TI13 Heroic team profile: Learn to Tango

This year the Heroic banner will be represented at The International for the first time in Dota 2 history.

Best known for their rich history in Counter-Strike, Heroic made their entrance into the Dota 2 realm at the beginning of the year. Despite being a European organization, they set their sights on South America, choosing to make their debut with a team assembled in a region that was falling apart in the TI12 aftermath.

The post-TI12 brutal shuffle in South America fragmented all the top teams from SA. A few of the best players from the region moved to Europe to compete for the 2024 season, which made it even more difficult to form a roster in South America.

Language barrier has always prevented SA teams from importing players from other regions and that led to a closed circuit between the few organisations that ventured into the region. When Heroic decided to build a team there, they picked up former beastcoast carry and position 4 players, managed to get the SA prodigy 4nalog, and also secured last year’s Keyd Stars position 5 support. But they quickly realized that with Wisper moving to Europe, there was no strong offlaner to be signed, so they had to look elsewhere.

Heroic roster

Hector Antonio “K1” Rodriguez
João “4nalog” Giannini
Cedric “Davai Lama” Deckmyn
Elvis “Scofield” De la Cruz Peña
Matheus Santos Jungles “KJ” Diniz
coach: kaffs

A different approach

Luckily, the only player in the professional scene to “speak more or less six languages” is an offlaner. Davai Lama is a true polyglot and besides speaking English, Dutch, French, German, and a bit of Russian, he had some basic understanding of the Spanish language too.

Read also: Davai Lama interview: “You open a lot more opportunities for yourself by learning a new language”

Even so, Heroic still had to deal with communication issues through the first couple of weeks as Scofield has a strong Spanish accent and speaks little to no English at all. So, after moving to SA, Davai Lama worked not only on his skills but also took private lessons to get his Spanish to a level where Heroic’s offlane would not suffer from any communication issues at all.

Fast forward to the point where Heroic qualified for TI13, when asked in which area he developed the most as a player in his first half of the year spent with a South American team, Davai Lama quickly responded “my Spanish.”

Hard work taken to another level

When Heroic entered the region, they knew that the South American scene lacked a solid structure. The organisation used its full resources to change the SA mentality. They provided a good foundation for the players to thrive, adopt new work ethics and learn how to stay disciplined inside and outside the game.

“We’ve been bootcamping for 99% of the time this year,“ Davai Lama said in an interview with PGL at Wallachia Season 1.

Their hard work catapulted Heroic to the top of the SA scene in no time. Throughout the entire year, they had no real competition in the region and secured a qualifier spot at almost every tournament of the 2024 season.

But while they dominated the domestic battles and qualified for TI13 without dropping a single game, Heroic struggled at international competitions. Their best placement is a top 8 at ESL One Birmingham and top 8 at DreamLeague Season 23.

Heroic’s most successful hero pairings before TI13

SA is notoriously known for a hyper-aggressive playstyle. More often than not, the SA teams surprise their adversaries with a meta of their own or a twisted interpretation of the meta. Historically, the SA teams have been able to pull the upsets by revealing heroes that not many have explored.

However, Heroic have a few hero specialists, and more so, K1 is someone with a particular playstyle. He doesn’t like ranged heroes at all and would avoid them even when the meta would call for Luna, Medusa, Razor or even a Troll Warlord in the safe lane.

Adapting to new meta

While Gyrocopter is Heroic’s most played hero this year with 36 picks, K1 played it just twice, losing both games with it. It’s the support duo that brought Gyro in Heroic’s drafts this year, and heading into The International, it will be on them to figure out how to match the ranged carry meta and secure the lane for K1, with Naga Siren, Tinker or Omniknight, while K1 will most likely resort to Dragon Knight or Troll Warlord for a ranged carry. About a week before TI13, he played just a couple of Lina games in pubs and has no Mirana or Windranger games.

Heroic’s flex potential is ensured by 4nalog, who has an extremely wide hero pool and has always been willing to sacrifice his lane match up in order to get something that would benefit the team in different aspects. In the few days before TI13, he might be able to find the perfect answer for the early team fights with something like an Earth Spirit or even act as a second carry on a Nature's Prophet.

Only time will tell if Heroic have indeed taken a different approach to the current meta. Less than 10 days keep us apart from The International 2024 when we will get to see how far Heroic can get at the pinnacle tournament of the year.