With five successive tier one wins in 2023, Gaimin Gladiators has undoubtedly had one of the most dominant runs in competitive Dota 2 but its form has dropped towards the end of the season. During the ongoing The International 12 (TI12), the team is starting in the lower bracket of the playoffs. The situation had started to deteriorate at Riyadh Masters 2023 a few months ago, which Gaimin Gladiators’ midlaner Quinn "Quinn" Callahan discussed in a recent TI12 interview. According to Quinn, teams have developed a better grasp of the meta as the year has passed. One key aspect of the meta has been Gaimin's adjustment to the bigger map change that took place in April 2023, the effects of which have become apparent only recently.
Quinn provides his perspective on Gaimin's drop in performance
Quinn and Gaimin have had a rosy road to The International, finishing second in the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2023 as well, but their performance dip later in the year has been a topic of discussion. The midlane player also shared his thoughts on the same.
“I think the difference during the DPC season compared to Riyadh and this DreamLeague (DreamLeague S21 in Sept 2023), to be honest, teams got ahead of us a bit in terms of meta. I think all the ramifications of the massive map size patch weren’t really truly fell until more recently. I think Riyadh was one of the first tournaments where that started to be felt more.”
Even though the map change was made six months ago, Quinn stated that it takes time for the effects of such a big change to appear in the game.
“It just takes time for people to truly understand some of these things and it’s still being felt. People don’t really understand how close they used to be with the old one where everyone knew everything and it was like - every game was pre-planned - five minutes, alright, the game’s over. It’s not like that anymore.”
Quinn pointed out that Gaimin's struggle to keep up with the evolving meta affected its perspective which proved problematic in the tier one tournaments that led up to TI12 such as Riyadh Masters 2023 and DreamLeague Season 21.
“And I think we were honestly just a bit behind on some things and other people got ahead of us and so we were just playing catch up. When you are playing catch up as opposed to when you are in a good spot and there are slight things you are tweaking, that perspective difference is massive. And I think for the last two tournaments, we were in the perspective of we are trailing and we are crawling to catch up to people as opposed to being near the front and maintaining the position.”
While Gaimin finished fourth at Riyadh Masters 2023 and 7th-8th at DreamLeague Season 21, the team had become accustomed to top results in the season and hence did not have the finest performances in these two events.
Quinn and Gaimin, who are currently in the lower bracket, will attempt to regroup before the playoffs begin and hold on to their withering form to return stronger. The team faces Evil Geniuses on 22nd Oct 2023, with survival on the line.