Heroic are one step away from elimination in ESL Pro League S18

Ahead of the start of group B of ESL Pro League S18, Heroic’s IGL, Casper “cadiaN” Moller declared in an interview that he was not happy with his team’s performance, complaining that the players lacked the confidence to implement the default strategies in many situations.

Now, after several days of matches, we understand why he was so unhappy.

Heroic’s struggles

Heroic started group B of EPL S18 with a victory against a complete outsider called Rooster. This Australian team won the Oceanic Qualifier but everyone knew that they had zero chances of beating the likes of Heroic or Monte in group B.

After this quick 2-0 result, in which Heroic only lost 6 rounds in total, the hard part of the tournament began. And immediately, it became obvious that the Danish team was not ready for the world’s best competitors.

BIG was the first serious opponent and it succeeded in beating cadiaN’s team. The score was 2-0 but the individual map scores paint a very different picture. One that shows how difficult this match was for both sides: 23-25 on Ancient and 13-16 on Inferno.

CadiaN usually has a very good performance, even though his IGL responsibilities don’t allow him to be as sharp as he could be with a gun. But in this match, he was the weakest player on the server, finishing with a KD score of 39-50.

qualified for the last chance stage 🤐 pic.twitter.com/Jmgdr6O3hN

— HEROIC (@heroicgg) September 8, 2023

In the mid bracket, Heroic faced MOUZ and was completely crushed by their rivals. The scores were 8-16 on Mirage and 10-16 on Nuke. At every single turn, MOUZ seemed to know exactly what they had to do to gain an advantage, while Heroic couldn’t adapt to what was happening to them.

David “frozen” Cernansky finished the match with a +22 KD difference. Meanwhile, not a single Heroic player had a positive KD score. What’s strange is that on both maps, the first half looked quite balanced. But in the second half, MOUZ proved to have superior tactics and their focus was considerably better during key moments.

The next match for Heroic will be against Monte. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Heroic’s chances are not good at all. Monte is full of great players, including a former Na’Vi member. But they somehow lost against MIBR in the mid bracket, after losing to BIG in the upper bracket. The battle should be fun to watch.

Header: Heroic