In the Dota 2 realm, the spotlight is on offlaners, and the quest for the ideal one is a competitive race in Europe. PSG.Quest recently welcomed Malik to their offlane position, while Entity announced DM for their offlane and Noone for the mid-lane.
Despite PSG.Quest’s participation in The International 2023, the team has faced challenges in the offlane role, evident by Malik being the fourth offlaner to join Quest this year. Malik briefly filled in for the team at the Riyadh Masters 2023. Quest’s offlane saga began with Faruk “Wuiter” Terci, followed by Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf and Tobias “Tobi” Buchner.
Regardless of the constant changes, Quest felt like they could beat anyone, mostly because the team always switched up its gameplay to accommodate its new offlaners, according to TA2000 in an interview with Dot Esports.
Entity, on the other hand, moved on from its academy-style recruiting by adding two established players to its roster, Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin and Volodymyr “No[o]ne-” Minenko. Both DM and Noone had unimpressive seasons in 2023, but the latter found a way to make it to TI 2023 at the last second with Team SMG.
In previous seasons, Entity usually prioritized picking up new players from the ranked leaderboards, introducing them to the professional scene in the process. While this approach worked for the team, it also created roster instabilities, as some talents would later get snatched by bigger organizations.
The two teams completed their rosters just in time for the ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 tournament. The qualification spots for this $1 million tournament are somewhat limited for almost all regions, meaning it’ll be a challenging ride for rosters who just got together as they won’t have enough time to work on their chemistry.