Puppey on 9Class’s unconventional heroes in Dota 2: “He comes up with his own meta.”

I wanted to improve my rank after losing the last qualifiers for The International, which the Falcons won. I realized I wasn’t playing well because I hadn’t been playing much. I thought maybe it was time to give up on the game. I’d known for a long time that it was getting harder to play.

I remember when MATUMBAMAN told me a long time ago—when he was also having difficulties—to play micro-heroes. The same thing started happening to me; I already feel like my strafes aren’t as fast. My mouse isn’t moving as fast—I don’t know, my mind isn’t working right. No, my mind is working, but my hand-eye coordination isn’t as good. When MATUMBA said he was having trouble, I started feeling it too afterward.

I thought maybe it was just too hard for me to play well. I played a lot of pubs for a month—15 or 20 games a day for three or four weeks in a row. And I dropped to rank 121, when [before that] I was at 300. If I’d kept playing, I think I would’ve gotten even higher. But then Vova [No[o]ne-] asked me, “Hey, maybe you want to try coaching?” Since he asked, “Maybe you wanna try?” [“Maybe you want to try?” — Ed.], I was like, “Well, maybe,” and just came. I came here, and honestly, [this is] the best boot camp in the world for me, so it’s kind of okay.

I’m not saying this [just] to be cocky. I’m just saying that I think I understand Dota better than others. When I see someone else coming up with really good Dota strategies too, I immediately want to soak it all up like a sponge [Ed. note]. I’ve been immersed in Dota for so long that it’s true. It’s just true that Dota works well with me—it’s a symbiosis. This “autistic brain” [Ed. note] that I have works with Dota, and I think I come up with good strategies in Dota.

I was most surprised by 9Class, I think. He comes up with the most unusual things. His heroes are just so unconventional. Everyone else plays standard heroes, but he comes up with Slark in position 4, Pudge in position 4. He creates his own meta. He even has Monkey King as a “four.”

When he talks about his Dota and shows me how he farms creeps and all that stuff, he’s an expert at it. So watching what he does and comes up with is like a sponge effect for me. When he does these things and shows me, it’s immediately “nice-nice-nice,” because he’s showing me new ways to play Dota.

Well, there were a lot of problems. Every player had their own quirks. I’m not going to discuss them just for the sake of it—because why bother?

[Question: “Were the problems mostly psychological, related to interpersonal communication, or more game-related?”]

There were problems in all those areas. Every team has problems. There’s no such thing as a team without problems. There were just problems there. I didn’t do anything special; I just tried to show them how to play so they could improve at Dota. When I talk about how to communicate with people and all those topics, it’s just… I do what needs to be done.

[Question: “Maybe you talked to each person individually, going over things with each of them one-on-one?”]

Yes. I’m saying I do this because that’s what a person should do. <...> Anyway, you’ll see that these people who play Dota aren’t complicated—they’re just regular folks. They like anime, Dota, and talking about some silly stuff that happened at the bar, things like that. Their interests are like that—[narrow].

[Clarification: “And eat.”]

And eat. No, usually, if anything, they don’t want to eat all the time. Some players, like Nisha I used to have, would just say, “Eating is a waste of time” [“A waste of time.”—Ed.]. Well, he was little back then; now he’s grown up. Now he eats, I think. I mean, their interests are so [narrow] that if you see they’re having any problems, you’ll go talk to them yourself, and things will be better. That’s exactly what you should do. I don’t do it because I’m a coach; I don’t do it to help them with Dota or anything like that, but because: “What’s wrong? We need to talk; you need to let your thoughts out—don’t bottle them up.”