Cover-Credits:
OG announced recently that offlaner Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf had been placed on its inactive roster. However, due to OG's decision to let the player pursue new opportunities for the upcoming Dota Pro Circuit (DPC), this seems to be a parting of the ways between the two parties. Amidst the speculation about the reason for this change after a fairly successful season, former Dota 2 professional Clinton "Fear" Loomis has stated that OG "kicked" ATF as he was unable to play micro-intensive heroes. Fear continued by saying that ATF has one of the narrowest hero pools he has ever encountered. In addition, he mentioned how the last Dota 2 patch nerfed most of the heroes that ATF prefers.
Fear says OG “kicked” ATF because of his limited hero pool
During a Twitch livestream, Fear made quite a straightforward assessment of ATF's departure from OG, saying he had a hard time understanding why the player could not learn to play heroes that required micro skills.
“I mean I don’t think they kicked Ammar strictly because he can’t play micro heroes, they probably did actually but I don’t know why he can’t learn to play micro heroes. Is that a hotkey issue? I have never seen a player in my life who is so limited by hero pool, except for AdmiralBulldog. He might be the other one.”
Furthermore, Fear said ATF's ability to play his preferred heroes came to prominence much before The International 11 (TI11). So, he suggested that OG's opponents would not have been able to handle his hero pool if he had been a newcomer at TI11, and ATF would have led the team to victory.
“The problem with Ammar is that he peaked at the wrong time. I am pretty certain Ammar would have won TI if he came to TI without playing any other professional Dota. He, for sure would have been a TI winner. He be picking like these Vipers, Huskars, and people would still be banning Beastmasters against him because people have no idea he can’t play them. And he’ll just the cheese the shit out of everyone. And then he would have been a TI winner."
According to Fear, Razor and Timbersaw would not have also been nerfed if ATF hadn't set a trend for offlane greed on heroes before TI11.
“And plus, they wouldn’t have nerfed him - like literally, the last gameplay patch was nerfing Ammar. They nerfed Razor, they nerfed Viper. They nerfed all his heroes. They nerfed Timbersaw, and every single one of the heroes he played got nerfed to the f**king ground.”
A nerf to Razor and Company, the dominant heroes prior to TI11, resulted in the rise of micro-intensive heroes such as Beastmaster, Visage, and Lycan, which gave Tundra Esports' Neta "33" Shapira, who is one of the best at playing these heroes, a big boost before TI11.
Fear said that 33 capitalized on this perfectly and as it happened, his team Tundra Esports became the champions of TI11.
“And then your boy, 33, the micro god himself, his heroes didn’t get touched. And all of a sudden, it was his meta. EasyClap. It was the ‘Neta Meta.”
With ATF's playstyle in mind, it will interesting to see which team decides to sign him. It's possible that the player is also transitioning into the position one role due to the number of carry heroes he's been playing in pubs.
