xMusiCa: Most important factor is trust

posted by Mantis., 1 year ago

Hello Justin. Firstly, congratulations on receiving a well deserved invite for The International. What was the response from your team on hearing such a great news?

Thanks! We were all really really excited when we heard of the news, its been our goal to reach the internationals ever since we started and we're really glad that all our hard work and efforts have paid off! *laughs*

It definitely did. I'm sure someone would have fainted. Was that the case?

No not really, we were all just really excited. lol

After the addition of Bleek, the team has performed good to a certain extent. Despite of that, the team fell short of winning a few competitions. What can be the reason for such dip in performance?

Bleek is a good addition to our team, his style and aggressive game play has lead us into trying out different sorts of play styles that works. However, we have not yet perfected those play styles so we might be a little sloppy at times. But no doubt the other teams in the world are slowly catching up and competition is getting tough!

Since Absolute Legends will be attending The International, how much time is being invested in training? Do you have any specific routine scheduled?

We don't have a specific routine, we'll just do what we always have been doing + put in more time and effort to get our skills level top notch. Although we train 20-30 hours a week excluding the pubs.

Boot-camps have been known to be very advantageous to a team, are there any plans on holding an intense boot camp before The International? If yes, then would you fly Bleek down to Australia since he lives in Canada?

I know some of us are planning to go over to USA a few weeks earlier to get used to the low ping, but other than that we will still be doing most of our training at home. No its not possible, he has his studies to attend to.

How important do you think the team diversity should be?

Well, its good that each player is able to use different roles and can adapt efficiently as per the circumstances, but I think that the most important factor is trust within the team.

The International will be held in Benaroya Hall this year in Seattle, unlike the previous year at Gamescom, Germany. The focus will be completely centered around Dota2. Do you like the concept and why?

I like the concept a lot, because this is a huge step for DOTA 2 and it shows how much the organizers are willing to fork out just to get DOTA 2 out there into the scene. I think after TI2 a lot of people will be more aware of what DOTA 2 is and this will allow much more competition to happen in the future.

Strong contenders like Na'Vi, DK and Orange Esports have been invited as well. Where do you rate your team amongst these powerhouses specially when DK has started to practice on regular basis?

All the teams that are invited are of top class level, none of them should be underestimated and each has their own unique way of playing, I think our current team has an equal fighting chance against the rest of the teams there. However a lot of effort will be needed from each and every one of us to achieve this.

Which teams are you looking forward to compete with?

As I said previously, all the teams that are invited are of top class level, so we look forward to facing each and every single one of them.

So far your team has been participating in online competitions with little to none experience on LAN, whereas other teams are well versed in both. This factor may affect aL's performance. Do you agree? How will your team tackle this issue?

I don't agree with that, each of us has individual LAN experiences from DotA, and furthermore, you can do so much more when you have no delay, things like juking stun with skills, and tping the instant that you go into fog. So yea, we do look forward to playing with no delay.

Which teams do you think deserve an invite?

There many teams that deserve a chance to go, but right now I think teams like Counter Logic Gaming, compLexity Gaming, Moscow5 and the ex Quantic team definitely deserve the invite. They have stuck with each other for quite sometime now and have proved themselves as force to be reckoned with.

Tobi has made known that the hero pool would be more or less complete bar maybe 5-10 heroes. How do you think this will change the competition?

With every hero that comes out, it has changed the meta-game quite a fair bit, with farming styles going over to pushing styles and then going over to ganking styles of play. So yes, I think with those additional 5-10 heroes it will definitely change in regards to how the game is played.

Thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule. With this we conclude the interview. Any last shout-outs?

Shout out to my teammates, Alex, Scott, Darcy, Trong and Godz our team manager for making all this possible. To all the teams that have been training and scriming with us consistently and also to all our fans that have been supporting us!