Team Spirit was a late bloomer in the 2023 Dota 2 Pro Circuit. Despite performing well regionally, TI10 winners struggled to find success at Major events. However, the tides turned in the summer as Team Spirit won two major events, earning $5.3 million in prize money just before The International 2023.
Whilst happy with the results, team captain Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov detailed Team Spirit’s 2023 season to Dot Esports, revealing that they had been struggling due to their hero pool throughout the year.
“We could have won the Lima Major, but we choked in the upper bracket and continued to make mistakes,” Miposhka said. “But in the second and third Majors, we simply couldn’t play some of the meta heroes, and we didn’t work hard enough to fix those problems in time.”
As Team Spirit struggled to find its identity in the meta, Dota 2 received one of the most significant updates of recent years: Patch 7.34. Following the patch, Team Spirit slowly found its rhythm, taking advantage of a new game version.
“To be honest, the patch doesn’t really matter to me,” Miposhka said. “They can change whatever they want, I just like finding new strategies, so a patch is a new opportunity for me to think of new strategies.”
And, oh boy, did they find some working strategies. Coming into Riyadh Master 2023, a leveled-up version of Team Spirit appeared on stage, storming the event to snatch the $5 million reward for first place, knocking out one of the heavy favorites, Team Liquid, twice in the process.
Miposhka admitted that Team Spirit had a better understanding of the meta and the game at Riyadh, once again underlining that they never had an issue with skill throughout the year.
“We know how to play the game. We make good moves around the map, but the way we picked heroes and the heroes we picked gave us a disadvantage.”
With a working formula under its belt, Team Spirit went on to win DreamLeague S21, and the team is also considered one of the favorites to take the Aegis at TI 2023. Team Spirit still employs a humble approach toward the year’s most prestigious Dota 2 event, however.
Despite currently being on top of their game, Miposhka says they aren’t taking anything for granted since everything can change in one tournament as more teams figure out a Dota 2 patch.
