TI13 Team Zero profile: Out of the Shadow Realm

Team Zero stepped out from the shadows in the Chinese qualifiers for The International 2024 and delivered the biggest upsets to book a ticket to Copenhagen.

Every year we keep asking ourselves how TI is different or why TI is special compared to other tournaments. For the Dota 2 fans watching the competition, the answer to that is almost always the same. Because that’s where the magic happens and that’s where we get to see the biggest stories unfolding.

This year it’s Team Zero who have a huge potential to write a TI5 CDEC type of story.

Who is Team Zero?

Team Zero was created mid-2023 as a varsity team for Xtreme Gaming. However, after the main team secured a direct invite at The International 2024 and Team Zero delivered the upset in the closed qualifiers, the two split ways in July of this year.

At the start, the Team Zero lineup featured two of the TI6 Wings Gaming champions. Zhou "bLink" Yang in the coaching role and Li "iceice" Peng as an active player in position 4 support. The initial roster suffered a couple of changes, with iceice and the carry player leaving the team at the beginning of 2024. It wasn’t until March that Team Zero had a stable line-up again with the arrival of Yang "Erika" Shaohan and Remus "ponlo" Goh, who can be considered the veterans of the new Team Zero roster.

Team Zero roster

Shaohan “Erika” Yang
Heming “7e” Huang
Beyond
Remus “ponlo” Goh Zhi Xian
Zzq

Erika is the only player from the team to have attended a TI before, and along with Ponlo, they are also the only two to have played for bigger names in the professional scene .

Erika and Ponlo’s impact on Team Zero

With Erika and Ponlo settled in, Team Zero had slowly started to pose a threat in the Chinese qualifiers. From dropping out in open qualifier brackets at the start of the year, they began to constantly reach the closed qualifiers grand finals, where they would usually lose to Azure Ray or G2.iG.

The two new additions to the roster not only stabilized the side lanes for Team Zero, but also brought a huge improvement in how the team communicates in game. Erika is the most vocal player on the team, and the one responsible with the big shot calls in team fights.

Since their arrival, Team Zero began to play extremely aggressively, matching the Western European type of gameplay. They have a high-risk, high-reward type of mentality and they will not slow down their tempo even when they are on the back foot.

Team Zero’s most successful hero pairings before TI13

Erika’s most played hero this year is Luna, but as the meta started to shift towards fast-paced games, he brought heavy tower hitters into his arsenal, and by the time TI qualifiers hit, he was ready to demolish the opposition with Clinkz, Muerta or Drow Ranger. As he tends to play ranged carry heroes, Zzq, his lane partner, has Clockwerk among his most-played heroes this year, along with Crystal Maiden and Mirana.

“He is one of the best carries I’ve ever played with, he is a beast,” said Ponlo about Erika after qualifying for TI13.

TI13 closed qualifiers marked the first time when Team Zero took down both Azure Ray and G2.iG. They made it to Copenhagen via upper bracket series, forcing the AR and G2.iG to duel in the lower bracket finals for the second qualifier spot.

Soon after the TI qualifiers, Team Zero got to play their first LAN together at Clavision: Snow Ruyi Invitational, but their performance was lackluster getting eliminated at the bottom of the groups.

Staying on the top of the meta

With less than two weeks before The International 2024, Erika has a hefty amount of pub games on Mirana, Lina and Windranger carry, which can only mean that Team Zero is making an effort to update their hero pools in order to match their opponents’ aggression and flex power.

Team Zero’s midlaner is an Earth Spirit enjoyer, already showing it through qualifier matches, including in the TI13 closed battle. Through the last couple of weeks before heading to Copenhagen, he started practicing Nature’s Prophet and Windranger, which should bring even more draft flexibility for Team Zero.

Perhaps the element of surprise will come from the support duo of Team Zero, as Visage, Sniper Leshrac and Snapfire are some of the heroes they seem to practice the most.

For most of the teams competing at The International 2024, Team Zero are quite an enigma since they never got to play against them this year. It will come down to how a team with four newcomers to the TI stage will keep their nerves in check and how quickly they can adapt to their adversaries. They are for sure a wild card team with a big dream, but miracles have happened before on The International stage and China has delivered some of the biggest Cinderella stories before with CDEC in 2015 and Wings Gaming in 2016. 2024 might very well be the year when history repeats itself.