Ex-Aurora players Abed and Palos. Photos from Aurora Dota2/Facebook
MANILA, Philippines – Aurora Gaming general manager Eric Khor looked back Wednesday on how Abed "Abed" Yusop and Jinn Marrey "Palos" Lamatao performed as core players for the Southeast Asian squad.
Aurora disbanded its Dota 2 roster earlier this month after acquiring a star-studded roster based in the CIS region which included The International (TI) winners.
READ: Aurora disbands Dota 2 team; Palos becomes free agent, Abed open to transfer
Eric only had positive reviews for his former players — and at some point, to their credit, Aurora was relatively the best Dota 2 team in the SEA region.
"I always thought that Abed was an amazing player, he's always commanded very high mechanical skills, something that he's incredibly known for," Eric said.
READ: Dota 2: Abed, Palos' Aurora qualify for $1-M DreamLeague S25 after beating Boom Esports
Abed became popular for his signature heroes Meepo and Invoker during his Execration days, and Storm Spirit when he was still with Evil Geniuses and Shopify Rebellion.
Eric and Abed go way back as they get connected in another Southeast Asian esports organization, Fnatic, years ago.
"When I knew Abed when he was younger, we worked before in Fnatic, he's very quiet, he's incredibly good but very quiet. I think over time, obviously, we did not work the whole time, but eventually, he went to EG, went to all these other teams, and when he came back to me again, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that he actually developed, you can call it a commanding skill, to a certain degree," he said.
The general manager said Abed improved in communicating this time around.
"He communicates a lot more, and I say that in general, the only thing he has to improve on at that point. So, he's still the great player that I imagined him to be, at this time even better than what I imagined, to be honest."
Meanwhile, Eric shared how Aurora ended up hiring Palos for the carry position.
"We decided to go with Palos because we have actually previously worked with Palos as well, and we knew kind of his style, he is a bit more of a 'brawly' type of style, not really very farm-heavy like I would say most carries would expect him to do — and we thought that this is the type of person that we want," he bared.
Eric said Palos made Aurora's cohesion "better" due to his jokes.
"[Palos] is very vocal, he actually makes the team environment really nice, like very communicative and he's kind of a bit of a, he makes a lot of jokes that a lot of people like, so yeah. The one thing that is surprising to me is how he brings the team cohesion better."
Moreover, as they enter the next chapters of their Dota careers, just two days ago, Abed posted on his X (formerly Twitter) that he's looking for a new team.
Interestingly, Canadian star player Artour "Arteezy" Babaev replied to said post, saying "run it back" as he tagged Russian player Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev. They were teammates before in EG.
As for Palos, he recently joined Philippine crew Execration.
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