Arteezy and qojqva’s all-time carry list is really a debate about what Dota 2 should reward

A tier list from Artour “Arteezy” Babaev and Max “qojqva” Bröcker has stirred up the kind of Dota 2 argument that never really goes away. The two ranked 25 carry players on a Team Liquid Dota video and, in doing so, reopened a familiar question: when people talk about the best position 1 players ever, are they talking about titles, peak form, influence on the role, or the ability to stay elite across years of meta change?

That is why the list has travelled beyond a simple streamer segment. The placements were strong enough to start a wider debate, especially because some multiple-time winners landed outside the top tier while players without a TI title still made the highest group. The list did not just rank careers. It exposed how differently Dota still judges greatness depending on which part of a player’s legacy people value most.

Arteezy and qojqva’s S-tier was made up of Yatoro, skiter, MATUMBAMAN, Ame, and Miracle-, with Yatoro described as the clear number one. Their reasoning, as summarized from the video, centered on players who changed how the role was played and had the results to support it. That is an important standard because it pushes the discussion away from raw trophy counting and toward influence, adaptability, and how a player shaped the role itself.

The names in that top group make the logic easier to read. Ame placed in S-tier despite never winning The International, while Miracle- stayed there even with much of his peak reputation also tied to mid. That tells you this was not built as a strict winners list. It was built around a broader definition of greatness that leaves room for players whose best stretches changed how people thought about carry play, even if the final trophy cabinet does not settle every argument.

Their treatment of skiter also fits that approach. He was given top-tier respect not because he is always the most celebrated player on his teams, but because of how hard his role can be inside structured systems and how consistently he executes it. That is the kind of placement fans often read as controversial at first, but it makes more sense once the list is viewed as a judgment of role impact rather than just highlight-reel reputation.

The more combustible part of the list came lower down. Ana landed in A-tier rather than S-tier, Arteezy placed himself in B-tier, and players such as watson, 23savage, and K1 ended up lower than many fans expected. The D-tier, which included qojqva as a deliberate joke insertion and a harsh placement for Nikobaby, was always likely to draw the loudest reaction because it mixed real judgment with obvious provocation.

That is where the broader community response came in. Follow-up coverage and discussion on Reddit quickly focused on missing names, the treatment of TI winners, and the way players from different eras were being compared inside one fixed ladder. The criticism was not really about whether the list was allowed to be subjective. It was about which kind of subjectivity was being used. Some fans clearly wanted the all-time conversation to lean harder on championships, while the list itself leaned more toward influence, longevity, and what Arteezy and qojqva think winning carry Dota actually looks like.

That tension has always been part of Dota’s all-time debates, but carry makes it even sharper. Position 1 players are often judged through both team results and the eye test. A carry can look like the best player in the world for months, then lose the biggest final and get remembered differently from someone with a less spectacular peak but better timing at TI. The list hit a nerve because it refused to hide that split.

It also helps explain why some of the community pushback focused on ana. Liquipedia’s International player records show how rare repeat TI success is, which is why any all-time list that does not put a two-time winner at the very top is going to be challenged on achievement grounds. Once that happens, the argument stops being about one player and becomes a bigger fight over whether carry greatness is best measured by championships or by how a player bends the role around himself at peak form.

The strongest takeaway is not that Arteezy and qojqva found the definitive answer. It is that their list made clear how many different standards still exist inside one simple question. Their choices reward players who were hard to imitate, hard to replace, and able to stay relevant across different versions of Dota, even when the usual trophy-first reading would point somewhere else.

That is why the debate has lasted beyond the original video. The ranking itself is only part of the draw. The more interesting part is what it reveals about how the scene still argues over legacy, and why the carry role remains one of the hardest in Dota to reduce to a clean all-time list.