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Even in Death's Batterry: "In certain weeks, the amateur scene was better than the bottom HGC teams"

 

Even in Death has been a team in the shadows throughout the North American Heroes Open Division. In the seven cups, the team played in six, earned third place in four and second place in one. As this earned them the fourth seed going into the playoffs they ran through the bracket, ending up facing the first seed LFM and beating them to guarantee their spot in The Crucible.

We had the chance to sit down with team captain Marty "Batterry" Nivinski as the team prepares for their Crucible match against No Tomorrow this weekend.  

Before we talk about the playoffs let's look back at the teams run throughout the Open Division. As someone that has experience playing on the professional level, what do you think about the quality of the amateur teams you faced throughout the Open Division?

Obviously those teams aren't in the HGC so they're not performing at the highest level. It started to become really apparent that the 6th-8th teams in the HGC and the top four in the amateur scene were really close together. The only difference was that there were some mistakes that B Step and  Team Freedom would never make that teams like us, LFM, UT-A were still making. If draft is equal, LFM, Imported and us could shake up those bottom HGC teams. In certain weeks, the amateur scene was better than the bottom HGC teams. We had our own meta, we were doing our thing and HGC had their expectations too. I think in the same way the amateur scene has an advantage on the HGC scene because we have our own little meta. The HGC teams really have to adjust to it.


Batterry competing with Astral Authority at the Second North American Fall Championship

The meta change is really relative too because amateur and HGC are playing on two different patches. Open Division was all on the live patch and HGC was sometimes two patches behind. So you guys are literally having to adjust on the fly sometimes the day of tournaments when a patch gets released, whereas HGC has a tournament server.

We would have won the first and second cups of the if day two was not a patch both times. Both times we lost the game against things that were changed and that was so frustrating because we work really well when there haven't been changes for two weeks. It was really frustrating. Thankfully they started offsetting the patches. Tournaments can be a lot of fun on patch days but not when it's life or death.

You guys got top four in most of the cups that you played in but you never got a cup win. Then you go into the playoffs as the fourth seed and take out the first seed, LFM, and win the whole thing. What was it about the playoffs that jolted you to the top? Was it the confidence or the seeding?

If you look at any of the teams that made it to the last playoffs, there's only like one team that had it harder than we did and that would be whoever we faced in the first round.

As far as seeding I don't think it could have been any harder

If they beat us then they would have to beat NICE (Four Guys a Legend) then LFM then Imported. As far as seeding I don't think it could have been any harder. You can't have five teams in the top four, but FGL is a top four team. I think they were better than UT-A at that moment but they lost a lot of seeding point because of roster changes. If they kept their seeding points it would be a different tournament.

In between cup 7 and the playoffs we really discovered what kind of players we were and what kind of team we wanted to be. We really took all of our strengths and just made it so we were always playing into them. We spent four months identifying weaknesses and mistakes and just saying we're never going to make these mistakes again. The playoffs was the first tournament where we actually did that. I was nervous, not because of seeding but because I wanted to get into the HGC.

Moving into the Crucible, since you won the playoffs you got to chose who you played, what went into the thought process when you decided to choose No Tomorrow. Obviously you've been paying attention to HGC.

The short answer is that No Tomorrow plays on central and Naventic plays on west and we have three players on the East Coast. We didn't make the decision that fast. I didn't really care much for choosing the team. We're just confident enough in our play that if we had lost to Imported we would still feel good going into The Crucible. When we found out the defending team gets to chose the servers, Naventic is going to choose west and we have three players on the east coast, we can't play the Genji's, the Zeratul the Valla, we can't rely on that with that edge. They're going to have 100 ping on us which makes a huge difference. We figured if we can beat both of these teams why handicap ourselves. If they were both in the same region I don't know we would choose Naventic anyway because they're doing a lot of changes and they play a lot of different stuff we wouldn't want to get caught off guard by the Kenma and BigE roll swap.

They're still a good team but at least we know what we're getting into before the games start

Plus we don't know what Kenma's or BigE's hero pool is. Drafting against an unknown is pretty annoying because you basically have to sacrifice a game at some point if they do have a strength and I think that's advantage going into the No Tomorrow set because they play the same thing a lot. Not to say that that's bad, the only difference is they're not winning a whole lot of games playing the same thing. So at least we know what to expect. They're still a good team but at least we know what we're getting into before the games start.  

Since you've played Imported Support and obviously been paying attention to the HGC, what do you think about their matchup against Naventic?

I think that Imported Support is an incredibly one dimensional team. I think they're really really really good at what they want to play and if you let them have that then they become a really good team. When I watch the draft, if Imported gets what they want they will beat Naventic. The thing about Naventic is they don't really play the HGC meta that much, they actually have kind of a weird amateur-ish style. They like the Lucio double support and multiple tanks and I think that Imported is really strong in that area. If Imported goes into their games realizing Naventic is an aggressive team every single game and plays away from it, they'll be in the HGC. The grey area is the ping. Imported is an eastern team too, they would have picked No Tomorrow for the same reason we did. I think that Imported is going have to pick a composition that doesn't rely on really quick timing and if they do, they're going to be fine.

 

The North American Crucible beings Saturday with Naventic versus Imported Support at 12:00 PDT/22:00 CET and continues Sunday with No Tomorrow versus Even in Death at 12:00 PDT/22:00 CET. All games will be broadcasted on twitch.tv/blizzheroes.  

Follow us on Twitter @GosuGamersHotS for more Heroes of the Storm news and coverage from around the world

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