Fear (player)

Clinton "Fear" Loomis is an American player from Medford, Oregon. Fear is one of the most storied Dota players, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players to emerge from the North American region. Fear's versatility and ability to play every position have enabled him to remain at the forefront of the competitive scene for many years.

DotA
Fear is one of the most respected American Dota players. Together with Merlini and DeMoN, he led a team called PluG Pullers Inc., one of the first Dota teams to get sponsored professionally. They were picked up by compLexity Gaming in early 2006, when DotA Allstars was still in Version 6.28. During his time on compLexity, Fear gained fame and was recognized as one of the best players in the world by many. CompLexity became an archetype for many other organizations that followed their lead and entered the Dota scene.

CompLexity shut down their Dota division in late 2007 due to internal issues. Fear went on hiatus and tried to rebuild PluG Pullers Inc. in a team aptly named PluG Pullers v2. In March 2008 Fear took a big step in his career when he joined Meet Your Makers together with former teammate, ezy. The MYM squad achieved some impressive results, such as a 3rd place at ESWC 2008. Fear left MYM after one year, only a few weeks before the MYM organization went bankrupt and disbanded their teams in March 2009.

Shortly after leaving MYM, Fear joined a North American squad which had recently been picked up by Evil Geniuses. They managed to reach the finals of Farm4Fame #9, where they lost to Fear's old MYM teammates playing under the name Kingdom. In December 2009 EG.DotA disbanded without issuing a statement for disbanding. Fear and DeMoN continued playing together in a new star-studded team, initially named Ben's Fuck Buddies, soon changed to Ben's Friendly Buddies (BFB). The other players on the team were Puppey (Captain), KuroKy, Merlini, Pajkatt, and AmarTnT. Their search for sponsorship only lasted a short time, until they were picked up by Blight.int. Two months later, stating that they were looking for a long run solution which Blight could not give, the squad moved on. They soon landed at the organization Nirvana, famous for their Chinese Dota team, OK.Nirvana.cn. Nirvana opened an international division with the team formerly known as BFB, now named Nirvana.int. Despite going through a number of roster changes, Nirvana.int finished 4th at ESWC 2010, 2nd in Farm4Fame 2.5, and 2nd in CM Storm the Front tournament. In August 2010 Azen announced that the squad would leave the Nirvana organization due to salaries not being paid out, and that Fear would be inactive.

Fear ended up joining a Danish/Russian team of well known players called LOST.eu in September. During his sponsorship, he largely remained inactive due to school commitments and work to finance his studies. The LOST organization pulled out of Dota in February 2011, and the team changed their name to Browned Potatoes. After three months without a sponsor they were picked up by OK.Nirvana.int, a merger of his former sponsor Nirvana and another sponsor named Online Kingdom. During the following months they managed to finish 3rd in Farm4Fame #3, before it was time to switch to Dota 2.

Dota 2
Fear began his Dota 2 career with his team OK.Nirvana.int, which competed in The International 2011 and earned a respectable 7th place. Clinton's experience at The International 2011 was the focus of Valve's documentary Free to Play. The team disbanded shortly after.

In October 2011 Fear was picked up by Evil Geniuses as the hard carry for their initial Dota 2 roster. Among his teammates were his former partner in EG's 2009 DotA roster, DeMoN, as well as former OK.Nirvana.int teammate Pajkatt. Fear and his new teammates made their first steps together in The Defense Season 1, delivering an encouraging performance in the group stages as they qualified for the upper bracket playoffs. Evil Geniuses took third place at the tournament, losing to Quantic Gaming in the loser's bracket finals. The team encountered a number of roster issues, which included the departure of several key players such as Pajkatt and MiSeRy. The Evil Geniuses Roster finally stabilized with the addition of Maelk, BuLba, and UNiVeRsE in May 2012. Fear, along with the rest of EG, was invited to participate in the The International 2012 on May 25th, 2012, in order to compete for a $1,600,000 prize pool. After an impressive performance in the group stage, they were knocked out of the winner's bracket by Invictus Gaming with a 1-2 score. Their run in the loser's bracket would prove to be short as they were immediately knocked out by TongFu. Following The International 2012, the team underwent a roster shuffle with the addition of Jeyo and Bdiz to replace BuLba and UNiVeRsE.

After The International 2012, EG showed their strength in a number of tournaments, winning It's Gosu Monthly Madness #2, EIZO Cup #1 and the AVerMedia Dota 2 Cup, as well as finishing second in the Premier Tournaments Raidcall Dota 2 League Season 1 and DreamHack Winter 2012. EG's success was unfortunately short lived as the team was marred with inconsistent play. Despite the team's poor play, Fear showcased himself as one of the strongest players in the western scene, a point that was emphasized with his victory in A Fistful of Tangoes. In order to help the team better prepare for upcoming tournaments, Fear decided to move into the EG team house in Phoenix, Arizona where his teammates would eventually join him. Maelk the long time captain of EG, retired from competitive play on May 1st, 2013. This forced the team to immediately replace him with SexyBamboe. Fear, now captain of EG, decided to switch to a support role to better fit the team's needs. Fear excelled at this role; however, the team still suffered from inconsistent play. The team's lackluster play and mid-season roster shuffle likely cost the team their The International 2013 invite. The team ultimately failed to qualify for the tournament, placing fourth in the The International 2013 Western Qualifiers. This would mark the first International that Fear did not participate in.

On September 19th, 2013, Evil Geniuses underwent a complete overhaul as UNiVeRsE, Fogged, and MSS joined Fear and Jeyo on the new roster. The new roster also marked the return of Fear to the hard carry role. All five members moved into Evil Geniuses's team house in San Francisco, California, which Fear had wanted from a team for quite some time. The team initially showed promise with a second-place finish at Electronic Sports World Cup 2013; however, the team played quite poorly for the remainder of 2013. This iteration of the Evil Geniuses roster was short lived, and on February 21st, 2014, Evil Geniuses signed the S A D B O Y S roster consisting of Fear, UNiVeRsE, Arteezy, Zai, and team captain ppd. The team immediately established themselves as one of the best North American teams with a victory at the Monster Energy Invitational, marking the first time Fear had won an offline event.

Shortly after the tournament, Fear had to take an extended hiatus from Evil Geniuses due to an arm injury. Fear had committed himself to a six-week recovery plan that would allow him to be active for upcoming tournaments. Unfortunately, he was unable to fully recover in time. On June 1st, 2014, long-time stand-in mason officially joined Evil Geniuses and Fear was officially ruled inactive due to his arm injury. This fortunately did not mark the end of Fear's relationship with Evil Geniuses, as he helped coach the team to a first-place victory at The Summit 1. A few weeks later on June 23rd, 2014, Fear announced he would be coaching the team for ESL One Frankfurt 2014 and The International 2014. On August 22nd, 2014, Fear announced that he would return to active play for Evil Geniuses as the safe lane carry. Fear's first tournament since his return was the World E-sport Championships 2014 in China. With strong performances by Fear on unconventional safe lane farmers such as Shadow Shaman or Tidehunter, as well as more traditional carries like Lycan, EG was able to eliminate TI4 finalists Vici Gaming and Newbee from the lower bracket with consecutive 2-0 victories. In the finals of the tournament EG dismantled their western counterparts Cloud9, cruising to a 2-0 victory thanks in large part to Fear's diverse hero pool. For the remainder of 2014 EG did not slow down at all, with victories at Star Ladder Star Series Season 10 and ASUS ROG DreamLeague Season 2, as well as a second-place finish at ESL One New York 2014. EG looked to carry this momentum into The Summit 2; however, due to some lackluster plays the returning champions finished in fourth place. Despite the poor showing in the last tournament of the year, 2014 was a great year for Fear as his ability to switch between hard carries and tempo controlling heroes quickly became a focal point of ppd's drafts. This proved to be a key factor in EG's success for the last quarter of 2014 as they established themselves as one of the best teams in the world.

In January 2015 the "great western Dota reshuffle" was sparked by the departure of Arteezy and Zai from Evil Geniuses to Team Secret, due in large part to conflicts within the team. With the Dota 2 Asia Championships quickly approaching, EG added SumaiL and Aui_2000 as stand-ins for the tournament. This tournament would mark the return of Fear to the more conventional farming safe lane carry heroes, as SumaiL preferred to play tempo controlling mids. With great play from all members of the team, EG found themselves in the top 4 after the group stage with an 11-4 record. They then stormed through the bracket, beating Na'Vi and Big God, but were soundly defeated 2-0 by VG in the upper bracket finals. EG recovered with a 2-0 victory over Team Secret in the lower bracket finals, and a 3-0 victory over VG in the finals. EG's victory was largely attributed to the team's ability to play a multitude of heroes and styles. The team took home $1,284,158 USD, and established themselves as the world's best team at the beginning of 2015. It was clear after DAC that Clinton had benefited the most from the departure of Arteezy as his average last hits per game increased by 77 from patch 6.82 to 6.83. Following DAC, EG and Fear continued to put up consistently stellar results as they won the Dota Pit League Season 3 and took second place at major LANs such as ESL One Frankfurt 2015 and The Summit 3. On May 6, 2015, Fear and the rest of Evil Geniuses were invited directly to The International 2015. EG came in first place in their group at The International 2015, including a 2-0 victory over eventual runners-up CDEC Gaming. EG carried their strong form into the upper bracket at the main event with 2-0 and 2-1 victories over compLexity Gaming and EHOME before losing 2-0 to CDEC in the upper bracket finals. However, EG were able to bounce back from this loss and defeated LGD Gaming 2-0 in the lower bracket finals to secure their place in the grand finals. In the grand finals, EG were able to defeat CDEC 3-1, largely off of the back of Fear's stellar play on Gyrocopter throughout the entire series. With their win over CDEC, Evil Geniuses went home with $6,634,660 USD and Fear, along with the rest of the team, cemented his place in Dota history. Following The International 2015, Fear began playing the 4th position support as Arteezy rejoined Evil Geniuses as the carry player.

In early 2016, Evil Geniuses began suffering a string of disappointments and a last place finish at The Manila Major. Shortly after their finish, the roster was shuffled with Fear returning to position 1, and his former position being taken by the returning Zai. With Universe returning to Evil Geniuses, he and his teammates played through the open and regional qualifiers of the Americas region of the International 2016 due to breaching Valve's roster lock rules, and later qualified for The International 2016.

At the International, he placed third in the tournament and later announced his retirement as a player due to his recurring health issues and will take over the coaching role. His retirement to competitive play saw numerous personalities praising his talent as a captain and a player, representing North America for more than a decade. Evil Geniuses later introduced apparel for sale, dedicating to Fear's contribution to the organization. In April 2017, Evil Geniuses created a video series on their players personal life with their maiden episode starting with Fear. Following the The International 2017, Fear returned to competitive action replacing Zai in the five position for the 2017-18 pro circuit.