Season 4 and us. (WALL OF TEXT INC)

Hey guys, my name is Barn and for the last 2 years I have been the coach/manager for Team Dignitas SMITE, now known as Novus Orsa. This is not going to be full of drama, so if that’s why you are reading I apologise in advance. I just wanted to talk through the changes and the reasons behind everything.



All I will say on the topic of SPL, is that Team Dignitas has retained their spot, meaning as of right now we are not in SPL, but you should be seeing us soon. This will become clear once everything is properly announced by both Team Dignitas and HiRez, and so until then we are not commenting on it.



Under Team Dignitas we have been in every split of SPL since the start of Season 2, and every split it would not be out of order to describe our performance as ‘frustratingly mediocre’. We have never been able to pull out the important wins and have never placed higher than 4th/5th, and despite making it to both Super Regionals we’ve never been able to pull out the wins that count.



After dropping out of contention for Worlds in November, myself, Shadow, Frosti and Duck3y discussed the idea of looking for other players to fill our duo lane. There were some clashes of personality within the team, notably between Shadow and Suntouch. We also felt that despite Bigman being a really solid player, his playstyle wasn’t something that fit particularly well with the rest of the team. The team felt that he was often very hesitant to play aggressive, and we weren’t that happy with his engaging. FrostiaK, Shadow and even Duck3y are quite aggressive players, and when one of your main engages is less comfortable playing like that it does lead to some issues.



Whatever your views on Bigman and Sun, we feel that we made the right call, and I’m happy to see Bigman find himself on a really solid roster, and respect Sun’s decision to focus for the moment on his stream. I hope to see him make a return to competitive some time.



We were struggling to find a roster we were happy with, until Frezzyy (PANDALIKE) came to us saying he’d been kicked off Obey. We have obviously played with him before and know what he’s like as a player, and since that we were pretty much sorted on playing with him. Top-tier support players are especially rare in Europe, so being able to field one of the ones with more experience is a definite confidence boost.



It is crazy how much Frezzyy has changed over his time with Obey. When he left us, he had the nickname of ‘CPU fan’ whilst at LAN, as he was so quiet we joked that you couldn’t hear him talk over the sound of his computer whilst on stage. Playing with him now, he has quickly become one of the main shot callers on the team and is always ready to give feedback and improvements in discussions during and after the games, and it’s really awesome to see how much he’s grown as a player.



There is obviously going to be a period where synergy will need to be worked on, but that is the same with any new addition to the Jungle/Mid/Support combo.



We had a lot more choice when looking for a new adc, but few that we were actually comfortable with. FleuryQ originally tried out for us as a jungler with FrostiaK at adc, but after a few sets of scrims we weren’t really sold on the idea. Whatever you think of FrostiaK (aka the world's most inconsistent player), we still feel like he is one of the strongest junglers in the game, and we are going to do what we can to remove this label he’s had since the roster formed 2 years ago. Once upon a time he was known as one of the top junglers alongside QvoFred, and for good reason.



My favourite nickname for him is ‘Frosti First-Blood’, either giving it up and feeding his brains out, or getting it and going crazy. We also like to say that he rolls a dice before every game and the number he gets decides how well he’ll play: 1 being the classic 0-16, 6 being 16-0. This season I’m aiming to get him some weighted dice, so we’ll see if that helps (Fingers crossed).



It was Fleury himself who suggested trying out for adc leaving Frosti in his main role after a talk with him after scrims, and almost straight away we noticed a difference. Despite him not being completely comfortable in the position yet, he is already showing he can hold his own against SPL adc’s. He is an extremely enthusiastic and optimistic player, and brings an atmosphere of positivity to the team, even when scrims haven’t gone well. He has meshed really well with the guys already, and I really hope we get to see what he’s capable of doing once he cements himself in the role. He has said to me he feels that he can be one of the best in his role, and his confidence in saying so leads me to believe he’ll put in every ounce of work he can to realise this statement.



We have always been a team to trust in the potential of players who maybe haven’t proven themselves / haven’t had the opportunity to, like Rens and Duck3y. Sometimes this doesn’t work out as well though (Sorry Dodo), but it’s still a risk we’re happy to take when we find a player we enjoy playing with.



By now ShadowNightmare and FrostiaK must be the longest still-running Mid / Jungle combo (If I’m wrong I haven’t actually looked). They are both really smart guys, and I’m happy to still be a part of their team. Even when the team wasn’t performing well, Shadow was the one player from our team that a lot of the time made it onto people’s lists of ‘Best Midlaners’, and he’s also shown to be a really strong leader. Out of everyone that has been on our team, he is probably the player most people would have issues with - he is very confident in his own ability and what he thinks is the ‘right’ way to play the game and this can make him quite stubborn.



Due to this he can often be quite frustrating to argue against, and he can be very blunt with his criticism if he feels you are not playing correctly. Some people can deal with this and work around it, and others can’t and start to get annoyed by it. Whilst in the off season, both Duck3y and Fleury were scrimming with another lineup, in case we couldn’t get a roster together, along with some other ex team members. The fact that Duck3y chose to continue playing with us, and Shadow, and Fleury still wanted to tryout for us, is enough for me to feel confident that the ‘core’ sticking together is the right decision and that Shadow is not this ‘dictator’ that some players try to make him out to be.



Duck3y is a cutie, and although he can be a little ( or a lot) dense sometimes outside of the game, we still feel like he has a great deal more to show. I think that we could see Duck3y proving himself among the best solo laners in Europe this season if he’s prepared and motivated to keep putting the work in and doesn’t get disheartened when either he or the team stumble. It’s been really cool seeing him grow in confidence from when he first joined the team - the trip to Group Stages in October was not only his first time to the States, or out of the UK on his own, but his first time on a plane.



All in all I’m really excited to see this lineup progress throughout the season, and I hope we can make some waves.



Thank you to anyone that obliged me and stuck through to the end of this wall of text, and I apologise for those many minutes of your life you won’t get back. Hopefully we can shake this mediocrity we have found ourselves under time and time again, and really show up when it counts (and maybe also showing that Dig were wrong to not have faith in us, if it isn’t too much to ask!).



Barn out.

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