sam’s place

Some people were interested in hearing what Resolution had to say on OG and ESL Online LA League, so I translated OG-related bits of one of V1lat’s latest podcasts to English. Better late than never, amirite :`)

Vilat: tell us, Roman, about this tournament in general, and how were you playing.

Roman: as you have noticed, the games were swell. OG is a team that keeps surprising you, keeps coming up with unexpected lanes, some unexpected moves, they keep using early timings to their maximum, the moment they are marginally stronger than their opponent — they will run at you and force you to react. They surprised us in 3 or 4 games in terms of lanes, like, we thought through everything they can do, and in the end they put like Enigma mid and go triple hard, Beastmaster goes solo bot, they’re doing things that an ordinary team we’ve been playing with before, some Nigma or Gambit or all other teams, they don’t do this. That’s why the games were very colourful, very interesting, playing those games and feeling those emotions was amazing, especially now, with our current team, with these guys, the atmosphere is so pleasant. Like, there was a moment, remember, when I went mid on Pango, I jump on Silencer, Enigma casts Black Hole on me, and in that same second just as she casts the Black Hole, Vovan [NoOne] is flies over and cancels her Black Hole with a Vortex. And I just sit there completely fucking boggled at how well we push the buttons in this team. This is just incredibly pleasant, and even as a viewer it’s just nice to look at.

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Vilat: …you’ve been talking about OG, right, what they are doing in drafts and lanes, and when we were casting the game yesterday with Bafik we were laughing at our analysts, because out of 25 heroes that OG picked in the finals they guessed maybe in 7 cases who’s gonna play whom and which lane. You just don’t understand a fucking thing (with them), right.

Roman: yeah, there’s sometimes like a random Void Spirit pos 4 (from them), yeah. But the fact that they took Neta (33) and they were playing with two pos threes, and Sumail was somewhere in between pos 1 and 2, this is very cool. Like, this allows them to use those early timings much better than if they were playing and drafting with Topson and MinOne. So it doesn’t mean those changes were negative for them, y’know, because Ceb, well, two-times TI winner, this guy knows what offlane is, knows what calls to make, how to move around the map, and how to play well.

Vilat: well on Ench he was feeding like a little bitch, really.

Bafik: yeah by the way it was a very interesting game, when he was just non-stop going forward on Enchantress.

Roman: ah, in fact, this was his only correct gameplay in that game, he stacked on time with Abaddon when we killed him bot, and the moment when I on a Batrider can kick him out of anywhere he’s just stacking with his second core, with Abaddon, and we can’t do anything to him already. But still, we were catching them when they were separating a bit, and with our great warding from Ljoha (Solo) we were catching them on these small mistakes.

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Vilat: we’ve been discussing with Bafik yesterday, that there’re two players in CIS who have been playing for OG, and they are both in Virtus.pro now, and VP is now playing against OG. laughs

Roman: I call this, “OG heritage”.

Vilat: ‘kay listen, yesterday Bafik was saying that he was talking to Igor (iLTW), quite some time ago, at one of the Starladders or whatever, that OG or more like time spent in OG, doesn’t matter successful or not, whether you won a Major or TI with them or not, this time still gives you a fuckton in understanding certain moments.

Roman: it is super impactful, I agree, yes.

Vilat: why?

Roman: aaah. Because you understand how thoughts of people regarding the game and the team, differ; and to what extent those moments are correct, like, you have to strive towards that, that’s something close to ideal. I don’t want of course to give them some super huge respect, but the guys are good in the sense that they were the first to realise that you are playing first and foremost not against the heroes, but against people, and you can use it. When you can, while outplaying the opponent, tip him in addition, spam some lines to all chat, tilt him a little bit, confuse him, undermine his confidence, and play with that. They were the first to realise that a team game is a team game because you have to pay attention first to interactions between people, that building positive companionate bonds between people is very important so that they could in their turn in game give it back, show that we’re bros here, I’ll always TP to def you, I’ll leave you farm, and if you’re having a bad game I gonna lift you and carry you through those hard moments. Somehow they come to all of this first.

Vilat: well it really sounds cool. There are different approaches to forming teams, in CS, for example, there are a lot of teams formed based purely on statistics and so on. So there are teams, where people never talk to each other, and yet they are showing (good) results. I can’t imagine this in Dota.

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Bafik: listen, I’ve had a thought that OG during TI8-TI9, TI8 especially, have taught teams that you have to play ’til the end. You have to try, to look for exits, ’til the last second, with almost no chances. And I see that even our teams in CIS play more and more ’til the end now, don’t gg on 15th-20th minute, but really try to find a way out.

Roman: Dota is evolving, people have learned to delay the game a lot, and when you can delay the game in moments when your opponent can end the game, and you don’t let them end it, you get much more windows to go into late with all those crazy items and so on, and basically everything comes down to who pushed the buttons the best and who has more buybacks. If you can delay the game to that point, well… You can turn it over easily.