PRB – Guys … Hi to everybody… It is August 12th … The International finished yesterday where NaVi took second place and we are having an interview with Dendi. Hi Danya.
Dendi – Hi.
PRB – Ok, look, a good amount of time has passed … and I know you have thought a lot, analyzed, talked to different people … what is your personal opinion on why you guys lost to Alliance in the last game yesterday?
Dendi – We just gave away that game. We lost because we did a lot of stupid things that we would never do in a regular situation. In other words, when we took the second Roshan we basically won the game already. Most likely they had no chances after that because everything was too cool (good) on our side. All we had to do is back off a bit, push out our lanes, and then take any lane and crush them. At that point they would have no chance to do a split-push or anything like that. I told the guys that I do not have a TP as I dropped it at the Rosh pit, took Aegis, I should have probably dropped the magic stick and kept the teleport, but that is not important… So we went and destroyed one lane even before they managed to destroy any of our tier three towers, and our guys were certain that they will be able to defend the base with four. Meaning that I do not need to TP and four of them will take care of defense. Next we started doing extremely childish mistakes because it was obvious for ANY of us that Puck will come and try to stop our teleports, but everybody started to TP right near their base anyway.. in panic … He cancelled Enigma teleport, XBOCT just ran after him, Funnik and Kuroky could not do anything against Furion and Wisp+CK … So we lost two towers, two pairs of barracks, it was a lot of money for the enemy team… a LOT of money… and then after that point it would be near to impossible to win … very hard … In other words we would have to be doing everything perfectly and the game suddenly became extremely easy for the enemy as of that moment. So, basically we had two options … either to plan our retreat after we destroyed mid barracks, or the second option not going there at all in the first place. We should have just backed to our base, pushed out the lanes and then went and finished the game and the enemy would not have any chance of stopping us, because I had everything going so well for me that I would probably kill all five of them alone…
PRB – If you would not take Aegis?
Dendi – Hm?
PRB - If you would not take Aegis?
Dendi – you are talking about the first time I went for Aegis… Truthfully saying I did not really want to go kill him… I could easily keep safe and even if they would go in to finish him I would kill a few of them… Yeah, but the guys kept saying: - Go finish Roshan! … Kuro was saying … So I went and killed Wisp there … And went in again to kill Roshan … It was Kuroky who kept saying Roshan, Roshan, Roshan, Dendi go Roshan.. So I went to finish Roshan … I just trusted completely to this decision … I of course got unlucky there… Got bashed three times, two of Alliance bought back… came there and killed me in the last second … Killed Roshan… Got my Godlike streak… Took Aegis … but again my thoughts – I did not want to do it … At the same time I am not going to blame anyone and in any case this moment did not change the game … Yes it gave a dagger to Puck, because he got 900 gold for my Godlike streak… Gave them some money, some experience, but they still were total bums … They had no items … Crystal maiden was a one-two hitter for me, wisp – one-two hitter, furion 2-3 hitter with his lothar and useless Midas… He might have gotten some ultimate orb, but he was long way from getting hex… CK who had drums and BKB, or just BKB… Total bum …
PRB – He had BKB
Dendi – I did not care about any of them at all! The whole team! Because I had BKB, Daedalus, just got my manta style … so basically just did not care about any of them… I could just nullify them together with my teammates and their disables … So basically first Roshan had no implications whatsoever… The second one we just took him … Took maiden, took Roshan … We get a 5 vs 4 situation where we could easily back off … push out our lanes and finish the game… So basically we just gave away eight hundred thousand to those guys…
PRB – Well… During the tournament I noticed that you had extremely bad team fights at the Roshan… You lost quite a few of them … and my point is… it seemed to me that you almost always had a lead at that point of the game, but then your enemies appeared and you got … well I would say you do not know.. Do not know how to back off and cool down at the right moment …. Do you think that is the case?
Dendi – well… First of all most of the tournament we played for the Radiant side, and it is a bit more complicated in terms of Roshan. And yes, we did a lot of mistakes. Not only at Roshan by the way. We made a lot of mistakes in general. Making so many and such stupid mistakes - it just did not seem like us. It is probably because of the tournament, pressure, and everybody was very nervous.
PRB – How hard it is three years in a row to get to the grand finals of the best Dota2 tournament? Did you guys find some kind of formula on how to get there or is it extremely hard road on the way to grand final every time?
Dendi – It is extremely hard to do and this year we had somebody smiling upon us for sure. I would say for sure somebody smiled upon us because against TongFu we should not have won… We would drop down to the loser’s bracket and nobody knows what would happen. It would be best of one the first game, and then best of three if we would with the one. Strong competition… Then Orange game where Windrunner denied their Aegis.. He He … I thank her for that! :D
PRB – It had an impact right?
Dendi – It had an impact and decided a lot… Possibly we would win even with their Aegis, but may be not!
PRB – You think they did it on purpose? To show off that they can win against you even without Aegis?
Dendi – Of course not. It was an accident.
PRB – Accident? In such games nobody does this on purpose right?
Dendi – Of course not. It’s like cutting of your own arm. You want me to cut off my arm and wave it?
PRB – No thanks
… During grand final … as the charts showed the game was pretty even and for the viewers it seemed like the game can turn at any point either way.
Dendi – you mean the last one?
PRB – Yeah, the last one.
Dendi – No.. I have not seen anything even during that game. If my teammates would play a bit more careful… I was virtually unkillable for the enemy team… They had nothing on me … So, if they can not kill me… They cannot focus me … I kill any of them in two hits … All my teammates had to do is keep close to me, try not to die, kite enemy heroes and disable them… That’s all! We would just eliminate everybody! I just run in and kill any of them! Anywhere. Our guys were good. Gleb (Funnik) caught Puck, Kuro caught him also, Clement (Puppey) and Alex (XBOCT) did everything perfectly! Sooo… I do not know … I did not see an even game … Actually, after my first death on Roshan when my Godlike streak got cancelled I proposed our guys to go attack them because I felt that everything is going amazing for me and that we need to go! The guys decided to go slow and play a bit more careful. They probably did not feel confident because I had everything going perfect for me and they did not have that many items. Puppey probably wanted his BKB, XBOCT also wanted something probably on the alch… couple of items, so it was decided to play safe for a bit… but I felt that we could just go because all of enemy teams were just total bums. They had no items… Maiden was around level 6 when I was over level 11. She just died in two hits! Like on the roshan when she started her ultimate I just ran up, hit her with meld once and then one or two regular hits and she dropped. I was in BKB, so she did ZERO damage to me or anybody on my team. So that was the story of the game. CK who was trying to focus me down with illusions he took 1/8th of my hit points and died in two seconds. It was their carry hero. Who do we have left? Furion that had lothar’s and Midas? What can he do? He can do nothing to Lanaya! My refraction takes 6 hits, and I kill him in two or three with daedalus.
PRB – So you think that it was more of you losing the game, rather than them winning it?
Dendi – We just gave them that game. Game number five for sure. That’s all
PRB - But before that there were some games with very strange picks.
Dendi – In game number four for example we also did huge mistake after which it was close to impossible to comeback. The night started, we were in great shape, score two to one, we got first blood.. the first night starts… everybody knows what to do against Nightstalker during first night… just group as five and just live through that first night. Farm jungle, do something else does not matter. As soon as the first night ends and Nightstalker does not get any kills – you have won. It is true almost always against Nightstalker. Especially taking into account our extremely good start… everything was great… What do we do? We get together as five and go to push bottom… Ooook… no problem… we take tower one… while we do it we do not lose any of our towers… awesome! We just need to back off and everything will be perfect for us… But what do we do? We go to tier two. We hit hit hit hit hit.. Nightstalker comes and we start to fight. For example I thought our Batrider is 6, and he turned out to be level 5, only I was level 6 … So, Nightstalker level 6 comes, I use my ultimate, everything is fine, our initiation was ok, but by some miracle Nightstalker lives and we end up losing 3-0 or 4-0… Oh yeah it was 4-0 I died on the rune also… so after that point it was basically impossible to come back into the game … extremely hard! Basically saying, we gave our enemy another victory. If we would not have these 4 deaths we would keep fighting and as the game progresses we would continue growing our advantage.
PRB - What do you have to say regarding picks during this tournament. It seemed that the team who gets wisp – wins. Do you think he is an imba hero, or only in skillful hands?
Dendi – No, that is absolutely no the case. Yes it is quite easy to play with him, yes he gives some extra opportunities, but it is quite possible to play against him, you just have to play more stable, carefully, more safe. If they make one or two mistakes, you get your advantage and do everything to keep it, even running as five if necessary and later in the game wisp just becomes useless.
PRB – Well, when you played wisp was it a special strategy? Wisp is considered to be a Funn1k hero.
Dendi – Hmm… Our wisp is usually played by Kuroky as support, but this time I took him center because we thought that Batrider will be mid and Wisp is quite good vs batrider mid. I tried it, tested… And I played wisp a bit, even thought I got to say that I did not perform well yesterday.. Gave away first blood very dumb death, but Lone Druid is extremely lucky. Unreal. The rest was fine for us… We just destroyed the guys and their strategy completely. Lone druid just could not win the game alone late game. Lone druid and POTM could not win against an Alchemist and Razor. Alch and Razor are much stronger and XBOCT played this game extremely well, he had 900 GPM around 20th minute. It is unreal to get such farm in this type of games.
PRB – so it turned out that you guys won games against Lone Druid and lost against Furion?
Dendi – Yes it was that way, but again the point is not heroes we played against but our game play.
PRB - Ok next question. The player has to be sure in his hero, you said you have a lot of experience in playing Storm Spirit, Pudge, and who else?
Dendi – I said that I have the most games played on those heroes in matchmaking, but it does not mean that I play them better than other heroes. It’s just purely mechanical skills are high for them as I’ve played a lot of games on Pudge, SF, and Storm.
PRB – well you tweeted once that you are playing a hero for the first time and did not even know what to build for the hero.
Dendi – when? o_O
PRB – yesterday I think.
Dendi – Hmmm… Don’t think so.
PRB – No?
Dendi – Well, I remember during the first International I played Enigma for the first time.
PRB – well during this tournament was there a hero that you played for the first time?
Dendi – well the first time I played wisp during some serious championships was during Dreamhack, but it was against a weak team during qualification and we were just having fun. Also, we picked it against Rox.Kiss I was solo mid when we had a show match best of 5, but generally I did not play it, Gleb (Funn1k) did.
PRB – ok next question. It is a known fact that that inside the booth on the stage you can clearly hear the audience. Nobody hides this fact. Did you guys hear each other in team-fights or there were some disturbances that made it hard to hear each other?
Dendi – Yeah, a lot of things were interfering with the communication. It was very hard in every aspect: Language differences, and simply the fact that we just could not hear each other, we basically had to scream very loudly and …. Well there were a lot of factors that distracted from the game and it was extremely hard to play.
PRB – Ok, now question regarding the movie – Free to Play. In my mind – an awesome movie. How did you like it as one of the key characters of the movie? It showed your unreal story. None of us in the organization, I am sure not even your teammates and not many people in general knew it. How did you like the movie in general and how did the actual filming happen? What are your feelings about it?
Dendi – Everything is great
PRB – Fill came to Lviv and filmed everything there? When did he come? In summer?
Dendi – they came from Valve in summer two times. I actually do not remember for sure if it was summer. It could have been spring the first time they came. Don’t remember.
PRB – Ok. What are your plans in the upcoming weeks, months?
Dendi - No special plans. Just going to rest where and how do not know. Time will show.
PRB – Ok Danya, thank you for the interview. Do not worry about it. Second place is….
Dendi – YEY I lost 800 thousand! Woo Hoo! High Five!
PRB – But you also won 600+ thousand!
Dendi – I lost 800 and won 600!! {high five sound}
PRB – Ok thank you for the interview good luck!
Dendi – Thank you!
EPT
