Solo: “Liquid pointed to our weaknesses ahead of TI7”

In an interview with CyberSport.ru, Alexey “Solo” Berezin talked about our team’s run in The Summit 7 and EPICENTER: Moscow, and discussed plans for The International. The captain of our Dota 2 roster also touched on the subject of slot distribution between regions at TI7.

Why did you decide not to repeat any hero picks at The Summit 7?

We had the idea after the first three games. One of us said, “We’ve picked 15 different heroes”. And I proposed to stick with this drafting style. Everyone agreed it was a good idea, there were no objections.

In the wake of EPICENTER: Moscow, many were saying you had problems with your strategy. Everybody knows who you’re going to pick and what you’re going to do on the map. Did you have that in mind when you decided to go for this challenge at The Summit?

To be honest, I didn’t know that people were saying these things. We had clear-cut priorities regarding hero-strength, but that never meant we were playing the same things over and over again. Those people are wrong; we can play absolutely anything.

You’ve shown that it doesn’t matter which heroes happen to be in fashion; any one of them can win games. Are you going to pick diverse heroes from now on, or stick with the ones that are currently meta?

There is no meta as such, but there are strong heroes that drafts use as a starting point, and there are counterpicks for enemy heroes. I did, however, like the Bristleback + Bloodseeker combo a lot. You can win with almost anything. That’s what we love Dota for: a hero’s shortcomings are easy to compensate for with items and making the right plays. You’ll see what we’re going to pick at TI7 already. All I can say is, we’ll definitely have a pool of over 30 heroes.

What went wrong in the match against Team Liquid? Was it the drafting in games two and three, or the execution?

If we’re talking about the playoffs, Team Liquid really surprised us with their Lone Druid and their laning stage. Their play was really solid, and I could see that they were going to win the tournament. EG were in super-good form and were showing some confident Dota, but they ran into the same difficulties we did.

The International 2017’s quota system is an actively discussed topic right now. Fans, managers and players alike are complaining that the CIS has been shortchanged. Do you think being given a single slot is fair?

Seeing as we’ve got the CIS invite, yes, I think a single slot is fair. SEA’s three slots is what looks unfair compared to the CIS, but then again, this year’s results have been completely different between these two regions.

Source: https://www.cybersport.ru/news/solo-odnoy-kvoty-dlya-sng-dostatochno