Fng on Oracle’s unpopularity: “It’s just like there aren’t any nerds—that’s the problem.”

Fng: By the way, I don’t know—it’s probably been about three years since they made that awesome Oracle “innate ability,” but for some reason, people still haven’t warmed up to it. Although, well, if you think about it a little… That’s exactly the point: they even tweaked his abilities a bit, gave him a really cool “innate ability” that now even shows Roshan from above. I mean, they took it from Templar Assassin and gave it to him. And, I don’t know, he’s not that weak. It’s just that there don’t seem to be any hardcore fans—that’s the problem. Even when Oracle was in the meta for a bit, there were literally only three players picking him.

NS: That’s true. Insania played him, Boxi. Who else played him? Solo. But he’s only fun in certain situations. You just see that supports are often picked early.

Fng: So that’s the point—they kind of give you an ability that’s basically always useful. The only time that ability isn’t useful is when you’re in a Sniper vs. Huskar matchup.

Fng: To be honest, if you count the months I’ve played—well, let’s say I played well, really well—I’d say maybe half a year out of the last 8–9 years. Honestly, it’s really hard even for me to remember a time after a tournament when I thought, “*** [Damn], I really played well in this or that tournament.” I was constantly thinking, “*** [Damn], I’m just playing like total crap—I messed up here, something went wrong there, I didn’t press the button there, my draft was crap, and so on.” That’s really how most of my tournaments went.

And people… I even remember: I always gave interviews, told it like it was—I didn’t care about being positive or whatever. I’d say, “Damn it, if you played like crap, you played like crap.” And people would tell me, “You need to believe in yourself more and all that,” but I’d think, “Well, I played like crap—what am I supposed to do?”