Faith_bian plans to retire after TI11, drops explanation on TI10 finals

The offlaner for PSG.LGD, Zhang "Faith_bian" Ruida just revealed his plans to retire after The International 11 (TI11) on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo. Due to TI10's True Sight nearing release, he also dropped a lengthy message to explain the Grand Final of TI10, where PSG.LGD faced an agonizing defeat to Team Spirit.

Faith_bian is an established player who won TI6 at the young age of 17. He was a part of the legendary Wings Gaming lineup which delivered one of the most dominant performances in TI history. After joining PSG.LGD in 2020, his presence only grew more significant, now standing tall in the world's strongest and most consistent Dota 2 team.

With a massive legacy behind his back, his retirement would certainly mark the end of an era.

On Weibo, Faith_bian stated (translated with Google Translate): "The True (Sight) of TI10 is about to be released. I think I can now send out the (analysis) part of the article I wrote ten days after TI10 finals, hoping to improve everyone's viewing experience from a new perspective."

He further added that he wanted to release the game analysis after TI10, however his organization didn't allow him due to concerns about public opinion. He concluded the post with his retirement announcement: "By the way, I also want to tell everyone: I will retire after TI11, leave the arena forever, and start a new chapter. I've been thinking about this for a while and I think it's the right thing to do, though inevitably with a little bit of regret.

For now, I just wanted to say, to both my teammates and my opponents, that I am more than determined for the matches to come. As a pro player, I'll do everything I can do, and make every endeavor possible, whatever the final results. As long as I did that, I'll have no regret even if I ended in last place in TI," Faith_bian stated.

In 2021, PSG.LGD came to TI10 as a powerful, dominant elephant. They were undefeated and they were ready to claim the championship. However, the annual pattern repeats and PSG.LGD once again fell to the underdogs. The Aegis of Champions slipped away from the grasp of the Chinese region for the 4th year in a row.

The TI10 finals became a black spot in PSG.LGD's history. It is no doubt that the excruciating defeat took a toll on the team, their fans, and the Chinese region. In the Weibo post, Faith_bian shared screenshots of his TI10 finals analysis in the hopes of putting his perspective forward.

A user on Reddit shared translations of the screenshots. The analysis itself is very lengthy, and so we have included a summary of each paragraph below the images.

Following coach Zhang "xiao8" Ning's match-fixing rumors and PSG.LGD's unwarranted loss, a ton of the community speculated that the result was fixed.

"I found out that many fans were unable to accept the fact we lost and chose to believe the games were fixed. It is quite understandable since I do not want to go back and watch the replays myself. There were too many stupid mistakes from our gameplay and decisions," Faith_bian said.

Faith_bian then went into details regarding the drafting for Game 1. He talked about how a first-pick IO didn't work out for them in the first game but they all decided to pick it again in G2. "We all agreed that we lost Game 1 because we performed poorly individually and that there was nothing wrong with our strategy of picking IO first. And so we decided to do the same thing for Game 2," he stated.

Faith_bian took the blame for Game 2's loss as he agreed to a Nature's Prophet pick which drove the team to play the IO in an unfamiliar way. "What went wrong with G2 was that we failed to pick our heroes around the strengths of IO. I take a lot of responsibility for this loss. [Due to the bad laning stage] This had a big effect on our early mid-game, which meant we were not able to play to our heroes’ timings, especially on my Prophet." 

For Game 3, the team had a successful reset. "We huddled as a group and xiao8 encouraged us by saying that 'We are already backed into a corner, so do not be afraid and just play your best.'” Game 4 unfolded even easier for the team after gaining a confidence boost through G3's victory.

In the final game, Faith_bian revealed that they were fairly happy with the drafts except for the Naga Siren ban on their part, which he deemed unnecessary. The laning stage went well but after a failed Smoke attempt, PSG.LGD began to lose control. "We smoked bot side and went towards the top, but managed to catch no one, and Tiny also got caught out bot. [The game] started as a stalemate, then we started getting picked off and we were slowly losing map control… honestly, I don’t remember much. I only know we tried lots of things to try and get our control back, but unfortunately, nothing changed. In my opinion, we lost this game at that smoke previously mentioned. We simply lost too much of our map control because of it." 

Faith_bian concluded his analysis, "In the end, we lost simply because we did not play well, what else can we say other than [Team Spirit] were the better players."

The final part of his screenshots described how his team felt after the loss. But he remains admirably positive, looking at the ups and downs of competition as something motivating. He also paid his respects to Team Spirit.

"During these five games (TI10 finals), it felt as if we had fallen off a cliff, but managed to desperately hang onto the edge, slowly climb back up, only to lose our balance on the last step and fall back down. Though I guess results like these are what keep esports exciting and are what keep me motivated to get to the top. Right now, watching Team Spirit from the bottom of the cliff, I’m reminded of myself at TI6, though they’ve been through much more than we did, and are a lot stronger. I truly respect and admire their performance throughout TI10," Faith_bian stated.

The revelation of his incoming retirement means that TI11 will be his final competition in Dota 2. Faith_bian will ride for victory one last time with his teammates in PSG.LGD in October 2022. Being 24 years old, many deem him too young to retire. However, he made it clear that he wants to embark on a new journey.

Not too long ago, Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen also revealed his plan to retire after TI11. Will we see more players exit the scene? Do we have to bid more aching goodbyes after TI11 ends?