athan “ana” Pham is playing Dota again nonstop playing with big names in the SEA server. He has been more active than any other active pro player having 118 matches in the past eight days according to Dota 2 Pro Tracker. Averaging, that’s around 15 games per day for the past eight days. Imagine the hours played in his account just for these past days. Ana has a 52% winrate so far using hard carry heroes such as Anti-Mage, Luna, and Medusa. Alongside using hard carry heroes, he also plays on the offlane position with Spirit Breaker and Outworld Devourer. He is third to some streamers such as Mihai “canceL^^” Antonio and Steve “Xcalibur” Ye but not that much. It is unclear if the legendary OG hard carry will come out of his retirement from Dota 2 but this constant grind is too much even for a professional player.
The 2 time back-to-back International Champion made a name for himself with Ana’s remarkable playstyle. His World Championship run actually defined the role hard carry. In The International 8, OG weren’t even the favorites as some drama before the event leaving the team incomplete. OG defied the odds despite a grueling hardship with their rookie player Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen” and coach Sebastien “Ceb” Debs to complete their roster. Ana performed perfectly during all matches they had, while still memeing with Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka on the side. They went up against a Chinese powerhouse, LGD for the Grand Finals. It went on for the entire full series, OG beating them 3 to 2. They also dominated heavily in the next International, 9 , as they defeated Team Liquid 3 to 1 for a back-to-back win, which no team have done before.
During his retirement, he would play some games during in Australian pubs probably to just have fun. However, the former OG carry currently plays solo ranked games in the Southeast Asian server for already about two months. These days, he’s been grinding constantly so he might surprise us probably joining a SEA Dota 2 team.
Ana was also seen playing against Topson in the SEA server frequently, and the retirement didn’t make his skills rust. Ana also plays frequently with big SEA Dota 2 names such as Armel, Kuku and Forev, winning against them. Who knows if Ana actually does come out of his retirement and win another World Championship in addition to his arsenal.
