ATF calls Jabz a D-level offlaner – as a joke

Dota 2 tournament organizers try to get professional players involved to some degree in what the talent side does, just to give fans a glimpse into the minds of the best players on the planet. It also makes the events more interesting because it creates a stronger bond between the audience and the “characters” in the “story”.

At ESL One Malaysia, two of the players that got called on the panel were Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf from OG and Anucha “Jabz” Jirawong from Fnatic. Both of them are exceptional competitors but ATF is six years younger than Jabz and a bit cocky from time to time.

The incident

To create some fun content for the fans, the organizers of the tournament asked ATF to rate a number of offlaners from S-tier to D-tier. Jabz was placed by Ammar in the D-tier row, being the only offlaner rated as a D-tier player.

The justification given for this choice immediately lets you know that this was a joke: “Cause he writes lol in chat. And he copies me on everything.” ATF went on to categorize himself as a C-tier offlaner, which again, clearly tells you that he’s not taking it seriously at all.

Both players are probably A-tier offlaners at this point, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. In the case of Ammar, he’s just 17 and will probably play Dota 2 for at least 10 more years. If everything goes well, even 15 years from now he might still be around competing against the young generations of that time.

The response

Jabz was later called to the panel and he acknowledged the joke, as well as the fact that his use of “lol” in the global chat was not intended to be malicious in any way. So we could hardly say that Jabz now has a beef with ATF.

The tactic

In traditional sports and especially in fighting sports like boxing or MMA, competitors often behave in an aggressive and disrespectful way to each other. Usually, this is all done for show and views. Rarely do we see people do it for real, but it does happen from time to time.

This advertising method has been criticized by some sports analysts, who are nostalgic about the good old days when everyone was respectful and nobody boasted about their skills. Hopefully, Dota 2 won’t go in a toxic direction either, at least not at the professional level. Because in pubs, the situation is really hard to control.

Header: OG