“I understand that MLBB is still in its early stages” — an in-depth interview with Team Spirit coach Coldstar

It feels different here, but at the same time, the arena looks pretty good—there are plenty of seats. Overall, there will be more spectators for the playoffs. The hotel is nice, too—just a standard, decent hotel.

I’d like to give a shout-out to the players’ area. The Player Lounge is really cool—there are tons of awesome activities. They probably took feedback from the 2025 Esports World Cup into account. There are lots of ping-pong tables, pool tables, and so on. The food deserves praise as well: today, for example, lunch was insanely delicious—it beats many lunches in Riyadh.

All in all, everything’s great. And this is Paris, after all—a completely different vibe, especially when it comes to the weather. In Saudi Arabia, it’s hard to go for a walk even in the evening, but here the weather is great, and there’s Parisian architecture… I’ve been to Europe many times, but I’ve never been here before, so for me this is a really cool experience.

The tournament is still going on, so I can’t reveal all the details. But I can say that we had a very good win rate during our training matches. We trained in Malaysia, and it was comfortable there: I think, out of all the Asian boot camps I’ve been to with Team Spirit over the past year and a half, this one was the best.

We added more team activities and extra work. We put a lot of effort into improving what we’d already done. We’re gradually trying to incorporate more team-based practices. In my opinion, this boot camp was excellent in every way.

Getting back to the results from the scrimmages: we played against all the top teams. Almost all of them—we only didn’t play against two EWC participants. One team was interested, but we couldn’t coordinate our schedules, and the other, Falcons PH, deliberately chose not to play us because we share common interests. We ended up in the same group as them in two tournaments right away, so they decided they didn’t want to play us.

We managed to play against the rest, and the results were satisfactorily good. In some cases, they were even excellent—including against EWC teams.

I think there are definitely some changes. Things always shift a bit between the wild-card stage and the main stage. I think the teams in the wild-card stage also had a general idea of what was strong and what wasn’t—but sometimes you need time to figure out the tournament’s meta, and they only played for 4 days. So they didn’t quite get there; they just didn’t have enough time.

The wild-card stage is very short; here it’s longer, and there are more teams—there were 9 there this time, and 16 here. We can watch and analyze more matches: roughly speaking, only Group B will be playing tomorrow, so we’ll watch those, think them over, and analyze them. We have time to work on our mistakes and so on.

So I definitely feel like there’s going to be some kind of meta shift. Overall, I’ve noticed a lot of disagreement about the meta, even within our own team. We periodically argue about what’s better and what’s more effective. And when we talked to other teams, we realized that everyone has different opinions about which heroes will be stronger and in what situations.

We have certain expectations for specific teams: some will play only tanks or only assassins, others will adapt to certain situations, and so on. I think the meta will stabilize further, but it’s clear that tanks have become weaker after the patch. And from the first day, it’s obvious that assassins have come to the forefront: there were a lot of them, almost at the top of the pick list.

I can say that we’ve been playing Bartz in scrims for a while now. Of course, it’s a prepared pick—it wasn’t an impromptu choice. We’d been preparing him, knowing he might come in handy. It’s clear that he’s a more niche hero than the core heroes that are most commonly picked right now. But we’re definitely not the only ones who’ll be playing him—that’s 100% certain. And maybe we’re the ones who can counter him best. I have a feeling that we talked with Kid Bomba and came up with some ideas in that direction.

As for the pick—the second draft, I think we could have done a little better. Let’s just say, we could have established a certain order to open up more possibilities. But overall, all our heroes are prepared. Everything we practiced, we used today.

Listen, I’ll speak from experience here—after all, I’ve been in esports for a long time. And here’s an interesting observation: MLBB is a relatively young discipline compared to others I’ve worked in. Of course, having organizations is a big plus—it boosts the players’ motivation and so on. But it feels like there are a lot of young players here who are willing to play even without a club or a salary.

They’re young, still in school or college. Roughly speaking, they have the freedom not to work and can devote a lot of time to MLBB. And it’s precisely these young players who can form good, strong teams that will create competition. Of course, natural talents like that are more the exception than the rule. But still, I think it’s entirely possible.

Besides, there are no clubs right now, but before you know it—some will suddenly appear, like magic, just like those who jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute this spring. Yes, the headlines are sensational: Team Yandex disbanded its roster; Team Yandex signed a new roster. It’s a very simple decision—you could even call it a faux pas when compared to other sports.

I understand that MLBB is still in its formative stages. Other esports did the same thing 10–15 years ago, and it’s understandable that major organizations want to secure the strongest roster and have the financial resources to do so. Nevertheless, I think young players will continue to emerge.

We’ll see how the competition plays out, because players aren’t leaving. Yes, some are ending their careers, but many are staying, many are continuing to play, and young players are emerging. And, again, surely more clubs will join by the start of MCC Season 8, because there are still two months to go.

Look, I actually came from League of Legends. I’ve heard a lot of different things about Dota 2, but it seems to me that coaching in LoL became systematized earlier. We learned a lot from the Koreans and the Europeans, who have also excelled in this area.

There were a lot of experienced people from other disciplines who came and shared their expertise. In the end, we adopted all of that and gained experience ourselves. And, you know, it seems to me that back then, the community was more focused on structured work. It was as if there was less chaos.

Maybe that’s why clubs hire coaches from League of Legends or Dota 2. I’ve heard that in Southeast Asia, a lot of specialists came specifically from Dota, but here in the CIS… I’m not sure there were any Dota 2 coaches at all.

But then again, he’s Filipino. As for the CIS guys… you know, it’s as if LoL had died out in the CIS, but the talent pool remained. And Dota is alive and well: so why switch to MLBB? It doesn’t make sense, not even from a purely financial standpoint. The path to the Tier 1 League of Legends scene is too rocky and difficult, while MLBB has a young audience and doesn’t yet have its own talent pool—there simply aren’t any players who’ve gained a lot of experience, ended their careers, and decided to become coaches.

We do watch Counter-Strike—both the guys and I keep an eye on it. As for Dota, just a little bit. Sometimes I check the results or take a look at tournaments like The International or EWC, the semifinals and finals, things like that. The guys lost in the quarterfinals there—it happened pretty quickly, and we didn’t get a chance to watch it—but before that, we were in Malaysia, and the time zones didn’t work out for us. CS will be in mid-August, so maybe we’ll watch it then.

It’s definitely tough to play without a break. Even when it feels like you still have some strength left, like it’s enough, and you’re running on pure energy—in the long run, that’s actually a downside. These kinds of questions are probably asked of Dota players and CS players, because their schedules are absolutely insane.

I think you can see it in the results: there’s very little consistency in Dota 2 and CS2—it’s not like one team dominates and that’s it. Well, okay, powerhouses like Vitality pop up from time to time, but the leaders usually change frequently—because the schedules are so packed, teams simply don’t have time to catch their breath. You’ve just won a tournament, and you already have to fly off to the next one. Everything just starts to blur together.

That’s why I’d say that, ideally, you need to take breaks. We try to do that whenever possible, which is why, for example, we skipped the CyberHero tournament in June: we wanted to rest and take a break before traveling to Malaysia so we could give it our all at the EWC and the Games of the Future. Plus BetBoom Rise of Legends—that’s three tournaments in a row.

It’s a very demanding schedule, especially given the amount of work we’ve already put in at boot camp and continue to put in now during the tournament.

Good question. On the one hand, I wanted to say Ling, because he’s picked all the time, but it seems to me (I just haven’t had a chance to check the stats yet) that his win rate isn’t very good. That’s not a fact, but it’s worth looking into. I’ll say Ling, but maybe in a couple of hours I’d give a different answer.

Probably someone like Angela. She’s just, you know… She has good potential, but her gameplay is really simple. Sometimes she can show up and turn everything upside down because she’s so annoying.