Entity's midlaner has a strong fighting spirit and even stronger belief in his team. Stormstormer talked with us about the dynamics and upcoming match at TI12.
Over the past few years, the Western European Dota 2 region has become extremely competitive. Entity is one of these teams.
The WEU team wasn't close to an invite, despite starting the season strong with a 5-6th place finish at Lima Major.
It had been a tough year for Entity. They parted ways with their long-time offlaner Tobias “Tobi” Buchner. But their new offlaner Kim “Gabbi” Villafuerte Santos is an experienced player and fit in perfectly with the rest of the team.
In the TI12 qualifiers, they displayed a level of competency like no other team, just like they had done last year and became first team that made it through the maze of high skilled teams in Western Europe.
We had the opportunity to talk with Daniel "Stormstormer" Schoetzau between the group stage and their potential elimination series in the lower brackets. The mid-player spent quite a lot of time talking with GosuGamers about his thoughts and feelings on the team roster changes and dynamics, the big changes in Dota 2 recently, his perspective on Tundra and their upcoming match, and what his goal is at The International.
Their next series will be on October 22nd at 22:00 CEST.
Tundra Esports
vs
Entity
StormStormer interview with GosuGamers at TI12
It’s been a tough year for Entity, and I’d like you to walk us through how you guys decided to have Gabbi join, it was a pretty unexpected announcement for everyone.
The year started off well for us — we qualified for the Lima Major instantly and we still considered ourselves underdogs in the beginning in comparison to all the other teams because Western Europe is still insanely challenging - there's Tundra, Liquid, OG, all these orgs and then all of a sudden Gaimin Gladiators with Quinn just popping off.
We were happy that we instantly qualified for the first major and went to Lima. Everything started off pretty well and we got to the top 6.
"This decision was not easy for us by any means (...)"
But after that, I'm not sure really what it was, but it seemed like it wasn't clicking between us anymore. We kept having a lot of talks, we kept trying a lot, scrimming a lot, playing a lot. Everybody was working hard. But still, we didn't get the results that we were hoping for. For some reason, we couldn't play as good of Dota as other teams.
We tried to keep going as long as possible to work on things and communicate with everybody but in the end, it just seemed like we needed some new fresh air, fresh blood, or something.
This decision was not easy for us by any means because we are really good friends with Tobi and of course, he stayed with the team since the creation of Entity. So (he was) the core member —part of the first five team members. But it felt like we needed some form of change in the roster and unfortunately, that was Tobi in the end.
We were definitely then looking for agents and were hustling, we were not sure who to find. Then all of a sudden we thought 'hey there's this Gabbi guy, like this SEA player'.... and in my head, I'm thinking 'Isn't that the guy that plays Morphling and Shaker all the time and just plays carry? What the hell, he's not an offlaner' but I think it was actually Fishman who was pushing because he realized that Gabbi had been streaming a lot and playing for a couple of months now. Also, the meta changed, and the offlane got more and more similar to the carry role in terms of how much you farm and everything, so it seemed like more of a realistic option. Of course, it was a bit of a wild guess, we don't know what he is like, it's a different culture, bringing a person from SEA might be uncomfortable for him, bringing him to Europe - everything might have been a new experience, but it was also definitely exciting to have this new kind of person that you don't know anything about really. We only got feedback from a lot of people that said 'this guy's clowny', everyone said 'this guy is such a clowny guy' and we were like 'ok, cool, sounds nice' (laughs).
So yeah that's how we ended up getting Gabbi and holy moly it was such a good decision.
Was there any moment when you considered changing roles to have him going in the mid lane?
Before we chose Gabbi, there were actually talks and I considered playing offlane myself because there were actually a lot of free midlane agents who were willing to play and good friends of ours, and not that many offlaners. Once again, Gabbi was a carry right, he didn't play offlane in competitive before this team, but in the end, we made it this way and everyone stayed in the role that they were and Gabbi went to offlane.
How has the team dynamic changed since Gabbi joined?
Yeah, definitely. Tobi was a more reserved person, he was always very nice, and very chill. You could never really hear any bad words from Tobi or anything but he was rather quiet, more backgroundy you could say. Whereas Gabbi is more outgoing. He's also a bit shy sometimes, but he has a lot of energy. Even when you just play pubs in your room he has so much energy, he keeps shouting and laughing and singing. Its definitely a whole different dynamic.
"(...)definitely things we lacked in the past and were improved since Gabbi joined the team."
Also in the game, he's a very confident player. He's making a lot of calls, he's saying what he thinks is good, and adding a lot to the core communication of the team, something that we lacked before. So I think that there are definitely pros, definitely things we lacked in the past and were improved since Gabbi joined the team. That definitely helped.
Entity had a pretty good first phase of the group stage, then you lost to Azure Ray in the seeding match. What went wrong in that particular series?
It's tough to tell. I think it was also definitely the nerves kicking in a little bit. I don't think that everyone played their best Dota, including myself —just simply because there was so much on the line.
"We considered ourselves at least as strong as Azure Ray"
I guess we are not the only ones of course. Tundra lost to nouns and Gaimin Gladiators just lost to Talon. I'm not saying that Talon and nouns are worse teams, but the favorite teams are also in the lower bracket with us.
I think that there were just a lot of nerves going into this series and it was hard to execute. We weren't really able to play our best Dota, I think we still showed some good plays and some good spirit though. For example, in the second game, we got absolutely stomped in the beginning and then we almost turned the game completely. We turned the probability to 50/50 again but just then we still made some mistakes and couldn't really close it out. So I'm still proud of some things we did in that series but unfortunately, it was not enough and I think most of us were expecting to get that win. We considered ourselves at least as strong as Azure Ray so of course we were sad that we were in that situation but it is what it is.
Moving forward you have a battle for survival with the defending champions. Is there extra pressure having to play against Tundra with elimination on the line or do you feel like the pressure is more on them?
Hard to tell. I think the pressure is more on them just simply coz we've got the underdog buff and that is just what it is. That's always a nice position to be in.
I think the pressure is a bit more on them too because they did not expect to be in the lower bracket at all. They were considered the favorites, they did insanely well in the group stage. I think they were top in the group and now they lost against nouns who they probably thought they were going to easily 2:0, (but) they lost 0:2, not even 2:1.
I think the pressure is on both teams a bit meaning both teams are thinking 'If we lose this series we're gonna fly home, this is it' but I think the pressure is more on them and we are trying to take it as chill as possible and we are just going to enjoy the chance to kick the champions out of this tournament - the previous champions.
How do feel you match up against them in terms of gameplay?
I think Tundra always strikes me as a very professional team, if that makes sense. Maybe it's a weird word to say but they have very strong fundamentals. I think they have very smart concepts on how to play the game, and play the map in different scenarios. They are very strong by-the-book players. If the game is going well for them, they play the map extremely effectively, and the movement is good. They also have Topson, a very aggressive player who sometimes is quite a flashy player who does some special stuff.
I rate this team very highly of course. How well you play doesn't only matter how good you are in the theory of the game and this TI that was proven so much, otherwise they wouldn't be in the lower bracket.
It's going to come down much more to how people feel going into this series and also what happened in this one week of break now, how teams better prepared for the enemy teams a lot of time. So I think gameplay-wise we have some super, some very unique strengths that I'm not gonna share too openly, but I think if we do what we are doing well, just the same ways as we did in our scrims right now, I think we have a really good shot at beating them.
How do you like the hero pool for mid-lane right now?
It's exciting. I like it the way it is right now. There are always some heroes that openly, seem like the strongest heroes on mid. For example, when the patch first came out with the Invoker and Pangolier changes you could see these two heroes being permabanned in the first stage in every single game.
"What midlaners do really well right now is create chaos in the early game"
I am glad that there was a patch before TI which also changed things a little bit so it's less obvious. There are still some heroes that seem to be stronger than others. Once again I'm not going to go into detail about this, but in general, I guess what midlaners do really well right now is create chaos in the early game because there are so many objectives you can fight around. You can fight around the side lanes, and you can, after ganking the safe lane, then portal to the offlane and gank the lane as well. You can maybe even be fast enough to control the enemy Wisdom Rune at minute seven. All of these plays are really, really cool and it helps to play an active hero to 'really shake the map' like my ex-teammate Pure used to love to say. I like the way the midlane is right now. I think you are in a role where you are really active and you can really set the tempo in the first 10 minutes of the game.
I think you are the first player that enjoys the change the week before TI, the new patch. And you mentioned of course adding fresh blood to the team as a positive thing. Are you a fan of big changes?
Absolutely, I'm absolutely a fan of big changes. I think the patch that came out with the big map, I loved it so much. Before that, I think there were 5 or 6 months of no big patches —smaller patches only, but nothing too big. I was so happy when this came out with the bigger map, wisdom runes, Tormentor, universal heroes, and all this stuff. I love it so much because I think it keeps the game exciting and keeps pushing people to invent new things, not just look to what other people play and copy that but gives you a completely new option to becoming creative. I definitely love that.
Pro players are really really good at working right now in terms of doing research, and checking what other players play. There are also a lot of tools right now on the internet that help you to research how other teams prepare. A few weeks after the patch came out, most players had already figured out what seemed to be the strongest heroes, what seemed to be the best starts, and all this stuff.
I like that people are thrown into a little bit of cold water. And have to adapt quickly and make drafting especially less obvious. Before the patch came out there were always really similar patterns.... we ban this, they ban that, we get this hero, they get that hero and it was always following the same patterns. But now it's nice, new changes, new possibilities and you have to basically invent something new.
Are you a fan of the Heart of Tarrasque meta that seems to be developing at TI12?
(laughs) I think it's pretty interesting because Heart of Tarrasque has never in the history of Dota been a meta item. It's really unique. I think whoever invented that, is an absolute genius. It must have been some pub player that came up with this Blademail/Heart synergy idea because you look back two months ago and no one ever bought Blademail on every mid-lane hero. If you would see some Kunkkas with Blademail you'd be like 'wtf are you doing bro, where's your ... I don't know what this hero used to buy...where is your actual item?'
"I think whoever invented that, is an absolute genius."
I think it's super exciting. I still think that the attributes could be slightly changed or nerfed there should be other items getting buffed to make it less obvious what you build because right now every hero is buying Blademail, every strength hero especially just simply coz the item has no negatives to it. So I think after TI the item is going to be really dumpstered and being put down. I think it's exciting. I like how these items, especially Heart of Tarrasque are really popular right now because it has never really been a big item.
What would be a placement result that you will be happy with at TI12?
I don't care so much about... okay, sure I care about the placement. I want to go through to the grand finals to play in the stadium. That's what is really important to me at least. I want to make first place. At the last TI I only played on the first venue and not the big stadium in Singapore, so that would be a big milestone for me. But even if that did not happen, what I care the most about is that I know that all my teammates tried their best, everyone was in a good mood and nobody lost faith in their team before it was actually over. I want everyone to fight till the end. I want everyone to still believe.
"I want everyone to fight till the end"
Even if you lost the first map, and you go to the second map and the enemy gets 10 kills and you get 0 and you are super messed up, I just want everyone to try until the very end. Just so that at the end you can look back at this event and be like 'Hey we all tried our best' and sure, maybe Tundra and Gaimin or whatever team you are going to lose to might be/might have been the better team but I just care about my own team...that everyone believes in each other and everyone tries their best.
Were you surprised at all by the teams that got eliminated after the group stage?
One team that I was definitely shocked by was Quest Esports. This team had been looking so strong in the last couple of months and of course, they also qualified to TI in a really dominating fashion in our Western EU qualifier. I was surprised. I also think Keyd Stars was in that group as well, and they managed to survive instead of Quest. So for me, that was the biggest surprise that they got kicked out.
But also big props to Keyd Stars. They were the 3rd or 4th SA team and many people would have expected that this is one of those random 4th teams that got a slot because of the DPC system, but they actually managed to survive and even get into a decider against LGD. I'm really happy for them — that this smaller team is where it is right now, they really deserve to be where they are right now.
