I've seen a lot of Cloud9 and whenever I approach their team for an interview, iDream usually makes the same familiar joke about suddenly being very busy, so busy he can't make it to the interview. I look to others, and everyone points to Dunktrain, the captain and official silver tongue of the team to answer my request for an interview. After some laughs, we find a quiet area and I begin with my questions:
I was speaking with Arthelon just moments ago and he said that the team knew you were going to win game 2 once you hit level 20, can you ellaborate on that?
DunkTrain: The talents our heroes get at level 20 are really, really impactful. Lt. Morales gets infinite mana, Leoric does infinite damage, and Falstad's epic mount on, Dragon Shire specifically, is nigh unbeatable because it's so much mobility. So we knew that if we got to level 20 that we would probably win a team fight as long as we didn't drastically mess up the initiation.
The thing is, Dragonshire is a hard map to end a lot of the times unless we get snowballed on early, so as we were going into the mid game and we were fairly even with Kael'thas on our team to help us stall even longer, we felt comfortable that we would have time to hit 20, win a team fight, and then win the game. We knew we just had to make it until 20.
Interesting. Most people view Kael'thas power spike at 13 is the strongest point for that style of team, but you used that strength as a stalling technique to reach the true power spike at 20 with Epic Mount and Stim Drone + Spectral Leech Leoric combo.
DunkTrain: Exactly.
Was there any doubt that you guys were going to win?
DunkTrain: I'm not certain if there was any real doubt. Of course in competition any team can lose to any team and you don't want to go in cocky, but our biggest concern wasn't necessarily that we would lose, but if we did lose, would look like idiots. That motivated us to play tight and really focus on winning the set.
A lot of people have been talking about your roster changes, and how it affects team moral, but I'm more interested in the practical, strategic side. Has Arthelon changed the way you play as a team, or possibly allowed you to compose strategies you never could do before?
DunkTrain: As far as in game strategies are concerned, I think Arthelon tends to play heroes that Fan didn't necessary play. It helps too that he plays heroes that K1pro normally doesn't like to play. Fan would play the Zagara, the Sylvanas, and Kael'Thas and he is strong at that, But Arthelon's Kael'Thas is just really, really good and that is a hero that K1pro doesn't like to play. So having another really strong ranged player in this meta gives us a really big advantage.
A lot of people are all in agreement that the current meta is in a bad place. How does Cloud9 cope with these frustrations? Do you even care?
DunkTrain: Well, I think there are basically two factors that lead people to get upset at the current meta. First of all, the last few heroes have just not been good enough. They aren't very impactful, they haven't seen competitive play and are even undertuned for Hero League. I'm not saying you can't win with them, but they are harder to use than the heroes people see as the "big bad guys" of the meta: Tyrande, E.T.C, Muradin, Kael'Thas.
The only things I think really need to change to shift the meta is probably that, the nerf to Tyrande should be on the healing side rather than the damage side.
I actually like all of these heroes and I enjoy the higher lethality version of heroes we see now. Much more than, say the double support meta we have seen in the past. That is much more toxic and bad for the game in my opinion than the current blow someone up meta. But this blow someone up meta has been around for so long and there have been so many heroes that haven't changed it at all. Those are the reasons people are getting upset.
The only things I think really need to change to shift the meta is probably that, the nerf to Tyrande should be on the healing side rather than the damage side. Maybe remove the healing for Shadow Stalk. Other than that, changes that slighty tweak heroes like Stitches that we don't see that often. The ability for teams to not have to play the blow-up team composition.
You want Tyrande to be a really good pick because you have a really strong Tyrande player. You don't want it to be 'Tyrande is first pick and just because you have another stun, the enemy heroes are going to die.' That is where it is right now.
You have proven many times, especially at BlizzCon, that you are a team that's understanding of the game allows unique hero compositions other's don't use, like the level 20 team composition you mentioned earlier. What other teams do you think are at this same level strategically?
DunkTrain: Well, as far as playing the game different or using alternate strategies, I think the European teams are better than that on average. But I think just playing normal games using standard meta, Chinese and Korea are better. Europeans get the innovative titles, but China and Korean are strictly better at team fights and objectives, things like that.
Do you have any preparation vs Panda Global or will you just kind of do your Cloud9 thing?
DunkTrain: Honestly we don't have any preparation vs. Panda Global. We haven't really been able to play much in the NA scene because obviously we were in China for a while, it was the holidays when we got back and everyone needed time off for a while after all the travel. We have spent the last week getting familiar again with all the NA teams but we didn't have time to practice against everyone. We just want to play on meta, play standard and try to keep it simple.
Thank you for the chat as always.
DunkTrain: No problem, any time.
As we ended the interview, a Cloud9 fan that was waiting patiently approached the two of us and asked for a picture with DunkTrain. He handed me his phone, and I took a photo of the two of them, one smiling normally, and one beaming ear to ear.
