Wong Hock Chuan 'ChuaN' is the Malaysian legend best known for his role in The International 2 winning Invictus Gaming squad. Currently, ChuaN resides in his new home, The International 4 winning team Newbee, who achieved qualification for Shanghai by battling through a competitive Chinese qualifying pool and are gearing up to compete in the 16 team tournament getting underway at the end of this month.

Ahead of the Major, we caught up with ChuaN to find out how his team's preparations are going, the strongest heroes at present, and who he believes has the best chance of taking home the winner's chunk of the $3,000,000 prize pool.

What is your training schedule looking like ahead of Shanghai?

The recent celebration of Chinese New Year has stunted our preparation time. We have not been practicing as it is a national holiday, and there are lots of other teams that don't celebrate Chinese New Year. They will not have had a break in practice, so it will have a negative impact on us. After the holiday has finished however, we will be training every day up until Shanghai. We will be training hard to make up for the time missed during the holiday season – we need to reduce the flaws we have as a team and make sure we are ready to compete.

This is the first major with the 6.86 meta. How are you finding 6.86 overall?

I think 6.86 will allow China to regain the world's top spot. With regards to 6.86, the change in map layout in particular has caused a much larger disadvantage to us veteran players. New players who come in can easily keep up with the newest metas, whereas we have to adapt to the new meta each time. The game has become significantly easier for new players.

How so?

Let’s take triple stacking neutral creeps, for example. In the old map layout, it was easy for us veteran players to triple stack and farm. Now that there is no way to triple stack creeps and guarantee farm, it really comes down to how well the player performs in terms of skill during the games. Additional ways of creating and getting farm are no longer as relevant.

ChuaN holds aloft the ESL Frankfurt trophy © Kelly Kline/ESL

You mentioned that 6.86 favours China. Why do you think the meta favours the Eastern teams over the Western teams?

Due to the fact that the top three teams at Frankfurt were all from the West, the nerfs hit their style harder than the East. The current meta suits Chinese teams more. It has increased the overall pace of the game offensively, and Western teams might not be able to cope with it. However, I still expect Western teams to be strong, especially Team OG, and, of course, Evil Geniuses.

The most recent tournament featuring both the East and the West was MDL. Your team, Newbee performed relatively well but eventually EHOME came out as winners. Do you expect a similar result in Shanghai?

In my opinion, MDL was a higher quality of Dota than the Frankfurt Majors. Although we didn't win MDL, I do believe that my team stand a chance of winning the Shanghai Major. Everything falls on the team and player's performance on competition day. By performance, I mean the stability of the player himself. If all of our individual players perform to their full potential, we will be able to win games throughout the competition.

Do you think there is a favourite going into the tournament? Do you think there can be an underdog story where one of the lesser teams wins?

Personally, I think EHOME will be the strongest team at Shanghai. At the moment, I think they're on top of their game and can beat anyone. The rest of the big name teams I feel are standard, and we can beat any of them if we play well.

I don't think that any of the smaller teams will do particularly well. It will be the normal big name teams who will put up a great fight and make the tournament amazing as a whole.

Team EHOME practicing before the Frankfurt Major © Steffie Wunderl/ESL

Will the winner of the Shanghai Major be a good sign of who will win TI6, or is it too early to tell?

Definitely not. The team that wins the Shanghai Major might not even get an invite to TI6. They might have the potential to get into the top three or top five teams, but winning the Shanghai Major will not also make you a winner at TI6. Like I've said, time and time again, it really comes down to how well you perform on the day. Dota is really similar to football and basketball. Just because you're the best now, it doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be the best in the future.

MDL saw Earth Spirit really come to the fore as one of the strongest heroes in the meta. Is the hero too strong and how would you balance it?

I do agree that he is very strong and would expect the hero to have the highest pick/ban rate at the Major. To make the hero more balanced, I think the speed in which he kicks stones to stun should be reduced. Also, the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade is too powerful. It makes the hero it is used on impossible to target, and I think that's too imbalanced. If it was up to me, I would remove the Scepter upgrade completely.

ChuaN has Earth Spirit topping his prediction list © Valve

Which other heroes do you think will have a high pick/ban rate?

Each team is very different and due to the diversity of each team in both strategy and play style, it makes picks and bans very hard to predict. For example, if I was playing against OG I would ban their Invoker, whilst if I was playing against Secret, I would ban their Ember. For each team there will be different bans depending on their play style. It's difficult to say now because it really boils down to each individual game.

You're famous for your Enchantress, with the West even branding the hero 'EnChuaNtress'. What do you think of the hero at the moment. Is the hero better in the offlane or in the more traditional four role?

Enchantress and Chen are my favourite heroes to play in the current patch, so I am going to say that I prefer the hero in the four role. By playing Enchantress as a four, it means I can apply a lot of pressure to the other team all over the map. As I am in the jungle it is harder for opponents to grasp where I am at all the time, and it allows me to get both faster levels and better farm. If you are in the offlane, the opponent knows where you are at all times and it is hard to create the same pressure.