I spent almost three months as analyst to the Fnatic Dota 2 squad. Looking back, it’s a feverish blur of hotel rooms, spreadsheets, and Asian take-out. Maybe that’s because I’m sick.

You could say that I’m lucky to only get sick now, but I honestly believe that the only reason I didn’t fall ill before is because I couldn’t afford to. It’s like how dying people will often survive just up until Christmas or until their latest grandchild has been born. Until Fnatic was eliminated from TI6 I simply couldn’t be sick… and so I wasn’t.

Manila Major

I’ve been involved in Dota 2 in one way or another for about four years now. I was pretty ambitious about it, too — the dream was to escape from the kiddie pool of volunteers and land myself an underpaid writing job.

If you think that last sentence is a joke, you have no idea of how cutthroat this scene is.

Fnatic’s invitation to join them for a try-out in Manila came during a time in my life where I worked 70-hour weeks; 40 hours at an ISP customer support job, 30 hours of Dota writing and analysis.

If you like playing Dota you probably don’t want to get a job working Dota.

Getting a paid writing job was doing some laps in the 25m pool. Manila was like getting tossed into the deep end at the Olympics. There was no time to wonder whether I was qualified for the job or not; all I could do was put my head down and swim. When I came up, spluttering and coughing, we were sixth and I was hired as Fnatic’s analyst for the remainder of the season.

Needless to say, I quit the ISP job. I would spend the next two months digging through Dotabuff pages and Yasp player profiles. When I describe the work it often sounds easy: I gather information about our next opponent and present it to the players. It saves them time that can be better spent practicing or resting. Useful, but not quite groundbreaking.

So let me ask you — what information is actually important for a team to know? What isn’t? What do they already know, and is that knowledge still up-to-date? What can I add that they never would have found out on their own?

What is the overarching story that the digging reveals? How do I make sure that my team remembers as much of it as possible? What about the documents they take with them for the draft — how do I make sure that the captain gets all the information he needs with a single glance?

How many of these things can I do before the next match is upon us? It’s nearly always less than 24 hours. How much sleep do I sacrifice?

Road to The International

In Frankfurt I learned a very important lesson: Don’t have any expectations. My memories of the tournament are drowned out by the bitter aftertaste. There was no direct TI6 invite for us. The guys got sixth at two consecutive Majors only to have to play the qualifiers, tired and jetlagged and on five days’ notice. There was no time for me to fly over to Malaysia. I could only assist remotely as the team fought their way through the bracket, and I wore out my throat yelling during the final games.

Two weeks of preparation; then we left for the USA. The Summit was a great personal experience, but going out against Na’Vi in 5th/6th place was disappointing. Starladder followed up on that by seeding us against Na’Vi immediately again. There’s nothing a team can do against decisions like that — all you can do is grit your teeth and play.

The only thing that matters is the next game. We clawed our way to a 3rd place.

Our wobbly performances in these two tournaments might have been a blessing in (a very stressful) disguise. We spent our last week before TI knowing exactly what we needed to work on. There were no more illusions to be shattered. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t easy. And it didn’t really start paying off in time either, as you can see by our TI6 group stage results.

Group Stage

We’d gone into Day 1 expecting it to be perhaps our “easiest” day, facing DC (whom we’d beaten at both Starladder and the Summit) and EHOME (who had dropped a wildcard game to Execration). There was no way to know we were facing the two teams that would crush the group. Our expectations were once again killing us. We got trashed, and we felt like garbage afterwards.

The road up was harrowing. We grit our teeth and set out to win every single game on Day 2, but instead got 2–0’ed by Newbee right out of the gate. Beating Secret was like lighting a candle in the darkness — and then Liquid came along and deftly pinched it out again.

At the start of Day 3, we were the worst performing team in the tournament save for Escape. MVP Phoenix got us a much-needed 1–1. It gave us enough juice to snatch two points from VG.R, and through tiebreaker shenanigans we got a best-of-the-rest 5th place ranking.

Picking an opponent felt like receiving a You Tried participation award, but it was something.

We took Escape. Notahax, their coach and my friend, taunted me about how he was going to cheese us for three days straight. We scrimmed several teams. We lost to pretty much all of them. I was tired and the thought of losing to Escape reared overhead like a thundercloud.

It could have been any team, really. Placing last would very likely mean the end of my career as a Dota 2 analyst. Even if there were teams interested in signing me, the rewards and salary couldn’t possibly weigh up against finishing a degree. I was staring down the barrel of my student debt and all I could do was pray that there was no bullet in the chamber.

Then, on the evening before the main event, something weird happened. We played a best-of-two scrim against Wings and we won.

To say that it gave us hope would be an overstatement. A scrim is a scrim — a team plays hundreds of those each year. Scrim results mean less than nothing if you can’t replicate them on the big stage. But what it did do was show us that we still had the potential to do well. We weren’t digging in vain. There was something down there if we reached deep enough.

It was our last team practice. From that moment on, the only thing that mattered was the next game.

One more match.

Main Event

For three days I had poured everything I had into dissecting Escape. It was over in 26 minutes flat. We had survived the best-of-ones.

One more match.

Alliance had the life squeezed out of them by EHOME and we cruelly repeated that same strategy in our first map against them. Second map — I got nothing. All I’d like you to know is that we don’t call DJ “Dota Jesus” for nothing.

The post-win haze faded quickly. We had just achieved a top 8 finish, something that had seemed impossible in the dark group stage days, but none of us lingered on the thought. By the time Liquid vs Newbee started the team was already on a shuttle back to the hotel practice room. I watched the game from the suite, hawk-eyed, notebook in hand.

One more match.

Now that I look at the VOD I can see Liquid’s grim faces, their slumped shoulders, the exhaustion in their eyes. Matumbaman played Naga and I knew that if they lost this map he’d demand an aggressive hero for the next game. He did, and oh boy did it ever almost work. I’m not sure we would have won that series if it had gone 1–1 back there, but Liquid gave us a finger and we took their entire hand.

When Ohaiyo got off the stage, grinning like a madman, I think I was the first to greet him. I punched him in the shoulder and yelled you are the worst Sand King ever and he just grinned wider and yelled back I know right?!

Beating Escape was survival. Beating Alliance was validation. Beating Liquid was vindication. We were now sixth, level with our best achievements of the year. We were strong enough to take this run even further and we knew it. For the first time since the group stage, we had expectations. We were under pressure.

One more match.

Part of the reward for beating Liquid was getting MVP next. The Koreans fear nothing but fear itself — and perhaps Fnatic. Did MVP themselves know that they feared us? I’m not sure. But I looked at their statistics from the group stage. When we played them for that coveted 4th place, we knew.

MVP likes to fight and so we fought them. I left after our first post-game briefing; the clash with DC already seemed inevitable, and a lack of time had left me with only sparse coverage. I was anxious to get some more hours in.

Mushi’s Medusa wound its way past MVP. A dominant Wings Gaming wiped the floor with EG. Time was running out and my results left me unsatisfied and worried. Digital Chaos was clearly not the same team we beat at the Summit and Starladder, but apart from their hero picks their stats weren’t much different at all.

One more match.

And this time it was the last. Looking back I can see the things I could have done better. But in the moment, tired and cold, it was all I had left in me. It was all the players had left in them. DC were better. They did not feel the pressure like we did.

While the guys were on stage fighting for their tournament lives, I collapsed. I laid down on the thin carpet in the back of the managers’ room and closed my eyes. There was no sleep to be had.

Aftermath

I’ve looked at this picture almost every day since we lost to DC. I’m not sad or broken up. A fourth place finish was beyond my wildest dreams. Perhaps that’s why I keep looking at it — to remind me that in this moment, the loss was devastating. I am staring in the face of desolation, a curtain falling on hopes we didn’t even know we had.

I think that daring to dream of the Aegis was what killed our chance of ever getting it.

In a vacuum the team that knows best how to win a match of Dota 2 would be the winner. But the International puts you up on a stage in front of thousands and asks you to fight for life-changing amounts of money. Digital Chaos played every single one of their matches in almost blithe disbelief. It paints them in a stark contrast to Wings, for whom the thought of not getting the Aegis probably seemed far-fetched. Neither felt pressure. Both made it all the way to the end.

So what now? My contract with Fnatic ended when TI6 concluded. I’m taking a break while the players take their vacations and dance the ritual of the recurring roster shuffle. I’d like to do some writing. Perhaps I’ll get some casting practice in. And then, after the dust has settled, I will join a team.

Gratitude

Almost three months ago, when I joined the Fnatic squad in Manila, Mushi asked me what my goal was. I said: “To get us the Aegis.” He smiled and shook his head. Looked me in the eye. “No,” he said. “What is your goal.”

I’d never quite thought about it like that. The answer came surprisingly easy, even if I’d never given it before. “I don’t want to have to go back to university next year.”

So this one was for him, for Adam, for DJ, for Ohaiyo, for MidOne… and for Eric and Kenchi and Patrik too. Thank you. I will not go back.