Winter: 'We are slowly picking up the pieces'

Hello Winter. Firstly, how do you feel being invited to The International? If I’m not wrong, it’s your first time participating in the tournament.
- Yup, it’s the first time for me and my whole team. No one participated last year and of course, we felt very happy and pleased to have been able to get this prestigious invite. It’s the biggest Dota 2 event ever, and it’s every professional players’ dream to attend it.



Do you remember what you were doing at last year’s event?
-I was having industrial training at One World hotel - I was still a management trainee then but I’ve already graduated so nothing can stop me from focusing one hundred percent on this tournament.

Oh, so you didn’t manage to catch last year’s The International?
-I managed to watch a few games from home after work. There wasn’t any internet access for trainees where I worked. *laughs*

How’s the team holding up now? Any bootcamps?
-Yup, we’ve been bootcamping since last month and the entire team is staying at my home now. We head to the Orange LAN cafe every day to practise. Well, we haven’t been doing too well for the past two weeks I guess, and it can be seen from our tournament matches, but we are slowly picking up the pieces, figuring out what’s wrong and solving our issues bit by bit.

Hopefully, everything will be smooth sailing before we fly off for Seattle.



Yeah, your team’s performance online hasn’t been too spectacular. Any thoughts on what happened in those games (vs mouz, iG, CLG, etc)?
-We just played badly - everyone lost sense of what was important during the matches and nothing was working. Our team chemistry wasn’t there, decisions made were bad, and basically, everything was bad. But since then, things have slowly been getting better day and day, and we hope to regain our form after we finish our bootcamp, and improve even more from there.

Were you guys playing from Orange LAN cafe? How were the connections in those games? Any lag?
-Yeah, we were. It’s around 230-250 ping for us playing on US West. There wasn’t any lag, just playable delay. We just didn’t play well.



I see. Tell us about how a normal day of training goes for your team.
-How many hours we play each day depends. Sometimes it’s ten to twelve, sometimes it’s eight hours. We play badminton often together *laughs*. Well, not that often - like one to two times a week. We do some team bonding, which includes going to movies as well.

We wake up, wait for Ice to finish bathing because he’s always so slow and lazy when we try to wake him up. After that, we’ll eat before we head down to the cafe, and then we practise from then on. We’re either watching replays together or scrimming.



Everyone plays badminton?
-Ya. Mushi wants to be the next Lee Chong Wei. He watched his matches alot during his spare time, especially his gold medal match when he lost to Lin Dan during the Olympics. Mushi was watching, and we had a television in our training facility, so all of us was supporting him. We held off training until his finals match ended *laughs*.

Yamateh was rooting hard for him as well. Actually, that was his special request from him that day - no training until the gold medal badminton match ended.

Were you following the Olympics too? Well, besides badminton.
-Not much, only badminton. Lee Chong Wei is a big icon in Malaysia now. Every Malaysian’s hero. *grins*



Hehe. So is that your schedule seven days a week? No rest days?
-Yeah, pretty much. We only rest when Yamateh and Ice go back to Johor Baru (another state in Malaysia) and that is once every two to three weeks for one to two days. That is when we get to rest. But even when there is no training, we will be watching replays and having discussions about how to play better.

Which teams do you normally follow or scrim against?
-We usually scrim against Chinese teams and Zenith or MUFC. Well, we play South East Asian teams and we feel like we need to follow every team at The International. You know, monitor their playstyle because every team is strong and no one should be overlooked. We strive to understand how each and every team plays.



Have you tried playing the European or North American teams? Do you plan to?
-We did try to arrange scrims with mTw and EG, but it didn’t work out in the end. We wanted some US West practice during that period to get use to the delay (playing at BTS/etc) but normally we would just arrange matches with teams from the region.

Hmm, based on your experience playing with them, what do you think is the toughest aspect of these teams and their playstyle?
-Teams from Europe and North America play different, from their drafts to their playstyle. The most difficult part of playing them would be to adapt and handle it properly as we usually play with teams that come from the South East Asian region.

I feel that North American teams like POTM Bottom, Complexity and Evil Geniuses have great team play and chemistry. It’s a shame PB wasn’t invited; they got noticed too late, after all the invites were out. They are a very unique team, and they’re playing so awesome as of late.

Yup, they didn’t even get to play in the Wildcard qualifiers. In what sense are they unique?
-Well, one small example. Aui is the only Dragon Knight player that opts for stats over Dragon Blood, and his Broodmother only takes Spawn Spiderlings to level three. SneyKing is a very strong off lane player.. you get the point.

Also, you spoke about the different playstyles between Asia and Europe. Could you be more specific?
-Everything is different, though there is a common ground. For example, M5’s pgg is always diving towers and playing super aggressive. In yesterday’s match against PB, mouz went inside enemy base at just four minutes and killed PB’s courier and two heroes outside their fountain. *laughs*

Chinese teams prefer to be more safe and secure, with not much risk taken, while our team Orange, as well as Zenith are more aggressive compared to them, but not as aggressive as M5. They take more risk in their plays.





I’m assuming it’s more of a balance between the two for your team. Okay, if we leave Orange out of the picture, which teams do you think will finish top three at The International?
-It’s hard to predict since there are not many LAN events to judge from. Online tournament performance can be very subjective but I guess Na`Vi will still be the favorites in my opinion. iG, LGD, mTw and EG are in better shape at the moment as well - I’m not sure about Darer or pgg’s M5 but they usually do well on major LANs.

Well, the European teams seem to think the Chinese will do well this year. Do you agree?
-Yup, they always have a knack of coming out with superb performances during major LANs. We’ve already been to some a few times and we have seen how hard they train so never count out the Chinese teams. Their online performance won’t reflect much on how they will perform in Seattle.

What do you think about the current hero pool used for The International?
-It’s great. All the DotA heroes used in Captain’s Mode have been transferred over and Dota 2 CM is much more like DotA now. People used to argue about the lack of heroes during last year’s The International, but now the pool is almost complete. Kudos to Valve for all their hard work. I think it’s fair that they are letting teams practice with a stable hero pool one month before the tournament, as opposed to adding in heroes one to two weeks before an event of this scale.





Do you see any competitive viability in the last three heroes added? (Keeper of the Light, Nyx Assassin, Visage) Are you maybe considering picking Visage for xTinct?
-*laughs* Yes, that’s one of his favorite heroes. I think the game has to develop to a state where almost all of the heroes can be used in Captain’s Mode. It’s how a team decides to pick a lineup that works well with a particular hero and the execution of that lineup is what matters most. Nyx Assassin used to be picked a lot in the Philippines before the rework of his third spell. The bugs were just so annoying.

Is he not viable now?
-Less viable. I think the old spell was much stronger. You should ask Ars-Art if Nyx Assassin is still viable. *grins*

Why is that so?
-Nyx Assassin was his best hero during his Virtus Pro days. *laughs* But that was long ago.





Well, thank you for the interview. Any shoutouts?
-I would just like to thank those who support us, because without your support we wouldn’t be here today. Thanks to our sponsors Kingston, Asus, Orange and Razer.

I would also like to thank our manager Kenchi for all the things he has done to help the team grow and improve, and Mr Frank Ng, our boss, for all the time he has spent hepling us prepare for this event.

The International 2 here we come!