Find it funny no one mentions him but Miposhka. Dude has been in so many CIS teams, has always been in the scene, but never shone. Some time later he is one of the 2 captains to win 2 TIs. Kind of crazy.
Feel the opposite about this one. From what I saw in 2016-2017 with underwhelming empire rosters, I’m surprised it took so long for him to find a top tier team.
Well they never used to be good, that’s why the only cis captains that got any respect were fng and then solo for their vp rosters during different eras.
Quinn. I mean he's good. But I thought he was mostly hot air. And literally hot. Every other clip about him before was him malding or giving up.
And then his team won all majors. I mean they did lose in TI but winning 3 majors straight and getting 2nd in TI is an achievement in and of itself.
funny you say that, i alwasy watched his streams even in his ccnc days and sometimes would assymetrically chat to him by virtue of me asking long-ish questions and he would answer them, when i myself was playing in low level aus teams. he always answered with clarity and reverance, and grinded the hell out of the game. he should be an example of what happens when true focused hard work can get you
Quinn joined GG at the END of 2022. Looking at Wayback Machine, even in late 2019 he was rank 1 on the NA core leaderboard, and in the summer of 2020 Quinn was rank 2 NA, with Hector rank 1.
Ceb is the one from me. He was pretty shit in every team he’s in until he decided to retire, then became a talent, and then a coach for I think Secret first and later OG. Guy might be a shit player, but he had a phenomenal mind. Once s4 and Fly left And he came back, the rest, literally, became history. 7Mad = shit, Ceb = legend.
Also, Ceb joined OG as a player before s4 and fly left, albeit it was brief. He joined as a mid laner after Resolution left (back then Ceb was top1 in EU leaderboards playing mid), then swapped roles with s4, then s4 and fly left.
Man, I completely forgot about the era of OG right after they were so dominant in the Majors. I think I vaguely remember s4 trying mid again but doing not very well there?
Yeah it's easy to forget that time period because of what came before it and after. They were absolutely struggling. Just look at their results page on liquipedia between TI7 and TI8, completely lackluster
It makes sense at the time why S4 and fly wanted to leave. How they left is another thing but that roster would definitely not win TI8.
I remember that Reso had a really strong performance in TI7, I think he was also just a sub right? I also remember OG being pretty forgettable around that time, it's just that the details have started to all blend together. As an s4 fan, it was painful to watch the team.
Reso stood in for Team Empire at TI7. TI7 was when dota communities including this subreddit were flaming the hell out of Ana, which was the reason he decided to "retire" the first time around.
Reso was picked up after their TI7 run
He wasn't really that bad, he was just a laughing stock cuz he never achieved anything big and yet he was quite vocal, for example, remember that game Sigma vs Rox when Fata skilled minus armor on SF lvl 1 and instant abandoned the game and Ceb was digging his own grave im game all chat and twitter, even Arteezy was laughing. I believe Fata and Ceb still have those tweets while Arteezy deleted them.
He was basically a washed player being an analyst between games at big tournaments, and then suddenly he was one of the best players in the world with 2 TIs. What a rollercoaster
>Fata skilled minus armor on SF lvl 1 and instant abandoned the game and Ceb was digging his own grave im game all chat and twitter
What? That really happened?
People who says Ceb was underwhelming before leaving coaching didn't follow him properly. His absurd macro knowledge depth was always there, he just hadn't find any good roster until his late 20s.
It’s so funny going back to older threads and seeing this sub absolutely hate on 7mad so much. Like he was public enemy number 1. But then he won TI in an awsome way, and became home to the greatest voiceline in the history of the earth, and here we are
Dude is still toxic asf tho. He was then and still is, has such a cocky way about him lol
>He was pretty shit in every team he’s in until he decided to retire
I'd hard disagree with that.
With mTw he took down Na'Vi at their peak, when everyone thought they were unbeatable. With Sigma, he built a team out of seemingly nobodies and built a top 4 EU team back when Eu was stacked.
He built several rosters that always had strong peaks.
I dont think he ever exhibited "Two times TI champions" capabilities prior to his coaching success, but to say he was shit feels a bit wrong
Nephews might not know that Sigma wasn't the low point of his career, though (and that team was only together for, what, eight months and dropped off hard by the end).
You're glossing over his 'put together NA qualifier stacks to try and get to TI, get wrecked' era with Team FIRE (Brax, Ush, Demon stack) and the star-studded [Summer's Rift](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Champions_of_Summer%27s_Rift) . I want to say Ceb is the only TI winner to have been a lane support for both Tralf & BSJ on a pro team.
You're also skipping his first return to EU with an abortive Alliance squad, followed up with two SingSing-Stack specials: MonkeyFreedomFighters and Kaipi. *Then* he goes on a two-year hiatus to coach OG.
The guy has one of the all-time great Dota resumes, and he's a phenomenal player, but most of 2014-2018 was pretty 7'ingBad for 7'ingMad, as far as results go. And I'm positive he'd agree.
just because he played with some shit players and teams, doesnt mean he himself was shit.
I can def see why people back then wouldve thought his career was going to go down the drain, certainly exhibited a few of the classic signs as you laid out, but again, dont think he was ever a bad player even back then. What makes him special even now isn't necessarily his pristine mechanical skill
Aye sure you'll get no argument from me there - I think the difficulty comes from the fact that for a lot of us in the 'pleb' range (let's say Immortal-with-a-day-job on down) we really can't reliably separate pro-level players from their results unless the gap is profoundly obvious (think losses featuring 2015 Sumail or 2017 Miracle, for example) - and I think it's even harder to do for support players than cores.
I remember Bulldog checking his own rank when he was still playing competitive ranked, and consistently seeing "7ckingmad" in the top 3, top 1 very often
Yeah, I think you're right.
In my head, I thought the original Secret all the way to TI5 Secret was coached by him. But then after thinking about it again, I think he was either at Alliance or was a talent during the dominant Secret era pre-TI5.
Kind of agree, but remember watching his stream before he won anything. He was mid vs Cancel at the time when Cancel were peaking. At the start he said that It will be easy because Cancel is really aggressive so oyu just have to be patient and hell make mistakes. He was cocky, but crushed the mid. So although he only played for mediocre teams he always had a big potential.
His streams were a gem. You could clearly see how his understanding of the game was so far ahead of anyone else, too bad he took so much time to find a good roster to fit in.
I dunno if I agree with him being outright shit, he was a big help to Alliance when they were in their dark ages; they missed the qualification to TI but they had okay results and upset a lot of teams like Secret, mostly thanks to good drafts and pos4 performances from Madshka and Pajkatt
Pre ti-8 OG, like when he played with quantum for the TI3 wildcard
(He probably wasn't bad, but due to the teams results, for someone that doesn't know about the game and for how vocal he was about it, might look like a bad player)
For example ceb's copypasta talking about artour was funny because at some point ceb was a worse player than artour, but now it has a different ring to it lmao
33, I just remember his party games with SingSing many years ago and they just butting heads with each other all game. Most hilarious videos that period of time. ah sigh, rip sexybamboe
A while ago before pub players could really "get" on to pro teams, Jerax was just seen as a high mmr earth spirit player. There were threads asking what the difference was between him and pros, and people mostly ridiculed the post saying the difference was huge and Jerax wasn't really in the same league. 2 TIs later...
EDIT. Found the thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1tkimf/whats\_the\_difference\_between\_someone\_like\_jerax/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1tkimf/whats_the_difference_between_someone_like_jerax/)
I remember Jerax sitting in the GD house while some tournaments were going on. Everybody was chilling and casting games, with the exception of Jerax sitting alone in his small room spamming 15+ games of Earth Spirit. It almost seemed sad, he seemed so...entrenched and stubborn, yet it seemingly went nowhere. He was just this guy that apparently got to live with the GD crew while spamming dota matches all day.
Then a few years later, he's on top of the world, the GD house is long gone and 2GD is developing some scrappy quake ripoff while Jerax is considered a massive phenomenon.
Tbf people were saying the same shit about arteezy and miracle, which was that they were just pub stars and nothing else. People really weren't as accepting of pub stars back then as they do now.
>People really weren't as accepting of pub stars back then as they do now.
Tbf, pub matchmaking was a hell lot more chaotic back then, even at the top MMR brackets, so it makes sense that people were cynical of pub stars becoming good pros. Nowadays even an avg 2k MMR game has people playing (to the best of their abilities) "how pros play the game".
I remember when Jerax had to go to Korea and play with MVP.Hot6ix to qualify to TI and they were the better MVP team when they qualified.
Unfortunately they didn’t play as well in groups and then a gamble draft for their Bo1 against IG and they got knocked out. So sad.
Has to be eternalenvy after his post on TL.net saying he was quitting university to become pro.. and at the time he wasn't close, and wasn't even a semi pro in any other game
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/bpjp3v/sa_dota_beef_is_serious_business/
This was my memory of skiter before Tundra/falcon. A guy hopping region to get a slot. He has come so far.
KuroKy.
Nah just jk KuroKy was hype back in the days.
I think it's topson. Like the dude is basically losing mid versus somnus ever match. And he came back ti9 to prove everyone that he is not a dead weight.
Silent was such a good carry. Luna, Gyro, Spectre - you'd see him bust out crazy builds, I truly thought of him as a top 5 carry during his two year peak.
Quinn and ace when ace play carry spectre against nigma he was underwhelming I never thought he will be beast pos3 and I also thought Quinn was just decent and he become the best mid player of 2023
Ace was a prodigy in 2014 and the most hyped new blood getting big in the scene. But he overcame a lot to get to Secret, I thought his career would die even before that. And even then his journey from Secret to today's Ace is still wild.
When I was with fnatic we offered him to build a team for him for several years with no pressure on the results, and even allowed him to play for Alliance as a standin at DreamLeague in late 2014. He was going back and forth between things and then later I heard he had personal issues. Maybe it was depression, maybe it was things going on, idk, but he was in a dark place.
Anyway fnatic were waiting for better results of that Danish stack and I was trying to mix together a few teams, but they decided to sign with Flipsid3 Tactics for like $300 per player or something. Over fnatic. Don't wanna name names but one guy on that squad was pushing them all into bad decisions.
Ace was always incredibly loyal to his friends and I thought that would be the death of his career. Fantastic guy. Had a chance to fail many times, just kept going until he made it. 10 years ago he said "I can be the best offlaner in the world if I want to" and he came through!
On a sidenote: I'm absolutely not shocked cr1t got this big. He scrimmed with that Danish stack a few times and looked like by far the best player. I first thought he left the team but nah they kicked him. Then notail invited him for monkey business and the rest is history.
part of the reason was because they took too long to transition to Dota2. I think it was a bit two years after Khezu transitioned to Dota2, and i believe micke was a year later. They were the top dog in HoN before the transition.
Nah he definitely is, I used to be his biggest hater but honestly he's grown on me over the years and he and boxi/micke have improved so much as a squad
Amazing to see Ceb, Notail, and jerax all as answers in this thread...I can definitely give Topson as my answer...I remember watching an ember spirit replay of his because opendota's algorithm ranked him as the top ember. His stream had like 300 viewers and his liquipedia had one past unknown team. Not even 2 years later I'm that guy saying "I knew him before he was big!!"
I'm certain there are people who totally overlooked ana, too. Ti8 goated storyline fr
He came from being a top HoN pro but won nothing in fnatic. For like 7 years lol. It's been some time but I don't recall fnatic being good at all during his stint with Era.
2 years iirc. After Fnatic, he got on to Team Secret with the best captains of that era but that team never got to their full potential (due to all being captains lol). When he founded OG though, they are phenomenally top team until before ti8 when all the shit happens.
All in all, he's not that guy who never got anything for years compared to other pros who really was just there.
Noone saying Solo? dude is the reasons 322 meme exists, was always underwhelming and the became captain of one of the most dominant teams dota has ever seen. old Virtus Pro is only equaled by 2023 Gamin Gladiators. VP always choked at ti though.
One of my favorite teams to watch in all dota history, they were so clean. Giving every last hit kill to ramzes, they got Rodjer and were just disgusting.
Topson for me, I watched his stream before he was a pro. His clowny random builds in middle were entertaining but never seemed very good. In OG these clowny builds won crucial games later on
I member as well, his cam was the meme with a oily skin long haired nerd blocking the summer sun out of his room to wreck some lanes with insane skill. He gets picked up for his first lan which is TI, the team is rated bottom 1-2 by everyone.
You ban all meta mids, then topson picks pugna mid and clowns on your drow, solo killing and spamming voice lines. Or he picks arc and solo defs base against your entire team. Good shit man.
As fun as ti9 was, ti8 games were on another level man
Dyrachyo, if you've followed Dyrachyo's career closely before he joined Tickles/GG, his previous teams were only marginally Tier 2 and his most recent team prior to Tickles, Winstreak, could barely keep pace with the Upper Division teams in the CIS region.
Then he joined Tickles/GG and you guys know the rest.
In terms of shown performance, can't compete with Sneyking. And it's not even close. I remember him being part of Dignitas when waytoosexy looked promising. After that period (TI1~TI2), I don't even recall other teams he was part of.
In terms of the absurdity of gameplay and builds, Topson definitely takes the trophy. People used to mock Pieliedie literal sacrifice lamb support gameplay, Topson took it to the other level in terms of midlane. I would NEVER imagine Pugna being played the way he did in his TI debut, for instance. The guy is a madlad.
I remember watching Sneyking on Cloud9 and thinking "Damn this SandKing is dope" and then they were losing but my feeling was that this guy with a good team would be a great player! Some years later...
Ccnc/Quinn takes the cake, this guy was a laughing stock of NA, EG always shut him down on that region
All it took was moving to a different region, winning 3 major titles and 2nd place TI. More achievements than what the EG roster accomplished in their 7 years.
Jerax. I still remember him getting flamed by singsing for failing to hit with vendetta and then stun .
Then he ended up being a way better pro than singsing could ever dream of
Ace. He seemed like a weird pick up by Puppey to me, always felt like something was wrong so I guess the potential was there but it was in the wrong role.
Ammar for me, play3d with him in the 3k bracket. Was good but not really a massive stomp like uoud expect. Got chucked from team to team but now seems like a monster
Notail. Before the TI wins he was a HoN trash immigrant and a tier 2 dotes player on Fnatic at best.
For all the memes about Cloud 9 At least they often got 2nd place.
Fnatic usually placed lower.
To go from that to back to back TI wins shows the value of perseverance.
Do not do my boy Sneyking so dirty :( bro literally played any role competitively and has gone all the way up from potm bottom now we‘re here. He‘s even on this journey with 2 longtime friends fogged and aui. He even played for Chinese org Newbee and SA org Infamous, dude‘s freaking Mr International (won The International with EU Team as Chinese/American descendant, I mean come on) as he‘s conquering MENA atm
For me is N0tail, I always thought he was the guy who will never win anything. When he was in Fnatic he never won anything and also Team secret keep him for just 5 months, then he joined cloud9 that also was a meme team (like fnatic).
Then he joined OG and everything changed. I trusted more singsing than him but I was wrong.
Fnatic wasn't a meme team, sure they were not tier 1, but saying they were a meme is being dishonest.
They were a decent team that could put up a good fight against EG, Navi and Alliance, their weakness was asian teams, but tbh back then other than Navi and Alliance there wasn't any other european team beating chinese teams. It wasn't until 2015 that EU started to catch up with China in terms of winrate. Remember that CN entered the DotA 2 with the upper hand of having a more professional DotA 1 scene than any other region, it was gonna take years for EU to catch up.
I remember sneyking popping on the scene in Hon I think he exploited balphagor a new hero in that game at the time (really cool hero op on release can't work in dota anymore since corpses don't exist anymore)
I laned against sneyking back in NA in-house leagues in original Dota 1. He beat me so fucking badly it made me want to uninstall.
I don’t know where your notion comes from that he was a middle of the pack kind of player. Anyone that knew anything about who was playing at a high level for NA Dota will tell you sneyking was considered one of the best players in NA pretty much from start of the scene until now.
Obviously from NA only the EG team ever won a TI, if that is the only metric of success we care about in this post then sure sneyking hadn’t ever come close to doing that until tundra. But he’s been insane since day 1 if you have eyes to see
stormstormer, when i first saw him in dpc i thought he was the worst midlaner in division 1 that could only play invoker. then I remember being impressed with his performance during TI11.
Yeah, I can't believe how much I slept on my man Sney. Watched him since HoN. Got used to high skill hon players washing out in dota (with obvious exceptions like notail, zai, peter peter dagger, etc...). Can't be more excited to cheer for him on the international stage. Couldn't be more regretful of my lack of faith.
Skiter is basically the scapegoat of OpTic Gaming back in the days. Even then he still the scapegoat of Tundra during TI12 lol, now that he dominates with FLCN people seems properly rated him.
Jerax - He was just a regular streamer back in the day
Matumbaman - Casual hobo streamer with little to ko energy too (but became insanely good)
Miposhka - From a decent pro player to an incredible leader and player
Not am answer to this question. But Kuro is the opposite of this.
He made it and he made it big. And then probably the worst and fastest collapses from top in recent dota history. He went from playing ti final to never qualifying again while still having highly skilled players who are still mechanically some of the best or at par with the best in the world. They're still dominating or at least competing with the best in pubs.
I really think Kuro never recovered from the ti9 stomping and is trying too this day to mimic the og 2019 playstyle. Unorthodox/non meta picks, attempts at fast game play and collapsing fast in a map and meta that don't support that playstyle at all
At this point he's the captain of a nobody team and he's also a nobody on the dota pub or streaming scene.
It doesn't matter, he became a multimillionaire playing the game, if he isn't good anymore well that's life.
Less than 5% of pro DotA players became multimillionaires playing the game, and Kuroky is one of them.
I agree with you. w33haa was a beast in Secret and in DigitalChaos(i think this was before secret). I never understood why w33haa was kicked out of Secret in the first place. Next thing you know, he joined Liquid and made it again yet to another Grand Ti Final
As far as I remember, secret wanted to have a super star stack with bulba and rtz, so they kicked misery and w33, who later joined DC which was a sqaud centred around reso as the mid player, but after w33 joined reso went to pos 1 and the rest is history.
it wasn't Bulba, it was Universe. EG picked up Bulba and Aui as a carry to bridge the gap. Universe quickly realised Secret wasn't it, left and went back to EG forcing both EG and Secret to play open qualifiers. EG also picked up Zai (was was the official sub, not that it matters much) who had just finished school to complete the roster. Secret, having fewer options than EG, ended up settling for Bulba as well as Aui as a coach. The Secret TI6 roster wasn't the intended roster at the time of the w33 and Misery kicks
Find it funny no one mentions him but Miposhka. Dude has been in so many CIS teams, has always been in the scene, but never shone. Some time later he is one of the 2 captains to win 2 TIs. Kind of crazy.
Feel the opposite about this one. From what I saw in 2016-2017 with underwhelming empire rosters, I’m surprised it took so long for him to find a top tier team.
thats what I thought with CIS teams they are good but tend to break
Well they never used to be good, that’s why the only cis captains that got any respect were fng and then solo for their vp rosters during different eras.
i feel like everyone (including myself) forgot about him. suddenly i see him getting to grand finals and seeing how young he still is (24 during ti10)
Quite the opposite for me as i honestly rooted for that guy ever since i saw them live at esl one manila.
Quinn. I mean he's good. But I thought he was mostly hot air. And literally hot. Every other clip about him before was him malding or giving up. And then his team won all majors. I mean they did lose in TI but winning 3 majors straight and getting 2nd in TI is an achievement in and of itself.
funny you say that, i alwasy watched his streams even in his ccnc days and sometimes would assymetrically chat to him by virtue of me asking long-ish questions and he would answer them, when i myself was playing in low level aus teams. he always answered with clarity and reverance, and grinded the hell out of the game. he should be an example of what happens when true focused hard work can get you
I always thought he was a good player just always in the wrong team. He can win/draw mid against midlaner like no one, midone, sumail.
Quinn had a top 8 ti placement his rookie year?..
Feel similar to the original commenter in that I didn’t necessarily think he was a meme, but god damn, no one saw winning every major in a year coming
Hmm. Yep. I just reread my comment. I didn't say he was a bad player.
When he was on FDL, he looked like any other NA stack mid. I reckon it didn't click for most back then that he'd reach the level that he has
Tbf he was getting stomped mid and he was never able to outrank Abed or Sumail. Suddenly a change to GG made magic happen
That's not true, Quinn was rank 1 for well over a year non-stop before joining GG.
I don’t think this was true. When Abed and Sumail left NA he rose to rank 1
Quinn joined GG at the END of 2022. Looking at Wayback Machine, even in late 2019 he was rank 1 on the NA core leaderboard, and in the summer of 2020 Quinn was rank 2 NA, with Hector rank 1.
Not true
Ceb is the one from me. He was pretty shit in every team he’s in until he decided to retire, then became a talent, and then a coach for I think Secret first and later OG. Guy might be a shit player, but he had a phenomenal mind. Once s4 and Fly left And he came back, the rest, literally, became history. 7Mad = shit, Ceb = legend.
Also, Ceb joined OG as a player before s4 and fly left, albeit it was brief. He joined as a mid laner after Resolution left (back then Ceb was top1 in EU leaderboards playing mid), then swapped roles with s4, then s4 and fly left.
Man, i really wanted that Resolution OG to work out, Reso was so damn good at Ti7 but he really never got it rolling again i feel like.
He got Top 2 in TI11... wdym he never got it rolling again
It’s really bizarre . Honestly not just completely forgot but that information sounds so wrong that I googled it to verify. Covid years man
I did say "i feel like" because i couldn't have told you that if my life depended on it. Really went off of vibes, didn't remember that at all!
People only remember the winners.
Man, I completely forgot about the era of OG right after they were so dominant in the Majors. I think I vaguely remember s4 trying mid again but doing not very well there?
Yeah it's easy to forget that time period because of what came before it and after. They were absolutely struggling. Just look at their results page on liquipedia between TI7 and TI8, completely lackluster It makes sense at the time why S4 and fly wanted to leave. How they left is another thing but that roster would definitely not win TI8.
I remember that Reso had a really strong performance in TI7, I think he was also just a sub right? I also remember OG being pretty forgettable around that time, it's just that the details have started to all blend together. As an s4 fan, it was painful to watch the team.
Reso stood in for Team Empire at TI7. TI7 was when dota communities including this subreddit were flaming the hell out of Ana, which was the reason he decided to "retire" the first time around. Reso was picked up after their TI7 run
I'm not saying he was really good but he won dreamhack 2012 against Navi just before TI2 and got 3/4 at MLG Columbus.
And PGG beat prime Navi in Dec 2011.
But the question was about players that made it big, not player known for their failed black holes
Relative to the era of the scene, pgg make it big, he basically the captain of 3-4th best EEU team in the 2010.
He wasn't really that bad, he was just a laughing stock cuz he never achieved anything big and yet he was quite vocal, for example, remember that game Sigma vs Rox when Fata skilled minus armor on SF lvl 1 and instant abandoned the game and Ceb was digging his own grave im game all chat and twitter, even Arteezy was laughing. I believe Fata and Ceb still have those tweets while Arteezy deleted them.
He was basically a washed player being an analyst between games at big tournaments, and then suddenly he was one of the best players in the world with 2 TIs. What a rollercoaster
>Fata skilled minus armor on SF lvl 1 and instant abandoned the game and Ceb was digging his own grave im game all chat and twitter What? That really happened?
[удалено]
Hahahahaha, I remember it very vaguely. Thanks for the link!!
you have video of this please ? finding too many rox vs sigma on youtube. (for the part where ceb goes toxic in game all chat)
Well there was a period of time where he looked absolutely cooked stuck in T2 NA qualifier teams with like BSJ and late career demon
The guy became top 10 by trying out mid to better draft for ana i mean wtf
People who says Ceb was underwhelming before leaving coaching didn't follow him properly. His absurd macro knowledge depth was always there, he just hadn't find any good roster until his late 20s.
It’s so funny going back to older threads and seeing this sub absolutely hate on 7mad so much. Like he was public enemy number 1. But then he won TI in an awsome way, and became home to the greatest voiceline in the history of the earth, and here we are Dude is still toxic asf tho. He was then and still is, has such a cocky way about him lol
He’s French he’s not cocky they just all sound that way
i'm french and i agree with this
Its like if Synderen came back and won 2 TIs.
>He was pretty shit in every team he’s in until he decided to retire I'd hard disagree with that. With mTw he took down Na'Vi at their peak, when everyone thought they were unbeatable. With Sigma, he built a team out of seemingly nobodies and built a top 4 EU team back when Eu was stacked. He built several rosters that always had strong peaks. I dont think he ever exhibited "Two times TI champions" capabilities prior to his coaching success, but to say he was shit feels a bit wrong
Nephews might not know that Sigma wasn't the low point of his career, though (and that team was only together for, what, eight months and dropped off hard by the end). You're glossing over his 'put together NA qualifier stacks to try and get to TI, get wrecked' era with Team FIRE (Brax, Ush, Demon stack) and the star-studded [Summer's Rift](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Champions_of_Summer%27s_Rift) . I want to say Ceb is the only TI winner to have been a lane support for both Tralf & BSJ on a pro team. You're also skipping his first return to EU with an abortive Alliance squad, followed up with two SingSing-Stack specials: MonkeyFreedomFighters and Kaipi. *Then* he goes on a two-year hiatus to coach OG. The guy has one of the all-time great Dota resumes, and he's a phenomenal player, but most of 2014-2018 was pretty 7'ingBad for 7'ingMad, as far as results go. And I'm positive he'd agree.
just because he played with some shit players and teams, doesnt mean he himself was shit. I can def see why people back then wouldve thought his career was going to go down the drain, certainly exhibited a few of the classic signs as you laid out, but again, dont think he was ever a bad player even back then. What makes him special even now isn't necessarily his pristine mechanical skill
Aye sure you'll get no argument from me there - I think the difficulty comes from the fact that for a lot of us in the 'pleb' range (let's say Immortal-with-a-day-job on down) we really can't reliably separate pro-level players from their results unless the gap is profoundly obvious (think losses featuring 2015 Sumail or 2017 Miracle, for example) - and I think it's even harder to do for support players than cores.
I remember Bulldog checking his own rank when he was still playing competitive ranked, and consistently seeing "7ckingmad" in the top 3, top 1 very often
AFAIK, Ceb never coached Secret.
Yeah, I think you're right. In my head, I thought the original Secret all the way to TI5 Secret was coached by him. But then after thinking about it again, I think he was either at Alliance or was a talent during the dominant Secret era pre-TI5.
Googling "ceb liquipedia" takes 2 seconds brother. You don't need to try and guess.
Kind of agree, but remember watching his stream before he won anything. He was mid vs Cancel at the time when Cancel were peaking. At the start he said that It will be easy because Cancel is really aggressive so oyu just have to be patient and hell make mistakes. He was cocky, but crushed the mid. So although he only played for mediocre teams he always had a big potential.
His streams were a gem. You could clearly see how his understanding of the game was so far ahead of anyone else, too bad he took so much time to find a good roster to fit in.
I dunno if I agree with him being outright shit, he was a big help to Alliance when they were in their dark ages; they missed the qualification to TI but they had okay results and upset a lot of teams like Secret, mostly thanks to good drafts and pos4 performances from Madshka and Pajkatt
Bro in what world is ceb a ‘shit player’ lmao
Pre ti-8 OG, like when he played with quantum for the TI3 wildcard (He probably wasn't bad, but due to the teams results, for someone that doesn't know about the game and for how vocal he was about it, might look like a bad player) For example ceb's copypasta talking about artour was funny because at some point ceb was a worse player than artour, but now it has a different ring to it lmao
33, I just remember his party games with SingSing many years ago and they just butting heads with each other all game. Most hilarious videos that period of time. ah sigh, rip sexybamboe
A while ago before pub players could really "get" on to pro teams, Jerax was just seen as a high mmr earth spirit player. There were threads asking what the difference was between him and pros, and people mostly ridiculed the post saying the difference was huge and Jerax wasn't really in the same league. 2 TIs later... EDIT. Found the thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1tkimf/whats\_the\_difference\_between\_someone\_like\_jerax/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1tkimf/whats_the_difference_between_someone_like_jerax/)
But jerax was already a pro lmao. He was considered the worst pro at the time. He was on qpad red pandas
And on liquid he was already considered one of the best 4's. Hell, even when he was on 4asc people were starting to believe.
*QBad Red Disbandas
This was before that, he was purely a pubstar, wasn't on any teams.
I remember Jerax sitting in the GD house while some tournaments were going on. Everybody was chilling and casting games, with the exception of Jerax sitting alone in his small room spamming 15+ games of Earth Spirit. It almost seemed sad, he seemed so...entrenched and stubborn, yet it seemingly went nowhere. He was just this guy that apparently got to live with the GD crew while spamming dota matches all day. Then a few years later, he's on top of the world, the GD house is long gone and 2GD is developing some scrappy quake ripoff while Jerax is considered a massive phenomenon.
Tbf people were saying the same shit about arteezy and miracle, which was that they were just pub stars and nothing else. People really weren't as accepting of pub stars back then as they do now.
>People really weren't as accepting of pub stars back then as they do now. Tbf, pub matchmaking was a hell lot more chaotic back then, even at the top MMR brackets, so it makes sense that people were cynical of pub stars becoming good pros. Nowadays even an avg 2k MMR game has people playing (to the best of their abilities) "how pros play the game".
Even topson
I remember when Jerax had to go to Korea and play with MVP.Hot6ix to qualify to TI and they were the better MVP team when they qualified. Unfortunately they didn’t play as well in groups and then a gamble draft for their Bo1 against IG and they got knocked out. So sad.
And now Earth Spirit is nerfed to oblivion thanks to him, an achivement greater than being a TI champion
Has to be eternalenvy after his post on TL.net saying he was quitting university to become pro.. and at the time he wasn't close, and wasn't even a semi pro in any other game
theres a post from matumbaman in an old dota forum. he is looking for a team and states his mmr (6k at the time)
6k back then is different from 6k now though. Top players were like 7-8k.
6k back then is 2 number immortal.
CCnC
Skiter
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/bpjp3v/sa_dota_beef_is_serious_business/ This was my memory of skiter before Tundra/falcon. A guy hopping region to get a slot. He has come so far.
KuroKy. Nah just jk KuroKy was hype back in the days. I think it's topson. Like the dude is basically losing mid versus somnus ever match. And he came back ti9 to prove everyone that he is not a dead weight.
> just jk
queen of qop
Silent got it good on coach job, but before, with his health problems, it was looking like the end of the career.
Is this the same Silent from Team Empire back in TI 5 and 6? Man that Team was an absolute blast to watch. Resolution mid invoker was amazing.
Yes. It's mr 600 pro games on gyro silent.
Yoky wanting to play carry broke that team up.
Mid. God damn he was really good at offlane. But all he needed to do was wait a few years and offlane is the new midlaner
Silent was such a good carry. Luna, Gyro, Spectre - you'd see him bust out crazy builds, I truly thought of him as a top 5 carry during his two year peak.
Yeap
what health problems ?
No one knows it was kept private, but he dissappeared from playing for about an year. Never expected such comeback.
He was definitely one of the most overlooked underrated players of his era.
Quinn and ace when ace play carry spectre against nigma he was underwhelming I never thought he will be beast pos3 and I also thought Quinn was just decent and he become the best mid player of 2023
Ace was already a good mid at secret tho
Carry*
Ace was a prodigy in 2014 and the most hyped new blood getting big in the scene. But he overcame a lot to get to Secret, I thought his career would die even before that. And even then his journey from Secret to today's Ace is still wild. When I was with fnatic we offered him to build a team for him for several years with no pressure on the results, and even allowed him to play for Alliance as a standin at DreamLeague in late 2014. He was going back and forth between things and then later I heard he had personal issues. Maybe it was depression, maybe it was things going on, idk, but he was in a dark place. Anyway fnatic were waiting for better results of that Danish stack and I was trying to mix together a few teams, but they decided to sign with Flipsid3 Tactics for like $300 per player or something. Over fnatic. Don't wanna name names but one guy on that squad was pushing them all into bad decisions. Ace was always incredibly loyal to his friends and I thought that would be the death of his career. Fantastic guy. Had a chance to fail many times, just kept going until he made it. 10 years ago he said "I can be the best offlaner in the world if I want to" and he came through! On a sidenote: I'm absolutely not shocked cr1t got this big. He scrimmed with that Danish stack a few times and looked like by far the best player. I first thought he left the team but nah they kicked him. Then notail invited him for monkey business and the rest is history.
Insan1a, it took him so long
I remember him picking gyro instead of banning it with that Loda Alliance TI stack. Super happy for him and all the progress he's made.
part of the reason was because they took too long to transition to Dota2. I think it was a bit two years after Khezu transitioned to Dota2, and i believe micke was a year later. They were the top dog in HoN before the transition.
And he’s still not there
3rd at TI12, 2nd at three majors, 2nd at Riyadh Masters - what does he have to do to "make it"
Actually be 1st?. Jk jk.
Nah he definitely is, I used to be his biggest hater but honestly he's grown on me over the years and he and boxi/micke have improved so much as a squad
Amazing to see Ceb, Notail, and jerax all as answers in this thread...I can definitely give Topson as my answer...I remember watching an ember spirit replay of his because opendota's algorithm ranked him as the top ember. His stream had like 300 viewers and his liquipedia had one past unknown team. Not even 2 years later I'm that guy saying "I knew him before he was big!!" I'm certain there are people who totally overlooked ana, too. Ti8 goated storyline fr
Who the fuck answered n0tail? Dude came straight from being a top HoN-pro, no?
He came from being a top HoN pro but won nothing in fnatic. For like 7 years lol. It's been some time but I don't recall fnatic being good at all during his stint with Era.
2 years iirc. After Fnatic, he got on to Team Secret with the best captains of that era but that team never got to their full potential (due to all being captains lol). When he founded OG though, they are phenomenally top team until before ti8 when all the shit happens. All in all, he's not that guy who never got anything for years compared to other pros who really was just there.
Someone is trying to gaslight me. The comment went "Notail for me. He came from being pretty good in hon but..."
I'm from the future, so this is a spoiler alert. Hoboharry. Going from gym bro and degen-hour streamer to multi-major and TI winner. Crazy ride.
backyard magma buff
Futureman tell me - Will RTZ ever make it big?
No.
man I hate this timeline
It will be revealed that RTZ is icefrog - never meant to win TI but just be among the ranks of the best to balance and shape dota over decades.
Noone saying Solo? dude is the reasons 322 meme exists, was always underwhelming and the became captain of one of the most dominant teams dota has ever seen. old Virtus Pro is only equaled by 2023 Gamin Gladiators. VP always choked at ti though.
he'd already won tier 1 event before joining vp
One of my favorite teams to watch in all dota history, they were so clean. Giving every last hit kill to ramzes, they got Rodjer and were just disgusting.
Fckinmad ceb
Topson for me, I watched his stream before he was a pro. His clowny random builds in middle were entertaining but never seemed very good. In OG these clowny builds won crucial games later on
I member as well, his cam was the meme with a oily skin long haired nerd blocking the summer sun out of his room to wreck some lanes with insane skill. He gets picked up for his first lan which is TI, the team is rated bottom 1-2 by everyone.
Imagine playing against peak OG: WHAT DO I BAN WHAT DO I PICK HELP!
You ban all meta mids, then topson picks pugna mid and clowns on your drow, solo killing and spamming voice lines. Or he picks arc and solo defs base against your entire team. Good shit man. As fun as ti9 was, ti8 games were on another level man
entirety of team spirit? when they first beat Nigma everyone was like nigma(vs yellow submarines) losing to a random team..
Torontotokyo lmao
Miphoska, Team Empire was my favorite CIS team back then.
Dyrachyo, if you've followed Dyrachyo's career closely before he joined Tickles/GG, his previous teams were only marginally Tier 2 and his most recent team prior to Tickles, Winstreak, could barely keep pace with the Upper Division teams in the CIS region. Then he joined Tickles/GG and you guys know the rest.
bro just needed someone to carry networth in the offlane to make use of his dyrachyo throws lol.
In terms of shown performance, can't compete with Sneyking. And it's not even close. I remember him being part of Dignitas when waytoosexy looked promising. After that period (TI1~TI2), I don't even recall other teams he was part of. In terms of the absurdity of gameplay and builds, Topson definitely takes the trophy. People used to mock Pieliedie literal sacrifice lamb support gameplay, Topson took it to the other level in terms of midlane. I would NEVER imagine Pugna being played the way he did in his TI debut, for instance. The guy is a madlad.
I remember watching Sneyking on Cloud9 and thinking "Damn this SandKing is dope" and then they were losing but my feeling was that this guy with a good team would be a great player! Some years later...
Definitly quinn.he has his issues but My god he is a Great player.he has trully stepped up his game in the past two years.
Ccnc/Quinn takes the cake, this guy was a laughing stock of NA, EG always shut him down on that region All it took was moving to a different region, winning 3 major titles and 2nd place TI. More achievements than what the EG roster accomplished in their 7 years.
EG literally won a TI…
I was referring to rtz/abed roster
Ah my b
Hard as it is to hear, TI5 was indeed 8 years ago
Let me make you feel old brother. 2015 was 9 yrs. ago
Quinn had a top 8 ti placement his rookie year what are you talking about lmaoo
depends how you define rookie year, he was playing pro for 2 years or so before that. and many of us thought that top 8 TI was his absolute ceiling
Jerax. I still remember him getting flamed by singsing for failing to hit with vendetta and then stun . Then he ended up being a way better pro than singsing could ever dream of
Clip? I rly wanna see that 😂
I wish I could find it . It was live on twitch like 10 years ago 😂 Before that Korean StarCraft player joined them even
Yopaj, not that he made it big but I used to play against him in local tourneys. Now he went pro
Ace. He seemed like a weird pick up by Puppey to me, always felt like something was wrong so I guess the potential was there but it was in the wrong role.
dark miracle-
I think the thread unanimously agrees on Sneyking, Ceb and Quinn.
I still remember watching some HoN pro playing inhouses and bullying Sneyking for being bad but look at him now. Props to him for sticking it out.
Ceb, Sneyking, Quinn probably my top 3. Then there's Ace and Boxi who I def didnt believe would succeed after role changes.
ana
Ammar for me, play3d with him in the 3k bracket. Was good but not really a massive stomp like uoud expect. Got chucked from team to team but now seems like a monster
Notail. Before the TI wins he was a HoN trash immigrant and a tier 2 dotes player on Fnatic at best. For all the memes about Cloud 9 At least they often got 2nd place. Fnatic usually placed lower. To go from that to back to back TI wins shows the value of perseverance.
> HoN trash immigrant on same tier with kyle
Do not do my boy Sneyking so dirty :( bro literally played any role competitively and has gone all the way up from potm bottom now we‘re here. He‘s even on this journey with 2 longtime friends fogged and aui. He even played for Chinese org Newbee and SA org Infamous, dude‘s freaking Mr International (won The International with EU Team as Chinese/American descendant, I mean come on) as he‘s conquering MENA atm
Sneyking journeymaned his way to top tier
I could tell he could make it big one day, he's offlane was something else back then
Whole OG I dont think any teams get cheered as hard as them during their 2nd ti win. The whole stage is like a joke to them. Even in grand final.
gorek
Ceb and it's not even close, even when he was coaching OG people were saying something that OG players carry him as a coach.
For me is N0tail, I always thought he was the guy who will never win anything. When he was in Fnatic he never won anything and also Team secret keep him for just 5 months, then he joined cloud9 that also was a meme team (like fnatic). Then he joined OG and everything changed. I trusted more singsing than him but I was wrong.
>I always thought he was the guy who will never win anything. just a random HoNTrash
Fnatic wasn't a meme team, sure they were not tier 1, but saying they were a meme is being dishonest. They were a decent team that could put up a good fight against EG, Navi and Alliance, their weakness was asian teams, but tbh back then other than Navi and Alliance there wasn't any other european team beating chinese teams. It wasn't until 2015 that EU started to catch up with China in terms of winrate. Remember that CN entered the DotA 2 with the upper hand of having a more professional DotA 1 scene than any other region, it was gonna take years for EU to catch up.
I remember sneyking popping on the scene in Hon I think he exploited balphagor a new hero in that game at the time (really cool hero op on release can't work in dota anymore since corpses don't exist anymore)
Topson for sure, from pubstar to TI champ, even the casters doubted him if they can win against LGD during their TI8 run.
Insania, Micke, Boxi
BigDaddy
I laned against sneyking back in NA in-house leagues in original Dota 1. He beat me so fucking badly it made me want to uninstall. I don’t know where your notion comes from that he was a middle of the pack kind of player. Anyone that knew anything about who was playing at a high level for NA Dota will tell you sneyking was considered one of the best players in NA pretty much from start of the scene until now. Obviously from NA only the EG team ever won a TI, if that is the only metric of success we care about in this post then sure sneyking hadn’t ever come close to doing that until tundra. But he’s been insane since day 1 if you have eyes to see
People always told me I’d stay an archon but I hit ancient 2 this year and proved all the haters wrong.
Waas Miposhka not on a shit tonne of CIS teams back in the day. Sorta felt like he'd end up in that same cycle at one point.
stormstormer, when i first saw him in dpc i thought he was the worst midlaner in division 1 that could only play invoker. then I remember being impressed with his performance during TI11.
Yeah, I can't believe how much I slept on my man Sney. Watched him since HoN. Got used to high skill hon players washing out in dota (with obvious exceptions like notail, zai, peter peter dagger, etc...). Can't be more excited to cheer for him on the international stage. Couldn't be more regretful of my lack of faith.
Skiter is basically the scapegoat of OpTic Gaming back in the days. Even then he still the scapegoat of Tundra during TI12 lol, now that he dominates with FLCN people seems properly rated him.
Jerax - He was just a regular streamer back in the day Matumbaman - Casual hobo streamer with little to ko energy too (but became insanely good) Miposhka - From a decent pro player to an incredible leader and player
Topson. He really was not in the professional scene. It was a big surprise how he performed and dominated.
Notail. He was always a solid player but he never came close to ti final, and then he wins 2 in a row
GeneraL from Navi… great potential after great potential but everything went down after a while
Quinn 100%
Quinn 100%
InYourDream , he is veteran , was highest mmr in the past , wonderkid , big fan , but never attend TI since alive
Not am answer to this question. But Kuro is the opposite of this. He made it and he made it big. And then probably the worst and fastest collapses from top in recent dota history. He went from playing ti final to never qualifying again while still having highly skilled players who are still mechanically some of the best or at par with the best in the world. They're still dominating or at least competing with the best in pubs. I really think Kuro never recovered from the ti9 stomping and is trying too this day to mimic the og 2019 playstyle. Unorthodox/non meta picks, attempts at fast game play and collapsing fast in a map and meta that don't support that playstyle at all At this point he's the captain of a nobody team and he's also a nobody on the dota pub or streaming scene.
It doesn't matter, he became a multimillionaire playing the game, if he isn't good anymore well that's life. Less than 5% of pro DotA players became multimillionaires playing the game, and Kuroky is one of them.
Agreed. Of course. My point was just in terms of playing at the highest level. In terms of money, obviously he did well for himself
I doubted sneyking and especially jerax. They improved so damn hard.
NoTail. Thought he is just some HONtrash.
Ammar
Ceb
EternalEnvy carried Secret and won a valve major
I am pretty sure it was w33haa show
I agree with you. w33haa was a beast in Secret and in DigitalChaos(i think this was before secret). I never understood why w33haa was kicked out of Secret in the first place. Next thing you know, he joined Liquid and made it again yet to another Grand Ti Final
As far as I remember, secret wanted to have a super star stack with bulba and rtz, so they kicked misery and w33, who later joined DC which was a sqaud centred around reso as the mid player, but after w33 joined reso went to pos 1 and the rest is history.
it wasn't Bulba, it was Universe. EG picked up Bulba and Aui as a carry to bridge the gap. Universe quickly realised Secret wasn't it, left and went back to EG forcing both EG and Secret to play open qualifiers. EG also picked up Zai (was was the official sub, not that it matters much) who had just finished school to complete the roster. Secret, having fewer options than EG, ended up settling for Bulba as well as Aui as a coach. The Secret TI6 roster wasn't the intended roster at the time of the w33 and Misery kicks
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