Photo: Helena Kristiansson / ESL
In the world of competitive Hearthstone, James "Firebat" Kostesich is known as a player with impeccable practice routine. Using data spreadsheets to analyze game's match-ups and preparing like a machine for important tournaments, the American entered BlizzCon World Championship as one of the favorites to win the trophy.
Firebat's opening was strong as he 3-0'd Chinese player Qiruo in Group C's opening game. Between his flawless win and the subsequent 2-3 loss to Kranich, Firebat finds the time to chat with our on-site reporter Nick D'Orazio shortly.
More BlizzCon World Championship interviews:
Dtwo explains why the meta is in an interesting place right now
Firebat, you 3-0’ed with a pretty sick version of Miracle Rogue. How does it feel?
It feels amazing, feels really good to get all the butterflies, get the first win. Feels great.
And because you won 1 round, it means you are going to BlizzCon for sure, and you just found out that out now right?
Yeah! Just found that out, I thought I had to play again today. It’s really cool.
So let me ask you about the version of Miracle rogue you are playing. Is that just a meta call or do you think it is the best version of the deck now?
It’s the best version that fits into my lineup of decks. All of my decks were created around each other, and I think thats the way you really have to make a set to go into any series.
"My ban strategy was to make my decks as flexible as possible."
Yeah, we have heard that similar logic from some of the other players. Tell me about which decks you chose to ban?
Coming into the entire thing, my ban strategy was to make my decks as flexible as possible to choose whatever I wanted to ban to counter-ban what they ban. But that means I need to figure out to what they are going to ban just by looking at their set. Looking at my last opponent's set, I thought he was going to ban rogue and if he banned rogue than he could just crush me with priest, because it beat all my decks besides rogue. So I ended up banning hunter, because I thought that he would think I knew that. So he thought I would ban the priest, and he would ban my hunter, meaning my ban would be basically useless. Because the hunter is the best deck vs no priest.
So I ended up banning his hunter, and he banned my hunter, and than I got the better of him.
Yeah and that was pretty much it. You destroyed him 3-0. It was tough to watch. Let me ask you, right now, what do you think is the most powerful deck? You prefer the more versatile decks, but what is something someone could pick up to play at a competitive level.
Zoo. Zoo is the one of the most powerful decks in the game because of the way that it functions. It functions by constantly playing minions and constantly trying to hit a curve. And mathematically your odds of hitting a curve is way better than your opponents odds of hitting an answer. Because your opponent is looking for specific removal cards, and there are not as many removal cards as they are minions, so you can play a minion every turn and they have to get their removal to line up, otherwise you just overwhelm them.
"Zoo is the one of the most powerful decks in the game because of the way that it functions."
Yeah, kinda the concept of threats VS answers. It’s always better to have the threats because if you have the answer, you just come up equal. If you don’t have the answer you are just behind. What do you think is best neutral card that should be in every deck?
I don’t think there is one that should be in every deck it depends on the style, that is a pretty tough question. There are so many different neutral cards that are good for different purposes. Recently Ironbeak Owl has been getting a lot of play in tons of decks, even control decks because it can react really quickly to aggressive decks and people are using it as another answer, as like removal basically. So all the minions with battlecry that can be used as removal will have a lot higher value in this meta because everyone is playing more aggressive decks.
Is there any particular player that you would prefer not to face based on skill level and deck selection?
I want to play against the best players, that is why I am here. So there is nobody that I’m afraid and I want to play whoever is the best, that is who I want to play best.
That sounds awesome; any shoutouts to your fans?
Shoutouts to team Archon, follow us at twitter, follow me at twitch.tv/_0firebat.
