N0tail and MoonMeander Laud OG ATF’s Playstyle

OG's entire new roster has excelled in the past six months, but the team's 17 year old offlaner Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf has grabbed the global Dota 2 community's attention with his wacky yet highly effective style of play. On OG's Monkey Business Show #17, TSM's captain David "MoonMeander" Tan Boon Yang expressed his eagerness to play OG at the upcoming Stockholm Major 2022, primarily because ATF is part of the squad. In MoonMeander's opinion, ATF possesses an impeccable understanding of the game and is in the right place at the right time, despite his greedy playstyle. Additionally, OG's founder Johan "N0tail" Sundstein noted that ATF was just 3k MMR in 2018 and now possesses one of the most unique playstyles he has ever seen.

OG ATF receives praise from MoonMeander and N0tail

On OG's Monkey Business Show, MoonMeander, upon mentioning his eagerness to play against OG at the Major, said there was one player on the team who was too good. MoonMeander, as N0tail picked out names from his squad, said that it was ATF.

When MoonMeander played against him at the Gamers Galaxy 2022 event in Dubai, he was surprised to see his high net worth in every game. As MoonMeander described ATF's patience inside the game, he praised how he executed every move perfectly.

“It’s f***ing Ammar dude. This guy is so good. After we played them, watching him and I was like - what’s this guy doing? Why is he so fat every game? So, I watch the replay one time at speed and I am just like - watching him 100 APM playing his game. Wow’s he so patient and so normal. His screen looks so slow. His move mouse clicks are so chill. He looks like a chill dude, just farming like - he’s just farming, oh he’s just dodging the gank, oh he’s back to farming, oh he’s just dodging again, oh he’s perfectly TPing to punish the overextension.”

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MoonMeander, who is a much more experienced player in comparison both by age and game experience, said he is learning to keep calm during games after observing ATF.

“I am like - wow. He looks like a 30 year old dude playing like a 30 year old dude. He’s playing on the line perfectly on a 15 year old (everybody laughs). I mean this guy’s half my age and there’s triple my patience. I am like - Okay, I gotta reset myself. I am double his age. I gotta have as much patience as him at least. He’s teaching me a lesson. He’s 16 years old so this guy is so good to me, at least.”

As N0tail and Sébastien "Ceb" Debs listened, the former said that ATF represents the new era of competitive Dota 2, possessing fresh ideas, playstyles, and mentality.

“I don’t know if I am spreading fake news, I’m pretty sure it’s true but did you know he was like 3k MMR in 2018 around TI8 times. He’s like really green also in Dota. So, it’s all new age, new blood, new ideas, I guess. Again, when I see it, I also don’t think I have seen anyone play like that before and with that mentality so it goes to show there’s many ways, many variations.”

It's been evident over the past year that ATF is a greedy offlane player who is always pushing the limits to gain farm. A lot of the time, even the items he chooses fit into his aggressive and greedy style of play. Although he has recently been showing much more versatility than in the past, Timbersaw and Mars are his signature heroes on which he usually leads his team to victory.

Soon, both ATF and MoonMeander will be playing in the Stockholm Major 2022 once the event begins on 12th May. There shall be 14 teams participating in the event, competing for a total prize pool of $500K USD and 3,530 DPC points.