https://www.cybersport.ru/dota-2/articles/pozvali-lil-chtoby-on-pokazal-sebya-dm-o-novom-sostave-vp-prodigy-i-matchakh-protiv-navi-i- team-secret

– Let’s start with the changes that took place in VP.P before the start of the tournament. What caused them?

– There was a misunderstanding with one of the players in the team, which did not allow us to continue playing together, to put it bluntly. As for another teammate, we decided to take, in our opinion, a more outstanding player for his position. Therefore, there was a replacement.

– Clear. Why gpK ~ and Lil?

– Regarding Danka: he is our good friend, but, first of all, a very talented player. This, I think, is plus or minus obvious to everyone. Actually, we wanted to take Danka for a long time, even initially, when we were assembling the roster. It’s just that Danya plays for Gambit, and at that time the clubs could not agree.

– And Lil?

We found out that Danek would be with us a day before the start of the tournament – he was allowed to post for us. Well, in fact, then we began to look at the available players in the 4-5 position – of all of them Ilyukha turned out to be the best option. I think he had a lot of motivation. Therefore, they called him – so that he showed himself. And he showed himself well, as you can see.

– So you believed in Lil? Judging by recent seasons, many other teams have been skeptical about him.

– Everyone in our squad considers Ilya to be a good player and very adequate. We had no doubt that if we call him, everything will be fine – there will be no disagreements. He just does a good standin. Actually, he performed well as a standin – having zero practice together, we reached the final, losing only to Team Secret. I think this is more than a good result.

– So you didn’t train at all before the tournament?

– Yes, zero practice. We put together the roster the day before the tournament. Well, Ilyukha and I played a couple of publics together, but what is a public in a party? What are you speaking about? These are not practices. We had neither strategies, nor any developments, nor games together five by five. Actually, we put together a combat-ready squad and just, so to speak, played on understanding. By the way, we went to play together after the first match with Secret.

– Your new partner is on the line. Which one of you calls more directly on the laning – you or Lil? Who is the main initiator of some kind of active action?

– On the laning, Ilyukha just asks what I want to do. I explain to him, because for me it’s easy – in every public I tell a person what to do on the line. Ilyukha just listens and does everything normally.

But there were also his personal initiatives and suggestions: he offered good heroes who really cool came from time to time.

– Let’s go directly to the tournament. In the first match, you came across Team Secret – a kind of final boss, with which you probably didn’t really want to start. Did the defeat at the start somehow affect your further mood, plans and strategies?

– In general, it hasn’t really influenced in any way. We just knew that we would be okay on the lower grid. That is, we were simply confident in our abilities. It would be a miracle to beat Team Secret – with a complete lack of co-op experience with the squad. Therefore, we knew that we would just play well in the lower bracket, we understood that we could beat all the teams there.

– The match against Natus Vincere was immediately dubbed as a battle for the top 1 in the CIS for the next month. And, perhaps, it made sense, given the departure of the main VP roster to inactive. Does this title mean something to you?

– I think we need to start with the fact that NAVI played with a full roster, with which they played in several tournaments – they trained, played KV, and so on, and we collected a stack for one tournament. Therefore, I would not say that it was a battle for the top 1 in the CIS. This is rather our stack against the NAVI team. Our stack won.

– But now many people consider you the top-1 team in the CIS.

– It turns out that our stack is top-1 in the CIS.

– On the first map of the match against NAVI, it seemed that somewhere from the 35th minute your opponents had no options at all to win – they were locked at the base. However, as a result, the game lasted 70 minutes. Were you just being careful, or did you really have a chance to go to their base?

– Let’s be honest: when the enemies of Arc Warden, Zeus, Elder Titan, and even Vengeful Spirit swap out of focus, you don’t really want to go to their base. We knew that we could farm the whole map, bring the advantage to at least 100 thousand and just finish. Actually, we did it. We took a million Roshans, a million Aghanims, waited until the advantage was just incredible, and then we finished. There was no need to rush.

– How did it happen that on the second map you completely lost the laning?

– There was such a situation: we thought that they are incredible geniuses, like Team Secret, and they will put very cunning lanes, but they put everything by default. Actually, we went against the cunning lanes, but they put the default ones, and it turned out that our lanes didn’t fit. We then had to swap lanes for regular lanes. In general, we changed our minds about the enemy and ourselves.

If it weren’t for the laning meme, the game would be more equal. And secondly, there was a serious mistake in the game. One mistake from a hard game makes an ultra hard.

– There is no point in discussing the third map, the match with Alliance as a whole, too. The only thing is the parentheses from epileptick1d, which have already become a meme.

– Yegor is a very good Morphling player, and when he sees a Morphling player dying while pushing the agility pump when he gets focused, Yegor gets very funny. He could not resist and accidentally hit the keyboard, and it so happened that his finger fell on two brackets and they went to the general chat. It probably wasn’t even on purpose.

– It seems that you have a special score with this team. At first Save- spoke disparagingly about her in an interview, then Nikobaby said that you showed disrespect …

– In fact, Vitalya is just an open person. But when he said this, everything was in fact. But then I grew up when I was a little boy, and I think he won’t speak publicly anymore.

– Again about Team Secret, but about the final: it seemed that everything was going well on the first map.

– In fact, we should have won the first map.

– Yes, you just had a bad fight in one place …

– The first map shows that one blunder against a tier-1 team always leads to defeat. Actually, we made a mistake there. We lost the second map on pick – they took their Lone Druid and banned just all the heroes that were offlane against him, despite the fact that their Lone Druid could still go to mid.

On the third map, there was a lane meme again. After the meme with the lanes, it was no longer possible to win, because Team Secret won’t let go anymore when you jammed with the lanes so much.

– There was something similar in the first match. You won the first map, on the second it got worse, and on the third there was almost a gap. Does Puppey just include a genius in the draft?

– In fact, Puppey really includes a genius. If you watched the very first game we won against them, he was simply drafted by Vitaly. But then Puppey drafted well. In the final on the first map, he gave us Magnus, with whom we played the entire tournament – plus or minus this hero we play normally, we roughly know how to farm, stack, and so on. And then Puppey just banned Magnus, removing the hero we were comfortable with. As I said earlier, we played zero practices. That is, one of the strategies that we were able to work out during the tournament, Puppey removed, so it was difficult.

– You picked Magnus a lot early in the draft. He is a flexible hero, and gpK ~ plays well on him too – so it is usually difficult to know where he will go. But it’s as if you weren’t using it: Magnus only played mid once. It turns out that the enemy knows that your Magnus is offlane. Does this limit you?

– I would not say that it is so. We always had flex – the enemy simply did not allow such a situation that we poked Magnus in the mid, that’s all. Plus, the fact that we are hiding the mid lane, on the contrary, makes the enemy nervous, because if he opens the hero to the center, who is badly standing against Magnus, he gets 5 thousand net worth by the tenth minute.

– NS recently wrote that you could use a coach. What do you think about this?

– I don’t think we need a coach. We have five people in our team who think, play ten publics a day, watch a lot of things. We have a lot of ideas and a certain understanding of the game. We don’t need a sixth person who will force his understanding.

– In your opinion, a coach at Dota is not a must-have?

– I will not speak for everyone, it just seems to me that we do not need him. Obviously, we do not need a mental coach who will say at the level: “Guys, you are the best, now destroy everyone.” I think our morals are all right in this roster. Therefore, we do not need such a person either.

– With Lil and gpK ~ you did great. What are the chances that both of them will stay on the team?

– As far as we know, Ilya has certain plans with HellRaisers, so I will not say for him here. We have one player, whom we are considering for the “top five”, very talented and good. Actually, we will try to build the lineup with him further. And Danek – I hope every effort will be made to make him the main member of our team.

– That is, Save- will return to the fourth position?

– Vitala is a great player in fourth position. He has a huge pool, excellent understanding of the game, the laning, so yes, he will return to the “four”. Rather, it was a necessary measure and a small experiment.

– Well, the last question. Maybe you have any further plans, tournaments? Where will we see you soon? Or until nothing shines on the horizon at all?

– It all depends on how quickly we can assemble the composition of five people that we need. How to assemble – let’s start training.