Uncertainty surrounds RoDjer’s career as HellRaisers feels like a lost cause

At the Parimatch League S3, HellRaisers suffered two embarrassing losses against Virtus.pro and FlyToMoon, leaving them with third place out of four participants. In hindsight, HellRaisers’ biggest pain was their inability to defeat the stand-in’d line-up of Virtus.pro.

Following HellRaisers’ defeat, Tarak Bortnik had the opportunity to speak with HellRaisers’ support player, Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan. He talks openly about HellRaisers’ recent issues and their inability to gel together as a team.

Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan

Quarrels, Despair and Discord among HellRaisers players

As difficult as it sounds, HellRaisers has a big underlying issue among its players. RodjER addressed that it’s “hard for HR players to work on mistakes and improve”. Even after their vacation, the team has not found mutual understanding in regards to most problems. RodjER additionally pointed out, the problem was not addressed and left as it was prior to their vacation. Furthermore, the team’s future is uncertain as of now. He of course can’t reveal further details until the team officially announces any news.

Despite having recently taken some time off the pro scene, the HellRaisers line-up will probably take another break. Whereas RodjER indicated that he doesn’t know whether if he will remain in HellRaisers nor left any clue about where he will play next.

HR’s performance has been underwhelming, period. Although they were invited to various large-scale online tourneys such as ESL One Birmingham and Pushka League, HR was unable to advance through Playoffs at either of them. All of their tournaments since February were down right horrible. The biggest highlight was topping the group at Pushka League, and then crashing and burning out in the first round in Playoffs.

LAN over Online Leagues

RodjER also mentioned that many pro players have diminished motivation because LAN tournaments are a thing of the past. Reminiscence of the days when LAN tournaments excited him back in Virtus.pro still lingers to this day. And if we look at HR’s performance back before the global crisis was a thing, we can see the team performing way better then in this recent Online era.

Despite the statistics indicating that online leagues bring higher viewership, there’s no denying that LAN tournaments are significantly more entertaining for both players and spectators. One unique atmosphere that LAN tournaments have is the air of intensity between competing teams and the wholesomeness behind the scenes. Nonetheless, online leagues do have their benefits, such as bringing European and CIS Dota together.

As pointed out by RodjER, EU teams play differently compared to its CIS counterparts. They even have their own perspective on hero drafts and the meta.

Quoting from a statement by Akbar “SoNNeikO” Butaev, who recently migrated from CIS to EU region, he said:

“The difference is huge between CIS and EU players. The first thing I noticed is that players are calmer, they listen to you and there’s minimal negative inputs from their end. Also they work hard – at least in my team. I just give them a task to focus on and they complete it in a few days.”

If anything, online leagues have contributed to the CIS scene by enabling teams to experience a diversified competition. But they were a ticking time bomb for others it seems.

For better or worse, HellRaisers will undoubtedly need to turn over a new leaf. Especially if they are eyeing on the International 2020. Until then, there’s no expectation for HR to bag any victories nor becoming a favorable candidate in Dota 2 betting.

Yet we can’t help but feel depressed about RodjER’s upsetting response about not feeling the “taste of victory” ever since he left Virtus.pro. So much for keeping the article optimistic. *sobbing noise*

Read next: Dota 2 NA Summer Shuffle – It was all one big lie

Comments are closed.