Captain America - The PPD Story

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

There have been few people in North AMerican esports like Peter ‘PPD’ Dager. From being almost universally disliked during his time spent in Heroes of Newerth, he has now become of the main focal points of western Dota as a whole with the success of the current EG roster he’s captaining.

At the core of all this, aside from intense rivalries, domination and bridges burned is the thing that has made him reach a level of success that only seems to be raising daily. His own strong conviction of him always being able to improve, and that every placement outside of the coveted gold, is failure.

The whipping boy

When PPD first found his bearings into HoN he was not considered anything special skill-wise until he managed to get vouched into the newest in-house league at the time, the FRAG in-house league. In-house ladder culture is often abrasive, rash and unforgiving due to it being populated almost exclusively by the highest level of players. This made it an almost exemplary proving ground for new players who wanted to find their way into the competitive arena. It was here this story’s main character got his first taste of playing in a competitive environment with some of the best players the North American community had to offer.

One of the people who noticed the young American’s quick rise to the absolute top of the league’s leaderboard was Mark ‘Tralfamadore’ Seidl, who had played together with one of the better teams in the early days of HoN’s competitive life in SK Gaming, and who would later on become team mates with PPD in team sGty.

“The impressive thing that stood out was him being the top rank in the new inhouse league at the time. He was a no-name that rose to the top fast of the league and that's what really caught the attention of some of the top players at the time.” Along with Seidl, another character central to the HoN-portion of this article also noticed the up-and-comer’s abilities. Kyle ‘swindlemelonzz’ Freedman was in the process of creating a new North American team that featured himself, Tralf, JingJun ‘Sneyking’ Wu and TKOlol, as you are probably expecting PPD soon also became part of this line-up as the team’s main support player. Under the banner sGty, the new alliance became one of the first exclusively NA-based teams that seemed to be able to advance their own personal levels of play into the realm of the dominating Fnatic roster.

Climbing the ladder

Despite this recent development, the top-performer in the in-house leagues became a butt of jokes in the HoN community. Renowned for his Kraken alone on the support role, his level of skilled was more than often called into question by onlookers, and even members of sGty at the time.

To be a bit frank, Peter was much weaker back then and understandably so - he was fresh into the scene. Obviously, he got noticed because he had a high rating in the inhouse league, but of course that doesn't always equate to appropriate skill levels. Let's just say, he had a lot of room for improvement. - Tralf, 2014

Why swindlemelonzz becomes an important part of this story comes shortly after sGty secured a sponsorship from the Trademark eSports organisation and also managed to win themselves a ticket and spot at the upcoming DreamHon Winter 2011 tournament. The very same day that the players’ flights are booked, PPD and Sneyking are kicked off the team in favor of Sender and Zfreek. In the heat of the moment, the support player decides to take matters into his own hands and attempts to deny the new roster their trip to Sweden by disbanding the team on the tournament’s portal, forfeiting their participation before going live with the news on his own accord on the official HoN forums.

When the dust had settled, sGty (now tDM) still made their way to Sweden, and PPD had burned a considerable bridge given that he had fallen out with one of the most popular competitive players around in Tralf. This also sparked a feud that has still not been absolved on either side of the spectrum, and oddly enough it set the support player’s career into another gear.

I think that Peter getting kicked gave him the drive he needed, because his skill level dramatically increased months afterwards. About a year later when Bkid and I were looking for a new support player for our team at the time Peter's name instantly came up. - Mark 'Tralfamadore' Seidl, speaking to onGamers, 2014

After his stint with sGty he formed several other teams throughout the next year and was the drafter for all of them I believe. They didn't have the greatest success but I believe that's where he first got his practice. I think the biggest attribute to Peter's success in drafting and just overall strategy comes from him really wanting to win - not picking stuff because it's fun or quirky or popular - but picking heroes and lanes that will logically produce the best outcome. That's not to say you can't have fun with picks, but winning and logical lane setups are the most important things for Peter. - Tralf, 2014”

With an urge to prove himself, PPD quickly joined Team Infused in an attempt to continue his competitive career. Made up of mostly Europeans, his dedication to improve was obvious due to the fact that he was forced to play European tournaments in the middle of the day whilst attending school. But with the eventual hard work the entire team (which consisted of Laurence “Astonl” Aston, Sebastian “ChubbyChris2” Lund, Jonathan “fajN`” Rauthing and Emil “getviolator” Thunberg) had put in they were managing to take games consistently off of higher tier teams like EG and SK. Upon joining the team, Infused had already managed to secure a spot at DreamHon Winter 2011, and after continuously improving their gameplay, the four other members headed to the even with little to lose. For PPD, he headed to Sweden for revenge.

It’s about sending a message

tDM are a really simple-minded team, they are all individually skilled players but play a very non-intelligent style of play. We don’t see them as a threat. - Peter on the HoNCast podcast, 2011

At the world’s biggest LAN, the story almost wrote itself on the American support’s behalf, as Infused ended up in the same group as tDM, effectively setting the stage for a grudge match and his chance at showing what he himself was capable of. Infused was far away from the subsequent glamour tDM wielded with their all-star players, but somehow the European-American team managed to defeat the favored American opposition. Unfortunately for PPD, this would be the only light in the tunnel for him in Sweden as they lost all of their four remaining games of the tournament, ultimately leading them to a tied second last place finish in their group and effectively ending their endeavour in Sweden. tDM would end up finishing in fourth place.

Re-iterating the sentiment held by many of his peers, PPD’s future team mate Jeppe ‘Haxxeren’ Jensen defeated PPD’s Infused team with his World War Entertainment roster, and didn’t give a second thought about the American’s individual play. This opinion would drastically change a few months later when they both found themselves fighting under the same banner.

Getting the band back together

In the months following DreamHon Winter, Infused dropped their support for HoN completely as they aimed to focus on the rising Dota 2 title. This left our protagonist teamless once again, but he quickly banded together with several of his former team mates in order to continue their competitive careers in the title. For every month that passed, it seemed as if their new team, named aYY Man placed higher and higher in online competition, their consistency was even rewarded with a spot on the official HoNCast Top 10 teams list of the month of April. It was during this period of time that PPD started paying attention to Dota 2 in a serious manner, following the very first International event where the historic sum of $1,000,000 was paid out to the winners Na’Vi a proverbial fire was lit under HoN’s developer S2 Games, and subsequently the professional HoN scene’s, ass.

The game itself had not yet truly found a good way to sustain its competitive scene in the same manner Dota 2 was starting to do, and the looming feeling of S2’s own tournament circuit HoNTour being an endeavour that had to succeed unless the competitive player base would simply migrate to Valve’s new mulitplayer venture.

PPD himself even appeared briefly on the HoNCast podcast before he flew to Sweden in order to compete with Team Infused at DreamHon. In the episode in question, he states that Dota 2 had already reached such a massive audience that HoN’s time in the sun had come to pass. “I think this game is going to die, and everybody will move on to Dota 2 or do something else.”

Whilst he didn’t change his focus from his game of choice at the time, as aYY Man were still going strong and had at least one more tournament in them, it was undeniable that many of the top players at the time were casting an eye towards Dota 2.

In the summer of 2012, aYY Man attended DreamHon with the expectation of qualifying through the BYOC portion of the tournament into the main group stage. Travelling on his own dime, it was yet another shot for the American to attempt and make an impression on the top performing teams in the world. Unfortunately for PPD, his attempt at greatness in Sweden was cut incredibly short following a tumultuous travel to the Scandinavian country due to a severely delayed flight that had him show up at the event immediately after arriving in European airspace. Unsurprisingly, aYY’s run in the tournament was incredibly short-lived.

But despite their disappointing finish, and their subsequent split as a team due to the player’s real life obligations, a massive opportunity presented itself to the young American; tDM were looking at finding new replacements following the departure of Sender and Zfreek, and PPD was one of the first they had considered replacing their former support with. Along with the American, Jeppe ‘Haxxeren’ Jensen followed with him.

This would become the team where all the hard work he had put in would finally be rewarded.

Started from the bottom

This new roster would not remain stable for long however, as the long-time competitor Tralf would leave the team shortly after the newly added Haxxeren and PPD. The new man in was Rasmus ‘Chessie’ Blomdin, who had played together with Haxxeren previously on Team it’s GoSu, and as if the changes weren’t already arriving at a rapid pace tDM were quickly absorbed by compLexity Gaming. Following this development, this team became the undisputed best team in the world for close to four months.

Throughout this period of time, coL won close to all tournaments they entered, including the two incredibly stacked DreamHoN online tournaments where they also secured their own spot at the first DreamHoN without Fnatic in attendance. Aside from qualifying for one of the biggest LANs in HoN history, they also claimed several other online titles with little-to-no problems, often ending deciding matches and finals within an hour. PPD was, in the middle of all of this, the player who according to Jeppe ‘Haxxeren’ Jensen one of the driving forces behind coL as he consistently egged on the remaining players to practice whenever they could.

Peter was the only one who was motivated throughout our period of domination. He was always telling us to play TMM whenever we found some free time in order to keep our mechanics sharp, instead of going out partying and getting drunk. Which we did.

[...]

Peter’s life was HoN. He didn’t have anything else, and I think that was what made him so good, because NA players couldn’t play the online tournaments since they were all mostly based out of Europe, which meant we played them in the evening but the NA players had to play them around midday, so I think he went into HoN absolutely full-time and had to press on and become the best if he were to ever justify the amount of time he put into it. - Jeppe 'Haxxeren' Jepsen, talking to onGamers in 2014

The commitment the now world-class player put in to become the best also showed when he and the team’s offlaner Moonmeander moved into coL’s training facility in Texas. A luxurious mansion that would give both players the opportunity to play their game of choice from the day they woke up to when their battered eyes could no longer stand the glare of their respective computer screens. Wins simply materialized for them, losses became a very rare occurrence that never warranted any discussion, they’d win the next one for certain.

Peter was extremely active and motivated, which is a requirement in order to really play against the best and beat them on a consistent level. He checked replays constantly, and would discover ward spots that other support players tended to use in order to deny them vision. Whilst it might seem obvious in today's standard, nobody took the time to do stuff like that as meticulously back in the day. - Rasmus 'Chessie' Blomdin, talking to onGamers about what it was that separated PPD from other supports, 2014

But one day, the past came back to haunt them. A newly created Trademark eSports roster, featuring PPD’s current-day team mate Zai, were quickly rising through the ranks and gave the North American kings a bloody nose in the DreamHoN Redemption qualifier tournament in the grand finals as they took a game off of them. This would be the start of compLexity’s eventual demise into chaos, even though they came back to win the following two games and effectively qualified for Dreamhack Winter 2012, the cracks in the veneer had started showing.

Nevertheless, victory at the LAN in Jönköping seemed all but certain. Even though a new challenger had appeared in the form of tDM, few gave them the benefit of the doubt going into the tournament and Tralf, who was now commentating full-time for HoNCast even bet that he’d shave his head if coL lost the Bo3.

To be honest, I think their play was lackluster during the finals, and we were playing well, so a win was inevitable. - Ludwig 'Zai' Wåhlberg, speaking in an interview with onGamers in 2014

tDM managed to claim victory on the debut-stage for coL in terms of LANs. After a four-month stint of being the undisputed top team in the world it had all come crumbling down in the grand finals, which were an unmitigated disaster for the team and their position as the world’s undisputedly best team came tumbling down as the Swedish showstoppers claimed eight of the fourteen awards present at the HoNCast 2012 year-end awards. coL only garnered two: jungle player of the year for Chessie, and support player of the year for PPD. The air was filled with the smell of disappointment, and a chapter of HoN history ended that day.

A war on all sides

compLexity’s loss in the Scandinavian nation became a catalyst for a sequence of events which eventually ripped the team apart. Most spectators at the time would have attributed it to the departure of all-star jungler Chessie, who left to join Swindlemelonzz latest team effort Stay Green, but according to Haxxeren, the internal conditions at coL had turned incredibly sour in a remarkably short period of time and had influenced the Swedish player’s decision by an incredible amount.

coL had two weeks in order to find a suitable replacement for their former jungler, and he came in the shape of former TT eSports player Andrew ‘Riser_’ Bronze. The new addition to the squad proved to be very potent in the short time he had played together with his new team as they won the Soundblaster Invitational in a close five-game series agains the surprise finalists LIONs. Merely four week before the HoNTour Season 1 grand finals would commence, it seemed as if the American team was on an uprise in terms of performance after several disappointing results, including a bitter defeat to Stay Green in the semi-finals of the Garena Star League qualifiers, a massive $60,000 tournament in Bangkok, Thailand.

As the premier teams in the world approached Las Vegas and the grand finals of the biggest event HoN had ever seen was upon them, the atmosphere in the team had improved greatly in contrast to their period without a consistent jungler. Hopes were high as they were set for a rematch against tDM in a Bo5 semi-final. Having gotten the better of them at Dreamhack half a year earlier, it seemed like tDM would consistently defeat coL, making them an underdog in the match-up which was still a hard reality to accept given their period of utmost domination.

The North American team pushed it as far as they could, and a deciding fifth match was played and lost for coL. Their 3rd place finish was hardly compensation for the loss they had endured, and Stay Green won their second LAN event in a row without dropping a single map. The new guard had entered, and the old had been relieved.

An unceremonious exit merely a month after their performance at HoNTour, the Danish hard carry left the team to make room for Tralfamadore once again. The build-up to this decision was, according to Haxxeren himself, the increasing difficulty of playing with PPD.

When it all started going wrong, we didn’t notice it at first but he became more and more passive-aggressive when we started performing poorly. He would sigh loudly into the mic, and would eventually start telling us how to play our own roles as if he knew them better than we did. It reached a point where I couldn’t be in the same room or the same call as him, he radiated this opinion of superiority to everyone else around him and it became unbearable.

[...]

We’d never argued on the team when we did well, and I guess he was frustrated then too but he kept it in for long periods of time. It eventually all came out between him and Moonmeander in a call where they went in hard on each other. It became such a show that I simply joined Stay Green.eu when they extended an offer towards me, because I simply couldn’t handle it. Jeppe 'Haxxeren' Jepsen, speaking to onGamers in 2014

Despite the resignation of Jeppsen, the new compLexity continued performing at a high enough level to be secured a spot at Dreamhack Summer 2013. The summery city of Jönköping was the first place that PPD had started his career within the game for real, and unbeknownst to him, it would soon provide him with closure as well.With the group stage being packed with the absolutely best talent the game had amassed throughout the past year, it would in the end be a similar top 3 to what the past few months had built up; SG, SG.eu (ex-tDM with Haxxeren) and coL, the latter two were interchangable but so far nothing seemed to be able to test SG’s mettle until this event.

Here, the recent kings of competitive HoN reached a worse overall record than both of the aforementioned teams, who finished in the top 2 of the group stage. From there on, the sister teams went to battle in the upper bracket, which eventually lead to the European team making a run through the lower bracket, coL followed suit as they went up against their rivals in the semi-finals. Losing in two straight games, the former teammates faced each other in the loser’s bracket finals. In the end, the North Americans had the last laugh as they advanced onto a rematch against sG in the grand finals.

The shape of PPD’s rival at the tournament had been anything but impressive on the LANs initial day, but they had made up more than enough ground on the initial day of the tournament’s bracket stage, which they rounded up by beating coL 2-0. They remained the team that nobody had claimed a Bo3 against on a LAN throughout 2013 as the event came to pass, but coL took it all the way to a final third game. Something that hadn’t been done for close to six months.

Whether or not it was the overall state of HoN itself, or the fact that coL would never seem to clinch a 1st place finish again, the team’s organisation decided to release all five of their players after just about a year of service with the North American esports giant.

From here on, PPD, Tralfamadore, Bkid, Riser and Zai created a makeshift team for what would become their final season of HoNTour. The team was known as Team USA and petered out into obscurity after roughly two months following their 2nd place finish at Dreamhack Summer. It is important note however, that during this time the core of Zai, PPD and Tralf were already transitioning fully into Dota 2, and had established a team together with Ensoe and Corey, two of North America’s most solid HoN players that were also making their transition over to Valve’s MOBA. This in turn was what contributed the most to Team USA’s ultimate demise, as a massive scheduling conflict caused by the members of USA caused them to not only being the center of an incredible amount of criticism, but they were also disqualified following said situation due to having forfeited a total of three games in a row in order to participate in the ongoing MLG NA League.

So ended the tale of HoN for Peterpandam, starting from the absolute bottom he had reached the top and seen himself sink into the role as the community’s absolute villain. Someone who would take forfeit victories whenever possible, someone who would go to absurd lengths to smear the name of his very own Lex Luger, Swindlemelonzz, in the dirt over the most trivial of affairs. These were the resounding opinions surrounding him as he left for the greener Dota 2 pastures, but from his fellow pros there seems to be a complete agreement about Peter Dager: He just wanted to be the best.

I think I can sum up what Peter did in three words: he did shit. HoN in general was much more of a passive game than dota. There would literally be games where first blood didn't occur for 15 minutes. But Peter was really good about actively looking around the map and thinking how he could make himself be useful. This is different than just wandering around the map because you feel useless - Peter would actually have a calculated gank in his head. For example, if he was to be supporting bottom, he would move all the way top sometimes and gank that lane and it would work because it was unexpected. Pretty impressive, too, because there's no smoke in HoN. - Mark 'Tralfamadore' Seidl, speaking to onGamers in 2014

From speaking with pros around the scene at the time of his uprising on the virtual battlefield, it’s almost unanimously stated that his accomplishments come solely from an almost unparalleled work ethic. Even during compLexitiy’s period of dominance this wasn’t understated as he put in as many hours as he possibly could in order to excel just the tiniest bit more against the competition.

He just couldn’t understand why other people would want to reschedule their games or show up late. I think he just applied his own situation in terms of dedication to everyone else. If he took it seriously, why couldn’t they?

[...]

I respect PPD as a player, I always have and always will. He knows every mechanic the game he plays has to offer and will do everything it takes to win. With that said, he will always be a dick in my eyes and I would never spend a minute in a room with him again even though I got paid for it. - Jeppe 'Haxxeren' Jepsen, speaking to onGamers in 2014

In the end, it cost him his reputation. But he didn’t care, a new chapter in his career had already started where the other had ended.

On the road again

With all the recent success and questions surrounding the EG roster, it seems baffling to think that not even a year has passed since PPD was still attempting to qualify for the MLG NA Full Sail tournament in Florida together with Stay Free. All members being new to the competitive title attempted their best in order to qualify for the event, but with many rosters remaining unfinished following the annual TI roster-shuffle, Team Dignitas were in need of a new support player as Peter ‘Waytosexy’ Nguyen had left their former squad. Leaving his friends behind, he tried out for the new roster and impressed his peers to such a degree that he would be on the team’s main roster and join them at the aforementioned MLG tournament, as well as for a number of showmatches in South Korea, organized by OnGame Net. Unfortunately for him, he would eventually be, in his own words, replaced after a number of bad results in scrims by Robert ‘Bdiz’ Tinnes.

Finding himself without a team once again, Dager joined up with Zai once again in the European-American team Super Strong Dinosaurs. Created by famed Romanian player Alexandru ‘ComeWithMe’ Craciunescu, the squad also contained PPD’s old brother-in-arms Sneyking, as well as Alaan ‘SexyBamboe’ Faraj. Reaching a number of fairly impressive results, which a 2nd place finish in the eighth edition of the weekly BigPoint Battle tournament, as well as performing decently in the ongoing season of Starladder Europe, the team came to a rapid halt on the 23rd of December 2013. Looking at the track record of Craciunescu, as well as PPD who was now determined to transition fully into the role of a leader, it is not hard to imagine that the two clashed personally until either party couldn’t find themselves functioning together at all.

Following the fallout, which the American decided to comment on as “Jerry Springer shit”, Zai and PPD left the team and laid low for close to a month before they re-surfaced as what came to be SADBOYS; a roster containing the two expats from Newerth, the 17-year old Canadian phenom Artour ‘Arteezy’ Babaev and the only two remaining members from the post-TI3 EG roster Clinton ‘Fear’ Loomis and Saahil ‘Universe’ Arora. The list of players quickly turned heads, but showed a much less than stellar display in their first match together, as they got romped 2-0 by a Team Liquid that had been looking to be in rough shape for the past 6 month leading up to their match in the joinDOTA League. Liquid still managed to run away with their victory and instantly cast a shadow on this new roster PPD had found himself on, and needless to say, this time the stakes were way higher than they ever were on Dignitas.

EG’s preceding team before the SADBOYS had been made up to be the next North American dream team, as they fielded an impressive roster which aside from Fear and Universe consisted of Ioannis ‘Fogged’ Loucas , Jio ‘Jeyo’ Madayag and Arif ‘MSS’ Anwar. They were in the end however not able to field any noteworthy accomplishments aside of placing 2nd at ESWC 2013. Having cited a lack of leadership and direction, these were the traits PPD had been able to bring throughout his two years in HoN and was what the North American teams as a whole were lacking, but there would be no room for him to show it if this team wouldn’t be able to play as a unit.

Leaderpandam

In the beginning of 2014, both MLG and joinDOTA were taking on the task of creating regional online leagues in the shape the joinDOTA League and MLG TKO, where strictly North American teams participated in the NA region in an effort to established the often criticized region. It was in primarily these two tournaments that the SADBOYS would make a name for themselves as they were simply not able to lose games to their opposition, increasing their value in the eyes of onlookers for the time being, but the team were still in dire need of results against established teams.

Their chance to truly broadcast their level of power came in the Electronic Sports Prime Shock Therapy Cup, an online tournament that had managed to fit in a number of the period’s highly rated teams such as Cloud 9, Rox.Kis and Team Empire. Empire were considered the best team around this time, riding off of the wave of a 17-game winstreak, it looked like easy pickings for the CIS superteam. It therefore made the triumph of the SADBOYS all the more remarkable, as they obliterated Rox.Kis before the 20 minute mark in the first round and never looked back against C9 or Team Liquid before they faced Empire in the grand finals of the tournament, but even there they left little-to-no quarter for the Russian-Ukrainian team and beat them down in the two games that were needed in order to attain victory.

After two more weeks of dominating the North American teams in the ongoing online leagues, it was officially announced that they were now part of the EG organisation, marking a significant step in the career of PPD and once again displaying that his hard work would not go unrewarded. This period of exceptional play from North America’s now premier Dota 2 squad would last for long enough of a period for them to win both the SXSW Monster Invitational, featuring three of the continent’s best teams in Team Liquid, eHug and Cloud 9, jDL and MLG TKO America, as well as the Starladder XI qualifiers, which sent them packing to Kiev against the world’s best teams.

However, their journey to the country that had belonged to the iron curtain was called into jeopardy when it had been revealed that Fear would not be able to make the event due to an injury in his arm. In the midst of searching for a stand-in that was able to travel across half the world with them, Jacky 'EternalEnvy' Mao from EG's main North American rival team C9 answered the call and joined them in their quest for international recognition.

In the Ukranian capital, the EG squad that had dominated their domestic tournaments came in to a group consisting of teams far beyond their own reputation. Three-fold TI grand finalists Na'Vi and TI2 champions iG were both present in Group B of the tournament, and the main point of critisicm surrounding EG at the time was their lack of results against non-American teams. They were definitely up for the challenge however, sweeping through their group by just barely squeaking out a victory against Na'Vi, and leaving both Rox.Kis and iG in the dirt after resounding victories.

Advancing on to the winner bracket, EG's sister-team and reigning champions of The International, Alliance, became their opponents. Having only faced in online encounters previously, this confrontation became one of the highlights of the tournament after EG managed to provide a ridiculous comeback off the backs of Zai and Universe after being down two sets of barracks. EG played like a team possessed and quickly became the talk of the tournament's second day.

But unfortunately for the North American team, their time in the sun came to an abrupt halt when they faced up against Team DK, the reigning kings of the Chinese Dota scene.Whilst entering the Bo3 with confidence, the Chinese machine chewed EG up and spat them out in the most unceremonious of fashion, and trucked on towards the upper grand finals with their perfect score. In the lower bracket, Team Empire had trekked through Alliance and Invictus Gaming to get their shot at reaching the grand finals. The bald eagle promptly flew into the meatgrinder following the two intial games of the series, tied 1-1 for the shot at facing DK in the grand finals, EG lost their composure against their Ukranian/Russian counterparts, ending their run at Starladder 9 in 3rd place.

The captain took this loss hard. Citing lack of sleep, he failed to make the closing ceremony, leaving his four teammates to collect the check in his absence. Tweeting later in the evening, he made his respect for EternalEnvy known. Perhaps PPD, shared a lot in common with EE and his desire to always strive for perfection, as looking back at his HoN days showcased his urge to be the best no matter what.

Honestly, in my opinion of previous American teams, I don't think they've been hungry enough to compete at the highest level. I don't think any of them have really wanted to win the way I want to win. - Peter 'PPD' Dager, speaking on Live on 3 in March, 2014

Continuing consistency?

All of this has now reached up to a vital point in the 22-year old support players career. Knocking on his front door is the chance for him to become a millionaire along with his teammates. But is this coming too soon? Having only been part of the competitive Dota community for less than a year, PPD cites constantly in interviews that he is still learning the game the more tournaments he plays. Whilst having plenty of experience from his HoN days, nothing has ever been on the scale of what he and his merry men will embark upon. What's more to note is that Mason 'Mason' Venne has now become a full-time member of EG, even though the captain was intending on starting a new team with the carry player before EG came into play, this means that even he must adapt to the change of playing Dota 2 competitively, and with serious results in mind, something that perhaps could cause conflicts in the team's least needing hour?

What speaks for him, however, aside from his impressive track record with EG is his seeming ability to almost always maintain a solid composure throughout a game. It’s been very clearly shown during the most recent games the team has played where they have often found themselves on the backfoot early on, but always seems to be able to come back the later the game goes with what seems like impeccable teamwork. Regarding what I wrote about the acquisition of Mason, it has been especially apparent that the carry has synchronized extremely well with the rest of the team when playing with them.

With a desire to achieve the best results, his journey has dredged him through the highest high and absolutely lowest lows. But now when the opportunity of a lifetime with TI4 has presented itself to him and being in command of one of the biggest Western hopes for the tournament in question, the possibility of failure seems like a non-option to him.

Photo Credit: Starladder, GosuGamers, Monster Energy, compLexity Gaming, Dreamhack