Virtus Pro is the largest esports organization in the CIS, founded in 2003. Starting XI Virtus Pro for Dota2 was formed in May 2012. Over the past few years, the composition of the players has changed several times in the team.
History of occurrence
The basis of Virtus Pro's Dota 2 roster in 2012 was two "veterans" of the first Dota, Alexander Koltan ("Santa") and Yaroslav Kuznetsov ("NS"). They tried to assemble a stable team, which, unfortunately, did not happen. Qualifying matches for The International 2012 ended in failure. Two founders remain in the roster, new players cannot bring success in various tournaments.
Performances at TI 3
In 2013, Alexander "Santa" leaves the team, Sergey Revin ("ARS-ART") took his place. He came from Na'Vi, who took silver at the second The International. Revin began to play the role of a hardliner. The first victory with the updated roster was waiting for Virtus Pro at The Defense Season 3 online competition.
Prize-winning places at several more tournaments gave the team the opportunity to receive a direct invitation to The International 3. However, already at that time a split was brewing in the team, the performances were unsuccessful. After the tournament, Virtus Pro disbanded their Dota 2 roster.
Composition crisis
After the third The International, hard times began in the team. The management decides to focus on CIS esports stars. The Virtus Pro Dota 2 team included Dmitry Kupriyanov (LighTofHeaveN), who won TI 1 with Born to Win. Artur Kostenko (Goblak) and Sergey Bragin (God) were also invited. However, the constant change of playing positions and strategic experiments did not bring results. The team performed unsuccessfully in tournaments, the turnover of players was huge. In the summer of 2013, several players left the team - Sergey Kuzin ("KSi"), Oleg Kolesnichenko ("cRazY"), Ilya Pivtsaev ("Illidan"). After that, the squad assembled from Ukrainian players lasted a couple of months.
2014 - hope for revival
Until January 2014, leapfrog continued with the composition. But even the stabilization of the situation did not bring positive results. Managing to lose even to non-professional teams, new composition Virtus Pro in Dota 2 suddenly passes the qualifiers for The International 4 in the spring of 2014 and gets the opportunity to play on the Wild Card. But the revived hopes for success were not destined to be justified. Korean team MVP Phoenix received the last quota for TI 4 instead of Virtus Pro. Yaroslav Kuznetsov ("NS") ended his professional career after that.
After that, the backbone of the team was assembled from the players of the disintegrated RoX.KIS. It turned out to take "gold" at MSI Beat IT 2014, third place at ASUS ROG. However, the successful performance of Virtus Pro in the cyber arena ended there.
ASUS.Polar - the prototype of the new composition of the "bears"
In 2015, the Virtus Pro.Polar team separates from the main organization. With the change of sponsor, it was named ASUS.Polar and began to perform well at various tournaments. The team included Artyom Barshak ("fng"), Alexander Kucherya ("DkPhobos"), Andrey Chipenko ("Mag"), Ilya Pivtsaev ("Illidan" ) and Ilya Ilyuk ( « Lil").
At the beginning of March 2015, the current Dota 2 Virtus Pro roster was disbanded. And in April, ASUS.Polar becomes the basis for the newly formed "bears" team. A series of good performances at esports tournaments began. In the arsenal, the first prize on ASUS ROG.
The International 5
In the summer of 2015, the team managed to take 5th place at the international Dota 2 championship in Seattle.
Virtus Pro played in Group B along with seven other teams. Having scored 9 points, they got into the lower bracket, losing in a tie-break to the Russian team Team Empire 1:2. In the 4th round of the competition, they gave the game to the Chinese team LGD Gaming with a score of 0:2. This is where the achievements of the Virtus Pro Dota 2 roster at TI 5 ended.
At the end of this championship, the team as a whole did not perform very well. It became more and more difficult to break through to major tournaments, and if it was still possible, then the results of the performances were not encouraging. After the disastrous qualifier matches for TI 6, the Virtus Pro Dota 2 roster was disbanded.
2016 team revival
September 2016 was marked by the announcement of the new composition of the "bears", which is still functioning today. List of players: Alexey Berezin ("Solo"), Roman Kushnarev ("Ramzes666"), Ilya Ilyuk ("Lil"), Pavel Khvastunov ("9pasha") and Vladimir Minenko ("No[o]ne").
In the first few months of its existence, the new roster was able to qualify for four esports tournaments. We got the first place at The Summit 6. In the grand final, the CIS team defeated OG - 3:0. The prize money of the championship was $100,000, of which $42,000 went to Virtus Pro.
In that season, the team was remembered for a series of 17 unbeaten matches.
On the Boston Major In 2016, the Bears team managed to reach the ¼ finals, failing to beat the champions of The International 2015, Evil Geniusis.
The next 2017 Major was held in Kyiv and the CIS - the team was able to reach the final. But in a stubborn struggle, she could not defeat her eternal rivals - OG. Taking second place with a score of 2:3, they received $500,000 in prize money.
Performance at The International 2017
Having played very successfully in group stage TI 7, Virtus Pro enters the winner's bracket, where they beat LGD, but, not being able to beat LFY, are also inferior to Team Liquid. In the first map of the match, the teams set a record for the duration of playoff games - 103 minutes. In general, the meeting with TL was held with a score of 2:1 in favor of the American team. The Bears finished the championship in 5th-6th place with $1,000,000 in prize money.
Corporate gaming style
Virtus Pro has a unique play style. A variety of tactics and strategies often introduce opponents into a stupor. The team stands out in particular for its ability to confuse the opponent at the draft stage, using heroes in a different way than everyone is used to. Use Vengeful Spirit on the carry position - only bears can do this. Shadow Demon and Luna in combination, using an infinite number of illusions, confuse opponents. Such a strategy allows the CIS team to act unpredictably on lanes and win games one after another.
An excellent demonstration of the bears' unique playing style is their play at The Summit 7. At this tournament, the team managed to take first place using 81 different heroes. Of these, only 4 were repeated in the fifth map of the final.
Each Virtus Pro player is able to surprise opponents with non-standard character upgrades, among the signature features of cybersportsmen is the purchase of non-banal items during the game.
The captain is the heart of the team
Aleksey Berezin (“Solo”), despite the difficult path in eSports, has become almost a Dota 2 legend. At one time, the player was involved in a betting scandal, but this is a thing of the past. Today Solo is the leader of one of the best esports teams in the CIS. His outstanding leadership qualities help the team to win. Virtus Pro needed a strong and responsible captain, and the guys were lucky to find him.
The director of the "bears" gave Berezin the opportunity to choose the composition of the future winning team. The captain looked closely at future candidates for a long time, assessed their human and professional qualities.
Berezin managed to play with some of the esportsmen who are now part of Virtus Pro in Dota 2, he considered some worthy candidates, watching their play and behavior in tournaments.
Interestingly, while fully coordinating the game, Solo entrusted the choice of heroes to Roman Kushnarev (“Ramzes666”). A risky move, because usually the player who takes the position of a carry does not make such decisions. However, in this team, this tactic works great. Ramzes666 is a young and very talented player. He was the first in the CIS to hit the 9000 MMR mark.
Kushnarev during the game, of course, consults with the captain, but by doing the bulk of the work of choosing heroes, he frees Berezin from unnecessary responsibility and allows him to fully concentrate on tactics and strategy.
One can talk about the Virtus Pro project, whose Dota 2 roster has been performing so successfully lately, for a very long time. Showing a truly "bearish" character at the games, the team gives the fans a lot of fun with an interesting and unpredictable game. The variety of strategies shows how much work the team does in training. Subordinating instincts to reason, Virtus Pro shows the best DotA in the CIS.
Future plans
The International 2017 that ended in Seattle allowed each team to draw conclusions about the mistakes made and the positive moments in their game. Virtus Pro team coach Ivan Antonov (ArtStyle) said that no reshuffles are expected in the team. Contracts with players have been extended until the end of 2018. The captain of the "bears" said that the team is one big close-knit family, and there can be no talk of a disband.
The team manager believes that the 5th place in the last championship is an absolutely adequate and fair result, all the players showed their best side. Despite all the successes of the team, Roman Dvoryankin believes that the result is quite natural for a long championship.
Ahead of the guys are waiting for a few weeks of rest, and then new tournaments and active preparation for them begin.
The Championship has already passed a month, and therefore almost all the teams and their rosters are fully formed. The reshuffle period was, as usual, tense and intriguing. Many teams tried to appropriate the mythical players, some even screamed about the breakup. Nevertheless, the current roster of Virtus.pro Dota 2 is ready to enter the esports arena and fight for prizes. How it will look, we will find out further.
Each team went to the formation and development. Many players from the CIS played with each other more than once in different teams, changed teams and tried to achieve success. Before we find out what the new composition of Virtus.pro Dota 2 is, let's remember a little history of this organization.
How it all began
And it started back in 2003. The first participants in the production center were the players in "Counter-Strike". The guys have come a long way, participated in various tournaments and glorified the organization. This went on until 2007. In May, another team was created - already in the DoTA discipline. Since this game did not achieve such overwhelming success as its second series, the team participated in few places and received prizes.
Despite the fact that the teams of the organization performed more or less successfully, nevertheless, at one moment terrible problems began, from which the Virtus.pro team was able to get out only in 2011. Victories and defeats began again, but again, before the advent of Dota 2, all the successes of the Bears were more associated with the CS.
"Dota 2"
But in 2012, they opened the very new discipline that is now collecting a lot of money - Dota 2. Then very strong players were recruited here: NS, KuroKy, Santa, AZEN and Dread. The guys were able to beat serious opponents and reach DreamHack.
After some time and a series of failures, the players of the Dota 2 discipline began to change again. All this happened because of the unrealistic expectations of the fans. The Virtus.pro Dota 2 roster received an invite to TI 2013, but they couldn't show themselves in all their glory there. As a result, NS and Smile remained in the team, the latter was signed at the beginning of the year.
Tough Times
In 2014, everything was also quite complicated. It wasn't long before TI14, and the team changed players like gloves. LightOfHeaven replaced the newcomer JotM and also returned to the Illidan team. Before the tournament, the guys even managed to check in at a couple of tournaments. At the qualifications for the world championship "Virtus.pro" reached the Wild Card and went to Seattle with high hopes. But they lost to the Koreans there, never making it to the main event.
Such failures significantly undermined the spirit of the team, and its old-timers NS and Smile announced the end of their esports careers. Illidan left the team for the second time. They were replaced by BzzIsPerfect, yol and Sedoy in the "bears" team. Meanwhile, Illidan found himself another team, which the Virtus management later decided to sign as a subsidiary and call it Polar. Now the "bears" had two teams that fought quite successfully and made their contribution to the history of the organization.
New victories
The roster of "Virtus.pro Dota 2" has changed again. By TI 2015, Fng, Illidan, Lil, God and DkPhobos were signed. The team began to win major tournaments and take prizes. For such merits, the organizers of the world championship did not ignore the team, and the guys received a direct invite to the tournament. This time everything worked out for the best. The team fought and struggled as best they could, as a result, the team took 5th-6th place, which was a very large and significant achievement.
Taste of victory
Not everyone can withstand a series of such victories. And so it happened: the current roster of "Virtus.pro Dota 2" in 2015 could not get together for the season, and therefore success was replaced by stagnation. None of the changes affected the wins. Serious tournaments completely ceased to exist for the team. Competitions, which still managed to pass, ended before they even started.
This state of affairs, of course, could not lead to a direct invite to TI 2016. Therefore, the guys again had to fight in the qualifiers to get a slot in the main event. But even here the team was in for a rout and a sad failure. After such defeats, the team was disbanded, and the fans began to wait for the new composition of Virtus.pro Dota 2 in 2016.
True or rumor?
Now it is not clear whether the organizers decided that they had chosen the strongest and most successful players, or they simply wanted to create a “hype”, but the preliminary composition of Virtus.pro Dota 2 was announced two weeks before the end of TI 2016.
On July 31, the organization officially announced the recruitment of players. The managers decided to leave the old-timer of the God team, who has been serving the collective and organization of the "bears" for the last three years. Then came the newcomers - Vega Squadron Solo and No[o]ne, who left the team, also took a place in the Virtus.
The organization announced another player - Lil, and a surprise for many fans was the attraction of the famous "Navishnik" Alexander "XBOCT" Dashkevich to the team.
This line-up of the Virtus.pro Dota 2 team of 2016 looked quite convincing and was liked by many fans of the "bears". But, as we remember, this is only a preliminary set of players.
Formation
A few days later, on August 5, the organizers announced the final formation of the team. As a result, the composition of "Virtus.pro Dota 2" in 2016 became the following.
Vladimir No[o]ne Minenko was finally returned to his already familiar middle lane. The fact is that in the announced lineup, he was supposed to play the role of a carry. His former Vega Squadron teammate and now current Virtus.pro G2A teammate Aleksey Solo Berezin was awarded the captain's armband and the same role. Ilya Lil Ilyuk took his usual position and, along with the captain of the team, became another support.
But the no less popular Roman RAMZES666 Kushnarev and another Vega Squadron player Pavel 9pasha Khvastunov became the newcomers, who were not announced in the preliminary roster and replaced the old-timer Sergey God Bragin, as well as the beloved Alexander "XBOCT" Dashkevich.
Now that the composition of "Virtus.pro Dota 2" for this season is known, let's take a look at each player individually and recall their successes and victories.
Captain, captain, smile
Well, the first one to talk about is the captain of all captains, popular with the Russian-speaking community, Alexey Solo Berezin. His career began with Dota 2 in 2012. At one time, Alexei was dragged into a conflict with the famous 322, after which chaos came into his career.
Lesha for a long time tried to restore his honest name, was engaged in streaming and performed as replacements. Already in 2014, he returned to his native team, but after an unsuccessful performance by RoX.KIS at TI4, the team broke up. Solo will play with Vega Squadron for the next tournament. This team also became an important page in his career for him. Despite the success last year, the team has not achieved much in this team. So Alexey got to Virtus.pro. Previously he played middle line, now because of the support.
young blood
Virtus.pro G2A also got a couple of young players. Vladimir Minenko, aka No[o]ne, takes the position of the midlaner. The 18-year-old boy played in mixes before, but the most successful page in his career was participation in Vega Squadron.
But Roman RAMZES666 Kushnarev is only 17 years old. His esports career began last year with the ScaryFaceZ team. His main refuge was the Team Spirit team, with which he was able to get to the Major in Shanghai. After a disastrous tournament, he left the team and later joined Team Empire. In Virtus.Pro, he plays his signature carry position.
Support from God
Ilya Lil Ilyuk - a boy from the pub. In 2014, Goblak decided to assemble a team and, playing MMR, found a promising and young player, which conquered the CIS-Dota in just a year. His Visage crown is world famous. Then NVMI became Virtus.pro Polar, and Ilya kept conquering the world with his professionalism.
Many believe that his success is due to the fact that the guy managed not to catch the “star” and not turn into a capricious and always whining cybersportsman. With his game, he overshadowed the entire main team and in the first year of his career he was able to earn 300 thousand dollars. Ilya has already played with Virtus.pro at TI5, where he managed to get to 5th-6th place with the team.
Through hardship to the stars
Pavel 9pasha Khvastunov started his career in 2013. Together with No[o]ne he played in different mixes and at the end of 2014 he became a member of the Vega Squadron team. Pasha is a very strong carry that is difficult to deal with in lane. He, along with his teammates, went through a difficult path. In March of this year, he had to leave the team. But since any player wants to play at TI, he found himself a mix team F5.
Despite the fact that the team did not play in the world championship, they still managed to show themselves convincingly in the qualifications. In Virtus, Pasha plays the role of a hardliner.
The Virtus.pro organization disbanded the Dota 2 roster. The reasons for the team's breakup were bad results tournaments in the last season.
After a successful performance at The International 2015, Virtus.pro's results began to go down. Unsuccessful performances at majors, failed qualifications for major tournaments - all this was the reason for closing the roster. At the Frankfurt Major VP, they took only 7-8th place, at the Shanghai Major - the team showed an even worse game, and at the last Manila Major and the guys didn't qualify at all.
The last straw for the management of Virtus.pro was the results of the qualifiers for The International 2016. The team took 6th place in the group and did not qualify for this year's main tournament.
Virtus.pro roster that participated in TI5
Virtus.pro intend to assemble a new roster within two months with the goal of showing good results next season. In addition, the organization intends to change the approach to management in the new team. It is also not denied that someone from the old team will be in the new one.
Managers of the Dota2 roster were also removed from their positions. Namely - Georgy "drAmer" Faleev - and sports director Virtus.pro - Sergey "Diver233" Pisotsky.
Former Virtus.pro roster:
fng
God
yoky
ALOHADANCE
no fear
According to the editors of Click-Storm, the dissolution of the roster is a natural result. These are not the NVMIs that showed excellent results immediately after the appearance. Reshuffles also did not benefit the team. Former players VP - Lil and Illidan performed better in Fantastic Five and Polarity than God and fng, which already speaks of problems within the Virtus.pro team. We hope that in the new season VP will start from scratch, and will also find strong captain who will be able to keep the team and lead it to success.