No[o]ne-: “The meta—it’s always changing at The International from start to finish, just like at any other tournament.”

I’d say that people create the meta themselves, and you might play one way in the group stage, but then when you get to the playoffs, your team might pick Io-carry, for example. ...> My point is that any hero can just pop up out of nowhere, and you’ll have to adapt to it. And it might not be just one hero—it could be a whole bunch. I think the meta is always changing at The International from start to finish, just like at any tournament. At first, certain heroes are strong, but by the end—in the Grand Final—you see something completely different.

We came up with Slark the night before The International. I just played a pub game and said, “We should pick him.” I don’t remember—I think we were in the playoffs. So, the day before the playoffs, I just played five pub games as Slark, and we started picking him. We’d been playing him all year, of course, but he’d been incredibly trash for a long time after the developers’ nerfs to our hero. We were the only ones playing that hero. But stuff like that happens anyway. And it’ll keep happening. I also practiced Invoker in a day—I remembered how to play him. I hadn’t played Invoker, I think, for about three years before that—or maybe two. I didn’t play Invoker at all in PARIVISION. Then I saw that bzm was playing a Quas-Exort Invoker with Drums of Endurance, and back then he was unbalanced. I played two games. I went 20-0. I said, “Alright, I can pick him.” And the next morning, Team Spirit and I closed out the series 2-0 with Invoker. That’s how Dota 2 works.

Well, that’s one of the reasons why I keep doing this in general, aside from everything else I get—so to speak—out of esports in life. That’s one of the things that drives me. Every time I step onto the LAN stage, I feel… It’s not even adrenaline; it’s some kind of special feeling, but it’s a mix: there’s adrenaline, norepinephrine—all of that is surging through me and just gives me the desire, I guess, to keep playing and training as much as I do. My eyes are red, my whole body aches, and I’m playing 10 hours a day at 29 years old.