posted by Abelle,
Puppey may be a controversial figure today in the Dota 2 scene but the fact remains that he is one of only three players to have competed in every single TI since the first way back at Gamescom 2011.

Puppey’s esports road started long before Dota 2 was released, but we pick up the story as the first TI was approaching, and Na`Vi had just formed their new roster to take a shot at the mind-blowing $1.6 million prize pool. This was the start of one of Dota 2’s greatest dynasties so far.

With TI announced and Dota 2 beta keys in hand, Na`Vi started an intensive bootcamp to prepare for the event. Some DotA fans doubted the squad, saying that there would be communication issues, but Puppey’s fluent Russian made him an easy fit for the CIS squad. Any further doubts were put to rest when Na`Vi sailed through The International almost undefeated (their only lost game was Game 1 of the Best-of-three Grand Final).

Chen, Puppey’s signature hero, was a big part of their first TI and continues to have impact to this day despite being almost entirely out of the meta. It’s still his most-played hero by far in competitive matches, though he’s only played it six times since TI6.


During TI, ArtStyle (Virtus.pro’s current coach) was Na`Vi’s captain, though Puppey said in a pre-TI interview that drafting had been more of a team discussion than solely the captain’s job. Shortly after TI, ArtStyle left the team, and Puppey became the new captain. He’s been captain of his team ever since.

Back in late 2011-early 2012, Na`Vi were on top of the world.They won tournament after tournament leading up to TI2, but with less than half a month to go before the big event in Seattle, they stumbled in The Defense Season 2, coming 7th-8th after a rough couple of playoff games.



At TI2, Na`Vi’s first group stage match was against Invictus Gaming. They lost 2-0, a taste of things to come. After a slow start and a couple more 1-1 ties, Na`Vi began picking up steam and secured several 2-0 wins to secure a spot in the upper bracket.

It was just the second TI and it already looked like there would be a repeat winner. Na`Vi took down three titans of Chinese Dota 2 in the upper bracket - Team DK, Invictus Gaming and LGD. It was not meant to be, however. iG fought back through the lower bracket finals and took the win in their third match against Na`Vi that event 3-1.

Credit: Valve

Still, Puppey and Na`Vi weren’t done dominating the Dota 2 scene. They played in many cups, leagues and LANs, maintaining a high level of play. In early 2013, Na`Vi announced that LighTofHeaveN would be unable to play for the next two months, and a very old friend of Puppey’s would be replacing him. That friend was KuroKy.

On the same day, Na`Vi also announced that they had decided to drop ARS-ART in search of “fresh blood”, signing Funn1k in his place. These two changes were the most drastic roster change for Na`Vi since forming.

It didn’t slow them down. Na`Vi won two offline events (The Defense Season 4 and RaidCall Dota 2 League Season 3) right before TI3. They went on to dominate their group and play in their third straight TI final. The Alliance vs Na`Vi final match will live on as one of the greatest Valve event finals in history, but it was the beginning of the end for Na`Vi’s dynasty.

Credit: Valve

After an explosive end to 2013 and even beginning of 2014, Na`Vi finally started to slow down around April, and the 9th season of StarLadder. Even so, the team stuck together through TI4, where Na`Vi missed their first Grand Final. They placed 7th-8th, a decent result but enough to trigger a desire for change.

Both Puppey and KuroKy announced that they had left Na`Vi shortly after TI4. Their new organization was a poorly kept secret, but Team Secret’s roster was officially revealed in their first StarLadder Season 10 match against Alliance on August 27th. Puppey and Kuro had recruited some of the best of the best, though they might have been a couple years too early. In fact, the three players to join the initial Team Secret roster are now all on OG - s4, n0tail and Fly.

The new EU dream team went on to take second in that season of StarLadder and 3rd in The Summit 2, a promising start. In 2015, they took 3rd at DAC, 1st at The Summit 3 and 1st at ESL One Frankfurt. Both Fly and n0tail were removed from the team around the start of 2015, and replaced by Arteezy and zai. The team had quickly become a fan favourite, and many were predicting that Puppey was on the path to a fourth TI Grand Final.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well as Team Secret fans were hoping. They played very in the group stage but upon reaching the playoffs they were immediately knocked into the lower bracket by EHOME. They beat Invictus Gaming in their first lower bracket match, but lost to Virtus.pro in the second and were eliminated in 7th-8th place.

Credit: Valve


It wasn’t all bad for old-school Na`Vi fans at TI5 though, because they got to enjoy the moment when the “random” Pudge cosplayer from the crowd turned out to be Dendi, sitting next to Puppey. It was a bittersweet nostalgia bomb, as both players’ teams had already been eliminated from the event, Team Secret just a few hours earlier that day.

Everyone but Puppey left the team after TI5 but he still managed to assemble a new roster with plenty of promise.

1 - EternalEnvy2 - w33haa3 - Misery4 - Puppey5 - Pieliedie— Kemal Sadikoglu (@ksadikoglu) August 22, 2015

The new Secret played well in enough events shortly after TI5 that they received a direct invite to The Frankfurt Major, the first of Valve’s new Majors. They dominated, taking the direct path to the Grand Final through the upper bracket. Their opponent? Former teammates Fly and n0tail on the newly formed organization, OG. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. OG took the Major championship in a 3-1 win.

2015-2016 was packed with three Majors between TI5 and TI6, so there wasn’t much time between each Valve event. Secret’s best result in the interim was a measly 5th-6th at StarLadder i-League Season 1. However, they came out swinging at The Shanghai Major in March, beat OG in the first round of the upper bracket and took home the trophy after a 3-1 win over KuroKy’s Team Liquid.

Puppey and w33 share a birthday on the same day as The Shangshai Major Grand Final (May 6).


With this championship, Puppey became the first player to win two Valve events (TI and Shanghai). He wasn’t the only one for long, with OG winning the next three Majors, but still no one has managed to win TI more than once.

It seemed like, in spite of losing his entire roster post-TI5, Puppey had a good thing going again, but Secret decided to kick w33 and Misery just days after winning in Shanghai. Arteezy and Universe joined, but after an absolute failure in The Manila Major, Universe headed back to EG, and Puppey’s team was in shambles ahead of TI6.

Secret had to go through open qualifiers to make it to Seattle that year, and they did. Their performance in the European qualifier was good, but when it came to the world stage, they seemed lost. After a poor group stage, the team didn’t make it past the first round of the lower bracket.

Puppey nearly lost his entire team again, but this time pieliedie stuck around in the shuffle. It was rebuilding time again, and despite the rough times, Puppey was still a community favourite. That would change just a month later.

EternalEnvy released a lengthy blog post with screenshots of conversations between himself, Puppey and the Team Secret director at the time, Kemal Sadikoglu. The allegations ranged from a 10% pay cut players were unaware of, to bullying and physical aggression. True or not, the community turned on Puppey and he went radio silent for months. His final statement was posted to Twitter on October 18th 2016, and he didn’t post again until March of this year.

I'm not getting into a war of words. Those that know me well know that I'm not that person described and (cont) https://t.co/RLH19K3RFI— Clement Ivanov (@CLEMENTINATOR) October 18, 2016


Since then, he’s slowly been working on rebuilding both his image and his team. It’s been a slow start for Team Secret, but they’ve put together a solid roster in time for TI7. In the mean time, we get to enjoy plenty of memes about monitor smashing and 10%, and we've got a damn good Dota 2 team with an extremely experienced captain leading them, with seven TIs and counting.



  • Abelle
    Abelle

    Abelle

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