Pittner "bOne7" Armand plays the offlane role for Cloud9, who finished fourth in their group at The International 5 with a 3W/1T/3L record. They will face LGD Gaming in the first round of the Winner's Bracket at the TI5 Main Event. In this interview, he talks about rebounding from a bad first day, and C9's plans for the Main Event.

C9 had a rough start to the group stage; you guys lost against LGD and then tied against Na`Vi. How did the team rebound?

I actually think we felt pretty good for the games against LGD, because they were pretty fun and interesting and we almost won both of them. The ones that were a bit sad were against Na`Vi because we didn’t expect losing at all. The games were pretty rough and we lost one - that was f**cked up. But LGD was nice.

How did you guys kind of rebound from that in order to kind of improve?

Generally when I lose I don’t get bummed out I just look at how to fix things and how to learn from mistakes but maybe a couple of players might be a bit sad, we’re pretty good with losing. Me and [Eternal]Envy, we’re pretty good at learning for example and N0tail is also very good at learning after a loss, he doesn’t get that mad.

Was it a matter of changing something that needed to be changed or was it “Okay this is another day, it just worked out better this time?”

For example we changed after the first day let’s try to not give people Leshrac. Other than that there’s not much change. Just play better I guess, be more focused.

Something that I’ve been noticing is that you’ve been playing a massive amount of heroes this tournament and I think you’ve only repeated on Puck, Clockwerk and Queen of Pain. Is having a very diverse hero pool really essential at this tournament?

It would be ideal for a team to have many many heroes but the problem it's not going to happen that much in the bracket actually because “Okay, we’re comfortable with these heroes, we’re going to pick these heroes even if it’s not a good draft against their draft we might just have a better chance to win even if we don't out pick them."

Something that I heard some of the analysts talk about yesterday was that the mid hero pool specifically is so limited there’s only like five heroes this tournament, and that people are just getting bored and trying to force other things in there. Does that ever happen in your role where you’re like “I’m tired playing these same heroes I’m going to pick something like Pugna”?

I generally don't like to pick the meta anyways. Since I pick myself I just pick whatever I feel is good. You can actually on offlane play like at least 15 different heroes and make them work.

It just depends on how you work with your team because you can’t just put any hero alone of offlane against three guys. I mean sometimes you can put against two guys many heroes but against three guys you can’t just put everything...But if you have good movement with supports and duo lanes you’re fine.

So you’re saying you usually pick your own heroes. Is there the trust there from the rest of C9 that “Okay, he’ll be able to take care of himself”?

I mean I’m picking so if someone tell me no it’s just “I know what I'm doing don't worry.”

Can a team afford to have that little kind of dissent where one person is just saying “you’ll just have to trust me I'm picking this anyways”?

Generally we like agree with what I'm doing. I’m generally asking questions and it’s like “Okay this suggestion seems nice, this is nice”. In the end I just like finalize the draft, everyone's talking, everyone's putting input and sometimes its nice for people to talk since sometimes you forget some heroes and they remind you.

We generally... like 95% plus of the time we agree “Okay we pick this right now, okay it’s good”, it’s rarely when I’m like this is really good and my team is like “ahhhhhhhhhhhh I don't know...”

We’re seeing a lot of teams focus on the five man, pushing as five, fighting as five that kind of stuff. Is that something you see a lot of success with at this tournament or seeing a lot of other teams do?

I think generally just five-manning is way easier to play than like split push. For example, when you just play a stable game and then you have a good five man - for example you have a [Mekanism] they don't have a Mek - you have better spells you just go and get towers. Like, it’s easier to play when you have map control and then it get very easy to play.

And then you can obviously just drop deep wards and it becomes an easier game where they’re just stuck inside their base and you’re able to farm up, get Roshan, etc

All your movements are way easier because you just see more of the map. That’s very nice. Generally, like when you don’t have a good five man lineup it's so hard to play.

Are there any teams in your group that ended up surprising you when you were playing them or watching their other games?

In a sense I thought Na`Vi should be better, for example. I thought that they could be better because we had some difficulties against them and then they lost against everyone. I thought Secret would be better as well, I thought the games against them were actually not as hard we had a pretty bad day that day.

You guys are facing CDEC; obviously CDEC have had kind of a breakout tournament. Have you been able to notice anything about why they might be specifically successful after watching their games?

The group has Chinese teams and some Russian teams, they all have the same playstyle in a sense except for EG, that’s why they won their group I think. They just have the same kind of five man-y lineup but CDEC are a bit more stable than them.

For example, their picks, they just pick the same three heroes for every player maybe even less than three heroes sometimes. So it makes them very predictable you can know what to do against them but what's good about them is they just stay good stable Dota.

They never give up, they never go for game losing moves, they have good stuff. When they played against EG they played against Techies, they played really well against Techies. The end they f***d up, they went into mines and stuff, but for 30 minutes they just played really well against them, they’re very stable.

In the next round you’re going to be facing either Empire or LGD a lot of people are agreeing LGD are probably going to be taking that series. Do you have a preference over which team you’re going to be facing?

Actually I think both teams play almost the same, I’m not sure which team is better actually. People will say “oh LGD will win for sure” but it's very very similar game style. We practiced a lot against Empire and then we practiced against LGD, it’s like they have the same movements.

When you’re focused and you have a good day, those games are super easy, but if you’re not playing your hero, you’re not playing that well, you’re just going to mess up and lose against them.

When you’re watching as a spectator those games, is it interesting to watch two teams that have such similar play style play each other?

Well it’s interesting when EG and Secret play. Actually there was a game of LGD versus Empire in [MarsTV Dota League], I didn’t watch those games because the replay’s weren’t put up...it depends on the game style.

I like it when EG and Secret play each other it’s very interesting to see but for example CDEC played EHOME yesterday and they had kind of similar playstyle they were both just like a lot of passiveness and stuff it wasn’t that much fun to watch.

There’s a lot of people that describe that TI has its own meta. Is that true this year and maybe kind of give me a little insight on what it kind of is?

Actually I have no idea. For example Secret have their own stuff, EG are very random, we are very random, then everyone else has kind of the same meta. Like you see a lot of Gyrocopter, you see a lot of [Queen of Pain], you see a lot of Ember Spirit. People just pick that over and over again, then you see EG, Secret and us and we play different stuff so that’s that.

Matt Demers is a Supervising Editor at theScore eSports, and is doing interviews from The International in Seattle. You can follow him on Twitter.





