Team Spirit Manager Explains Why Save - Has Been Missing From Pro Dota 2

Moldovian Dota 2 player Vitalie "Save -" Melnic made waves with his young but influential captaincy skills and crisp support gameplay during his tenure with Virtus.pro last year. Despite the successful period, Save - moved to the team’s inactive roster after The International 10 (TI10). Since then, he hasn't been playing competitive Dota 2, despite consistently playing ranked games. While speculations regarding Save-'s absence have been circulating for some time now, Team Spirit's manager, Dmitry "Korb3n" Belov revealed during a recent livestream that Save - is voluntarily not competing in pro Dota 2. Although he has been invited by a number of teams, he simply refuses to play, said Korb3n.

Save - is voluntarily not competing in pro Dota 2 tournaments, according to Spirit manager Korb3n

The year leading up to TI10 had made Save - one of the hottest commodities, but he didn't end up on any of the teams in the post-tournament roster shuffle, and ended up surprising many folks. It turned out to be even more confounding when the player was never seen on any of the teams during the entire Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2021-22.

When Korb3n recently addressed the Twitch viewers, he simply clarified that Save - is not interested in joining a team at the moment. He added that Save - refused to participate in the GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Dubai 2022 in March 2022, despite being invited to play with the team.

Vladimir "RodjER" Nikogosian stepped in for Spirit's position four player Miroslaw "Mira" Kolpakov, who was unable to attend this tournament.

“He just doesn't want to play anywhere, that's all. There's nothing to understand. He had a bunch of offers, he doesn't want to play anywhere. When we went to Dubai, we asked him to be a stand-in and he turned it down. I'm sure he was called, he just said no.”

[Transcriptions via dota2.net, Translations via DeepL Translate]

Mind Games' coach Arsenii "ArsZeeqq" Usov had also reported a couple of months ago that Team Secret had invited Save -, but he turned down the offer.

Though the 20-year-old has not shown any interest in competing, he has maintained close ties to the game through regular pubs gameplay. Based on Dota 2 Pro Tracker, he has played 41 games with a 53.7% win rate over the past eight days. At the time of writing, he is ranked 17th on the MMR Leaderboards, a great place for a support player.

Fans of Save - will be hoping that he returns during the roster shuffle that follows TI11. There is a very slim chance of him playing in the event by joining a team that has qualified for the tournament.