The Weekly CourierVirtus.Pro Win ESL One Katowice Major, Black Leaves Clutch Gamers

By eggs on Feb 27, 2018 04:44 UTC

Virtus.Pro Win ESL One Katowice Major

In the grand finals series, Virtus.Pro’s new roster dispatched Vici Gaming in a dominant 3-1 victory, taking home 750 Pro Circuit points and the $400,000 prize. The win is their second Pro Circuit major—the first being ESL One Hamburg—which launches them to 1st place in the Pro Circuit rankings. They had dropped 0-2 to Vici Gaming during the group stage, but in their playoff bracket run they ran through Evil Geniuses—a team they’ve lost every BO3 for 4 years, dating back to TI4—and swept Fnatic 2-0.

Virtus.Pro raced off to a 2-0 series lead against Vici Gaming off the strength of their Gyrocopter and Omninight pairing. By game 3, VG finally banned Omni, and VP took a chance on a last-pick Broodmother. Ori- jumped out of the gates with stellar play on his Puck, leading to what would be VG's only win of the series.

HUGE DREAM COIL COMBO!!!@ViCi_Gaming with the 4-man Coil into 4-man Blinding Light!
Picture perfect. #ESLOne https://t.co/RUTJQiyOsP pic.twitter.com/SeLIDOvb1L
— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) February 25, 2018

It was a great debut for VP’s new player Rodjer, who wins a Major shortly after leaving Na’Vi, as well as a Mercdes-Benz for being voted the MVP.

The tournament’s meta featured a rather small pool of carries. Tiny, Gyrocopter, and Razor dominated as the top 3 carries, as well as the top 3 most contested heroes of the tournament. Sven was nowhere to be found, and Razor, though usually regarded as a situational pick for anti-carries, is now a comfortable, first round hero. With another mini-patch around the corner, the landscape should shift once again before we get to PGL Bucharest.

Black Leaves Clutch Gamers

Our Journey with @BlackDotA2 comes to and end, sooner than expected. There have been many reasons for this.

First of all we would like to say that our journey has been great and it was great working with him on our side.
— Clutch Gamers (@TeamClutchGamer) February 21, 2018

In just three weeks since joining the team, Black and Clutch Gamers have parted ways. In a tweet thread, Clutch Gamers said that "management, players and Black has no bad beef," while referencing internal issues of "miscommunication and other misunderstandings" as reasons for the separation. Black offered his perspective in a twitlonger comment that first thanked CG's ownership and management for their efforts. He wrote about his initial skepticism about with the team, "We were all in different countries and regions, so before forming the team we did actually not have the chance to play together and test the waters, so once we started practicing things didn't go as planned."

Once the team didn't perform to his expectations, Black blamed himself for losing faith in the team, and he apologized for his faults.

"My guts tell me it's the right thing to do and I always went against what my guts told me in the past. Being loyal is a great attribute to have, but I learned you should never betray your own heart. I have a strong feeling that this if for the better. For myself and them. I'll be trying to assist them with finding a new player and be there for them in case they need me. We are all friends outside and inside of DotA 2, simply cause we can't play together doesn't mean we hate each other."