With the EPICENTER Major 2019 now over, a number of Dota 2 teams are preparing for The International 2019. For those who received a direct invite, they get more time to practice with the latest update, considering that Valve recently released Patch 7.22d for Dota 2. For the other teams, preparation is needed as the regional qualifiers are set to begin this week.
The biggest change, of course, was Infamous disbanding its roster and signing four of Team Anvorgesa's members. Player.One has a separate story on this move.
Below are five other Dota 2 teams that have made important roster changes.
Chaos Esports Club
Back towards the end of June, Alexei ‘j4” Lipai moved from Winstrike to Chaos. Chaos was initially based in South America before making the move to Europe. Speaking of Chaos, the team signed on Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen prior to bringing in j4. j4 was replaced by Dmitriy “Fishman” Polishchuk, on loan from Nemiga Gaming.
Fnatic
Despite receiving a direct invite to TI9, Fnatic also made some roster changes. For starters, Pyo “MP” No-a was removed from the active roster. This resulted in Anucha “Jabz” Jirawong moving to Position 1. To round out the roster, Kin “DuBU” Doo-young went from Coach to joining the team at Position 5.
The Pango
Another interesting move was made by CIS team The Pango. The team first let go of three players, which were Semion “CemaTheSlayer” Krivulya, Bogdan “Iceberg” Vasilenko, and Danial “XSvamp1Re” Alibaev. The three are replaced by Vladimir “Chappie” Kuzmeko, Mikhail “Misha” Agatov, and Danial “yamich” Lazebny.
The Pango also benched Aybek “Naive-” Tokaev and replaced him with Danil “Dendi” Ishutin, who is on loan from Natus Vincere.
beastcoast
For those familiar with roster changes, beastcoast let go of Jacky “EternalEnVy” Mao along with Timothy “tmt” Ong back in May. The team finally made a decision on the replacements. The first is Leonardo “Mandy” Viana, who was originally from paiN Gaming. The second is Joel Mori “MoOz” Ozambela from Gorillaz-Pride.
paiN Gaming
With Mandy leaving the team to move to join beastcoast, paiN Gaming lacked one person to complete the roster. Surprisingly, the answer comes in the form of William “hFn” Medeiros. Dota 2 player hFn was formerly of Chaos before being released towards the end of June along with Nico “Gunnar” Lopez.
So far, these are the changes that have been made ahead of TI9, and we can likely expect more as the year's biggest tournament draws near.
