It’s been a rather quiet week of Dota 2 on the tournament front, but the announcements more than made up for it.

The first week of May wasted no time in dropping big moves left and right, with teams gearing up for The International. Here’s a recap of everything that went down (that’s worth knowing about before the action heats up).

Singaporean organization Team Nemesis hasn’t had the greatest welcome to its Dota 2 venture. After miraculously qualifying for The International 14 – and finishing dead last – Nemesis overhauled its Southeast Asian roster by signing household names like Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon, Anucha “Jabz” Jirawong, and Worawit “Q” Mekchai. 

However, the most recent iteration failed to post anything worth mentioning, and the roster ended up disbanding.

To make up for lost time, the organization has taken a huge gamble by relocating to the Americas region. To start their rebuild, Nemesis has signed former PARIVISION coach Astini – one of the most respected minds in Dota 2.

Astini and Nemesis have taken the roster in a completely different direction – even across the world. While retaining Jabz, the team has signed an Americas core and also placed their bets on an academy player.

The new Nemesis roster is as follows:

The Brazilian coach brought in two of his fellow countrymen – 4nalog and Lelis – to start the rebuild. Nemesis then acquired former GamerLegion player Yamsun, who Astini worked with under Nouns back in 2023.

To wrap up the roster, the team recruited rubikon155, who recently played for Team Spirit Academy, to shoulder the carry role. The youngster is currently the highest-ranked player on the team, sitting 36th on the European leaderboard.

To be honest, this roster doesn’t really scream anything special. On top of that, the region Nemesis will play in remains unclear. The team’s goal is to obviously qualify for The International, but it’ll be a tough ask no matter which region they play in. 

If they stay in Southeast Asia, they’ll have to go against the likes of OG and REKONIX. If South America is where they’re headed, they have Heroic and the South American Rejects. The only viable option would be North America, where GamerLegion may be their only obstacle. 

Either way, I’m not much of a fan, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. 

While we have a little bit of a LAN tournament break, we have 1win Essence, a $100,000 online tournament, to fill the gap. Though this isn’t necessarily a “must-watch” tournament, there were some very interesting developments heading into this event. 

MOUZ has brought in the king himself – Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan – as a stand-in. We haven’t seen the superstar compete since he left Nigma Galaxy in February, but this could signal his return to competition. We all know what he’s capable of, so hopefully we’ll see him join a team and aim for The International – the stage where he belongs. 

1win Essence has also hinted at two huge roster moves. Rumors were brewing that Team Yandex was bringing Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin on a permanent basis, and that Evgeniy “Noticed” Ignatenko would go to PARIVISION to take Valery “tripleS” Lazarev’s spot.

Well, this is exactly what we’re seeing at this event: DM will compete under Yandex, and to be completely honest, I think this move is signed on paper already. On the other hand, PARIVISION has announced that Noticed will be standing in for them at this tournament, but who knows what’ll happen next. 

Onto my personal heroes: the South American Rejects. Last week, this unsponsored squad announced they’d use their tournament winnings from PGL Wallachia Season 8 to stay in Europe, thousands of miles away from home.

I’m happy to say that their efforts have paid off. The Rejects played in DreamLeague Division 2 Season 4, a $50,000 tournament that also served as a qualifier for DreamLeague Season 29. They won the entire event, beating Nigma Galaxy 3-0 in the grand final. 

This win nets them a nice $15,000 reward and also means they’ll stay in Europe for another month. The Peruvian squad will participate in DreamLeague Season 29, a million-dollar tournament that runs from May 13 to 24.

They most likely won’t have to worry about putting bread on the table anymore, as Filipino gaming and entertainment company PlayTime has officially picked them up. 

It has been an extremely productive month for the South American Rejects, going from unsponsored underdogs to having some financial backing in the span of 30 days. However, the job’s not done yet. 

In a recent live stream, top streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel watched a clip of streamer Nicholas “Jynxzi” Stewart playing League of Legends. In said clip, the latter mentioned League is the hardest game in the world, both mentally and mechanically.

Having played both games previously, xQc disagreed, saying Dota 2 is the more difficult game:

“League is easy. League is a joke. Learning League and being decent at League is easy, it’s a joke. Come on bro.

Put a hundred hours in League – if you’re a decent gamer, you should be Gold. A hundred hours in Dota? You are worse than where you started. A hundred hours in Dota, and you’ve actually gone backwards, by a long shot.

And it’ll take you a thousand hours to get past that gap. That’s just how it works.”

And honestly? I don’t think xQc is wrong here.

Dota 2 has a long list of mechanics that’ll take the average player thousands of hours to master – creep aggro, fog of war, lane equilibrium, you name it. And once you’ve figured those out, you have gameplay patches that roll out every few months, changing everything you knew about the game. 

A few months back, Edgar “9class” Naltakian made Slark one of the most popular support heroes in high MMR pubs, and this week, he’s one of the strongest carries in the patch. 

There’s a reason why you’ll see players in Dota 2 with thousands of hours sitting in the lowest rank. There’s just way too much to digest and remember, which is also what makes the game beautiful and addictive.

No matter how many hours you have in the game, there’s always something new to learn.

Every Dota 2 season ends with The International. Even without the eight-figure prize pools of the past, TI is still the tournament every player dreams of lifting the trophy at. With May now upon us, this is typically when Valve announces the eight direct invitations to the event. 

From what we’ve seen so far, six teams are currently the frontrunners for a direct invitation. Though nothing is set in stone, I believe these are the squads who have done more than enough to earn their fast pass to TI:

The remaining invites are still up in the air, but I’m predicting it will come down to Team Spirit, PARIVISION, Xtreme Gaming, and HEROIC. If Valve decides to announce invitations later in the month, DreamLeague Season 29 – starting May 13 – suddenly becomes more important for these teams in question.