Natus Vincere changed their lineup severly about two months ago: Long-time captain Clement „Puppey“ Ivanov and Kuro „KuroKy“ Salehi Takhasomi left the team and were replaced. This change turned out to be good for Na’Vi – the teams performance has improved since then.

No doubt the recent lineup changes for [natus vincere] for severe. The team released its long-time captain Puppey and important player Kuroky. Both joined the [secret team] just days later. The release came in a phase where the results of [natus vincere] for less than convincing compared to the standard they had set themselves throughout the years. A seventh place at The International 2014 for example was their worst performance at the worlds most prestigious Dota tournament ever.

So fans could with reason argue if results would improve with the newly signed players Ivan „VANSKOR“ Skorokhod (former [team empire]) and Artem „fng“ Barshack (former [power rangers]). Both were missing experience and a record of world-class play so far, despite their obvious skills in the game itself.

But the change turned out to be good: Since September [natus vincere] has gathered more than 6.000 points in the World Ranking. For a brief month they even reclaimed the top position in the ranking, however lost it in November to an even better team of [evil geniuses]. But in the past two months, [natus vincere] is back among the five best teams in the world.

What the new team is still missing though is a tournament win. They were close at the Excellent Moscow Cup 2 lately, dominating the group phase and playoffs until losing to [team empire] by 1:3. It was however their biggest success since April, when the old team with Puppey and Kuroky won the Dota 2 Champions League Season 2.

The new [secret team] will be a tough challenger for [natus vincere] though. Both met at ESL One New York and Star Ladder Star Series Season 10 in October – and the [secret team] performed better twice.