ATF will kill Team Yandex if they continue to play only their heroes

The transition of Ammar ATF Assaf to Team Yandex for Dota 2 was considered by the overwhelming majority of the community as a 100% strengthening without any reservations. You can really find a whole trolley of advantages from such a transfer, after all, ATF is one of the best (if not the best) performers in its position, and also with Aegis in its luggage. Only a few remembered those “reservations”. For example, Vladimir Maelstorm Kuzminov.

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This composition is an atomic bomb with a timer. Perhaps I need to clarify. The worst decision ever was to remove Notisd. After PV’s vlogs, I’m his number 1 fan. DM is a chill silent one, but Ammar is generally not the kind of player who will adapt and interact. He will do what he wants. It’s only a matter of time before the others’ patience runs out.

But the voices of the “alarmists” were drowned out by the confident victory of Team Yandex at PGL Wallachia Season 9, where the team literally had no opponents: not a single lost match during the tournament and only one map given away in the playoffs. But a triumph at an event where half the tops were missing and the other half had replacements still shouldn’t create a false impression.

However, now I want to talk not about the “powder keg” and the emotional aspect, but about the pool of ATF characters. In my opinion, the biggest vulnerability of Team Yandex, which will soon make itself felt, is buried here.

The reason for this reasoning was the match between Team Yandex and LGD at BLAST Slam VIII. Yes, the ATF team won the series. But the second card became an alarm bell, and the name of this bell is Huskar.

The fact that the ATF has a peculiar pool of characters is not news. He took Aegis with such a pool, including the “troika” Ursa, a year ago. But there's an important nuance: ATF's otherness was part of the overall design of Team Falcons. The team regularly practiced flex heroes between positions. Huskar, Viper, Timbersaw, Razor, Necrophos, Bristleback, which were opened in the draft, could end up going to at least two different positions, and sometimes to three. This juggling of less obvious and sometimes non-meta characters allowed the team to remain flexible, avoiding awkward matchups and so on.

But this will not work in Team Yandex.

Alimzhan Watson Islambekov recently noted that the ATF firmly believes in its heroes, and the team believes in the ATF:

I like. He is very confident in his characters. We trust him too. And he's a TI champion, a really good player. I've been on the line against him my whole life. Yes, it's good to have ATF on our team.

This, of course, is good from the point of view of team spirit, but is not always effective in terms of gameplay. Huskar is truly a revealing character. He already appeared during BLAST - in the match against Team Spirit. And there too it was closed without a chance.

With such faith in its own heroes, ATF in Team Yandex risks being simply readable and predictable. It will not be difficult to close Razor, Huskar, Timbersaw from Assaf, because the opponent will always know from the draft who will get these characters and which specific line they will go to. After all, Chira JUNIOR does not have these heroes in the pool (less than ten games on each of them on the professional stage), and Watson does not play the same Razor and Viper. And this is not the problem of Watson and Chira JUNIOR. This is an ATF problem.

And here we return to the ATF pool itself. Over three seasons with Team Falcons, he got used to the fact that he could always be “outside the meta,” and now he’s following the same rails. Here are his characters for the last month on the professional stage.

It seems to be quite varied and interesting. But, again, there is a nuance: there were and still are not several basic offlane heroes in the ATF pool. In case you suddenly forgot, then:

• Enigma - not a single match.
• Lycan - not a single match.
• Undying - not a single match.
• Batrider - not a single match.
• Dark Seer - only six matches (the last one was more than a year ago).
• Brewmaster - only eight matches (I haven't played it for eight months).
• Beastmaster - only ten matches (haven't played it for over a year).
• Largo is just one game.

And this is without mentioning rarer offlaners like Visage. The lion's share of the characters from the list above are now in the meta and in the active pool of almost all offlaners. ATF, despite all its skill and unconditional talent, finds itself locked in the cage of its own unusual pool.

Then again, if the ATF were in the old Falcons now, no one would be sounding the alarm. But Team Yandex, on the contrary, is just as accustomed to playing with characters from the list above. Naturally, the team has difficulty understanding what to do with the off-lane Huskar, who cannot be moved anywhere. And the more often Team Yandex meets with tier-1 teams, the more often this vulnerability will manifest itself. Such things.

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