Team Nemesis’ meh Dota 2 roster, South American Rejects get org, xQc ends tough debate: calm ahead of International

It’s been a bit of a quiet week Dota 2 before the competition, but the announcements more than make up for that.

The first week of May wasted no time dropping big moves left and right, teams prepared themselves International. Here’s a rundown of everything that went down (what you need to know before the action heats up).

A Singapore corporation Team Nemesis has never been so welcome in its Dota 2 business. After miraculously qualifying for The International 14 – and finishing dead last – Nemesis has revamped its Southeast Asian roster by signing household names like Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon, Anucha “Jabz” Jirawongagain Worawit “Q” Mekchai.

However, the latest iteration failed to post anything worth mentioning, and the list was eventually disbanded.

To make up for lost time, the organization took a big gamble by moving to the American region. To begin the rebuild, Nemesis signed former PARIVISION coach Astini – one of the most respected minds in Dota 2.

Astini and Nemesis took the list in a completely different direction – even worldwide. While keeping Jabz, the team signed an American context and also placed their bets on the school player.

The new Nemesis system is as follows:

The Brazilian coach brought in two of his compatriots – 4nalog and Lelis – to start rebuilding. Nemesis then found former GamerLegion player Yamsun, who Astini worked with under Nouns back in 2023.

To round out the roster, the team recruited rubikon155, who recently played for Team Spirit Academy, to participate. The youngster is currently the club’s top scorer, sitting 36th on the European leaderboard.

To be honest, this show doesn’t really scream anything else special. Furthermore, the region Nemesis will play in is still unclear. The team’s goal is to qualify for The International, but it will be an uphill battle regardless of the region they play in.

If they live in Southeast Asia, they will have to go with the likes of OG and REKONIX. If South America is where they’re headed, they have Heroes and South American Articles. The only viable option would be in North America, where GamerLegion would be their only obstacle.

Either way, I’m not much of a fan, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

Although we have a small break for the LAN tournament, we have it 1win Essence$100,000 online tournament, to fill the gap. Although this is not a “must watch” tournament, there were some interesting events at the event.

MOUZ brought the king himself – Sumail “Sumail” Hassan – as a stand-in. We haven’t seen the legendary champion since he left Nigma Galaxy in February, but this could indicate that he is back in contention. We all know what he is capable of, so hopefully we will see him join the team and aim for the International – the stage where he belongs.

1win Essence also revealed two big moves. Rumors were first brought to the Yandex team Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin forever, and that Evgeniy “Notice” Ignatenko will go to PARIVISION to replace Valery “tripleS” Lazarev.

Yes, this is what we see in this event: DM will compete under Yandex, and to be completely honest, I think that this move has already been signed on paper. On the other hand, PARIVISION has announced that Notised will represent it in the competition, but who knows what will happen next.

To my heroes: South American Rejects. Last week, the unsponsored team announced that they would use their winnings at the PGL Wallachia Season 8 tournaments to stay in Europe, thousands of miles away from home.

I am happy to say that their efforts paid off. The Rejects played in DreamLeague Division 2 Season 4, a $50,000 tournament that also served as a qualifier for DreamLeague Season 29. They won the entire event, defeating Nigma Galaxy 3-0 in the grand finals.

This win gives them a nice reward of $15,000 and means they will spend another month in Europe. The Peruvian team will participate in DreamLeague Season 29, a million dollar tournament that runs from May 13 to 24.

They probably won’t have to worry about putting bread on the table anymore, as the Philippine games and entertainment company PlayTime has officially taken over.

It’s been a very productive month for South American Rejects, going from unsponsored subs to having some financial support in the space of 30 days. However, the work is not done.

In a recent live broadcast, the top broadcaster Félix “xQc” Lengyel watched the broadcast clip Nicholas “Jynxzi” Stewart to play League of Legends. In the said clip, the said League is ultimately the most difficult game in the world, both mentally and mechanically.

Having played both games before, xQc disagreed, saying that Dota 2 is a much harder game:

“The league is easy, the league is a joke. Learning the league and being respected in the League is easy, it’s a joke. Come on brother.

Put a hundred hours into League – if you’re a decent player, you should be Gold. A hundred hours of Dota? You are worse than when you started. A hundred hours of Dota, and you’ve actually regressed, by a long shot.

And it will take you a thousand hours to go through that space. That’s just how it works.”

And honestly? I don’t think xQc is wrong here.

Dota 2 has a long list of mechanics that will take the average player thousands of hours to master – creep aggro, fog of war, lane balancing, you name it. And once you’ve got these, you have the gameplay patches that come out every few months, changing everything you knew about the game.

A few months ago, Edgar “9class” Naltakian made Slark one of the most popular support heroes in high MMRs, and this week, he’s one of the strongest carries in the patch.

There is a reason why you will see players in Dota 2 with thousands of hours sitting at a very low level. There is so much to digest and remember, which is also what makes the game beautiful and addictive.

No matter how many hours you have in the game, there is always something new to learn.

Every Dota 2 season ends with The International. Even without the previous eight-figure prize pools, TI is still the tournament every player dreams of lifting the trophy at. With May upon us, this is usually when Valve announces the eight direct invites to the event.

From what we have seen so far, six teams are currently leading the way for direct invitations. While nothing is set in stone, I believe these teams have done more than enough to earn their fast pass to TI:

The remaining invites are still up in the air, but I predict they will go to Team Spirit, PARIVISION, Xtreme Gaming, and HEROIC. If Valve decides to announce invites later in the month, DreamLeague Season 29 – which starts on May 13 – suddenly becomes more important for the teams in question.