Team Falcons Dota 2: What’s With Their Current Dip in Form?

Team Falcons’ Dota 2 squad was undeniably one of the most dominant teams in the previous season, having won several high-profile tournaments like BetBoom Dacha Dubai, DreamLeague Seasons 22 and 23, and ESL One Birmingham. Their earnings in the 2023-2024 season amounted to over $2.5 million; a good year in the office by anyone’s standards.

But when you look closer at their results towards the tail end, even the most dedicated Falcons fan will find a bit to be desired. After all, when you win almost everything, people come to expect more of the same — especially when you consider the sheer level of talent on this roster.

Between grizzled veterans like Oliver “skiter” Lepko, Andreas Franck “Cr1t-” Nielsen, and Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun, as well as young but unbelievably skilled talents like Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf and Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak, Team Falcons has plenty of star power to throw around. Their gameplay and coordination as a team allowed them to run everyone over last season, but things haven’t been so great for them lately.

Waning Confidence

Their form started to slip after DreamLeague Season 23. Despite an outstanding performance in the group stage of the Riyadh Masters, they only managed to finish in third place, losing the lower bracket final match to Team Liquid.

Then, they ended the season with a disappointing fourth place result at The International 2024 (TI13), after surrendering a 2-0 outcome to the red hot Tundra Esports.

Once the new season rolled around, they had a fresh start and PGL Wallachia Season 2 to look forward to — but not even that tournament saw them going back to winning ways. Worse still, they lost to a squad that most would have predicted to just get crushed by them in the form Heroic, who went on to win the first S-Tier tournament for South America.

Of course, these kinds of finishes are far from anything to be alarmed over. At the end of the day, they’re still finishing within the podium places pretty much wherever they go. But a team with six genius-level Dota 2 players, including coach Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling, has a lot of expectation on them.

We’ve all seen how hard it can be to keep your mental fortitude in this game for long periods of time, especially when the results you want don’t come when you expect them to. OG’s Cinderella run at TI8 proved that Dota 2 is as much a mental battle between two teams as it is a mechanical and strategic one. Going from win after to win to loss after loss can affect confidence.

Tough Rivals from Western Europe

Of course, there’s also the fact that other Western European competitors also just happened to get better around the time that Falcons started to fall short of expectations. Team Liquid in particular really enjoyed Patch 7.37c, with Neta “33” Shapira making the most out of his signature Visage and the absurdly powerful Death Toll facet.

Gaimin Gladiators will always be around with how stacked that team is and Tundra hit an unexpected stride after calling Martin “Saksa” Sazdov in as a last minute stand-in for Edgar “9class” Naltakian. Keeping up with your competition is just part and parcel of being a professional Dota 2 team, and lately Falcons just haven’t done that.

But like we said, it’s far too early to call them washed up. BetBoom Dacha Belgrade is coming up in just a few days, and there’s DreamLeague Season 24 a week after that. Whether they’re now better prepared against their rivals is up in the air at this point, but they’re certainly capable of figuring things out moving forward given the personnel within the team and the organization.

Only time will truly tell, but we’re fairly confident in their ability to bounce back and win another major tournament sooner than later.