It’s the end of an era for Heroic

Over the last two years, Heroic came very close to dominating Counter-Strike’s esports scene and were, for short periods of time, the number 1 team in the world.

They finished 3^rd – 4^th at PGL Major Stockholm 2021, won Pinnacle Cup Championship, finished 2^nd at the IEM Rio Major, won BLAST Premier: Fall Finals 2022 and Spring Final 2023, and finished IEM Katowice 2023 in 2^nd place.

All of these results put the organization in a very special club. After years of struggles, Heroic were finally regarded as being among the best of the best, up there with Natus Vincere, G2 Esports, FaZe Clan, and Team Vitality.

As the team’s IGL, Casper “cadiaN” Moller played a huge role in all this transformation and dedicated himself completely to the team’s success. But now he got benched because his vision for the future is incompatible with that of the club.

It’s hard to say what happened internally and why Heroic, all of a sudden, went from being a top 5 team to finishing 21^st – 28^th at ESL Pro League S18. What we do know is that without cadiaN’s leadership, this organization is likely to go down very quickly.

Thank you, @caspercadiaN ❤️‍🔥 pic.twitter.com/Wfe1MT10FB

— HEROIC (@heroicgg) October 4, 2023

Counter-Strike is a mentality game these days

Ahead of EPL’s playoffs, I spoke to nine players and all of them said the same thing when it comes to performance. The skill gap between the world’s top 10 teams is so small that the result is often decided by psychological factors.

The teams that have great chemistry often prevail because of their ability to deal with setbacks and make epic comebacks. Heroic were clearly not feeling good at EPL S18, which is why they failed so miserably.

They’re still the same team that finished 3^rd – 4^th at Gamers8 2023, but the relationships between players are obviously not as good as before.

Now that cadiaN will finally leave the club after three and a half years of work, it’s not clear who will replace him.

He’s not exactly easy to replace given his vast experience and excellent IGL skills. And since he got benched because Heroic didn’t want to make the roster changes he proposed (probably because of financial reasons), the likelihood of the club bringing in a top-tier player for a lot of money are quite small.

One name that comes to mind is dupreeh, but is Vitality willing to let him go for a reasonable price?

Header: Heroic