Interview with Reason Gaming at Katowice

Linked: I’m Linked. I’m from Slovenia, I play the Support role for Reason Gaming. bLaDe, WolfJoe, and Nic are from Germany, and we have zwHydra – he’s from Russia, but we substituted Zarmony for this tournament [because Hydra was sick in the hospital].

bLaDe: Hydra was playing for Kiev 6-1 – Kiev 5, whatever you want to call it. Nic is only been playing on Makziboys, so he doesn’t really have a huge amount of competitive experience, but he’s a good player, mechanically especially.

For me, it all started on mYm. We did pretty well in the European Qualifier [last year] and only barely missed Prague. We lost to Bob?, which was then Dignitas. Then I moved on to go with Goofers for a while, and we split up right before the first qualifier and then decided to substitute in for Pigs in Blankets with Hydra. The roster was a little different at that time. It was like Miscoj, Tazu, me, Nic, and Hydra. We basically switched out Tazu first, then Miscoj for Linked and WolfJoe.

bLaDe: I think WolfJoe has been playing since the [alpha?]. He’s been on some teams, but nothing really out of the ordinary, like he’s never made a step to a team that actually achieves something.

Linked: Most likely, we’ll be playing in some weekly cups this month, and then we’re probably going to play the next big thing that’s going to come up. But I don’t know for future plans, there’s probably going to be giant roster switch again after this and Korea because I think the top teams are not satisfied that they didn’t qualify or get better spots. So maybe roster changes could happen in the future for us as well as probably every team in Europe.

bLaDe: It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen in the near future in Europe because there’s gonna be the huge “clown fiesta” again of roster shuffles. Na`Vi didn’t even make it out of the group stages; they’re probably really upset about this. So it’s really hard to say. Some of us might even get an offer to tryout for a big team. It’s hard to say. We will see. We are not in a rush right now, there’s not much going on in the future. We’re gonna take it slow and see what happens.

Linked: I think Abathur and Viking bans are only for certain teams and that’s because on certain maps, you can just play the map and just reach levels and just buy time for your team. So basically, [against it] you have to play a time game. You have to do something aggressively fast. Sometimes you can make a mistake with that, and then you’re just going to go even more behind than you already are because you will never be – even if you get kills, that’s the only way you can be equal or ahead versus Vikings or Abathur. So if you don’t do anything of that, you just go behind in levels and then the talent leads – you won’t win teamfights anymore.

bLaDe: It’s good on maps where the entire team is required to go somewhere for the objective. Like Cursed Hollow, the team has to go to the tribute and contest it; on Sky Temple, you have to go to the Temple; on Towers of Doom, you have to go and capture the Shrines. Basically, the team with the Vikings will just try to delay as much as possible. What you usually want with Vikings is someone with a lot of delay like Zagara or Tassadar – you just want to annoy your opponent so they can’t actually cap the objective, and meanwhile, the Vikings are still soaking and getting a lot of levels out of it. To snowball the game, always fight with a talent ahead, and that’s basically the goal of the Vikings or Abathur.

Linked: I think the meta is going to keep changing with every patch. In League, you mostly, until a giant patch comes out, need certain Heroes. You need to have a “caster” [for example]. But in Heroes, there’s not magic damage or ranged damage, melee damage. It’s all the same, so you can’t defend it. Right now, I think the meta is mostly trying to get one hyper carry, and then you need to just pick a Tank, a Support, and then most of the time, you just pick a Melee Assassins. I think Sonya is all-in-one in this patch because she brings tankiness, lots of damage, and she’s really hard to shut down because of the CC reduction.

In America, Zeratul is one of the most priority Heroes top bans/top picks, but in Europe, we didn’t seem to pick it up. We are like one of the few teams who actually play him more than the other teams. He offers a lot of pressure on maps like Dragon Shire and, at the same time, he can split up the team, so he focus one or two targets and Void Prison the healer or you can wombo combo. But it depends on the patch. Before it was two Supports meta. I think right now the only ones who play it are mYi, and other teams just play one Support.

Two weeks ago, Illidan was a top pick with Rehgar, and now, no one seems to play him anymore because I think people aren’t used to changes. Heroes that were played a few months ago, and now they’re not used to them anymore, but then when people start playing them more and more, then they kind of get used to how you counter them or what you have to pick against them, so that Hero can die out eventually when people know how to counter it.

bLaDe: I think that Blizzard is finally making some patches in a timely manner – it’s really good for the game because it gives the underdogs a chance to figure out the meta first and then just win by draft. You can do that in Heroes. If you’re playing half decently and you outdraft your opponent, they can’t do a lot, and the more balance patches, the more this will happen. You saw GIZ/Epsilon qualifying in the first qualifier because they were the first ones to figure out what’s best in the current meta, and that carried them through the qualifier, and they beat teams like Dignitas and Na`Vi. They maybe didn’t have the best players on their roster, but if you figure out what’s best in the current meta, you have a good chance of beating top teams – if they didn’t figure out the meta [too], that is.

bLaDe: I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s really boring if you have a really stale meta and everyone’s playing the same, and there’s no real -- [not having] to use your brain for drafting gets pretty boring pretty quickly.

Linked: Mostly now, we were looking at the NA regionals and some drafts, we were like, “Okay, we’re not playing this stuff,” but certain drafts, you find, “Yeah, we can also get these Heroes actually. They’re not bad versus certain teams.” Right now I think Cloud9 is one of those teams that you can take a lot of drafting advice, but in Europe, everyone seems to have their own playstyle so it’s hard. We were expecting – let’s say Liquid – that they’re going to play Vikings or Abathur, which you kinda have to ban because we’re not used to — The teams that aren’t top eight, they play so much different. They just pick like Hero League, they don’t really think about synergies and stuff. They just pick like, “Thrall is open, and that’s a really strong person.” They just get that instead. I think you have to consider map choices most of the time, like what is really good. Let’s say, I think Sonya is the best on Blackheart’s Bay because she can jungle and she still does everything like before (she has damage/tankiness). On Tomb, I don’t think she brings that much because most of the time, you have to put her on bot lane, and if the enemy has Thrall or Zagara, she just loses the lane early and you go behind towers, and you can’t follow as much as Thrall early.

I wouldn’t say that a certain region has the top tier draft. In League, it was always Koreans who were ahead of someone, but in Heroes, I think when certain metas clash, it’s not that a certain region will just dominate another one. It’s just the patch and the region. Everyone has their own playstyle, and then we’ll see which region has the best meta, but I think it’s more like rock-paper-scissors in the end – Koreans, let’s say, beat NA; NA beats Europe; and Europe somehow manages to beat Koreans because of different drafts. Maybe something like that – because it happened last BlizzCon.

bLaDe: Hmm. I like the Cloud9 drafting, like the tankless drafting they did at NA regionals. It seemed really powerful, and it’s out-of-the-box thinking. I think in Heroes, a lot can work if you practice it and execute it well as a team. You can even play no healer comps because basically healers just do negative damage, right? Other than that, not really. I don’t have an idol or anything.

Linked: Just played against him because I didn’t buy him yet. He seems like he will probably be played in competitive. I think you could replace something like Zeratul or Thrall, but then you would probably play only one ranged carry, and then you would have one Tank, two Melee Assassins, and a ranged carry, Support.

bLaDe: I played him a bit. I think he presents a hard counter to many Heroes, especially Melee Assassins like Thrall/Illidan. But he’s also easily counterable because he’s so immobile, prone to CC, and has no self-sustain, so if you lock him down once and focus him, he’s basically dead – you can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t really seem OP, he doesn’t really seem UP. He seems just fine, and I think he’s gonna see play in certain situations, but it’s not going to be like Li-Ming – “I’m just gonna pick her whenever anyway”. He’s good in certain situations and on certain maps where you can punish your opponent for pushing, but I think he’s fine.

bLaDe: That’s because I think most people just don’t know how to deal with him.

Linked: I guess I would say my favorite Hero is, from the Support role, I would say Rehgar or Brightwing. Rehgar had some time that he was OP, who had the most healing. Now he’s this again, but he had almost no picking [before that] because everyone just did better everything. For the most fun Hero, I guess Li-Ming is kind of fun. I spam her a lot in Hero League. I’ve always been that player who just plays the Hero that’s OP at the time. I did that back in League the same. I don’t have a certain Hero that would be like, “Damn, this is so much fun than the other.” But I guess casters are more fun to play to me in this game than Melee Assassins or Tanks. That’s just boring to play.

bLaDe: I always like the sneaky Heroes. When I started playing, I picked up Nova, and it was the first Hero I got to level 10, and I bought the master skin instantly even though I had nothing, no other Heroes. I just bought it because I liked her so much. I think right now she’s pretty weak.

It’s the same with Zeratul. I think the cloak mechanic is a really cool mechanic. If you pay attention, you can see them, but it’s so important that you actually can’t see them on maps so you can sneak up on the target. You can put a lot of pressure on the map because if you never show, they have to be afraid. Like, a Zagara can’t be pushing hardcore; she always has to afraid that Zeratul’s coming up behind her to gank her and kill her. And also, you can make some insane plays with Void Prison, of course. It is OP and it has always been OP. A good Void Prison can completely turn a fight from an unfavorable situation. [I like] all the Heroes where you can carry to a certain extent. Like Thrall, Sundering is such a strong ult.

Linked: You can follow me on Twitter. My nickname is LinkedSLO. and I guess Facebook, I have Linked. And you can follow me on Twitch, generally, but I don’t stream that much.

bLaDe: I guess, if you want to, you can follow me on bLaDeHots on Twitter. you can go visit Reason Gaming as well.

Linked: Shoutout to Reason Gaming for picking us up. My friend DiqozoY for duo queueing with me :D.

bLaDe: Shoutout to Reason Gaming as well and Hydra. I hope he’s feeling better. That’s about it.