We caught up with LGD.Forever Young’s captain and recent addition to the squad just before The Bucharest Major began. Yao ‘Yao’ Zhengzheng has been a stalwart in the Chinese Dota community for a very long time, taking part in the first iteration of The International under the Online Kingdom organization and since then Yao has been a part of the LGD organization – and from early February this year he joined forces with the LFY squad as they looked to gain some much needed DPC points heading towards TI8. Here’s what Yao had to say:

LFY have only recently fully come together as a team and not been at any Dota 2 Pro Circuit events with this current line-up. How much time have you and the team spent in preparation for The Bucharest Major?

The roster change was a sudden one and we had the Chinese New Year too, so we haven’t really had a lot of time to prepare – basically just one week of bootcamp.

So what kind of preparations have been made – I’m guessing there was a fair amount of Dota involved?

With a lot of teams being on holiday and those that weren’t were involved in ESL One Katowice, we didn’t get much time to scrim. We’ve played a lot of pub games though and had many discussions around the game so that we can make sure everyone is on the same page. In the end we need to maintain a positive dynamic within the team so that we can do well.

Would you say that you and the team are prepared to fight for some DPC points now?

We’re still in a bonding-period of sorts, getting to know each other but we take every game seriously. We are definitely prepared to fight for our spot and we want to win as many games as possible against every opponent.

It’s nice to see that you have that fighting spirit. How have things been with the 2 Malaysians joining the squad? What kind of new dynamic have they brought from SEA and does it work well with the Chinese playstyle?

It has been a great experience so far – even though in-game communication with Ohaiyo is still quite rough, he has definitely been trying his hardest to improve. Ahfu has helped a lot too and everything is slowly falling into place.

Are you enjoying the current way in which the Dota 2 Pro Circuit is functioning or do you feel that it is too much for a lot of the teams? Are there issues with the constant play in events?

For myself, I really love to play in tournaments, especially the LAN events but I do think that the current schedule is too intense. With teams focusing so much on DPC points it can trivialize many of the other Dota 2 events and it also makes it really hard for us to arrange scrims.

How do you feel about the new patch system where we’ll see changes every 2 weeks? Will this help balance and control the meta?

It definitely helps in terms of the balancing of heroes plus it ensures that teams have to adjust to the meta constantly which makes things more exciting.

Do you and the team play anything other than Dota together? Or maybe hangout beyond the game?

Dota is a major part of all our lives but we also sometimes get some great food together or watch movies.

Thanks for the interview – finally, do you have any shout outs you want to give?

Just to the fans and community – thank you for supporting us and we will maintain a positive attitude and take every game seriously.

With the Bucharest Major now upon us it will be really interesting to see if this LFY squad can perform at the top of their game and get back to the heights that were displayed toward the end of last year. LFY will have their work cut out for them right from the get-go as their first match up is against the reigning TI champions, Team Liquid but in a best-of-one scenario, anything can happen.

More interviews from the Bucharest Major

PPD – “Hopefully we can make our fans proud at this Major”

KINGRD & Tavo – “It’s challenging and more fun to play against the best teams first”

Ohaiyo – “It wouldn’t be wrong to say Eternal Envy was behind my termination from Fnatic”

