XNova Announces That He Is Looking for a New Team

Malaysian Dota 2 player Yap "xNova" Jian Wei has announced on Twitter that he is looking for a new team to sign up with. This comes forth as rumors were spreading about him potentially joining a new team in China. The Dota 2 player stated on Twitter that even though it was a little late, he was still looking for a new team, ahead of the upcoming Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2021-22. This tweet comes one week before the roster lock date of 21st Nov 2021 for the first regional league. The last major stint for xNova was with EHOME back in July 2021.

XNova says on Twitter that he is LFT

In his tweet, xNova, who plays as the position five and usually fulfils the role of a captain, acknowledged the late timing of his announcement.

Currently, there are a number of roster shuffles happening across all six regions and very few top teams have announced their final rosters publicly. Recently, rumors around xNova's new Chinese super team made the rounds. The rumors suggested that Jin "flyfly" Zhiyi, Lu "Somnus丶M" Yao, Ren "eLeVeN" Yangwei, Xu "fy" Linsen, and xNova were putting together a new team. Invictus Gaming and Vici Gaming currently hold contracts with flyfly and eLeVeN respectively, whereas Somnus and fy are free agents after having recently parted ways with Elephant.

However, xNova's tweet now suggests that none of his prior plans panned out.

EHOME was xNova's last notable team, with whom he played for a year between 2020 and 2021. Its performances in the Chinese tournaments were modest, and when it came to the first regional league of the DPC 2021, the team struggled even more. At the FMWH Season 3 Dota 2 Championship, Liu "Sylar" Jiajun, EHOME's new carry, helped rekindle EHOME's hopes, as the team won the competition. But sadly later on, the team didn't qualify for the second major and The International 10 (TI10) after its performance at the DPC remained largely lackluster. On 31st July 2021, EHOME benched its entire team and xNova officially departed the following day.

XNova competed with fellow Malaysian players under the 'Ragdoll' tag in the qualifiers for BTS Pro Series S8 in September 2021, but the team did not qualify for the tournament.

XNova has had an underwhelming period of results after gaining a great deal of success and fame at PSG.LGD from 2018-20. In his tenure, he won two Majors and earned second and third places at TI8 and TI9.

It will be interesting to see if xNova can find a new team in such a short time frame. While the roster lock date is 21st Nov 2021, the first regional league of the DPC 2021-22 begins on 29th Nov 2021.