With recent victories in ADC against already established teams such as XtC, How.Korea has mesmerized the DotA community, being the only Korean team in the competitive scene. GosuGamers has interviewed the leader of the team, Heen, to answer some popular questions about his mysterious team.
Hello, this is MeaNy- from GosuGamers. Please give us a little introduction to yourself
-"Hello, my name is Lee Seung Gon. I am currently playing in ADC as How.kr, which stands for How Koreans Do It. I am the leader of the team."
So recently How.kr has been receiving a lot of attention. But for those who don't know, please introduce your team
-"There are ten people in the team roster including me. However, the main players are five, who will also be attending WCG this year. The rest are Clan Pein members who play in Bnet U.S West server. I created Clan Pein.
The main players include Hoonji, tomato, devil, lanpu and me. Hoonji is my school junior and he is a gank-carry/carry. Tomato used to be famous as xD.Scout and he is currently our supporter, who usually plays heroes such as Earthshaker and Tidehunter. Devil is also a supporter, but he is a poorer warding supporter such as Crystal Maiden and Witch Doctor. Lanpu is similar to hoonji, so they do rock paper scissors to get the hero they want. I try to do an all-rounder, but I usually take essential roles such as carry or rich ganker."
How.kr has only recently been formed, and DotA in Korea is not very well known, but what is your secret to staying competitive against well known teams in ADC?
-"I emphasize communication to my teammates. Although we are busy and hence do not practice much, I ask players to maximize their speaking during the game to let ourselves know what players will be doing in the game. Furthermore, although we do not have much practice, we watch our replays together to fix our mistakes. I individually watch our opponents' games before we fight them and take notes about their favorite heroes and game management."
Being the only noticeable Korean team on DotA competitive scene, what style difference, if any, do you think you have between you and other teams such as Chinese, European and Asian.
-"Actually, when China was the top of DotA last year, we tried to immitate their playstyles and mostly copied their strategies. Then, as our favorite heroes were different from Chinese, we realized that we needed to adjust the style to ours. Now we are slowly finding our style and optimizing it. Our style is defensive, making a timed attack until our items and levels are superior. Instead of pressuring the opponents, when we are at an advantageous stage, we don't miss it and try to end the game then. Simply stating, Chinese or European teams try to make action when they are at disadvantageous stage. But, we try to fish the opponents to make mistakes :). However, I realized that this kind of play has limitation, so I am trying to use different tactics. In Starcraft, a player with many different strategies win, and I think the same about DotA."
So, as a Korean, do you think there is a correlation between Starcraft and DotA?
-"I personally play both Starcraft 2 and DotA. Although these two games are relatively uncomparable, I think that to win in both games, there is a similar game philosophy."
Wow, are you also a progamer for Starcraft 2?
-"Oh no, I attend university, so I don't have much time to play. But, I am 1300 Diamond player in Korean server. I play Starcraft 2 because it has great potential to develop and I just want to watch it evolve from the beginning lol."
How much is DotA actually known in Korea?
-"DotA community in Korea is relatively very small. There is not much competition, so although the skill is increasing, it is developing slowly. DotA in Korea is a game for few people. Mainstream is Chaos (author's note: Chaos is a similar WarCraft III map to DotA, created by a Korean when the DotA project was handed over to IceFrog.). As a result, few Koreans play DotA because of friend recommendation and it is more like 'a game to have fun with friends'. Hence, there aren't really strong teams in Korea."
Then, when is How.kr created and since when have you and your friends started DotA?
-"Actually, How.kr (How Koreans Do It) is not so different from SuP (Sponsor us Please) of last year. We just changed the name of the team to make it more interesting and to promote DotA more in Korea."
Oh, please explain to us some detailed history of your DotA team
-"I left a Korean clan called xDT, and made Clan Pein with my friends in 2008. Then, the clan evolved to be the strongest team in Korea by 1 year. In early 2009, March, a player who was playing in overseas, asked us if he and we could join force to create a WCG team. So, 2 foreigners (March and Mystyle) and 3 xDT members (Heen, Scout, Devil) joined together to participate in WCG 09. In WCG 09, our team name was TOFU and this year's team name is Pein. Clan xDT became inactive, so we moved on to Clan Pein naturally. 90% of the members of How.kr is from Clan Pein. Scout aka Tomato want to stay uninvolved in the clan because he thinks that's cool lol, but he joins us for tournaments."
How does Korea run DotA competitively?
-"Korea has 3 tournaments in 1 year. They are called DCB, DLeague, and KDL. The price is usually small, but most of the point is to find out the best team of Korea. These tournament games are broadcasted in afreeca.com by the community."
So about how many teams play in Korea?
-"One tournament usually consists of 16 teams. But the problem is that those 16 teams often gets disbanded and reformed."
Is Clain Pein/How.kr currently being sponsored?
-"We are not getting sponsored. Not only are we low in skill, but also DotA is not popular in Korea, so finding a sponsor is getting unrealistic. Korea does not have many tournaments, so we would like to join overseas LAN, but we don't have money T T. For now, we can only participate in online tournaments, and WCG, which takes place every year. WCG is a golden opportunity for us because if we make to qualifiers, airline ticket and lodging are free hehe."
So what is your team's goal for the future?
-"Currently, my team's goal is not as huge as to win big events, but we want to maximise are skill to have satisfactory gameplays. The reason for this is we lack experience and practice, so we still have some unsatisfactory games. Basically, we would like to be a team that other teams cannot look easily upon."
Now, lets talk about ADC. What is How.kr's goal in ADC?
-"In last year's ADC, our team made a terrible result because our members suddenly couldn't continue participating. Hence, this year, we would like to use the skill we gained for the past 1 year to aim for high ranking and play in playoff."
What do you think about other teams in ADC?
-"Inevitably, the strong teams that we are aware of are Chinese and Malaysian teams. But, because other teams do not have information about us, I always ask my teammates to think as underdog and play with full effort."
You guys made an excellent win against XtC. How do you think about the games?
-"In game 1, XtC had some unusual picks. But we stayed firm to not be controlled psychologically and we used our familiar combination and strategy to win them firmly. In game 2, although we were shaken very much in early game, we communicated much to estimate XtC's movement and prevented some dangers. Hence, we slowly recovered our item and level difference with them and won. I always tell my teammates to look 30 seconds ahead before making a move. I looked at game 2 several times again to understand more, and realized that XtC made some mistakes, letting us to make counter attacks. So, to deal with other teams who may have more stable gameplay than XtC, not letting us any chance to make counter attacks, we are trying to eliminate more of our mistakes."
Thank you for spending your time with us. Do you have any shoutout?
-"Yes! Thanks to march the pooh bear for teaching koreans how to use salves and shoutout to DBC8 and Arch for hosting tournaments in a community where it's difficult to do so."
After the interview, Heen added some humorous information about his teammates.
-"Tomato is the loudest player on the team who takes the role of scolding at people who make mistake. Lanpu is relatively new to DotA and he hasn't played many games against overseas teams, so he is very ambitious. Hence, I used to give him trash lanes (sentinel top/scourge bottom), but since he complains to me for not being able to be "pro", I now give him heroes who can masturbate, such as phantom lancer and sniper. So now I go to the hard lanes. Devil takes most of the insults from the team but since he is kind, he doesn't go emo mode and tries to play better. Hoonji is my school's junior, so he wants to play heroes I play and step over me."
Stay tuned to GosuGamers for more interesting interviews and more update on this Korean team.
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