Fng played 15 pubs a day to prepare for TI12 regional qualifiers
After a nearly flawless run in the Eastern Europe (EEU) regional qualifiers, Virtus.pro emerged as champions of the tournament, taking down One Move in a 3-0 grand final to punch their ticket for The International 12.
After securing their spot in the finals, the team captain and hard support Artsiom "Fng" Barshak, had a quick interview with the casters to share his feelings on the patch, how they trained for the qualifiers, and who they wanted to find in the finals.
VP didn't care which team they faced in the regional finals.
Entering the finals of the tournament, Virtus.pro had a 6-1 record, losing only one game against Na'vi in a 70-minute slugfest that was arguably the best game of the tournament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ss_lCM98pg
Despite struggling against Na'vi in their earlier series, Fng said he didn't really care much about which team they faced in the finals, believing both teams have a very similar play style, "Well Actually I don't think we really cared too much because Na'vi and One Move, they are similar teams when it comes to playstyle. They love to play around mid and play with active mid laner, so it was kind of the same preparation, to what we need to do in order to beat them."
Virtus.pro spent the entire 2023 DPC season placing fourth in their region, enough to earn some DPC points but not enough to qualify for a Major. When asked how it feels to qualify for The International, Fng was glad they could do so through the regional qualifiers.
"Well it feels very nice, especially doing it through qualifiers, despite the fact that it's always hard actually to play qualifiers. But you kind of prove a little bit of a point that you're good enough, at least in your region."
Fng: "It's not easy to counter Shaker in the mid-lane"
Fng believes Earthshaker is perfect against teams in EEU. (Credit: Valve)During the 10 games VP played in the EEU qualifiers, the team picked Earthshaker six times for the mid-lane and won five times. Ilya "squad1x" Kuvaldin's dominance on the hero forced other teams to begin picking it themselves in the later games of the tournament.
When asked why the team valued Earthshaker so much, Fng stated that the hero counters the meta of their region very well, "We were practicing Earthshaker right when the patch hit. It's not like Shaker became OP because of a small change on Enchant Totem. But it's good against the meta that we have in Eastern Europe Qualifier. It's not that easy to counter Shaker in mid-lane, because you're caught, you're getting destroyed in one second with good support on Shaker's side."
Speaking of patches, 7.34b was released before the regional qualifiers to curb some of the more broken mechanics in the game. Some heroes and mechanics might need another round of tuning before Fng believes the game is ready for The International 12.
"I would say put Twin Gates slightly further away from lane, so people don't abuse it so much. What I like about Twin Gates you can go from top to other side and it's cool. But yeah, you can abuse lanes a lot and we actually got abused in Riyadh and the DPC a lot."
Dropping only a single game during the qualifiers is an incredibly impressive feat and one that took VP a lot of hard work to achieve. The last question for Fng was how they prepared for the tournament and the team captain did not mince words, bluntly stating that it was a grueling process for them.
" It was actually mega rough because we played six scrims per day. We talk about three hours per day about Dota, then we have one day off but it's not a day off. It's actually a day that you need to spam 15 or even more matchmaking games."
That's a lot of practice but it paid off, as VP became the fourth and final team from the region to represent EEU. It will be exciting to see how they fare against other teams at TI12, especially regional rivals Team Spirit, and Betboom Team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGLz4NDc2cU
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Image Source provided by: Valve