Interview with Newbee.Kpii at ESL One Hamburg

Interview with
Kpii

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us after that hard-fought series vs EG. How do you feel now that you’ve achieved Top 4 at the first Major of the season?

Pretty happy because Majors are about 4 times the points of Minors so I’m really, really happy.

So let’s talk about that series. How were you guys feeling after Game 1?

Game 1, we felt like it was an outdraft. We felt like no matter how we played it, it would be really hard, like 80/20, 90/10, so we thought going into the 2nd game, if we just draft fine, it would be fine.

So that was Game 1, but Game 2. It looked really bad for you guys around the 20 minute mark but you guys made a few plays here and there and eventually came back. But what stood out for us, I think was when you made some really sick initiations on the Puck so how do you feel about that like, how did you grasp the perfect timing to go in?

Generally, for Puck, especially in that game, I think I just needed to coil at least 2 heroes, then Monkey King can just use his ult so if I only coiled one, it wouldn’t be enough but as long as I got more than one, I think provided enough lockdown, and that’s the only way we could start a fight and that’s pretty much just how we played it, Coil into the Monkey King ult.

After Game 2, you guys went into Game 3, it was looking pretty even despite the disastrous developments in the midlane but you guys managed to pull it back and I think all 3 games, you had to buy back multiple times so how did you keep your head in the game, knowing you had no buyback and a bad initiation could have dire consequences?

I think in Game 3, it all came down to the Aghanim’s. As soon as I saw the POTM (Mirana) or the Syllabear (Lone Druid), I just used coil and then we have TA and Lifestealer who can just right-click. So I think it was a pretty easy job for me. If I see a carry hero, I just have to coil him and that was pretty much my job so I think, generally, it was a pretty easy job.

So, I think that, before, you said that got a lot of flame from the Chinese community. Do you think their perspective will change a little bit after seeing how exceptionally well you were playing this series?

Regarding the flaming thing, I think that it happens with everyone. They’ll flame all pro players if they lose. Like even if it’s Miracle and if he was Chinese, if he lost, they’ll still flame him. It’s really simple like, if you lose, they’ll just flame you and if you win, they’ll say good things about you. With regards to changing their minds, I don’t think so. There are some fans who are really good and will say nice things and support you regardless of whether we win or lose. But yeah, others will just flame when you lose and say nice things when you win.That’s something I don’t think can change but yeah I’m okay with that, I’m fine with the community.

Moving on, I think after TI, where of course, it was disappointing for you guys. I saw your tweets about True Sight when it came out and I wanted to ask, in the aftermath of TI, and even after StarLadder, which was another disappointing defeat for you, between then and now, do you think anything has changed in the team? About your overall performance or maybe your mindset?

So with regards to scrimming, before Starladder we still scrimmed a lot and played pubs but I think for this tournament, we were a lot more serious in the sense that we watched and studied our opponents a lot more instead of playing pubs, so we were really focused on this tournament.

Speaking of your opponents, how prepared are you guys to face Virtus.Pro? They defeated Liquid and they’re really strong right now so do you maybe have something special in mind against them? Or perhaps you just have a general idea of dealing with their lanes and aggressive playstyle?

Just standard things, I think. We just need to secure the early game because they’re a very fast team so we just need to do well in the early game. If the game drags on, we tend to pick heroes that are good late game so we’ll just see how it goes.

That said, pushing the tournament aside, Valve have basically said that they’re releasing the new patch after Hamburg. Is there anything in particular that you’re looking forward to?

I think just nerf the popular heroes and buff some unpopular heroes, that’s the main thing for me. I think the gameplay at the moment is really good, so maybe just leave that as is.

Are there any specific heroes that you think are really strong right now that you might wanna see nerfed or maybe any specific heroes that you wanna see buffed?

So one hero is definitely Veno. I think you can always pick him because he can always play anything from position 1-5, so he’s really flexible and that’s his strength and he’s also a good hero in general. Also, I think position 4s are pretty limited nowadays, it’s always like Earthshaker, Earth Spirit, Clock, Spiritbreaker, there isn’t really much of a variety in position 4 now so I think they could nerf some position 4s and buff some other position 4s. The other positions are pretty good I think, there’s quite a lot of different heroes being picked.

Are you looking forward to the two new heroes, or are you more skeptical about how much they might mess up your pubs?

Well, I mean, it’s not gonna be in CM, so it wouldn’t matter for us but it’s always fun to have new heroes. We’ll see, but I’m really excited.

Well, thank you very much for your time and good luck with the rest of the tournament!

Thank you.

Interviewers: 2009, ShiaoPi
Editor: OmniEulogy