Dukalis on the loss in the final of The International 2026: “It was disappointing not to perform at our full potential.”
The players of the PARIVISION Dota 2 roster shared their thoughts in a team vlog following their loss in the grand final of The International 2026, discussed the drafts for the first and fifth maps of the decisive match, and also addressed criticism from the community.
On the loss in the final of The International 2026
Satanic: It was just disappointing that we didn’t win.
9Class: I was upset. But I think I thought about my family, who were sitting there. The fact that I let them down…
No[o]ne-: It was a shame that we made too many mistakes in the grand final.
Noticed: I didn’t have any specific thoughts. I was just upset, I guess. I thought we could have won.
Dukalis: I think we played well throughout the Inta and had a chance to win it, but in the final we played much worse than we’re capable of. It was frustrating not to perform at our full potential.
On the first-card draft
9Class: People wanted to come up with something overnight. I didn’t really participate, so to speak. I was more focused on how to get some sleep that night so I wouldn’t overthink things. But someone else thought about it too much. And that’s how we ended up with this.
Noticed: We had the idea that this was the first card, and we had something that could work. I think if we’d refined that idea properly, they would’ve had a hard time drafting against us.
Dukalis: I think we had a certain amount of leeway to experiment. We were playing really well, and in that situation, you can come up with something. And if it works, it’s a huge game-changer. If we win the first map with a draft like that, it’ll be impossible to draft against us: they’ll have to ban Io, Ember Spirit, and so on.
Satanic: We had a suggestion to pick Axe and immediately follow him up with Lifestealer. I think we would have won the game that way.
No[o]ne-: There were a lot of options there: Kez, Tiny, and Sven. They were all good options. Even though the first pick didn’t go according to plan, it paid off big time in the grand final.
On the fifth map
No[o]ne-: Juggernaut would’ve been a good pick if we’d played him well. After all, leading by four thousand at the twelve-minute mark is a huge advantage. We just played the map poorly ourselves. We just played the map poorly ourselves. Why would Juggernaut be swapped out? Simply because in the late game, he can’t do anything against Lifestealer, Pangolier, and Dark Seer. He’s basically useless against them.
Noticed: I’ve been reading about it, obviously, since I like to keep up with everything. But I think that in most cases, the hate is undeserved—both toward Alan and toward the guys. People only see the simplest and most obvious things. I don’t think this should affect anyone in any way or mean anything at all.
Satanic: I saw that people were writing to me about Aghanim’s Scepter. I disagree about Aghanim’s Scepter. The game is just too complicated there. Basically, my hero became useless after the 25-minute mark. After a mistake where I didn’t press the spin button, it was already too hard to win from there. We still managed to make a little progress anyway.
PARIVISION lost to Team Spirit in the grand final of The International 2026 with a score of 2–3. At BLAST SLAM VIII, Dukalis’s team took third place, also losing to the “Dragons” 1–2. The next tournament for the teams will be PARI UNIVERSE by FISSURE.
Photo by Igor Bezborodov, BLAST.
