ALOHADANCE on Joining NAVI: I Have Wanted to Play With Solo for Years

Over the years, NAVI has been through a series of roster changes and has now landed at yet another promising roster, containing prominent players from Eastern Europe (EEU). Amongst the inclusions are two veterans of the region in the support role - Ilya "ALOHADANCE" Korobkin, and Alexey "Solo" Berezin. In a vlog on NAVI's YouTube channel, ALOHADANCE discussed how he had always desired to play with Solo. In the early stages of his career, ALOHADANCE had played a few games with Solo, but then, owing to certain circumstances, he had never been able to spend time with him again.

ALOHADANCE talks about how he always wanted to play with Solo

Currently, ALOHADANCE and Solo are among the most experienced support players in the EEU region. Despite the fact that the two have been playing the game for quite some time now, they have never really crossed paths and spent much time together.

The vlog shows ALOHADANCE reminiscing about playing for Team Empire in the early parts of his career, which was the only time he had been able to compete with Solo. They only played scrims and one official game, which did not turn out well for them following which Solo left.

“I have wanted to play with Solo for years. We played one official game and a couple of weeks of scrims, which was before I got on Empire in 2015 where I had my best career results. Airat (Silent) badmouthed Resolut1on and Resolut1on said he wouldn’t play with him, and they invited me to try out for the mid position since I was producing pretty good results as a midlaner at the time. We played some scrims and I was doing really well actually, then we lost our official game without a chance, and Lyokha (Solo) said he was leaving. That was the last time I played with him.”

ALOHADANCE also touched upon the reasons why he was unable to play with Solo after Team Empire.

“I have always wanted to play with him but certain things have gotten in the way, one of them being my behavior in public which would make others go, ‘Who is this crazy kid?’ Anyway, there have been factors preventing this from happening, but it’s become possible now.”

ALOHADANCE has been playing Dota 2 for some time, but he has been streaming a lot in the past two to three years. Since splitting from FlyToMoon in August 2020, he has streamed a lot of Poker and the custom Dota 2 game 'Atomic War' on his Twitch channel.

As NAVI's support duo, ALOHADANCE and Solo might scream great, but it is to be noted that both players have not been very engaged in Dota 2 in 2021. While the former is just returning to competitive Dota 2 after a year off, the latter has been playing for temporary squads where he has not experienced much success.

The performance of ALOHADANCE, Solo, and NAVI as a unit still remains to be seen.

While the squad is not expected to play any matches in the near future, it will be bootcamping for a month starting mid-September 2021 in preparation for the next competitive season.