We sat down our with DotA2 team captain Kieran ‘DreadKnight’ Ghataora to find out his thoughts on the team’s achievement’s at epic.LAN last weekend.
So, you finished a well earned 3rd at epic.LAN – overall what’s your impression of the team’s performance?
“We’re really happy about finishing 3rd at epic.LAN, the scary thing about this LAN is that we came into it unprepared with new members and a standin, I was fully prepared for it to go a lot worse and yet we came second. We played really well and could easily have placed 1st or 2nd but we were outplayed on the day by two very respectable teams. Overall though, extremely happy! We were seeded 6th and came 3rd, everyone expected us to bomb out and we convincingly beat the other mainstay UK team, Team Infused which was a big win for us.”
You had a 5 or 6 game winning streak, confidence to go all the way must have been high?
“I believe we were 6-0 on day 1 yeah, the momentum coming off that was honestly amazing, we ended up losing off it which is a shame but momentum really helped us in day 1, nobody expected us to do well in our group so going and perfecting it extremely convincingly was such a big win for us. I think we’ll always pull it out of the bag at LAN and overperform (Which speaks to how badly we probably should have done with what we were coming into LAN with) because our players are definitely completely different compared with online tournaments, there’s so much more adrenaline and excitement, LAN is amazing!”
What have you taken away from this, to improve the team for future games?
“Honestly it’s all about stability for us, we keep getting more and more stable every couple of months but we’re not quite there yet. We just need some more time, it’s taken us a while to get to this point and it might take another chunk of time to find our mid but we’re taking our time now hopefully as it’s very important to wait for the right pickup, I really don’t want to have to drop someone before LAN again.”
Overall, how was your experience at epic.LAN?
“epic.TWELVE was just as great as my first time there, amazing LAN. Good job to the epic.LAN staff and ESL. I’d give specific shoutouts but I’d forget too many people, it was an incredible experience, completely different to iSeries. Thankyou for hosting Dota after the miserable turnout at epic.ELEVEN lads!”
Did any of the teams you faced surprise you with their strength or weakness?
“THE ROCK were stronger than I had thought they’d be. Beesa & Supercell are just such strong players it’s unreal, probably some of the best players I’ve ever met. Apart from then the only thing that really shocked me was Infused at this LAN, I felt they played much worse than they usually did and I’m sure they don’t feel the best about their result, shocked all of us frankly when they went out to Rasta Gaming but I guess that’s LAN for you, whoever plays better on the day will win!”
Now you’ve got epic.LAN under your belt, what’s next for the DotA2 team?
“Well, first and foremost we’re looking for a new mid player, that’s our big goal. Aside from that we’re thinking of switching roles around and changing our playstyle to something that’s more fitting to this meta & our new teammates. In the past and definitely at epic.LAN I felt we played a somewhat outdated style that worked because of mine, Antab’s and 1chiGo_’s experience with it but you’ll definitely see a different style of Dota coming out from us now, even more so if the role changes work out.”
Thanks for talking to me again! Anything you want to add finally?
“Thanks again for the interview Sam, if you don’t mind I’d like to give a shoutout to our sponsors, SteelSeries for their awesome gear, EsportsClothing for their great jerseys, onlinekeystore for their brillaint discounts (Which we do actually use!), Duality Media for our nice (relatively )new website & hitbox.tv for providing UK DotA2 with an excellent new streaming platform. Also, King Dave <3.”
