HEROIC Dota 2 in more roster turmoil as TaiLung replaces Davai

South American Dota 2 squad HEROIC is saying goodbye for now to Cedric “Davai” Deckmyn, the offlaner that they brought back into their fold shortly after the conclusion of The International 2025 (TI14). The organization announced his benching on January 15th, with his replacement revealed just a few hours ago.

The replacement in question is Santiago “TaiLung” Agüero Gustavo, formerly of Amaru Gaming and TaiLung Mafia.

Nothing but hard times

Things have been anything but easy for HEROIC as of late. Although they showed so much promise at the start of the 2025-2026 season, they fell off a cliff after placing sixth at BLAST Slam 4 Singapore. Their terrible results thereafter prompted Elvis “Scofield” Peña, easily their best player and the glue that kept them together against stronger competition, to leave the team in order to join Perú Rejects.

In just four months, we secured another international title.

However, due to recent challenges with performance we’ve made the difficult decision to move @Davai_Dota off the active roster.

We want thank Cedric for his contributions, wishing him nothing but the best in the next… pic.twitter.com/9JMsqTEMnq

— HEROIC Dota 2 (@heroicdota2) January 15, 2026

HEROIC then brought in Thiago “Thiolicor” de Oliveira Cordeiro to fill the hole that Scofield left in his wake, but this move has so far done little to turn their fortunes around. After losing to Perú Rejects in the DreamLeague Season 8 South American qualifiers, the organization decided that it was time to move on from Davai as well, thus moving him to their inactive list for the time being.

Fixing their most glaring weaknesses

Enter TaiLung, who has been making some waves from the tier 2 scene in South America over the last few months. He is the very definition of a pub star and a Dota prodigy, as he reached the 11,000 MMR mark at the tender age of 14 years old. North American veteran Samuel “Sammyboy” Anderson praised the young talent about two years ago, saying that he would “become a beast” in a few years’ time back in 2024.

This Osito kid from peru gonna be a beast in a few years

— Samson (@SamsonDota) March 23, 2024

TaiLung was still known as “osito” during this time, and even then he was already making a name for himself. His Dotabuff profile shows that he is rank 24 Immortal, with a frankly insane win rate of 68.15 percent as mid Tiny over 157 games. Guess we know what his signature hero is. It of course remains to be seen whether TaiLung’s arrival will help turn this sinking ship around, though we don’t really have to wait too long; his first test will be on January 18th once the ESL One Birmingham qualifiers begin.

The youngest player on the scene, reaching EU Top 28 at just 16.
From playing with 180 ping, all the way from Peru to Fortaleza, today we welcome the young prospect TaiLung as our midlaner.
We are happy to support your pro career and reach the top of the world together.… pic.twitter.com/90fF3OE4PX

— HEROIC Dota 2 (@heroicdota2) January 16, 2026

Incidentally, this also means that Adrián “Wisper” Dobles will be going back to the offlane position, since TaiLung plays mid and mid only. Personally, I think this is the right move — as Wisper was also a huge part of what made HEROIC’s top 6 result at TI14 possible in the first place. Bringing in Davai only to move Wisper to the mid lane worked for a short while, but like I said, things took a sharp turn for the worse once other teams figured them out.

They’re still left without Scofield in the lineup, though, which will forever be a big deal until someone else can prove themselves better than him from the soft support slot. For now, they’ll have to figure out how to best integrate TaiLung and Thiolicor as they continue their campaign in the new year.