Garter leaves Dota 2 in favour of LoL due to “broken” competitive system

Ylli "garter" Ramadani, a former Dota 2 professional player announced he will be ditching Dota 2 in favour of League of Legends, citing Dota's broken competitive system as a reason for his switch.

Last few weeks were filled with an ongoing discussion between Dota 2 and League of Legends pros and personalities who publicly argued over which of the two MOBA titles is "the best", which started a heated debate that spread across both communities. There have been many talks about the topic before and while there is no answer which would satisfy both sides of the conflict, garter's strong accusations of Dota2’s flawed competitive scene just might have tipped the scale slightly into League of Legends' favour.

The Albanian Dota 2 professional took on Twitter earlier this Thursday to unveil his plans for the future with a post titled "Out with the old, in with the new".

https://twitter.com/gartergaming/status/1212755475755937792

In his Twitter post, garter talked about his career as a professional Dota 2 player, which started back in 2011 at Virus Gaming, which was a French Dota 2 squad. Garter claimed he has dedicated the last decade of his life for Dota 2, competing, grinding, streaming and moving across the ocean back and forth all with one goal in mind – to become one of the best and compete at The International. Unfortunately, he failed to bring his ambitions to fruition.

"For the last 10 years I gave it my all, sometimes less and sometimes more than others, but always my best. Unfortunately, not all of the best-laid plans come to fruition. For the last three + years I have encountered many obstacles one after another in the competitive scene," said garter.

The Albanian former Dota 2 pro player then went on to address the issues Dota 2 competitive scene has, starting with concerns over Tier 1 of the competitive scene.

As stated by garter, any high level or "even $500 salaried team" can poach any player from any team, at any given time, be it midseason, one day after qualifiers or even mid-event. As an example, he talked about Dendi's stack, who won the tournament and only a day later saw Alexey "nongrata" Vasilyev got poached by Team Spirit, which in garter's eyes ruined the team's immense potential.

Supposedly, garter witnessed such incident happen numerous times before in his career. While he was playing at ProDota Gaming he saw his teammates Aydin "iNSaNiA" Sarkohi, Michael "miCKe" Vu and Malthe "Biver" Winther all poached from the roster at various times.

He had the same thing happen to him when he moved to Team Leviathan, which was a huge opportunity for garter, however, he was forced to return back to Europe shortly after joining the team. Reason for that being the disbandment of the team following the departure of Brian "BananaSlamJamma" Canavan and Jaron "monkeys-forever" Clinton who got poached by VGj.Storm.

Those, are, however, only a few examples he pointed out, claiming "I have another 100 examples I can give but I'm trying to keep this short but poignant."

Garter went on to address the Tier 2 scene, where his main concern is the lack of online events, lack of funds in the scene and irregular salary payments from the teams and organizations. As stated by garter, he is owed at least five-digits worth of money, which he believes he will never see.

"Three years ago I had a $2k a month salary with multiple bootcamps and equipment and consistently was offered positions on other teams that were equal to or better terms, two years ago I was offered multiple $1k salary teams and last year $500 or fly to SEA, etc to compete for an unestablished organization with higher hopes —- because the funds for anything less than tier 1 teams don't exist anymore so the sponsors aren't interested."

While all claims so far are very concerning for the Dota 2 professional scene, the final straw which pushed garter to leave the scene and join League of Legends was the flawed MMR system, claiming there have been too many changes and inconsistencies which resulted in either one-hour long queues or extremely unbalanced free-for-alls.

"I am a 2 account 8kmmr player (top 100 EU on two accounts) but I cannot play my role because X random 4kmmr guy decides that he is somehow more important and takes it," said garter.

"I can't even stream under these conditions because I'm either not enjoying the game at that time or it ends up a complete disaster with ppl under-performing (because of the skill gap), pinging, throwing games or destroying items which becomes unplayable for me and unwatchable for viewers."

Garter believes the main reason that caused that is that people are tired of the system, which constantly changes and as a by-product creates a toxic community, making the game unenjoyable for everyone involved.

Because of all those reasons, garter decided he had enough and simply has no more strength in him to keep on fighting against a "broken system" which doesn't reward those who try to be the best, but is instead creates a toxic environment and unenjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Despite all his issues with the system, garter still believes Dota 2 is an amazing game which helped him meet some incredible people, who all had a positive impact on his life, however, he believes the system has way too many flaws, which made his decision to hang up his Dota 2 hat way easier than expected.

While garter is leaving Dota 2 competitive scene for good, he has claimed his career as a professional gamer is not over yet, as he is not old enough to retire just yet. For that reason, he has decided to dive into the world of League of Legends, where he will continue to work hard until he reaches his ultimate goal, which is to become one of the best players in the world.

Garter announced he will share his entire League of Legends journey with the community live on his Twitch channel.

While losing a player with such hard-working mentality and drive to be the best is a huge loss to Dota 2 scene, we can at least be happy he has not given up on the esports scene entirely but has instead opted to take his expertise into a rival MOBA title.