something was done to help the team get back into shape to move forward. rOtk has finally been added to the team. His arrival in late March 2021, however, didn’t change much in terms of immediate results, and after another fifth place finish in the second DPC season, Elephant had to prepare for the TI10 regional qualifiers.
The first step was to say goodbye to their support five, Ru “RedPanda” Zhihao and welcome aboard Xie “Super” Junhao, another veteran of the scene, with a lot of TI in his hands and excellent results every edition. who got to play.
Elephant
list
Chengjun “Eurus” Zhang
Yao “Somnus 丶 M” Lu
Haiyang “Yang” Zhou
Xu “fy” slow
Junhao “Fantastic!” Xie
trainer:
Bai “rOtk” fans
Super was part of the first Chinese dream team, Team DK, finishing in the top 4 at TI2 and in the top 6 at TI3 with them. His history with TI also includes a top 4 in 2014 and 2015 with VG and a top 3 with LFY at TI7, so having joined him just a month before the TI10 qualifiers was also a moral boost for everyone. The qualification campaign went smoothly until the finals of the upper group, where EHOME managed to send Elephant to the lower group. However, bouncing from the low end, Elephant eliminated EHOME 3-1 in the finals, becoming the fifth and final Chinese team to fight for the Aegis of Champions this year.
While Chinese fan criticism of Weibo has been cruel every time Elephant has failed to qualify for a Major this year, and the pressure has only increased as the TI10 approaches, the fact that these players have stuck together only signals. how important it is to them to test with this exact formula.
Going back to the “against all odds” reference, it can be argued that what OG achieved in 2018 and 2019 served as the greatest lesson learned by fy and Somnus and to some extent by the entire Chinese competitive scene.
The claim of the elephant to the Aegis
A couple of days before TI10, Elephant is the only team ready to compete in the biggest Dota 2 tournament with absolutely no official matches against a competitor outside of China. They have chosen not to play in any of the online TI10 qualifier tournaments, and while their records aren’t great against their Chinese counterparts, no one can even imagine how they fare against Western teams right now.
Most of the time, when a team hasn’t shown much of what it’s made of so close to TI, this can be a huge plus for them. However, with Elephant the situation becomes more complicated as its players are some of the best in the world and everyone knows what their comfort choices are and what kind of strategies suit them best. It all depends on the conclusions they reached during the nearly one-month bootcamp in Romania before TI10.
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