The Most Iconic DOTA2 Esport Team: NAVI and its current condition in the pro scene

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Natus Vincere (Latin for "born to win") more commonly known as NAVI for short, is the most iconic esport team in DOTA, and has deep roots in other esport like Counter Strike and other esport games.

The DOTA2 segment was created later of 2010 revolving around their star player Danil Ishutin in game name Dendi, a 22 yr old Ukranian Dota star player who showed promising skills and talents.

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NAVI wins the first ever “The International” tournament of Valve, the biggest tournament in esports that time. With the prize pool of 1.6 million USD, and the winner taking home 1 million USD which unprecedented by any other tournaments at that time. Dota1 tournaments were considered big when they have 10,000 prize pool with the biggest only at 45,900.

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Natus Vincere dominated the dota scene from 2011-2013 by winning the 2011 and placing 2nd in the 2012 and 2013 and kept its presence till 2016 winning tons of money with the heart of the fans around the world.

Jumping to the current condition of NAVI today, they are regarded only as a tier 2 - tier 3 team by most people, and it's not shocking when they lose to some lesser team in tournaments’ qualifiers rendering them unable to play on the big stage. 2017 was a major hit on Navi as it was the first time that they were not able to attend the glamorous The International tournament.

With the roster having multiple and significant changes throughout its 8 yr and still counting career with only Dendi remaining on the active roster and their former position 1 hard carry
XBOCT - Alexander Dashkevich as their coach.

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The decline of NAVI’s performance is a constant heartbreak for its fans around the world,
Now sitting at the 10th rank in the Dota Pro Circuit points with the top 8 being invited in the TI 2018, navi is so close yet so far from securing their spot in the biggest tournament of esports.

Just recently in EPICENTERXL, a major DOTA tournament, which winning here is an almost guarantee of being secured an invite and boost to any teams ranking, NAVI defeated the top 2 teams Liquid and its nemesis the current strongest team in the world, the russian team Virtus.Pro in the group stage. With the win over these top 2 team, fans all over the world are screaming their hearts out in joy and chanting “NAVI IS BACK”. But after a few days, NAVI loses to a once favorite to win a TI title and a 4 time major winner BUT declining team OG and to the 2 most bottom of their group Pain Gaming and Newbee with both scoring 0-2 before facing NAVI. These loses shocked the fans as these games should be their easy opponents that would secure them in the playoffs but turns out the other way around. Now NAVI, kicked out of a big tournament, its fans lament and its haters are rampant in reddit and twitch chat.

But is NAVI really had a shot at winning any LAN tournament?
Let's check out their current roster

Position 1 - Hard Carry
Crystallize - Vladislav Krystanek

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The irrefutable star player of NAVI Crystallize is true to his position of Hard Carry, most often carrying the heavy burden if winning the team when all odds are against them. Vladislav is a young player, only 18 yrs old but already making a scene in the esports world. With his notable heroes such as Morphling, Naix and his dreaded favorite faceless void. Though NAVI losing important games, surely Crystallize keeps Navi a force to be reckoned with.

Position 2 - Solo Mid
Dendi - Danil Ishutin

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Dendi the only original player that is on the active roster, now 30 yrs old still has it to be one of the greats of mid players, albeit passed by a lot of players such as N[o]one, RTZ, Miracle and other mid monsters, Dendi proves that he can still play against the best. With top laning phase game with still the record of highest denies among mid players, Dendi keeps the opponents resources scarce. His hero pool has always been big with even using support heroes and being able to use them to carry the team albeit not always is still always a shock factor for the opposing team. With his signature heroes such as Shadow Fiend, Lina and Viper, Dendi is still a threat to any team. Now also burdened with the drafting and possibly captaincy of the team, with the former being effective but also shows inexperience as their losses shows and the latter goes against the current meta of the core players should not be captain as i distracts them from focusing on the game. NAVI does a lot of mistakes mostly not being able to take objectives after winning team fights is one of them. This might be the problem of the team and something that NAVI should remove of Dendi’s shoulders.

Position 3 - Offlaner
GeneRaL - Victor Nigrini

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General, also a young player, only 21 shows promise in the offlane, with his signature hero beastmaster, slardar and batrider, these young player gives any opponent a run for their money. But being talented doesn’t make you the best, With the Highly rated Pos 3 players having Pasha, Fata, and Mind_Control, General has a lot to overcome, though his signature heroes are good, he still has a lot to improve as offlaners has a heavy burden of initiating, General is still not at the same caliber of those that are on top. But surely, he has what it takes.

Position 4 - Roaming Support
Lil - Ilya Ilyuk

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Lil is a former Virtus.Pro player and a former major title holder from his former team, has the highest achievement in the roster if being recent is our topic, only behind Dendi if overall achievements are included. He is also the top total earning with approx. 902,000 USD with Dendi only placing 2nd with approx 780,000 USD, already shows you how good of a player Lil is.
Ilya is a brash and mostly known for trash talking his competition, even saying GH, liquid’s pos 4 player as an average player who does average moves. But true to his word, Lil shows that he can beat any pos 4 player in terms of skills and talent, with only Rodger of Virtus.pro and GH of liquid are the only 2 that would claim the rights of being better than him. Lil has been in the team for only a month, but shows great promise, though still a loss to NAVI as his predecessor was Rodger who is now in the minds of the people the best Pos 4 in the world with Lil being the weak link in Virtus.Pro that may have been the reason for him being kicked in his former team.
Now with NAVI with his quest for vengeance, Lil is on fire, in game and in off game as you can see his happiness in soaking the glory of beating his former team VP in the groupstage and also showing him the most affected mentally in their loss to Pain Gaming. Lil in my opinion is the current best player NAVI has along with Crystallize and Dendi, and being in a support position, he should hold the captaincy as he must have learned a lot from the current best captain in the rankings right now, his former captain Solo of Virtus.Pro.

Position 5 - Hard Support
LeBronDota - Nikola Popovic

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The only non Ukranian player in the roster, LeBron is the newest in the team being 4 days younger in its addition to NAVI compared to Lil. LeBron is the substitute to Sonneiko, their former captain and pos 4/5 player. Sonneiko has been rumored to walk out of Navi because of the team’s approval of separation of Rodjer who came in as per Sonneiko’s recommendation. Sonneiko was a monster of a player, NAVI has disbanded for a short’ while and reformed revolving around Sonneiko and Dendi, says a lot about the player. With his departure, and Lil coming in as pos 4, their pos 5 was left vacant, and after a lot of try outs, LeBron came out as the team’s top pick. But LeBron proved to be inexperienced and most often the sacrificial lamb, he brings little to Navi’s game, in contrast to other Pos 5 players such as Solo, Kuroky and Puppey, who have been known to play with such greedy team that the aforementioned names has to play “position 6” with how little gold they get in game so they can support their farming team, still gives tons of impact in the game unlike LeBron who aside from being sacrificial or buying support items, has not much more to offer. Thus him being the weakest link. Pos 5 has been said to have the easiest position, thus mostly being picked to be the captain for they have the time to spare for map awareness and shot calling. But with LeBron not captaining and no other task, he is deemed a big weak link in NAVI, same as pieliedie of Fanatic or ninjaboogie of Mineski who are both non captain and considered weakest in their team would still out play LeBron in giving more meaningful sacrificial plays, space creation for their carries, better warding skills and overall talent. But discarding LeBron this near to the TI 2018 tournament would throw all of NAVI’s pro circuit points out of the window and would have them go through open qualifiers in the CIS region for a spot in the TI 2018. With them having records of losing to lesser teams such as Empire, Vega Sqaudron and most notably Team Spirit, will they have the guts and confidence to kick lebron for a better pos 5 player and go through a hard qualifier? Or will they keep him and bet on LeBron improving his skills? Time will tell.

Coach
XBOCT - Alexander Dashkevich

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Xboct, pronounced as hwoʊst or Huh-vocks, is the former position 3 in The International 2011 and position 1 in TI 2012-2013, is a renowned player, with his approx earnings of 650,000 USD, only behind dendi in the roster, would prove him to be a good pro player. Shifted to coaching for NAVI, Alexander now says he loves his job, and is open on playing pro again but only as a support, and if he would, speculations would be for pos 5 which is a no brainer for everybody.
With his coaching job, now he focuses on ironing out their strategies, helping in draft so and so. With his former TI winner Artstyle which is now Virtus.Pro’s coach, he wishes to follow his footstep and revive NAVI from the ashes to its former glory. But Virtus.Pro has a solid roster with each of their players can claim to be the best of any position and very few would argue, while NAVI though has good players, is far from being the best on their own, so does Xboct, a known good player should sit in the background and watch his team lose important games? Or will he have the guts to get back on the pro scene and change NAVI’s roster? Will his skills be enough to catapult them in to the TI 2018 CIS qualifiers? Or will they focus on improving each of their own talents in their own respective? Only father time has the answer.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope you enjoy my NAVI article!!! Happy playing!

NAVI! NAVI! NAVI!