Today is Day 2 of the playoffs, and we've arrived at the arena.
The guys are inside getting ready for the game against Liquid in the lower bracket.
The tournament ended sooner than we'd hoped.
We prepared well, however, there had been some issues since Singapore that we'd tried to fix.
We discussed a lot of things after Singapore, and we were able to solve most of them.
We improved a lot as a team over the course of the last bootcamp, especially towards the end.
We managed to achieve a lot of things which we'd discussed, and this allowed our team to step up.
I think it was noticeable, especially our showing in the group stage, where we beat EG and Liquid to advance in first place.
We've fixed a lot of things, we improved our hero pool, communication, drafts.
We ended the tournament here exclusively because of our drafts.
Skill-wise, the guys were capable of achieving a better result.
We started having problems in the playoffs and we couldn't execute our game plan in the game against Alliance.
We tried something similar in scrims where our opponents didn't hard-counter us, so we thought it could work.
It was fine though - we lost the first game, and we could've won the other two.
We were ahead at some point in the decider, but we weren't able to execute our idea.
Idan is warming up against Boxi with Lanaya.
Why do you have issues with drafts?
We decided to use new strategies, but they appeared to be lacking.
It looked easy in practice. I guess we didn't lose a single scrim with Wisp.
I had some doubts that opponents don't counter-pick you in scrims.
It happens a lot: you want to test your strategy, and the opponent does the same.
You beat them easily and misjudge the power of that strategy.
You're playing Liquid today, do you think they are prepared for you?
Looking at their game against VP where they ran a currently almost unbeatable Naga-Disruptor combo, they nearly messed it up.
Yes, you gotta keep in mind it was a Bo1, and they might've been nervous, but now they're going to be more confident.
Every Major has its own meta, do you like the current one?
There was Viper in the first phase in Singapore, and now it's Slark.
I don't really care about the meta. It suits us well, and we are pretty confident in our picks and bans.
We were heavily outdrafted in both games against Liquid.
Why did this happen? We didn't see eye to eye.
We have a default opening in Game 1, then they ban Viper and pick Oracle in the second phase.
We realized they were going for Huskar, so we started to discuss it, and things got a little messy.
There were several good options, but for some reason, we hadn't finalized them.
Almost all the guys participated in the discussion, but our opinions were split.
We wanted to pick Apparition or pick Huskar ourselves.
However, we didn't do anything about it, so we ended up losing our grip, which affected our further plan.
We picked Omni as it was a decent fit.
Whereas our opponents went for Huskar, and ended up having a really strong draft with good synergy.
Their Leshrac could go to any lane, which they utilized by taking Morphling on last pick.
We picked Naix because we'd anticipated a carry Leshrac as they hadn't used it as position 3 previously.
We got outdrafted and it made it difficult to play,
but the guys did a good job staying in it until the end and doing their best to turn things around,
and were actually close to making a comeback at one point.
We showed our character, put up a good fight that didn't break our confidence and we knew we could possibly win the next two games.
Look, physical resist 92%.
I thought it was about 80.
412 bonus agility.
Elder Titan is the way to go.
We rarely play games that go into this stage.
We had our confidence up heading into Game 2 as we were sure we could bounce back and win the series.
It was kind of similar to the Alliance match where we blew Game 1.
However, we made the same mistake in the second game: when we were discussing the Enchantress pick, we figured it could be Brood.
We were well-prepared for this tournament in terms of individual form and teamplay.
The only thing we need to work on is our approach to drafts.
It's not about Andrey or Bakyt picking wrong heroes or something, we need to reconsider our macro play and the way we want to approach it.
We need to avoid being too restrained like we did in Singapore against VP,
make sure we keep a level head when drafting and have a clearly defined allocation of responsibility.
Bakyt and I are going to continue to be in charge of the drafting aspect, getting the rest of guys involved only if necessary.
I'm gonna have to try and take full responsibility whenever they're hesitating by stepping forward and making a call.
Only then decide whether it was the right one or not.
We need to get a bit better at communicating in-game.
The players don't always inform about a move they're going to make,
which leads to a mess in terms of rotations and overall coordination.
Other than that, we're doing pretty well. Not flawlessly, but everyone makes mistakes.
We're going to keep working and improving.
The progress is evidently there, and we are aware of what aspects we need to work on and what direction to move going forward.
It's really important because everyone was able to see our improvement over this short period of time.
Each one of us has noticed that and we know what we need to work on.
We just need to develop a systematic approach to certain things.
I'm sure we'll do just fine at the next Major qualifiers.
We head back home for a 4-day break and then travel to the bootcamp to practice for the next Major qualifiers.
We apologize for letting you down, guys.
We'd hoped for a better result, but thank you to everyone for your support. Keep doing that! The best is yet to come.