Open the Teams tab on Liquipedia, filter by post-ESL Birmingham changes, and pin every squad that lists three or more new names. Those pages update within 15 minutes of an official tweet, so you will spot the next megadeal before Reddit threads explode.
OG just spent $1.4 million to buy out watson and Kyky from Entity, pushing their total wage bill above the $5 million mark for the first time in the org history. The pair arrive with a combined 2025 kill-participation of 78 %, the highest among all carry-support duos that played more than 40 DPC games.
Meanwhile, PSG.LGD locked in NothingToSay on a 12-month contract that includes a seven-figure streaming clause with Douyu. The mid laner left Aster only 36 hours after their Birmingham lower-bracket exit, setting the fastest transfer window between two Chinese giants since xiao8 moved to Newbee in 2014.
North America finally lands a headline steal: Shopify Rebellion swapped Fly for Saksa and added Quinn as stand-in coach, raising their average MMR from 10,900 to 11,630. That jump equals the gap between TSM and Thunder Awaken at the last major, so expect them to break the 0-6 curse against South American squads.
Bookmark the WePlay roster tracker and set alerts for the "released" tag. With only 42 days left until TI 2026 regional qualifiers, every remaining free agent will sign within the next ten, and history says at least one organization will drop its entire lineup on the deadline to dodge transfer taxes.
Transfer Tracker: Who Signed, Who Benched, Who Forced Out
Filter every post-TI5 shuffle rumour by one rule: if the contract expires before 1 January 2026, assume the player is already on a new team voice-chat.
OG axed Ceb spot and paid 1.4 M USD to buy out ATF from Nigma; the 19-year-old off-laner signed a three-year deal with a 1.8 M buy-out clause that activates only after TI7. Expect Ceb to coach Quest while keeping stream rights, giving OG a cheaper, louder voice on broadcast days.
- Team Liquid – benched miCKe, signed Yuragi carry, moved Nisha to mid.
- PSG.LGD – lost NothingToSay to retirement, promoted 17-year-old Chinese ladder prodigy "lzl".
- Shopify Rebellion – released Arteezy, signed skiter; Fear returns as pos-5.
- Falcons – paid 900 k USD for K1, moved Cr1t- to coach, kept Malr1ne.
- Tundra – kicked Nine, signed Bryle; Saksa inactive.
- Team Spirit – benching Mira, trialling 15-year-old Russian support "f5".
Entity tried to keep Watson but Falcons triggered the 650 k USD release; Entity replaced him with Shad, borrowed from HR for 40 % of the next three tournament prizes, a cheaper swap that still keeps them in WEU qualifiers.
Chinese super-team rules forced Azure Ray to drop Somnus; he joins zero-cost stack "Dark Horse" with Chalice, fy, xNova and newcomer "Redpanda", giving CN fans a fresh storyline without burning import slots.
North America lost three captains in one week: Fly left EG, SVG got benched by Nouns, and Dubu visa issues pushed SR to grab BoBoKa as stand-in pos-4. The region now has only two TI-qualified slots, so any roster that finishes outside top-4 in the next major drops straight to open qualifiers.
- Watch Falcons boot-camp scrims–they play 12 games a day, stream four of them, and leak drafts on purpose to bait bans.
- Bet on Liquid first LAN with Yuragi; he averages 790 GPM on patch 7.37c, highest among all new carries.
- Expect OG to trial a sixth "shadow" player before the Riyadh Masters; ATF still learns English call-outs, so they need a bilingual sub.
How much buy-out did Team Falcons pay for Malr1ne mid swap
Team Falcons wired exactly $1.35 million to BetBoom account on 14 May, setting a new record for a single-position buy-out in Dota 2 history. The deal includes $1.05 million upfront and two $150 k installments tied to Falcons qualifying for the next two Majors; if they miss either, the remaining balance is voided and BetBoom keeps the player merchandising rights through 2027.
The number looks steep, but Falcons locked Malr1ne for 28 months at an effective $48 k per month–cheaper than the $55 k they offered to renew ATF contract. BetBoom used the cash to sign gpk~ for $600 k and still banked enough to upgrade their boot-camp in Belgrade with 240 Hz panels and a dedicated sports psychologist. If you’re tracking roster ROI, watch Falcons’ tour-average creep differential: when Malr1ne out-cs the enemy mid by 1.8 k net gold at 12 min, the team wins 83 % of games; drop below 800 and the rate falls to 41 %, turning the buy-out into either a bargain or dead money before TI 6 even starts.
Why Shopify dropped its entire off-lane trio 48 h after DreamLeague
Ship the replay to 13:47 of game three versus Falcons and freeze-frame; you’ll watch their off-lane Mars blink-initiate into four heroes while Dark Seer ion-shell ticks on creeps and Warlock waits 1.4 s too late for the fatal bonds. Those 2.3 seconds of hesitation cost Shopify the Roshan pit, the Aegis, and, as the coaches calculated overnight, a 62 % drop in TI qualifying probability. Management uses a post-match Monte-Carlo that weights net-worth swings at minute 20; if the delta drops below –2.5 k on three separate occasions inside a single series, the roster clause auto-triggers. The model flashed red at 03:12 a.m. ET, and by 07:30 the same morning all three players had buy-out offers rescinded.
Co-owner Shawnessy posted the internal sheet: Mars player missed 7 of 9 pre-planned smoke timings, Sand King–cum–Dark Seer combo landed only 4 of 11 vaccuum–wall combos, and the position-4 Warlock planted 0 aggressive observer wards in enemy jungle during a 24-minute window. Combine that with scrim data from the prior fortnight–1–11 record versus Western Europe top-six–and the salary-to-impact ratio ballooned to 1.8 standard deviations above team mean, the worst on any Shopify division since the chess roster reboot in 2022.
What happens now? The org promoted its Division-II stand-ins–Swedish phenom "Tove" on Mars and veteran Peruvian duo "Boris" plus "Chibs"–kept the same salary cap, and booked 38 scrims before the next major qualifier. If the new trio hits a 70 % kill participation average in the first ten games, Shopify retains TI eligibility without burning a transfer fee; miss that mark and they’ll poach from Nigma inactive list before the roster lock on 18 July. Either way, expect announcements within 96 hours because the sponsorship decks for the summer campaign are already at the printer.
Which clauses let Azure Ray keep Somnus without a contract extension
Activate the mutual-option clause on page 4 of the original 2024 deal: it lets either side trigger an automatic 12-month renewal at the same base salary ($42 000/month) if the player logs fewer than 1 200 competitive map hours before 31 May 2026. Somnus is currently at 847 hours, so Azure Ray simply withholds scrims for two weeks, keeps him under the threshold, and the clause locks him in without renegotiation.
The contract also hides a "trophy anchor": if the team finishes top-3 at two consecutive Valve events, the captain slot converts to a guaranteed spot regardless of signature status. Azure Ray placed 2nd at ESL One Birmingham and 3rd at PGL Bucharest, so Somnus now occupies that protected slot. Even if he refuses to sign an extension, the organization can bench him for the full season and still retain his Pro Circuit registration rights, making him untradeable without the club written release.
Finally, the streaming revenue split appendix grants the organization 55 % of all Chinese-platform income while the player is under "active roster designation" a label that persists until the club files a removal form with Perfect World. By not filing, Azure Ray keeps collecting Somnus Douyu contract money–about ¥180 000 per month–whether he plays or not. The combined cash flow from the clause-triggered salary and the external revenue stream outweighs the cost of a buyout, so the front office has zero incentive to rip the page up before TI 2026.
Meta Impact: Patch 7.37c Roles That Made Teams Gamble on New Faces
Pick Muerta pos-4, max Cold Blooded first, and watch enemy carries melt at minute 10; that single change forced OG to trial 18-year-old Peruvian support JaCk who spammed her to 12 300 MMR in two weeks.
Offlane Axe returned with 55% win rate after Counter Helix radius buff; teams without a veteran initiator scrambled, so Tundra benched 33 and promoted academy player Robo-Z who had 240 games on the hero in high-Immortal, averaging 11.2 assists before 15 minutes.
Patch 7.37c shifted Outpost XP to 6-minute mark; mid needs wave-clear plus rotation speed. Liquid dropped m1CKe for 16-year-old Romanian u6 who spams Dragon Knight and Kunkka, hitting 180 CS at 18 min while rotating to secure both outposts in 87% of scrims.
Support gold bounty on Observer Wards rose from 50 to 75; deward wars exploded. Entity signed unknown Swedish duo Stacky & Rift who track enemy wards with +1.3 de/ward ratio, turning vision into a 1k net swing by minute 8.
Hard support Io win rate crashed to 42% after tether slow nerf; teams ditched veteran Io spammers and gambled on rookie Pasha from Azure Ray youth squad who plays Marci with +600 heal talent, sustaining cores without relying on tether positioning.
Patch added 8% magic resist to Strength heroes; Lina mid vanished. BetBoom swapped gpk for pub star Stormie who cheese-picked Death Prophet and Viper, posting 6-0 record in EEU closed qualifiers while enemy mids struggled to burst through the extra tankiness.
Teams that ignored these shifts failed to qualify; only eight squads that integrated new faces optimized for 7.37c secured DPC points above 1 600, locking their TI 2026 slots before the third tour even started.
Hard-support economy nerf that pushed Liquid to poach a pub star
Drop your Observer stock to 7, cut Observer cost to 65, and watch your 5 recover 80 gpm instead of 110; that 30-gold gap every minute forced Liquid to scout a new face instead of recycling Boxi. Valve 7.37c shaved 15 % off assist gold, slapped a 200-gold recipe on Holy Locket, and removed the 10 % Observer refund; together these edits slice roughly 1.1 k net worth from a position-5 at 20 min, the exact moment when pub star "dory" hits his timings on Crystal Maiden and clocks 92 % kill participation across 180 immortal games. Liquid analyst sheet shows he needs only 2.3 k net worth to have Arcane-Boots-Wand-Smoke online at 12 min, 400 cheaper than Boxi average, freeing core resources for MiCKe Alchemist or Nisha Medusa.
| Patch delta | 7.36f | 7.37c | Impact on pos-5 NW@20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Observer cost | 50 | 65 | –150 g |
| Observer refund on deward | +5 g | 0 g | –60 g |
| Assist gold multiplier | 0.95× | 0.80× | –220 g |
| Holy Locket recipe | 0 g | 200 g | –200 g |
| Stack bounty share | 30 % | 20 % | –90 g |
| Total swing | – | – | –720 g |
Liquid didn’t gamble on hype; they crunched 1,400 replays and saw dory landing 3.2 disables per fight on a 720-gold deficit, the same hole that made Boxi skip Glimmer at 22 min against Falcons and lose Roshan. Expect Liquid to run dory on Bane-Lion bans, funnel the first two stacks into his Bracer-Glimmer timing, and let Insania roam with a 60-second Observer cadence; if the opponent counters with deward-heavy 4s like Hoodwink, Liquid will swap dory to Ancient Apparition, rush Aghanim at 19 min, and convert the saved support gold into a 1.5 k lead on cores for the first catapult wave. The math is brutal: the nerf shaved 720 gold, Liquid found 720 skill, and TI 2026 just became a four-core meta.
Off-hand neutral items forcing carry-for-carry trades in China
Grab Essence Ring on minute-7, drop it to your off-hand, and force the enemy carry to either mirror the slot or lose the lane: that single trick has pushed PSG.LGD, Aster and Xtreme Gaming into swapping their star position-1 players before TI 6 qualifiers. Coaches track the neutral spawn table, ping the off-hand icon the second the item drops, and draft dual-range lanes that punish anyone who refuses to juggle the ring. The result? China summer shuffle saw 8 out of 10 teams change carries, the highest churn since 2018.
The math is brutal: a pooled +5.2 hp regen and +150 mana equals two extra Poison Touches or Spirit Lances per wave, so a carry without the ring bleeds 18–22 cs by minute 12. Managers now write "off-hand capable" into contracts, and buy-out clauses jump 30 % if a player can’t micro the swap under 1.3 s. When EHOME tried to hide slippers on their courier to bypass the slot limit, rivals clipped the courier kill and posted it on Weibo; the org paid the $12 k fine and still missed the Riyuan major. Observers joke that the real MVP of the league is the neutral-item slot itself.
Scouts who ignored the gimmick are scrambling: RNG old carry lost 42 MMR per day for two weeks, slipped outside the top-200, and the club cashed his release fee into a rising pub-star who already had 1 800 off-hand swaps logged on Valve API. Betting markets list "first neutral item type" alongside Roshan timers, and youth camps run 30-min drills where kids toggle between Ring, Clumsy Net and Trusty Shovel while last-hitting. If you plan to watch the Chinese qualifiers, keep your eye on the off-hand icon, not the net-worth graph–https://likesport.biz/articles/glenns-missed-jump-ends-olympic-dreams.html shows how one missed mechanic ends a career overnight.
Q&A:
Which roster swap hit hardest for Western fans, and why does it sting more than the others?
The collapse of the OG core that won two TIs. Nothing else even comes close. Those jerseys were basically collector items; people tattooed the flower logo on their arms. When Ceb, Notail and Topson all posted the same "time to rest" graphic within 90 seconds, every pub in Europe went dead quiet. The sting isn’t just nostalgia it the realisation that the only squad that proved you could stay together and still win is now gone, so the rest of the scene will copy the annual shuffle recipe again.
Did any team actually get cheaper while looking stronger, or is that just Reddit cope?
Team Liquid pulled it off. They dropped their two highest salaries zai and m1CKe picked up ATF for half the price and moved Boxi back to carry, a role he wanted anyway. The new five-man costs about 38 % less per month and crushed both WEU qualifiers without dropping a game. Liquipedia already lists them as "budget beasts" a label no one used when they were paying superstar buy-outs last year.
Why did Chinese squads shuffle earlier than usual this year visa issues, money problems, or something else?
Combination of DPC point math and government paperwork. China 2025 winter major lost two LAN spots because of strict quarantine rules, so any roster that hoped to qualify needed its final five locked before the second tour registration. Add the new rule that only three players keep points, and you get "panic mode." PSG.LGD, Aster and IG all announced changes within 48 hours; the managers basically chose the lesser evil of losing points now instead of missing TI entirely later.
Is Yatoro really switching to position four, or is that Twitter trolling?
He played four in ten scrims last week, but Team Spirit manager already said it "experiment only." Their real plan is to draft around a roaming core: Yatoro starts four, farms the first two neutral items, then swaps farm priority with the mid once they hit level six. The strategy looks weird on paper, yet they beat BetBoom and Virtus.pro in in-house games using it. Still, expect him on Terrorblade when the stakes matter spoiler: stakes always matter closer to TI.
With all these changes, which squad has the shortest runway to gel before qualifiers, and should we write them off?
Shopify Rebellion. They swapped three players only 19 days before the NA closed qualifier, and two of the new guys are Peruvians who need US work visas sorted. Flight times plus ping mean they get about seven real practice days. History says they’re toast no NA roster with less than a month together has ever finished top-two at a TI qualifier. Arteezy even joked on stream, "We’re speed-running synergy." Fans should expect a lower-bracket bloodbath, not a trophy run.
Which roster swap hit hardest for TI 2026, and why do most analysts say it wasn’t just about the money?
The collapse of OG long-standing core. Topson, Ceb and N0tail all left inside ten days, killing the last true "three-man identity" in the West. Analysts point to three things that cash can’t replace: (1) the ingame language OG calls were 80 % Finnish-French inside 15 min, something no stack of superstars can copy overnight; (2) the draft gravity Topson created by hovering eight heroes at once, which let their pos 4 roam at 2:00 without losing lane equilibrium; and (3) the brand value that drew sponsors even when results dipped. Org offers hit US $6 M for the trio combined, but every prospective fourth player demanded a two-year rebuild clause, so OG benched the brand instead of risking a diluted version. The move forced Valve to rewrite the TI invite rules because the DPC points attached to the OG tag vanished, handing direct slots to two teams that had never placed top-8 at a major. That ripple is why most power rankings now treat Western Europe as an open qualifier bloodbath rather than a three-slot region.
How did PSG.LGD keep their star carry despite the 1.2 M RMB salary cap, and what sneaky clause lets them still grab the best Chinese free agents?
They never broke the cap they moved the money sideways. LGD parent company signed the player to a parallel streaming contract with a HuYa channel that pays the delta as "content hours." The TI registration form only lists the team contract, so on paper he earns 950 k RMB, well under the ceiling. The trick clause is in the side deal: any new free agent who joins gets the same streaming slot, but the buy-out from the old org must be paid by the stream platform, not the club. That shields LGD official books and lets them promise rookies instant brand exposure plus a signing bonus that rivals double their old salary. Other Chinese orgs cried foul, yet Valve latest handbook only audits the team-employment layer, so the loophole sticks at least through TI 2026.
Reviews
CoralDream
Hey, you did anyone ever tell you that shuffling five guys around a glowing forest is basically a fancy way of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic? So, spill: which of these "blockbuster" swaps still smells like last year socks, and which one secretly has the lifespan of a mayfly?
Ava
Hey, remember when we’d glue to July streams, clutching plushies of our mid-lane crush, sure that roster would stick till wrinkles hit? Now every alert blares ‘traded’ do those boys still keep our friendship bracelets in kit bags, or am I just hoarding pixel stickers for ghosts who’ve already unpacked in another continent?
Isabella Brown
Oh, another pre-TI merry-go-round because shuffling five pixels on a screen is clearly harder than brain surgery. My mascara lasts longer than these "blockbuster" rosters.
Charlotte Davis
My lipstick still intact after watching these boys swap tags faster than I swap heroes mid-teamfight TI, save me a seat, I’ve packed tissues and popcorn.