No[o]ne-, Noticed, and Dukalis named the strongest and weakest winners of The International

No[o]ne-: Well, in my opinion, it’s OG from The International 9. They completely changed Dota—the whole structure. I’ve played against those guys.

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Dukalis: No, I’d go with Tundra from 2013, because that was also a team with, let’s say, super-skilled players, and they had their own vision of how to dominate Dota. Well, overall, you could pick any roster from 2013.

Noticed: I don’t know, as far as I’m concerned, “Tundra” isn’t even close. If I had to pick, it’d be either OG or Wings.

No[o]ne-: There’s still “Spirits” from the 10th and 11th Int eras.

Noticed: Spirit was just in its prime at the time, but it wasn’t like they were actually breaking Dota—whereas Wings and OG were both in their prime and were breaking Dota. They were just doing what no one else was doing, and no one could do anything about it. ...>

No[o]ne-: The thing is, they just changed the structure of the game. Nobody had thought of it. I was just talking to JerAx and N0tail. No one in Dota was even thinking about the concept of waves at all back then—for people, it was something unbelievable. The guys just sat down together—as they told me—and came up with it at bootcamp. They were just sitting there thinking about how to break the game, and they thought, “Damn, the waves are coming out—we can just skip them all the time.” And they started doing what no one else was doing: they’d go with a fight draft, rush into the enemy “triangle” at the 15-minute mark, and start skipping waves.

You had absolutely no way to counter it—the game was broken for you. Waves are constantly rushing at you, and they’re attacking you right in the middle of them. And no one had ever done this to such an extent… This had been used in games before, but it hadn’t been planned out this well, executed with such intelligence—the strategy was specifically tailored for it—so you were just in a total [shock] playing, and people were just killing you over and over every minute, then finishing with a 40,000 lead. And they’d run into the enemy “triangle”—which nobody else did, because it’s the most dangerous spot on the map—but they just *** [didn’t care]. They died there once, ran back in again; died again—ran back in again. Until you break. That’s just my two cents; what I remember about it.

No[o]ne-: Newbee.

Noticed: Yeah, I think it was Newbee, too.

No[o]ne-: The fourth International. There was a meta where games ended in 15 minutes. Fast push.

No[o]ne-: Yatoro.

Noticed: Yeah, I think it was Yatoro, too.

Dukalis: Let’s break it down by position so it’s not so random. Basically, each of our positions. Anyone can answer for Yatoro. So, the strongest midlaner, for example—Maybe, yeah, probably?

No[o]ne-: Larl.

Dukalis: Well, yeah, Larl’s still around, by the way.

Noticed: Offlaner—obviously, Maga [Collapse]. If we’re talking about all the Intos, I think no one has pulled off a diff quite like Maga’s.

Dukalis: For the “top five,” let’s go with Puppey and Seleri.

No[o]ne-: For me, by the way, the “top five” includes Miposhka.

Dukalis: Yeah, okay, and Yarik too.

Noticed: Did you guys name the “top four”? Because to me, the “top four” are JerAx, XinQ, and fy.

No[o]ne-: Well, for example, just bringing back the compendium. That would be nice. It was such a cool feature, but they decided, “Yeah, *** [who cares].” ...> If Valve and Gabe Newell came to their own International, it would be really cool, because a long time ago they used to do all that—up until the ninth or tenth Int, somewhere around there—and then, unfortunately, they stopped doing it. It was pure magic. You’d meet Gabe; he’d come out on stage, but now he just records a video from his yacht: “Yo, guys, good luck!”—that’s it, and he’s gone.