Hello Meracle. Thanks for the interview. Not many people know about your Dota 2 team before this year. Tell us a little on how it was formed? Who started the gig? The team wasn't started by me. The four of my teammates were already in the team before me. I only joined them after TGX 2012 which happened in September last year. What games did you play before you started Dota 2? Tell us a little history about how you got into computer games? I most played Warcraft 3 games before I started DotA 2, I got interested in competitive DotA when I was like 14 years old. Aside from Warcraft 3, I also play a lot of console games and handheld games. I just simply play a lot of games (Laughs). Since we don’t really know much about your teammates and you. Please help me introduce them and probably one sentence to describe their behaviour in real life and roles in game. I am a very quiet guy in real life, but does most of the talking for the team. I also love buildings and creeps more than heroes in the game and enjoys playing heroes with a lot of illusions. I play the hard-carry position. Poloson and I are both 17 this year. He also does not talk much in real life but enjoys being called Batman, so I won't take that away from him. He plays the solo mid. Hana is 18 this year, he's more social than the rest of us have a passion for basketball. He takes the off-lane role. Lubby is 19 this year. He doesn't talk as much but will when it's needed. He plays Anti-Mage and Phantom Lancer more than I do in pubs. However he plays the support role because I can't. MEEN is 18 this year, same as Hana. He's the more emotional guy and likes to blast music when we are skyping in games while singing. He claims to be a tryhard in pub games, but spoils every game that I play with him. He plays the support role too. Since most of you are still very young, how do you and your teammates juggle your time between training and studies? We mostly train at night and sleep afterwards. The whole morning and afternoon will be spent doing our own things like school and whatnot. If exams are coming, then we will stop training for a bit until the exam period is over. We are pretty fine with rescheduling our training time. Most of us are still schooling so we can't just fully dedicate to DotA 2. Singapore is an extremely expensive country to live in and E-sports isn't really that big here.
Zenith's decision making and the way they play are amazing.
Why Meracle? Is it a typo? No, many people thought it is but actually it is just a character in a game that I like a lot (Laughs) The team really impressed a lot of people when you guys were able to go head to head with Zenith in Flash League. How did the team managed to climb into stardom that quickly? I guess there are many teams that are not very used to playing with our style of play. We play extremely defensive and teams tend to overextend for a kill without thinking of the consequences. Let’s talk about your games against Zenith yesterday. The first game was really close. What do you think was the main factor causing you guys to lose such a close game? What do you think the team could have done better in the game? I guess we should've forced in much earlier when we had the Aegis. Aside from that, I believe we should've played much more aggressively as all of us were saving buy-outs even though we were on the offensive. Zenith's decision making and the way they play are amazing. But yeah, we should've pushed much earlier rather than bringing it to late-game after they got like five Scythe of Vyse up. Many viewers are surprised to see Timbersaw making its way into the game. What do you think is Zenith’s advantage in picking up the hero and what was the team’s plan to counter such an unorthodox pick? We never really played against that hero at all but we were confident that it would not be as good since it does not have any stuns to lock down the Morphling. I noticed that the Timbersaw in the last battle stayed alive for a long time on 50hp before going down. Was there a miscommunication there because he did a significant amount of damage before dying. The whole fight was extremely messy and there were a lot of spells being thrown out. Cogs, EMP, Cyclone and many other things. We were quite lost during that fight. GoDz mentioned that you in particular had some very questionable buybacks. The first one was when Zenith picked you off and you did not buyback until they came knocking on the tower. Was that intentional or were you saving up for your next item? I was looking around at the map to see if I was able to split-push without getting caught before buying out. Another questionable buyback was when you perished in a battle but did not buyback immediately. You waited for about four to five seconds before buying back. What happened there?
I thought of Rapier but Clockwerk had Blademail.I wanted to make them think that I do not have buy-out and when time it when Magnus uses Reverse Polarity/ Then it would be too late for them to re-position themselves. People notice that most of your team’s supports are always very low in level in general compared to other teams in the game. Why is that? We normally want to keep the pressure up on the opponent's solos with smoke-ganks which often fails. While doing that, we are not stacking creeps and since we would not get the kill, it results in our supports being low in level. We are working on that though. We also noticed that you were using Gyrocopter in the second game. Gyrocopter is more or less a European pick and SEA/Chinese teams don’t generally love to run the hero. Are you guys more adapted to the Euro playstyle? No, we just felt that Gyrocopter was able to carry, and also be extremely strong on a solo lane that game. The casters from BeyondTheSummit definitely thought you could have opted for the Divine Rapier since it was all or nothing for FD in game two. Why did you go for Satanic instead? I had that thought in mind, but Iceiceice's Clockwerk had Blademail which made me think that Satanic would've been a greater choice of item before getting the Divine Rapier. However, the game did not last that long (Laughs). Many teams have dropped the Anti-Mage pick but your team seems to have a knack for him. Do you think Anti-Mage still fits in the current meta-game? Anti-Mage is a hero that suits our playstyle extremely well. It is amazing at split-pushing and also is able to flash farm when given the opportunity. I believe Anti-Mage will always fit in the meta-game just because he's always the go-to hero when you are losing in a best of three or best of five series. So far, you guys are 1-3 against Zenith .What do you think is needed for your team go toe to toe with them on a consistent basis? I guess we've to train really really hard and watch how they play. Their gameplay and draft as a whole is extremely unique. Considering that you guys have missed the chance to go to G-1 this season, what will First Departure be gunning for next? We'll be gunning for every competition we participate in. Who do you think will end up representing Asia to the G-1 League? I hope it will be MUFC, Zenith, Orange, and iG. I believe in the SEA teams. Alright Meracle. Thank you so much for the interview. Would you like to give a big shoutout? A big shoutout to our sponsor, Armaggeddon, and to everybody who supports us!
