Speeed on personal qualities in Dota 2: “For me, the two most important things are hero pool and consistency.”
GamerLegion support player Paul “Speeed” Boccicchio spoke in an interview at PGL Wallachia Season 9 about the team’s drafts and the cancellation of the North American qualifiers for ESL tournaments.
On the fact that heroes from his analytical YouTube videos don’t make it into the team’s drafts
I mean, I’m not the most influential person on the team when it comes to the draft, and that’s fine with me. Bignum and Mangusu are mainly in charge of the draft. They take the lead, and I’m happy to trust them. So yes, my videos exist sort of separately from this team, and it’s funny to think that other teams seem to be watching them.
On the team having gone through a lot of point guards
Obviously, I don’t want to say anything negative about our former carries. I had a lot of good times with Ghost. Yamsun is my GOAT. I love that guy. But I’d say the main thing is probably personality. Timdado, in particular, is very easy to work with. He’s very calm. And very funny. It’s like with him… I don’t know. He says some crazy stuff. He says all kinds of crazy things. It’s really easy with him, but when it comes to Dota 2, we get serious. Before today’s series, he said, “Let’s look at the lanes.” And I was already ready to just relax and hang out. He’s like, “Let’s look at the lanes.” I’m like, “Alright, let’s look at the lanes.” And today that really made a difference. So yeah, little things like that.
On ESL scrapping the North American qualifiers
That was painful. RCY just showed me his phone and said, “ESL is over.” I was like, “Damn, I… I don’t even know what else to say.”
[So what are you going to do? Try to qualify through South America or something like that?]
We just played in the European qualifiers and lost in the BLAST Slam IX qualifiers, which is really frustrating. But yeah, I don’t think we’re weaker than the European teams. We lost to Pipsqueak+4—which is funny—obviously because of ping. No, but they’re good. I have a lot of respect for them. Yeah, the European qualifiers are pretty tough. There’s Natus Vincere, Pipsqueak+4, and all those teams. So, I think we’ll most likely try to make it through them.
On My Approach to the Game
I’d say the two most important things for me are my hero pool and consistency. I really value being able to truly master three or four heroes in every patch. I think that helps me a lot. And just staying calm. It’s not that my team is particularly prone to stress, but I’m pretty good at just relaxing and laughing when things go wrong. I think people see that, for the most part, I don’t get worked up, and that helps them relax a little too and not let the stress get to them. So yeah, that’s really important to me.
Earlier, GamerLegion support player Paul “Speeed” Boccicchio broke down the Dota 2 7.41f patch, commenting specifically on the nerfs to Treant Protector, Invoker, and Bounty Hunter, and also noted that the update included too many hero nerfs.
Photo — Valve.
