New NAVI Dota 2 Roster Featuring Solo, GeneRaL and No[o]ne Unveiled

NAVI has finally unveiled its new Dota 2 roster. Alik "V-Tune" Vorobey, Viktor "GeneRaL" Nigrini and Vladimir "No[o]ne" Minenko, who were on the bench, are now on the team's active roster. Additionally, two new players in the support roles namely Ilya "ALOHADANCE" Korobkin, and Alexey "Solo" Berezin have been added. The team also has a new coach, Ivan "Artstyle" Antonov, who will also function as the team's general manager. This roster change follows NAVI's announcement in July 2021 that they were renewing their roster following "unsatisfactory performances" in The International 10 (TI10)’s Eastern Europe (EEU) qualifier.

NAVI adds ALOHADANCE and Solo to complete Dota 2 roster; Artstyle returns as a coach

GeneRaL replaces Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev, ALOHADANCE replaces Vladimir "RodjER" Nikogosian, and Solo replaces Akbar "SoNNeikO" Butaev, all of whom had departed from the squad recently.

NAVI’s updated Dota 2 roster is as follows:

1. Alik "V-Tune" Vorobey

2. Vladimir "No[o]ne" Minenko

3. Viktor "GeneRaL" Nigrini

4. Ilya "ALOHADANCE" Korobkin

5. Alexey "Solo" Berezin

• Ivan "Artstyle" Antonov (coach)

• Alexander “Lk-” Lemeshev (manager)

In a blog post on its website, NAVI states that Artstyle helped the organization build its Dota 2 roster. Aleksey "xaoc" Kucherov, the organization's Chief Operating Officer (COO), had previously stated they would hire someone to help guide the process of roster building when the team was placed inactive.

Artstyle is a renowned coach in Eastern Europe, who has been fairly successful in both his playing and coaching careers. Having won TI1 with NAVI, he then coached Virtus.pro in 2017-18 and helped them win multiple Major titles as well as place 5th-6th at TI8.

Further, GeneRaL returns after a controversial removal from the active roster in April 2021. Until he was replaced by RAMZES666, the team had done reasonably well in official games, so the community was at first surprised by GeneRaL's departure from the playing squad. Nevertheless, the organization clarified that there were internal issues and the team had been underperforming in scrims.

ALOHADANCE and Solo will be performing under the NAVI banner for the first time in their Dota 2 careers. While Solo formerly played for NoTechies in the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2021, ALOHADANCE shifted his focus to streaming and did not compete in competitive Dota 2 this year. In 2020 he was a member of FlyToMoon, the team that would eventually play under the NAVI banner.

NAVI's new roster will gather for a month-long bootcamp in Kyiv in mid-September to get ready for the next competitive season. A vlog about the new roster, as well as an interview with Artstyle, will be released by the organization in the coming days, as stated in the blogpost.

This NAVI lineup has some of the most experienced players in Eastern Europe, so it will be interesting to watch how things turn out.