Streamer Timur TraVoMaN Hafizov said that he taught pro-players from the CIS to play Techies.

Streamer Timur TraVoMaN Hafizov said that he taught pro-players from the CIS to play Techies. In an interview with Cybersport.ru, he also spoke in more detail about the situation with forZe and the conflict with Aren VeRsuta Zurabyan.

– People often hate Techies and those who play it, while they like your gameplay. How do you explain this contradiction?

– There are several factors. First – I’m not playing with them in one match (laughs). The second – people rarely see the gameplay of Techis, for them it is something non-standard in their usual game, because of this, there is interest. In addition, many people write to me that they like to watch my behavior, because there are few places to find calm content on YouTube.

– it’s calm – part of your character or are you making some efforts to remain calm?

– This is part of the character. When I started to stream, I had an understanding that you have to be yourself, you just can’t do a lot of content and at the same time pretend – this is very difficult. I’m pretty calm in life, somewhere too much.

“Have you always been that way, or did it come with age?” When you were a schoolboy, could you afford what the zoomers are doing now?

– I never insulted, crossing borders. He could scream in the chat: “Why are we doing this?” But it’s hard for me now to remember those times, because when I started playing on Thechis, I was definitely calm.

– The NBA basketball player said that teammates in LoL are thousands of times more toxic than players in the NBA. What do you associate with this level of aggression in the gaming community?

– The Internet factor is important – people feel unpunished. In the NBA, as in any team sport, people are socialized, this is not the case in games. Plus, in Dota 2, opinion leaders allow themselves to be aggressive, while tens of thousands of people watch them, who will continue to behave accordingly.

– In your cuts on YouTube, you began to embed the reaction of streamers playing against you. Zai was easy and humorous about dying on your mines over and over again, while Russian-language streamers and players really burned out, and they could immediately switch to insults. Why?

– It is difficult for me to answer this question. The only thing that distinguishes the community in the CIS and the European is who are the leaders of opinions. Gorgc, the most popular streamer in the European Dota, is always positive, and our popular streamers always behave negatively, offend someone, create a brightly eccentric image. And this is already a certain continuity – those streamers that are now nurtured on the same type of content that was five years ago. It turns out a vicious circle – there were no popular people with a different outlook on life.

– The problem is that we have an “aggressive offer” in the stream market, or is there a demand for such a presentation and type of content?

– It’s hard to say what was the root cause. Now supply and demand are going in the same direction. It seems to me that the fact that the most talented streamers offered exactly this type of content entailed everything else.

– You offer an alternative presentation of content and say that your goal is to improve the community. Do you see the fruits of your work and how do you evaluate the result?

– It’s difficult to keep any statistics here. They often write to me: “I began to behave differently in the game” or “You helped me look at Dota differently.” I see that I am changing people, but what percentage I can’t appreciate.

Recently there was a story with a professional team[[forZe – approx. Ed.]where her players are fined. After this precedent, I’m sure managers will tell pro players that they don’t have to. Now we will not see such a negative in matchmaking. Many will say: “Man himself has not changed.” But what’s the difference? There is legislation and there is a police that monitors it, so people don’t run down the street with knives and do not kill each other, although many probably would like to. And to live because of this is better. That’s exactly what we can do: many may want to, but they won’t write such a thing in the chat.

– But there have already been similar precedents, for example, a major scandal with Ceb. Then, too, there was increased attention to the problem, but still people allow themselves this. Is there any need for a clear, rigid system in DotA to keep track of this, or will this not work in the gaming community?

– I believe that this should be done in relation to people who represent some organizations. It’s clear that if a conditional Vasya writes 3,000 MMR something like that, then I’ll just ignore it – I can’t influence him in any way. We are talking about community leaders, about professional players who represent large brands, because they have leverage and they have their own leverage. Here, increased social opportunities entail increased social responsibility. In the case of Seb, it is a question of his sponsors, his team, how they reacted to this. In the case of forZe, Lukoil decided to react like this, and I believe that I did it right.

– Did forZe representatives contact you after this incident?

– No, no one contacted me. I know that my viewers wrote to them and even then took off screenshots, as representatives of the team replied: “The young man apologized, the conflict is settled.”

– What do you think, if the conditional forZe was not written by you, but by an ordinary user: “Guys, your player insulted me,” would any measures be taken?

– If you write directly forZe, then there would hardly be any consequences. It was precisely the sponsor, Lukoil, who entered it. The organization in this case acts as an acceptor of money – sponsors give it money. The club will try to hush it up somehow. Another thing Lukoil, which allocates money, is that he is already interested in how his image appears. In this case, they can somehow influence this situation and promote it, but will a simple hard worker guess to write to Lukoil? It turns out that while this situation lies with the sponsors and the responsibility of these people, other pro-players will be able to continue to do this in pubs, and there is nothing to be done about it.

– Pro-players, despite their sometimes rude behavior in the game, are easily offended by any criticism from analysts and commentators. What do you associate this with?

– With immaturity. You can look at the average age of pro-players in the CIS – about 18-20 years. These are people who are in themselves asocial – they just sit at home and play. They did not go to university, did not go to college, but graduated from high school and are now playing. This is not a reproach to them, because it’s hard to get into e-sports in another way: you have to be a genius in this game and spend a lot of time on it. But in terms of social development, these people at some points do not catch up, and therefore such distortions, some kind of childish resentment, are obtained.

– You recently had a conflict with VeRsuta. I read that some users treated your dispute as an attempt at self-PR. What was that for you? Was it important for you to convey your position or is it just part of the media component?

– There wasn’t such a place that I’m sitting and thinking about what I would argue with Versus. I just saw on Twitter that he openly insulted me, and it was not clear to me why a person allows himself this. He seems to be working as a commentator in the studio, has some kind of media weight and at the same time openly writes the insult on his twitter to me. And we had no conflicts; Moreover, he once called me to star in his program. This, plus the fact that I had an influx of new viewers who still did not quite understand the concept of my improving the community, why I play on Thechis and why it’s not bad. I decided to explain everything at once, it was not Versace’s answer. It didn’t matter to me what he would think, I just saw his position, and I believe that a person with media weight who works in e-sports does not have the right to have such a position. I can’t bring it to him, it’s his business, I just showed everyone that it’s wrong and that I think about it.

– In one of your videos, you said that it is wrong to cheat players playing on Techies – if you have complaints and questions, they should be asked to Valve, and not to those who play on the character. Do you think there are real questions about the hero that Valve can ask? Is he really imbalanced or is it the problem of players who cannot play Techies, in a team with him or against him?

– The statistics speak for themselves – its winrate is slightly less than 50% [49,15% — прим. ред.]. This is not an imba, they don’t pick it up on the pro-scene, but if they pick it up, they can hardly realize it. There are heroes who have a low win rate in public, but they work in pro-games. And it turns out that the character absolutely fits into the balance of Dota, while fundamentally at the same time does not violate Dota itself. The gameplay with and against Techis is a more vivid manifestation of the macro component of the game. We have a macro and a micro component, a third variable is not introduced here. Thechis is a bare macro. Therefore, one cannot say that Techis is something new in the world of Dota.

– Why is this hero taken so little on the pro-scene?

– Techis requires special preparation if you want to play with him. If you train with him, then this time you do not train to play with other strategies. When you play with the Banshee, Void, then you simultaneously cover a range of strategies. This is more effective than training one Techis, especially if you do not believe in the result. After all, since the hero does not appear, you think that the hero is weak, why will we play with him.

There are five people in the team, and one wants to play with Miner, while some do not want to. And all – most likely, they will not play with Thechis. The team should have coherence and motivation. I worked with a number of pro-players and I know that one of the teams nine months ago before TI did not pick Miner simply because one member of the team was against it. They knew how to play, understood what needs to be done, but didn’t pick, because it would negatively affect the atmosphere in the team.

– Is this a team from the CIS?

– Yes.

– In the end, she went to The International?

– Passed.

– You said that playing with Techies and training for it is not the same as training another character. How much is the playlist changing? So the process of adapting to the game with Techies is complicated?

– This requires the team to make other decisions about the game. If Techis mined a line, then you must leave this line so that the opponent’s core comes to farm it and lands on mines. You are doing something else at this time. And if Techis is not in the team, then you yourself would have stayed on this line, because it is profitable for you to farm there yourself. And here the problem is that this is not a public for 3 thousand MMR, but a pro-scene – here people on the muscle memory do a lot of actions, and they are not used to changing the pattern of movement on the map because of one character. It’s hard for them to master.

– Is it in order to surprise rivals on TI that you cannot overpower yourself and spend several days adapting to the hero?

“I explain it to myself like that.” Suppose you are a Kerry player, confident in yourself and do everything clearly. Here is your support picks Techis, you train him, but in the game you start to make the wrong decisions, move incorrectly, make mistakes. This brings you to tilt, as is usually the case with pro-players in the CIS. It turns out that the situation in the team is heating up simply due to the fact that one player is poorly reconstructed and has little competence. As a result, the character is abandoned. Many also simply do not believe in the character, as they rarely meet him in matchmaking.

– How are your training sessions with teams? Do you teach a specific artist to play Techies or do you communicate with the whole team?

– Mostly this is a conversation with the performer himself. I explained to him how to draft with Miner, how to act on the card, some chips, and so on. After that, they went to training, played out – something worked out, something didn’t – then they discussed the games and sorted out the mistakes.

– Do you offer your services to the teams yourself or come to you? Are you paid for this?

– It was when I proposed, and when they came to me. I did not take money for it, it was really interesting to me. I agreed that if you like everything and the team will win with Miner, then you will openly say that I trained you. For me, this is a boost for the media, I did not chase money. But for some reason the teams did not ask.

– Did you communicate only with teams from the CIS or were there teams from other regions?

– I studied JerAx from og. They even pickled Techis at The International. According to him, they could pick it in the final if they played against PSG.LGD. But they met with Liquid, and w33 had only two signatures in the tournament – BP and Templark. Techis does not play against Templarca, and it was profitable for them to give w33 to Templark.

– Tell me more about training with JerAx.

– I myself went to JerAx. I saw how he played Miner on EPICENTER: he was doing something completely incomprehensible. I decided – what the hell is not joking. On Twitter, of his few people, a PM was open. I wrote to him, and he purely by accident read my message. In the end, we phoned Discord before TI. We practiced on replays, which is not so. After that, when he played, progress was evident.

– Did he somehow thank you after the game?

– He then thanked me in one of the matches. At The Summit in September, TraVoMaN wrote to himself in a nickname and at the end of the rink he wrote: “Thank you, TraVoMaN”.

– It’s strange that after this the flow of people didn’t increase, even if the TI champion takes advice from you and the hero picks at TI after your training.

– Because no one saw this or that outside the CIS, did not notice, and in the CIS everyone knew me already. I have worked with many Tier-1 teams in the CIS. Now it’s hard to fit Techis into the meta, it has become too fast. The hero is bad in such games, he is not so functional. This is an objective reason why people do not apply.

– Besides JerAx, from those who play on the professional stage, who else is good at Techies?

“Nobody picks him now.” Zai played when Techis was not like that yet. Now the hero is played by Zayac and XSvamp1Re – they know what to do. No one else picks.

“And how do you rate their game?” Is there anything to learn from you?

– Yes, I did the analysis of the Hare game three or four months ago. There is always something to improve. It is impossible to say here that the Hare is a bad player and does not understand what to do. I played 3 thousand games on this hero, it is clear that I have a lot of scripts for different situations. Another thing is that their strength is in universality – they know 30-40 heroes at a good level. I do not have that.