Erho has been around the Heroes scene basically since the competitive era dawned in late 2014. From the original Barrel Boys to Complexity to Bob Ross Fan Club and its transformation into Team Naventic, and finally a brief stint with Tempo Storm, Erho has been a consistent front-line presence in many major tournaments. After McIntyre departed the reformed Barrel Boys, Erho signed on with the team and assisted in their qualification for HGC's first season. He took some time to talk with us about the recent past and the impending future.
Most of the members of No Tomorrow have been consistent presences on the competitive scene for some time. Who was the impetus behind the team's creation?
I'm actually the newest member. After McIntyre left for what is now B-Step, I was looking for a new team. They were willing to try me out in the first qualifier, where we did really well- in fact, taking a game off of and almost the series from Naventic -so they decided to keep me on and we ended up winning the second qualifier over [Dumpster Tier] Superstars.
So, starting with the basics: it was a pretty rough start for you guys in the first quarter of the season. What do you think has been holding you back? Is it communication problems in-game? Drafting issues? Something else?
First off, we definitely underperformed and we know that. We think the reason is that we just haven't found our identity. We're not playing to our strengths. We're still a new team and we just haven't figured it out yet. And there were a lot of issues between me and TigerJK, in that we're both kind of dominant personalities when we play.
So we've actually switched me over to be the shot caller and main drafter and all that stuff, in-game. Because a lot of the time we'll have two different ideas about what call to make and it led to confusion. Now that we've found our new dynamic, I think we'll do pretty well.
OK. I'm not that familiar with Casanova's history, but I know that the other four of you had often been, if not team captain on your other teams, at least frequently shot callers or in-game leaders and it takes time to find that chemistry where everyone's role is understood.
Right. Making me the in-game leader is our first major change and we're going to see how that works. But our second change is one that we started trying near the end of the season when we were having more success and that's where, instead of the shotcaller's word being law, we started letting people make some of their own decisions. So we're going to try to continue with that, by having people be more vocal in-game. And hopefully, it will improve our decision making, because that's what we feel is our biggest problem right now: decision making and getting on the same page.
I just feel like I could be doing more for my team.
Some of the metrics out there (Master league and others) have given you good but not stellar marks on your three favorite heroes: ETC, Muradin, and Varian. How would you assess your own performance?
I'm the type of competitive person that, even when I win the game, I always go back and look at things I could have done better. I just feel like I could be doing more for my team. If one of my teammates is underperforming, I feel like I could be performing better to make up for that. I take a lot of that responsibility on my shoulders.
Makes sense for a tank player. Speaking of ETC, he was your top pick this season, by far. You played him 14 out of 34 games, almost three times as many as either of your other two main favorites, Muradin and Varian. Is it because he fits your playstyle or because he's so versatile? He's still one of the most hotly-contested Warriors in draft. Do you think he needs more adjustments to bring him back to the pack like they did to Muradin?
Well, the reason we ended up picking ETC so often is because of our drafter, TigerJK, really preferred aggressive compositions before I joined the team, so it just became kind of a natural progression. Also, when I played before, I was one of the best, if not the best, ETCs in NA, so it just fit naturally with what we were trying to do. And he's just the strongest tank in the meta, by a large margin; other than Varian, who was nerfed recently.
Do you think ETC is too powerful?
I don't think he's too powerful. I think he just does everything. He does a little bit of everything really well and, especially, is a really great front line threat. It just makes him an all-around safe pick no matter what. He doesn't have a lot of hard counters. I'd like to see him brought down to a level where he has a more specific role, but I don't know how you'd nerf him. You'd have to change around his kit quite a bit, since his baseline kit is what makes him the perfect tank: survivability with Powerslide, CC with Powerslide and Face Melt, healing, etc.
Muradin was the same way, so they'll either have to tweak ETC's numbers like they did with Muradin or do a significant kit change
Right. I was really surprised when they changed Echo Pedal to do increased damage against Minions because it suddenly gave him the one thing he lacked, which was wave clear. It's interesting that you mention trying to find a more specific role, since the current PTR, of course, has a number of changes to other Warriors that tries to focus them into conditional or response picks. But Varian received a nerf to Warbringer even before the PTR.
As a regular Varian player, is Warbringer still good enough with an 85% slow or does everyone go Shield Wall?
I was talking about this on my stream the other day and the only real way to build him right now is if the other team has a way to constantly activate Parry so that you get a lot of benefit from it constantly being up. If they have heroes like Valla, Tassadar, Tracer, or Lucio, that allow you to have a lot of uptime on his Parry, it makes him unbelievably tanky.
So, even with the Warbringer nerf, you think he'll still see play and the Taunt build will still be the dominant one?
Yes. He'll still see play and Taunt will still be the only build used because his other two builds aren't really viable right now. Taunt is still a form of point-and-click CC, but it's still a situation where you need to have a lot of uptime on Parry to make him valuable. Before the nerf, with two forms of point-and-click CC, you weren't that concerned about Parry's value. Now it's the reason to take him.
If you're going to be a melee character right now, you need survivability.
I noticed in looking over your games that you always took Varian in a double Warrior composition and usually with a Bruiser like Artanis. So, you don't think that in a double Warrior comp alongside, say, Muradin as the tank, that one of Varian's other heroic abilities would be viable with him as the Bruiser?
Oh, no. Absolutely not. Varian's always going to be the frontline tank. Your other Warriors are going to be squishier and you always want him carrying the frontline. Your main concern is that your frontline isn't, you know, dead. If you're going to be a melee character right now, you need survivability and Varian's other heroics don't do that. That's why Ragnaros is so good because, especially after you hit 13, he has such great durability.
Right. On the PTR right now, they are, in fact, identifying Ragnaros as a Bruiser. As far as the Warrior meta overall, with them shifting Warriors into more specific roles, do you think there's enough diversity in the meta right now? In the 5 weeks of the first part of the season, you ended up playing a total of 5 heroes. With these changes on the PTR, do you see that changing for you?
Yes. Definitely. So far, in the current patch, I've been playing a lot of Stitches. I've been playing Dehaka. I think there's a lot of variation right now. I think it started with when they nerfed Tychus so hard. That allowed people to get out and experiment and you're just starting to see the results of that.
But I think you're also seeing a lot of diversity in Mages, so you're also seeing people playing anti-mage heroes, like Anub'arak and now Tyrael. You'll be seeing me play a fair amount of Stitches, because he's so good against Mages. You'll be seeing me play Anub... Not so much Tyrael anymore.
Some of the changes were more stark than others. I'm fine with Tyrael becoming anti-mage, but when they took away Imposing Will... That was the reason you picked Tyrael.
You'll still see him. You can still get some value out of Sanctification. I mean, it's a huge hit for him, but that's the way the game's balanced out. Things are either way too strong or way too weak. They're trying to make things so that they're balanced based on situations, rather than being overpowering.
So, we'll see how they do with this approach. Like, when I used to play Muradin, I could pretty easily 2v1 or 3v1, so the balance method has come a long way.
Definitely. So, looking at the last series of the first part of the season, with you guys against Gale Force: On game 1, they get first pick, so you pick the map and go with Sky Temple. They first pick Zeratul and your response with Ragnaros and Varian. Rag I understand, but Varian's not a hugely popular pick on that map.
Was that a response to Zeratul (old Warbringer could isolate him long enough for a quick kill) or were you already angling for the double Warrior comp, which you later got with Dehaka?
Rag at the time was just a really powerful hero on any map and as for Varian, we knew they would follow with Falstad, and Varian is really strong against both of them. It's also a matter of not locking yourself into any particular comp with the first two picks and Rag and Varian were just two really solid picks. But, yes, Varian is strong against Zeratul.
OK. Late in the game, GFE had the XP edge, but you had the structure advantage, as you still had keeps untouched, and they were down two. They went for the boss and you guys decided to dive the boss fight, even though they had the 20-19 level advantage. With resets on their Li Ming, you got wiped and they walked in with the boss for the win. What was the thinking there? A 16 minute boss wouldn't guarantee a keep loss.
So, going back to what I said at the start, we know that our decision making process is what was holding us back and that's we've decided to put that solely in my hands.
a) because people listen to me more and
b) I'm not a guy that listens very well unless I have a tremendous amount of respect for the person making the call. It's not that I don't respect TigerJK... I don't know how else to explain it other than to say he just doesn't have enough weight in the game.
So we decided to try a few games with just my shot calling and the energy and the enthusiasm has been better and we're beating everyone right now, which is why we're really excited. Yeah, we got 3-0'd by GFE and in every game we had an advantage that we should have exploited for the win, but didn't. So I think this is the best way to address that problem going forward. It's just the decision making thing. I think Tempo Storm is the only team in NA right now we can't get ahead of in games.
Issues over communication and respect for each other are often pretty ego-driven, which happens in any kind of competitive environment. Have you considered getting a coach to try to help you sort those things out? I know it's more difficult right now without a sponsor.
Yeah, we've considered it. We've talked about getting a coach a couple times. But we know what our issues are. A lot of people can sit in their armchairs and tell us what our issues are but we know better than any of those people because we live it and breathe it. We're more familiar with our chemistry than anyone else can be. And it's not just between me and Ed [TigerJK] but it's often someone else that just won't listen and we've found that when I am making the decisions in-game, everybody listens. And we've also found that when I'm shot calling from my Warrior position, I'm 2 or 3 times more vocal and informative, for lack of a better word. When I'm making decisions for our team, I just function better.
Did you watch any of the Western Clash?
Yes.
It's funny that you bring up Stitches, of course, since JayPL made some pretty amazing Stitches plays in the first couple games of the grand finals, as part of a comp- Stitches/Tyrande -that a lot of people would consider outdated. Did that approach surprise you guys? Or did you figure it was just part of what you do in an extended tournament (i.e. start making different picks to try to keep your opponents off balance)?
I can't tell you really why they took the Stitches-Tyrande comp except that, along with Kael'thas, it gives them a lot of zone control, with two of those Rs on pretty short cooldowns; in addition to the huge pick potential. So I don't know why they did it, but the reason we've been playing more Stitches is because the meta changed so much this last patch with the nerfing of Tychus. It kind of shifted things toward Mage damage and Stitches is really strong against Mages; as is Anub'arak.Also, without Tychus, Arthas will see more play and I was around when Arthas and Stitches were the most powerful tanks in the game, so this patch coming up is kind of my patch. I'm going to really enjoy this.
But as far as Dig playing Stitches and Tyrande, I think they did it based on what other teams were prioritizing and because they knew it was something that other teams weren't prepared to play against. They ran it really well, so kudos to them.
On the patch, Arthas is the only one who's gotten an almost universally positive response from places like Reddit and so on. I always considered him a favorite but also felt that his lack of mobility is what really held him back.
I don't think he needs mobility, really. Based on the way they've buffed him now, if he had mobility, he'd be broken. He's the only hero in the game with an AoE slow that can be constantly on, plus an attack speed slow as part of it, and a root. He's really, really good right now.
I think his problem has really been that he's too squishy. He lacked survivability and now with all of the buffs to his health and things like Icebound Fortitude, he won't have that problem as much. And they buffed his ghouls.
I'm not a guy that listens very well unless I have a tremendous amount of respect for the person making the call.
Right. Well, as a charter member of the original Barrel Boys, you haven't played Chen yet in HGC. Is it just a bad meta for him or does he just not fit your playstyle these days?
Yeah, Chen... He's just not... Everything he does there's a Warrior who does it better. Think of him like Illidan, except he's not a threat. Whenever you're drafting, you have to look at what the hero does well. What does Chen do well? He's a good laner. He's good in the early game. But what does he bring to a team fight? He's good on maps like Braxis or Dragon Shire where you need a solo lane for an extended period of time but, these days, he also loses that lane to a lot of other heroes that are also good in that role. And then he just doesn't bring enough to a team fight where a lot of other heroes do have something to contribute.
Agreed. Anything you'd like to mention that I didn't get to?
Mostly just that we're well aware of our issues and we know we fell below everyone's expectations, especially our own. A lot of people saw us breaking into the top 4 and we're in 7th or 8th place now. So we have a new part of the season coming up with seven more games so, if we play well, we could finish this segment at 8-6, at which point we're in a position to try to get to BlizzCon.
It's not over for any team in the HGC and I think we've proven against teams like GFE and Naventic that we can easily- easily -get ahead of these teams and then it's just a matter of closing the game out.
