HEROIC Do South America Proud Despite TI14 Elimination

The International has been a tournament of insane upsets and unexpected results. The defending champions never set foot in the arena, 3x hopefuls Team Spirit crashed out on the Road to TI but despite all that, HEROIC showed an exceptionally strong standing for SA. After their lower bracket quarterfinal game against BetBoom Team, they’ve now equalised Thunder Awaken’s 5th-6th place record for South America at TI and they did it in style.

South America takes on Europe

These teams are well matched in a way that I definitely wouldn’t have expected even a couple of weeks ago, back when I still thought Europe would be dominating yet another TI. While BB have definitely been a “middle of the pack” team this year, HEROIC have only been standing on a PGL Wallachia Season 2 win this whole time so it stands to reason that HEROIC have out done themselves.

From Wisper’s offlane Phoenix to Yuma’s carry Pudge, HEROIC really put on a show. They pulled out picks we don’t often see on this stage and that made for some outstanding Dota.

HEROIC go the distance in the lower bracket

Despite BetBoom’s strong start in game one, HEROIC made a valiant attempt to pull the series back. And by strong start, I mean Pure afk farmed as Anti-Mage for 40 minutes and then showed up to the fights and won the game.

The second game was a very strong showing from HEROIC with a last pick Leshrac making his presence known. BetBoom may have claimed they weren’t scared of him but boy, they should have been.

Game 3 through was when HEROIC really shone, even if they didn’t manage to destroy the Ancient in the end they were in control for a good amount of the game. The energy in the arena was electric as this was undoubtedly the best Dota we’ve seen at TI so far, there wasn’t even a single Helm of the Dominator on this field. And at one of the best TIs we’ve had in years, that’s saying something. There were some outstanding BKB Black Holes from KJ’s Enigma but it really wasn’t enough even when paired with Dawnbreaker’s Solar Guardian.

In his post game interview with Pyrion Flax, KJ said “It was pretty damn fun… I was happy to play here and to show you guys that we are a world class team. We are Peruvians, Brazilians, Nicaraguans but we are a world class team and we put up a fight”.

There’s a lot to be said for this team and they have really proved that international Dota is well on its way to a proper comeback and I for one can’t wait to see it. They may have ruined my TI fantasy predictions but I have absolutely no problem with that.