Team Liquid is heading into the UB Semi-Finals series at The International 2023. GosuGamers had the opportunity to talk with captain Aydin "iNSaNiA" Sarkohi.
Team Liquid has easily become a household name on the Dota 2 landscape. And they have receipts to prove why. The European team made it to the grand finals on five separate occasions this year — Riyadh Masters 2023, Bali Major, Berlin Major, DreamLeague Season 19, and Lima Major.
Read that again. Three of those five were Majors. With results like that, Team Liquid secured first place in the DPC rankings and has become one of the favorites to seize the Aegis of Champions.
Merely hours before the DPC 2022-23 Season roster lock, Team Liquid announced Michał "Nisha" Jankowski as the replacement for recently retired Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen. Nisha assumed the mid-lane role in the roster and since then Team Liquid has been on fire.
Now, when it matters most, Team Liquid is sitting in the upper brackets of The International 2023 with, in the worst-case scenario, a Top 6 placement secured. If they reproduce their results from the previous Valve Sponsored events this year they will at least be gracing the stage in the grand finals.
The tension is thick, and the pressure is mounting but that didn't stop team captain Aydin "iNSaNiA" Sarkohi from meeting with GosuGamers during the break week to talk about their experience so far, the state of Dota 2, and the ‘second place curse’. As always, the Swede was all smiles, easygoing, and talkative.
Team Liquid will next be competing in the Upper Bracket Semi-Finalsd, on Saturday, October 28 at 01:00 CEST
Team Spirit
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Team LiquidiNSaNiA Interview with GosuGamers at The International 2023
Congratulations on the upper bracket spot! How confident are you and the team feeling going into the playoffs?
I think we always feel pretty confident. Our team has had a pretty good track record this year so we have a lot of reasons to believe in ourselves. With that said, I don't think we don't really have that many expectations, we are just going to take every game as it comes and try to do our best.
Team Liquid lost the first game they played (against Azure Ray), and haven’t dropped the game since. Was that a one-off, or did you change anything after that defeat?
I think Azure Ray kind of got one on us. FY really popped off and kind of destroyed the entire map (laughs) so we didn't really have much to say. It felt like they got to dictate the entire pace of the game and then after that, we were just on the receiving end the entire time. We didn't really change too much, we just realized we need to play a bit sharper and we need to be a bit more careful about giving away certain heroes in certain positions.
You guys are one of the favorites here. Who do you see as your top two main challengers in the pursuit of the Aegis?
(Laughs) I don't really think of us as favorites, maybe I should, but I don't really see it that way myself. I think the favorites for winning TI are Team Spirit -- they looked really really hot recently. There have been some unexpected outcomes I think. I expected BetBoom to be in the upper bracket, I expected Tundra to be in the upper bracket and I expected both of them to be very strong here. But with them in the lower bracket, I think I have to shift the focus and so maybe Azure Ray seems like a very tough opponent. They have a lot of veterans. So I would probably say Spirit and Azure Ray.
And speaking of upper brackets and lower brackets and results overall, were you surprised with the group stage outcome?
We actually scrimmed BetBoom and Shopify a lot going into TI. So when I saw them both in our group, I was like 'OK, this might be very bad for us or very good for us'. We had to see what happened because there was a lot of info on both sides. So I was a little bit surprised that we did as well as we did. I thought we would have some more 1:1's but luckily it worked out in our favor this time I think.
Team Liquid was very dominant for the entire season, but you were eliminated in the group stages of DreamLeague Season 21. Was that just fatigue?
I think we came off of a pretty long break after Riyadh. We didn't really scrim going into DreamLeague and I think most of us hadn't even been playing pubs so I think the outcome was quite expected. Dota has reached a point now where if you don't play you are going to get obliterated by these teams that are putting in effort every single day. I don't think that any of us took it too harshly. We kind of knew what we got ourselves into.
Eastern Europe has suddenly turned out to be the dominant region at this TI. Do you think the new patch is favorable for their playstyle?
I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. I think they played the same region as us in Europe. And Western Europe has been so strong for so long that it was kind of surprising that Eastern Europe wasn't also showing up in as many numbers. I think the region, Eastern Europe/CIS, has had a lot of competition between each other so it was a matter of time. In terms of the patch, maybe, but it's hard to say.
What do you think about this new TI format for 1) the group stage and 2) the overall tournament with 4 day breaks?
I think so far I prefer the old system. I like the idea of building momentum when you play day by day and you ramp it up. I feel like having this four-day break -- I remember even at the last TI when we had it before when we got top 4, it felt like we lost a lot of momentum and you get out of the groove a little bit. So far that's my take on it. Whether it is better for viewership or broadcasts and stuff, I don't know. So there might be some other advantages but from a player's perspective, the old system felt nicer.
How do you like the current meta? Have the last few balance patches changed the viable hero pool significantly?
I think the latest ones, the last 3 or 4 patches they really mixed things up. I feel like the entire year before we were just playing the same heroes even though things like Medusa was bad for one day and then the next week she was on top of the scene again, but overall the hero pool that you were picking from was quite similar. Now it feels like it is a completely different style of Dota which is really fun. I really like what they have done with the patch. We are all still exploring even though we are halfway through TI. There is new stuff popping up every day.
A case has been made over the last few months that with the amount of farm increasing with every major Dota 2 patch, the game has just become a farm fest instead of one having unique strategies. Do you think that is the case?
I think it will be this way for a while until people figure stuff out. I remember initially when the new map was released, everyone was just dying everywhere, nobody knew what was going on. And then after a while, it settled in with everyone knowing where to farm. Now I feel like people are figuring out which areas to control and where to look for kills. It's just a natural progress of big changes in Dota. Maybe it is a lot of farming right now, but I think it will progress to be more... people will always find a way. If everyone is spending time on farming then people will figure out how to kill them, then they will figure out how to split push again and then it is the eternal cycle.
Speaking of dying and not farming how does the position 5 role feel right now?
Over the last five years, (role) 5 has become more of a real role (laughs). It used to be pull some waves, stack some camps and place some wards but nowadays you have a lot more influence on the outcome of the game. I am overall happy. I feel like it is a position where you can impact the game a lot more compared to a few years back. So I am happy about that.
How has your experience in Seattle been so far? Do you like the city?
I haven't really left the hotel, so I can't say much about Seattle except that it has been quite rainy. The weather ... in Singapore last year the weather was a lot nicer, but any major city kind of vibe.
Do you think that the second-place curse affects you at all? Is it something that is in the back of your mind?
(laughs). I want to say it is in the back of my mind, but I remember when we went into Riyadh we were kind of expecting to play Gladiators as we always do and then when we found out we weren't going to play Gladiators I think we all felt like, 'ok, it is time to break the curse' …if it even is a curse. I think that loss we took a little bit harder because it felt like there was something grand finals that we were doing wrong more than it just being Gladiators being our Kryptonite. But I don't really think about it. At the end of the day you place second, you are really sad in the moment but then the day after, you are pretty proud of yourself for getting second place.
