This is a translation of this interview.

– Let’s start with the hottest news. Just 1.5 hours ago Na’Vi announced their new roster. What are your thoughts on it?

Building a good team atmosphere is hard, there are always issues within the team, mostly psychological. For example, a team is playing good, winning games, then meta changes or a new patch comes out, and the team has a lose streak. The players just haven’t had time to figure out the game properly, they start having quarrels. It may escalate to a disband. That’s a tough way.

Dendi is accustomed to winning, but it is known that the path to victory is hard, and now you have three foreigners in a team. General has always played for Russian-speaking teams, and now thay only have three men in the team who speak russian.

Pajkatt plays pretty cool. I am not sure about Biver. Na’Vi have statsmen which calculate a player’s skill according to some formula, his KDA or whatnot. But when you’re on stage of a Major, it doesn’t matter, because if your carry is dying, you should go help him, not look at your stats. Besides, simple human qualities matter: it is important what character you are, not how well you play.

As a player I don’t believe in this Na’Vi roster. [To win] you need immense momentum, team chemistry, synergy. It is hard to build.

– You mentioned quarrels within the team and disbands, so I cannot but ask: on one of your streams you said that you were wrong in the situation when you got kicked from VP in 2015. You have also reposted DkPhobos’ interview, where he said that the main reason [of the kick] was that you both had problems adapring to a new patch. What did you exactly do wrong?

You’re not supposed to say some things in public, the people may not be ready for them. For example, in that situation fng acted like a moron, he understands it himself. He just got under God’s influence, that’s why we got kicked.

– It’s no secret that God loves special treatment. For example, XBOCT said once on the panel that God loves when a team plays 4+1 and everybody is protecting him on mid, that’s when he can achieve maximum utility. TI5 showed that this may be true.

On TI we just got lucky. We could have lost to compLexity if that what has happened hadn’t happened.

– You mean the moment when God got sick in the booth and you paused for a couple of minutes?

No he didn’t get sick, there was another reason [for a pause]. Anyway, after the pause they lost momentum and we eliminated them. Their Antimage didn’t buy BKB and bought tarrasque while we had a lot of control. Many times throughout the tournament we could have lost, and the fact that we got fifth place is just pure luck.

Dota is a game of an instant. I have often thought about this during the six month after I got kicked. A split second decides everything. The difference between winning a TI and not even competing there is ten matches. You lose the first one, you don’t get to compete. You win all ten, you win TI. We lost Boston Major in 1.5 seconds: we went without vision, and Sniper killed himself by a blademail. The 60 minutes prior didn’t mean a thing. This is a game of an instant.

Pro scene is a show, and I strive to talk in a way that nobody understands if I was serious or kidding. And when I reposted that Phobos interview… I wasn’t totally serious.

It went like this: we had a good team, and at some moment Silent had health problems, we needed a carry. We thought about picking fn, but Vega snatched him from us. We could play with XBOCT or Ramzes, but eventually we decided to pick Yoky. We got home from Croatia and messaged in a group chat.

God is very emotional person, he is easy to get mad even from small things like not getting enough sleep. The four of us conversed, and Phobos (I’m a little exaggerating here) told fng that our scrims are pointless, we don’t spend time rationally. Instead of crafting strats and perfecting certain heroes we just pick random heroes. Phobos wanted to change the approach and said something like ‘It’s better if I just practice alone, it’d be better [for the team]’. God thought that he didn’t want to play as a team.

Another problem that God has is his approach: ‘the more you play, the better you are’. He has always thought that if you grind 12 hours a day, you will be better than someone who only plays 10 hours a day. Phobos disagreed, he thought that it is far more importang how much time you spend analyzing and strategizing. It’s better to play 3 matches and then spend a couple of hours analyzing replays, it will have more impact.

We had a small conflict, then didn’t speak for three days, then I am told that I got kicked. They said that I were overly cocky, that I played for Twitch clips, not for the team. That I strive for hype, not for the result. All of this was false. Moreover, they said that I am bad at macro.

– But you said on stream that this conflict helped you adjust your approach?

Still I don’t think that I deserved to be kicked. After all this time we see what happened with fng and God. They just needed to play 2+3.

– You were talking about Silent. I remember analysts saying that one of VP’s problems were his small hero pool.

People who only spectate the match — commentators, analysts — they only see 10% of what is really happening. Building team communication is a very hard process.

Silent is one of the greatest players in CIS. He excels in all aspects, not only as a player, but as a person too. He is an ideal teammate: he is calm, collected, good analyst, can help with the draft. And he never tilts. He’s also cool to hang out with.

– Ok, let’s return to current matters. How do you assess your year as a player?

There are no problems that can’t be overcome. I was kicked two days before the roster lock, I physically couldn’t find a team. I could’t go to Na’Vi or a foreign team…

– Na’Vi proposed you?

Yes, some time ago. But two days before the roster lock I couldn’t do anything. I don’t think that I am to blame for this story. I did 150% of what I should do. I got on with everybody, I adjusted for everybody’s personality, I did what I was asked to do, I tried to help everybody. The only thing I could do was make a team with Phobos to play open qualis.

– On stream you said that team was trash.

Yes, tier 3 trash. But these days, especially this patch, any team an win against any team. For instance, you go to a Major and EG lose twice to compLexity. In essence coL isn’t a team, it’s a pub mix. And EG have the best players in every role. They don’t have the right to lose. But Dota is such: a wrong rune spawned, you missed the high ground and now you’re third in the group and get to play Wings first round. There are no objectively good or bad teams.

– But ratings are made somehow. Gosugamers and betting sites predicted that you will win.

It doesn’t matter. We had a 25 match win streak, then we lost once 0–2 and lo we are Major top8. And there you have one peculiar team from Greece. The guys play for fun. They are happy they got to play on lan. And they got second place.

– OK, and here I have the question: where are your emotions? I wrote about this during the Major group stage, you don’t celebrate after the win.

We have completely different mindset. The pressure is too high. I go to the internet to read the news, and everybody suddenly thinks that we should win Boston Major. The pressure builds up, you start to think that you have no right to lose. You enter the booth to play against EG and you don’t think about strategy or who goes to which lane. You think how not to lose. You don’t have the right to lose because everyone said so.

– It’s easier to be an underdog in modern Dota?

Yeah, certainly. There was so much unwarranted hype, we got distracted. The management told us that the results before 2017 didn’t matter. And then other people started telling us that we must win Major. We could very well do without this pressure.

– I think ppd and some other pro players said that on the contrary, this pressure helps achieving results.

I get what you mean. Yes, it helps, but our team is too new. We have little experience of playing with each other and here you are playing a single elimination tournament. Hello, we’re boys who just wanna play some dotes…

– What do you think about the format?

Single elimination sure was bad for us at the moment. We really were the strongest team, we knew it. Single elimination means you can easily get the place you’re not supposed to. OG who got first place can only win decisively over EG and a few other teams. If they got Ad Finem in the first round, AF would have eliminated them. EG is top4, they lost to OG cluelessly. We lost to EG cluelessly. All three teams got different places.

We’re stronger than OG. If they got us first round, they would be top16. They don’t get to play against us, they get first place. Is it fair? It shouldn’t be like that. I think that in double elimination your chances to get the place you deserve is much higher.

AF are runners-up. I watched grand finals from the audience and it was just hilarious. Neither of the teams had a proper understanding of dota.

When you play competitively, you understand what you need to do to win the game, hence you pick such and such heroes. Usually it works like this: you gain critical mass of items and levels to the point when your hero has maximum utility. After that you take objectives and execute your game plan. What did OG do? They have all their lanes pushed. What would a normal team do? Push them back…

– OG, on the contrary, do a smoke gank into the jungle with zero enemy heroes.

They go to the jungle without vision, there isn’t even an objective. It felt like 4k pubs. Sure it feels different when you play on the stage, but as a spectator it was just awful. My eyes were bleeding, I was facepalming the entirety of grand finals, especially the third game. It was Pro Series level of performance. But OG is top1 and I am top8, so I don’t have the right to flame them. By the way, Kiev Major is most likely single elimination as well.

– Many people are compiling their best-of charts for the year. My colleagues think that Jerax is the player of the year. What do you think?

It’s hard to rate players. From a professional point of view I have problems singling out somebody. From the outside you see only a small part of the process. Ok, let’s take a player that’s insanely good in both micro and macro, a genius player, for example, Miracle. He comes to a new team. I don’t know what’s really going on in Team Liquid, but right now they are lacking in the strategy department, and Miracle struggles to find his place in the team. As a result the best player on the planet does absolute bullshit and plays like trash.

As a spectator.. what criteria should I use?

– You can choose them yourself.

Best player of the year… the point is that there was a lot of patches, a lot of teams, rosters, reshuffles.. It’s hard to single out somebody. Jerax is great, he plays good, he got better in regards to micro. His teammates allow him to play a bit recklessly. My team allows me this as well. Once I played a pub on Weaver and told the guys: ‘Let’s try this’. I am given Weaver and in the Summit grand finals I am top net worth, 7 kills at minute 7, I have a godlike streak, and somebody names me the best player in the world. But all of this is because I have a great team that believes in me.

Ok, let it be Jerax.

– Speaking about unusual pos4 heroes: fng said that he doesn’t understand, for example, pos4 Kunkka. You, on the other hand, have executed beatifully on them.

I am not pos4, I am pos3.5. And there is not a pos5 in our team, we have pos5.5. This patch differs from the previous one in that roamers have great impact, but they don’t farm, they don’t have big net worth, while I have been top net worth at times. Playing this position you steal runes from enemy mid, steal offlaner farm, make carry retreat from the lane, anything.

fng didn’t let me play my heroes. For example, in a match we needed a Shaker, I play him. The game doesn’t go well, fng decides that I am a shit Shaker and it’s better that he plays Shaker. There was a story when somebody asked fng why we don’t play Chen or Ench. He answered that I do not play them and he hadn’t enough time to practice them, or something like that.

Actually it was like that. ‘Artem, let me play Chen! Let’s train it. — No, you suck on him’. What happens next: in Polarity I had 90% winrate on Chen and Ench. Why? Because I played 30 pubs each of them. Solo is one of the strongest Chens, he proved this in Vega. He has good micro and he understands where and when he should be on the map. But in our team I play Chen, because Solo believes that I do it better. It’s very important that your team believes in you. In old VP they didn’t believe in me.

– Don’t you feel that the current VP’s success is founded on the good teamwork that was formed among Pasha, Noone and Solo in Vega?

I am reluctant to say so. They were our direct opponents, your success and hype depends greatly on your fellow CIS teams’ blunders. It’s better if you come to TI, and Na’Vi, Vega and Empire crumble, while you don’t. I don’t know how it was in Vega, but we didn’t have a cohesive team.

With the new roster we got together, bootcamped for a month, then there was Summit, bootcamp in USA, then Major. There was many things, but it doesn’t matter: we did everything together. Went to the movies, played escape the room, ate out. We had fun just hanging out together. The boys are simple, sincere, sensible.

– OK, this fall you were very strong, but then a new patch came out which can change everything. Is 7.01 a Virtus Pro patch?

It may be, it’s too early to tell.

– Did you play the new patch togethera lot?

Nope, just a couple of matches. We try to find our style. It’s hard so far — New Year holidays, 3rd January we already fly to ESL in Malaysia. Last patch it took us 1.5 month to develop our style. We worked constantly and then got a sudden insight how to win in dota. We decided on our heroes and got second at the Major qualis precisely because we have figured everything out.

– How much time do you spend practicing daily? And how do you spend you free time?

We allocate time differently: we play for a couple of hours, then analyze. As for the free time, I have bought a gym card a month ago.

– But you’ve already hit the gym before?

Previously I did fitness only at home and outdoors in the neighborhood. I lacked time and motivation, and now I like it a lot. When we were in the USA, I went to the gym daily. Sometimes I go to the movies, but recently I spend most of the time analyzing the new patch. So far we haven’t studied it as thoroughly as we want, we don’t want to get distracted. If you want to be the best, you got to apply maximum effort.

– You practice 12 hours a day, per God’s advice?

He spent 12 hours a day perfecting mechanics. We spend more time doing analysis. Solo, unlike fng, always tries to improve himself and help the team to improve. He doesn’t waste time grinding pubs playing carry to raise useless MMR. For example, Solo asked our analyst to make a list of heroes who have 10/15 lvl talents that give gold and xp. It will be good for him as pos5 to have gold even without farm.

– Speaking about pubs, you often play mid Visage. Will we see you playing mid Visage in official matches?

If we develop such a strategy, yes. We haven’t discussed it with Solo, but if we need this, then yeah, sure. It’s a matter of trust. If we see that the enemy team picked some trash that Visage pwns easily, and it’s the third game in a bo5 series while we lead 2–0, I can say: ‘Boys, lemme make some salt’. I think Solo would agree.

Now I realise that the whole interview I’ve been flaming God and fng. Anyway, we have achieved something because of them, we earned money and got 5th at TI. I am grateful to them for the time we played together, they taught me many things, both in game and personal. They’re good boys, they just made a mistake. Everybody does.

– I’ll eagerly do an interview with fng later, so he could flame you all he wanrs.

Yes, otherwise the people will read this and think I’m a cocky turd.\

– OK then, let’s talk about you personally. On stream you said that you had a girlfriend who left you. How did you meet?

We met on the internet. She’s 18. I liked her photos and she texted me. She said some bullshit but I gave her a chance. She does gymnastics, very pretty. As for manners… You know, there are people who have bad upbringing, and then there are people who just happen to be ill-mannered, be it parents or friends to blame. She was of the latter type. Everything was good, but she’s 18, light-minded, easily hyped. These traits were revealed after 6 months of relationship. We are like from different worlds, we have totally different views. [In a relationship] people should help each other become a better person. She wanted just to party and have fun, it seemed really weird to me.

In the end she left me for a then more successful player. Now this player is teamless, while I play for VP. People get what they deserve. Anyway, I am grateful to her for the experience.

– Recently I’ve seen a photo of a signing session in Korea…

Yeah, there were a lot of girls, I’ve seen it as well.

– So, a natural question: do girls text you often?

Yes, actually I am late on a date right now. They do write me, but mostly they are clueless schoolgirls who are 14, or glory hunters who try to get on with you because of your success. Sincere people are rare. I think that if a girl plays dota, it’s already weird. Anyway, most of these fans is trash, hust to have fun, I am not interested in them.

–In Russia they think that you should absolutely graduate, like a necessary achievement. What do you think?

It’s impossible to study and play simultaneously. The level of education that [Russian] schools give is very low, so you can just waste a couple of years and not even get any knowledge.

– And what’s your parents opinion on this?

– When I finished 9th grade [~14 years old in Russia], my mother told me to apply to a college, which I did. But then I started to make money on dota, she understood that this game can be a source of income, and didn’t insist that I graduate.