Translated Interview
With DM
Source: https://www.cybersport.ru/dota-2/interviews/dm-my-mnogo-rabotaem-i-zasluzhivaem-normalnogo-rezultata - (14.12.20) (by Cybersport.ru)
Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin, Virtus.pro's offlaner, talked about the EPIC League finals after beating OG 3-2, the team’s bootcamp, and goals for the coming DPC season.
— Talk about the final. How tired were you after this series?
— We started with the plan to win against their Morphling, as we did in game one thanks to placing very good lanes. We continued to give them Morphling because we were confident, but playing against that hero still turned out to be very difficult. If something on our side lanes goes even a little wrong, Morphling will simply stay mid and push the tower while our own mid hero leaves to help other lanes. That leads us to lose advantage and the game gets very hard. In game four we finally decided to ban Morphling to not have to play OG’s best strategy and Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen’s strongest hero in this meta. There is no sense in letting someone have a hero in grand finals when they played 20 matches with it in just a few days. It got a lot easier to play after we banned it. The games were still tough and tense, but OG are weaker without Morphling.
— Was OG’s Ancient Apparition mid pick in game four a mistake or did the idea just not work out?
— Ancient Apparition was a good hero against our pick with Omniknight and Death Prophet. More likely the loss had to do with Topson’s particular hero pool. Sometimes his hero pool isn’t enough to win the lane or counter the opposing midlaner. AA is a good early game hero for them, and its mid laning is about 50/50. But Danil "gpk" Skutin outplayed him in one particular moment and we were dodging some of AA’s ultimates. It worked out fine for us in the end.
— There was a discovery this tournament: teams figured out that Ursa counters Sven. Then why wasn’t Ursa picked after Sven every time?
— You have to know how to play Ursa. He wasn’t in the meta for a very long time, so many carries simply don’t know how to play him. Right now Ursa is only picked by those who execute him well: Egor "epileptick1d" Grigorenko, Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng and Michael "miCKe" Vu. Those are the first players that come to mind, I didn’t even see anyone else play Ursa.
— Frankly speaking, what would you have considered a success before this tournament?
— Top 3.
— Isn’t that quite ambitious, considering the event was full of top European teams, while you’re a young one?
— No, that’s an absolutely normal aspiration. We have a roster that we are confident in, and we are constantly practicing and improving as players. I wouldn’t say that a top 3 finish is ambitious. It’s realistic. We work hard and deserve decent results. Which basically got confirmed in this EPIC League.
— Where do you get the motivation to play and practice, while many other teams mention how tired they are of this patch?
— We only just gathered together and we want to show what we can do. We have a massive motivation to work and improve. I would even say that we can’t not have motivation because we got signed by a famous organization with good conditions. We have to show our best so we practice a lot. We worked like hell during this tournament (laughs).
— Are you personally tired of Dota 2?
— No. I do obviously have a desire to launch Cyberpunk 2077 or World of Warcraft during our bootcamp, but we all came here with the mindset to play Dota 2, not to just chill. So that’s why I don’t play any other games. I might play some just a little bit closer to New Year.
— You have another match against OG the very next day. How do you even plan to relax?
— We will rest a day and continue to play. A new patch is coming soon, so Dota will be different and nobody knows what will happen to the meta.
— What are your future plans? Will you stay in the bootcamp to play OGA Dota PIT or will all go to your homes?
— Yes, we will stay in the bootcamp for Dota PIT. After that some people will go home and some will stay here, since some are simply comfortable playing and practicing in the bootcamp.
— New DPC season starts in January, qualifiers at the least. Will you have time for some kind of vacation or you don’t even plan any?
— One month of rest and patch analysis will be enough. Then we will come back to the bootcamp, hopefully not as extensive. This bootcamp was very long, we’re here for almost two months playing a ton of matches every day almost without going outside at all. It is hard work.
— So you’ve been bootcamping almost since forming the team?
— Not quite, me and gpK are here since about October 25th. The rest joined during the next week. So you can count how long we’ve been staying here.
— New DPC season. What goals do you set for yourself?
— I think the goals are rather obvious: we want to play well and win. But we won’t be playing two hundred tournaments in a row, since you must prepare for every single one. Plus it’s simply exhausting to play a tournament after finishing one just a few days ago. So we will be filtering tournaments we want to participate in. But we will be playing and practicing a lot as we’re motivated and full of strength.
