Team Falcons are qualified for the EWC 2025. But are they ready for it?
It happened at the PGL Wallachia Season 4, but nobody expected Team Falcons to be out of the DreamLeague Season 26 before the playoffs. The team had an amazing run at the BLAST Slam 3, getting to the grand final against Tundra. What's wrong with the team that won almost every tournament in 2024?
Their Bo2 group stage performance wasn't disappointing, as they got two wins and three ties. However, losing 2-0 to PARIVISION and Yakult Brothers was a hit they couldn't come back from. Their last match before the tiebreakers was against NaVi Jr, the team that eliminated them at Wallachia. Despite not eliminating the Falcons, a 1-1 was enough to send the Falcons to a tiebreaker against Gaimin Gladiators.
DreamLeague Season 26 tiebreakers: Gaimin Gladiators destroy Team Falcons in Game 3
It wasn't an amazing group stage for Gaimin Gladiators either, and this is a team that is just rebuilding after Melchior "Seleri" Hillenkamp left. The new squad is also playing with Arman "Malady" Orazbayev, a young player from Kazakhstan. Despite making an amazing duo with Alimzhan "Watson" Islambekov, he's had little Tier 1 experience.
But the first game wasn't anyone's fault. Falcons wanted to stay at DreamLeague Season 26 no matter what, and they had a beautiful draft to prove it. While Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf got to play his signature Viper, it was Wu "Sneyking" Jingjun's unkillable Abaddon who stole the show. It was a quick 31-minute game, and it looked like the Falcons were close to their best performance.
Gaimin Gladiators knew how to adapt, and they did something no one would imagine: Puck support. At first, this looked like Falcons had forced them to quickly change laning decisions just to try to give Quinn "Quinn" Callahan a good lane. However, as Purge explained later, it was an amazingly smart decision, since it countered ATF's offlane Pango.
This, paired with a Nature's Prophet pick for Watson, gave them more than a 9k gold advantage by the 20-minute mark. The split push was massive, and their map control made playing Puck support look really easy.
The tiebreakers' third game of DreamLeague Season 26 was even worse for Falcons. They even had a misclick blooper in their favor, but still were not able to get any kind of advantage. By the 15-minute mark, it was already over, and at minute 25, after trying and failing to steal Roshan, it was over.
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Is Team Falcons making changes ahead of the Esports World Cup 2025?
It sounds like a possibility after a year of mixed results, but the team still had a lot of highs together. They reached the podium multiple times, and the team is still capable of beating any Tier 1 opponent they face. However, the amount of EPT Points they have is so big that they can make at least one change without losing their direct invite.
Will they do it? Most likely not. The teams are already locked for EWC 2025 and The International, and there's no single player to blame for the team's performance. The longevous patch and the number of tournaments played one after another may have affected Falcons during their DreamLeague Season 26 run. The new Dota 2 patch 7.39 will likely be a breath of fresh air for them to rebuild.
Now that the new patch is out, a lot of interesting games will come from DreamLeague Season 26. Stay updated in our Dota 2 section!
