This week I had the opportunity to interview ishb00 of HeroesHearth Esports. As a freshman player in the HGC, I really appreciated his perspective on how the first weekend of HGC played out. Let's dive in!Definitely was nervous. Truth be told, I didn't know what to expect going into it and tried my best to not psych myself out. Still, I could feel myself hesitating more than usual and in general playing to make less mistakes rather than trying to make plays like I would usually do in scrims. I managed to kind of snap myself out of a bit by the end of the Tomb game where I made myself step up and go for the engage. I definitely didn't play at 100% those games, but feel that's to be expected my first time on the big stage. Hopefully I can get that under control in future sets.

What are your thoughts on the current meta? While we saw a decent amount of tanks make an appearance, we saw a lot of the same supports, and especially the same carries (hanzo, genji, greymane), come to play in almost every game. Do you think there some specific adjustments that need to be made?

I think the DPS meta is by far the most static. For tanks, ETC is the clear frontrunner but many other tanks are viable in certain situations. For supports, I think Lucio is the only one that needs a tune down, but I could definitely see buffing some of the weaker supports. For DPS though, the prevalence of Genji, Hanzo, and Greymane feel like they're eclipsing many of the weaker DPS. Picking any of the more vulnerable DPS into those is just asking for trouble. I feel like when giving your enemies any of these removes your ability to pick most of the DPS heroes in the game you have a problem.



Your first match of the weekend was against arguably one of the strongest teams in NA, yet, you guys held your own pretty well. What do you feel like you learned from this matchup against Tempo?

In hindsight, I think playing against Tempo Storm early was a good thing for us. It let us know exactly what separates us from the top teams. We've learned a lot from watching their rotations and seeing all the small things they punished us for. We may not be able to put these things in practice immediately, but we hope to up our game in these categories more as the phase continues. Our goal is to be top 3 by the end of this phase so that hasn't changed.



Can you talk a little more about Volskaya? Being the brand new map in rotation, how are you guys as a team approaching it, and the (arguably) less powerful objective (do you think this contributed to the relatively long time the map went or more because you had the Azmodan)?

The objective on Volskaya feels really good for taking walls, and really bad for taking anything else. Ending games with the Triglav rarely happens and most games end with an ace (or near-ace) rather than forcing with an objective. Many teams have resorted to drafting win conditions within their heroes rather than relying on the Triglav (picks with scaling like Chromie or lvl 20 Tassadar Archon) so that's where the Azmodan idea came in. It performed surprisingly well in scrims so we went with it. After all, it let us embrace 2015 Arthelon to the fullest.



Going into next week you will be matching up against Spacestation Gaming and Team Freedom. How are you guys preparing for these matchups, and what is your mindset now that you’ve had your first taste of the actual HGC?

Now that we've seen priorities and drafts from all regions, we're going to look back at our drafts and practice accordingly. Between the new players and the new meta, we knew there was a decent chance we lost to Tempo Storm and that it wouldn't mean the end of our season or anything like that. The whole team has taken the loss in stride, keeping with us the things we need to learn and nothing else. Not to mention, after the mess that was that Volskaya game, I feel like we can only go up from here.



What do you hope to see from Blizzard for this year of HGC? Are they meeting your expectations, or is there anything specific you’d like to see added or improved upon, as well as anything you’re really excited/happy about?

The main thing I want to see Blizzard do is improve awareness for HGC. Providing content and selling our brands is our jobs as players, but it's unacceptable to me that so much of the player base just has no idea HGC even exists. I've had games in Masters HL on my tournament account where people have asked me why I have a clan tag, or referred to me as "hhe" as if that was just part of my name. I'd like to see more promotion for the league within the game itself to help promote awareness. It's one thing if people don't want to watch, but it's another if people just don't know it exists.



A big thanks to ishb00 for the interview. If you want to follow him, you can find him here on HeroesHearth or on twitter @ishb00116.