
Natus Vincere support player Tamir “daze” Tokpanov said in an interview at PGL Wallachia Season 9 that the team managed to resolve many issues, which has given them confidence in their gameplay.
I realized that the loss to LGD actually gave us a lot of confidence in the lower bracket. <...>
Our coach, Cy-, really stood out in this series. On both maps, we just calmly played our own game—we didn’t have to get creative; we stuck to our strategies. It’s fun to play these heroes against their picks, especially in the second game: they wanted to outplay us in the draft, but Cy- had something prepared, and everything worked out well.
XG’s pick of PL on turn 16 was very confident. It seemed to me that they must have known something—perhaps about PL’s matchup against Brewmaster—but in the end, it all went very smoothly. They probably thought they could destroy us in the lanes with Dazzle and PL—healing through illusions—but we played that phase well. In the mid lane, Niku solo-killed Xm, and after the laning phase, the game was very easy.
I guess we just didn’t have much luck in previous tournaments. We’ve fixed a lot of things by now. Last season we suffered many losses and didn’t qualify for TI or EWC, but we’ve resolved those issues. In this tournament, we feel confident in our Dota and our gameplay.
Natus Vincere lost to LGD Gaming in the upper bracket but made it through the entire lower bracket without dropping a series. In the grand final, the team faced Team Yandex, to whom they lost 0–3.
Photo: PGL.