Cr1t Explains Why Evil Geniuses Parted Ways With JerAx

Evil Geniuses made one of the biggest roster changes of the season when it brought back Jesse "JerAx” Vainikka from retirement to round out its roster heading into the DPC 2021/22 season. Unfortunately, the gamble hasn’t really paid off with EG’s teething issues at the beginning of the season, which was then followed by a last place finish in the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022.

Soon after, EG parted ways with JerAx and will head into the latter part of the season with a new lineup. In a recent livestream, the team’s support, Andreas Franck "Cr1t-" Nielsen explained what went wrong with the previous roster and why the team decided to make the roster change, replacing JerAx.

Cr1t explains what was wrong with the previous Evil Geniuses roster

Cr1t explained that Evil Geniuses messed up with its team composition with its roster changes at the start of the season. “We definitely all f**ked up, in terms of realizing what the team needed when we brought in Jesse (JerAx) and Egor (Nightfall),” said Cr1t. “We just had something lacking on this team, that nobody could really bring. More than anything it was me, Artour(Arteezy) and Bulba’s fault because we should have realized what we had on the last team, what we needed, and made sure we had a complete team. So that’s pretty much the downfall of this roster”

He also went on to explain that EG’s performance in the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022 was terrible for all of them and that they were thus forced into making a roster change. “We were playing bad, the vibes were not good obviously since everyone was playing bad and we were losing, underperforming. We definitely needed something to change, so I think this was just the most straightforward solution because we need someone on the team that’s an actual captain and we don’t have that right now with the players we have, which is what I think is the biggest problem,” he added.

Cr1t also praised and wished the best for JerAx, stating that it was very interesting for the team to learn from him and see what he took from what it had. However, he commented that it felt like this roster was doomed from day one despite all the hard work the team had put in to make it work.

He also commented that the current state of competitive Dota meant that the team had no leeway and that it had to react now to grab the chance to fix this before The International 2022 (TI11).

Evil Geniuses will continue its journey through the DPC 2021/22 from Tour 3, which resumes from next week. The team is expected to announce JerAx’s replacement in the Position 5 role by then.