Two days ago, esports powerhouse Virtus.pro announced the benching of of their entire Dota 2 main roster. Five months ago, we praised Virtus.Pro for finally activating and reclaiming their throne at ESL One Los Angeles. The team did not play horrible over the summer period, yet their inactivity and lack of growth prompted the VP organization to look for solutions elsewhere.
© Virtus.Pro
Alongside the news that the main roster will be inactive for some time, Virtus.pro also confirmed that they will be skipping the ESL One Germany 2020. This comes as a surprise to fans, as Virtus.pro has been a reigning champion of ESL One tournaments since late 2017.
Winning ESL One events MVP award comes with a gorgeous Mercedes Benz A-Class sedan which Virtus.pro players had brought home twice. This became a meme in it itself about their expanding car park of VP after each ESL event. The inability to defend their ESL title at year-end is additionally bad for VP fans, who cherish the team’s ESL event buff.
That said, the roster shuffle is necessary as the team’s performance and morale have diminished after countless losses during this season.
Since the post-TI9 roster shuffle began, Virtus.pro have had six new players coming in and out of the team. As soon as TI 2019 ended, three players were replaced by Save-, Reso1ution and epileptick1d.
Their first debut at the Chengdu Major 2019 ended with a premature elimination in the regional qualifiers. It didn’t take long before both Save- and epileptick1d were removed from the roster and transferred to their sister squad, VP.Prodigy. The empty spots are eventually occupied by Cooman and Zayac.
Both players were poached off Natus Vincere, and team B8 prompting another meme for VP as the poacher squad in the CIS region. The organization still couldn’t make things work with their ‘all-star’ roster. Cooman was eventually replaced by iLTW marking the 6th roster replacement in less then a year.
Meet VP.Prodigy, as the name suggests they certainly live up to their names. They may not be at Secret’s level, yet the squad is doing solid so far at OGA Dota PIT S3.
They kicked off their first series with a heavy favorite, Team Secret. Shockingly, the boys were able to snatch the first game off Team Secret, which certainly upset the Dota 2 odds. The match did have some ridiculous moments, yet VP seems to be a good mesh of talent ready to perform extremely well.
They continued their run by eliminating Team Nigma, and are now set to face Team Liquid today. You can follow VP.Prodigy’s progress at the official OGADotaPit channel.
Virtus.pro’s history and achievements date way back in the year 2015. The team garnered alot of recognition as the next powerhouse in CIS region. This came after the former International 2011 champion, Natus Vincere, had a terrible run at TI5. Ever since, the name and brand grew after successive victories in Valve-sponsored majors up till the year 2019. They were a top team in the Dota 2 Pro Circuit (DPC) rankings.
There are speculations that former offlane player, Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev, may be returning to Virtus.pro for the upcoming season. If that happens, he just might be Virtus.pro’s saving grace. Till then, Prodigy remains as the sole defender of the Virtus.Pro brand.
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