Dendi puts an end to his Dota 2 team

Danil “Dendi” Ishutin, the Dota 2 player who became famous for winning the first edition of The International with Natus Vincere, has finally admitted defeat in his attempt to succeed with the team he founded almost two and half years ago.

Making B8 a tier-1 team looked extremely challenging from the start. For a while, people were sceptical about the project simply because they hadn’t seen Dendi do anything big in more than three years. Then, as the losses accumulated, everyone knew that the players he had picked did not have the skills to compete with the world’s best.

B8’s trials and roster changes

B8’s first roster didn’t look bad. In fact, many of its players were well-known at the time —Nikola “LeBronDota” Popovic, Andrii “Ghostik” Kadyk, Rinat “KingR” Abdullin, and Steve  “Xcalibur” Ye were all quite famous and competing in a high MMR bracket alongside Major and TI champions of that time.

What was probably lacking in that first B8 roster was a strong captain. Dendi was a good Mid but he has never been considered a skilled IGL. Perhaps he hoped that the players he had found would find their own way and succeed with minimal assistance. But that didn’t happen.

B8’s performance throughout 2020 was abysmal and their win rate was probably below 20%. Apart from the occasional victory against a decent opponent like Infamous, Godsent, or HellRaisers, the results were disappointing. This quickly led to roster changes.

By June 2020, all of the original members of the team had left and Dendi had to bring in new players. In some cases, his choices weren’t bad at all. For example, Remco “Crystallis” Arets was regarded as a good player and has since been acquired by Team Secret. But in Dota 2 you can’t succeed unless you have five good players, not just a few, and B8 didn’t have that.

Notable results

Among B8’s results, the most notable were the following:

• 5th – 6th place at WePlay! Dota 2 Tug of War: Mad Moon
• Participation at ESL One Los Angeles 2020 Online: Europe & CIS
• 9th – 10th place at BEYOND EPIC: Europe/CIS
• Participation at ESL One CIS Online Season 1: Lower Division
• 6th place at ESL One DPC Eastern Europe Season 2: Lower Division
• 3rd place at Dota 2 Champions League Season 3

For a team that aspired to maybe participate at The International or at least a DPC Major one day, these results are quite modest. But they still kept Dendi afloat and gave him a slightly more numerous audience on his Twitch stream. Perhaps one day, he will give it another shot and be more successful.

Header: Danil “Dendi” Ishutin