Another beastcoast player leaves to play with new team

The wave might be moving on after just a few months.

Image via Valve
Recommended Videos

This article is brought to you by StatBanana, the best Dota 2 strategy tool.


It has not been a good week for beastcoast’s Dota 2 team, as another player has left the organization to compete in the 2019-20 Dota Pro Circuit with a new squad. 

Leonardo “Mandy” Viana is the third player to depart beastcoast and the first to do so in order to form a new stack. His new team, e-Lions, will be competing in South America once the DPC begins in a few weeks, but that widens the hole left in the North American squad’s roster. 

https://twitter.com/pghfong/status/1174689229777121280

As of now, beastcoast only has two players under contract and have not made a single comment on social media about any of the changes. Braxton “Brax” Paulson and Michael “ixmike88” Ghannam are the last remnants of a team that looked like it was on the rise in the NA scene. 

Before Mandy’s departure, Eric “Ryoya” Dong decided to join Geek Fam and a very talented roster in Southeast Asia, while Joel “MoOz” Ozambela skipped town to join an NA rival in J Storm. This comes just months after the team surprised a lot of fans by placing third at the NA qualifiers for The International 2019. 

With free agency nearing its end and most of the good players off the board, there aren’t going to be many opportunities for beastcoast to improve on what it already had if the team keeps waiting to address these departures. 

The team’s Twitter account still has Dota 2 featured in the header and tried to make it clearboi the organization wanted to try to become relevant in the scene. But with how little money there is in tier two Dota, especially in NA, it might be a calculated decision to not compete anymore. 

Screengrab via beastcoast

If Brax and ixmike88 leave in the following weeks, that will probably signify the end of beastcoast’s short stint in the professional Dota 2 scene. 

Either way, all three of the team’s former players will be competing in the upcoming qualifiers for the first DPC Major and Minor of the season, which begin on Oct. 5.

Author
Image of Cale Michael
Cale Michael
Lead Staff Writer for Dota 2, the FGC, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and more who has been writing for Dot Esports since 2018. Graduated with a degree in Journalism from Oklahoma Christian University and also previously covered the NBA. You can usually find him writing, reading, or watching an FGC tournament.