After returning from The International 3, we had a chat with Team Dignitas DotA 2 player Ioannis 'Fogged' Loucas﻿ about everything that went down and how he feels about it looking back. Fogged talks about their matchups, what could have gone better and much more. Without further ado, enjoy reading!

Thanks for your time, how are you all feeling after the event as a team?

Fogged: Pretty terrible unfortunately, we knew we were coming is as the underdogs and with our inconsistency I felt as if we would have some issues. We still held our heads up high and actually expected to go a bit further than we did, so the loss to Orange hit us very hard and painfully.

What was the atmosphere like, with a home crowd cheering for you?

Fogged: ﻿The atmosphere for The International was absolutely fantastic, nothing else a true DOTA fan/player could even dream or imagine for a tournament. Not only was it exhilarating to play in front of the crowd, (unfortunately not as much as we’d wanted) but it was also just a great experience talking to all the rest of the players a lot and just watching some good dota.



You've had some jitters in competitive LAN settings before, did you have any troubles this time?

Fogged: ﻿Personally, no; I never really had sustained a large amount of “jitters” for our past tournaments either but saying that I wasn’t nervous is a total lie. Of course the nerves begin to set in before our matches and everything but it wasn’t to me because of the crowd or the LAN setting, I was just more concerned with us playing perfect.

I always have said to be a little nervous or anxious is actually far more important than people could think because if you’re feeling that anxiety it means you truly care and you’re going to give it your all.



Team Dignitas came in as an underdog, did that play in your favour?

Fogged: ﻿I actually thought it would go into our favor more than it truly did, I don’t particularly believe that changed anything.



Your first game in the preliminaries was against DK, and things didn’t go your way. What do you think went wrong?

Fogged: ﻿We had watched and watched many of the Asian scenes games but we hadn’t PLAYED versus them in over a year so were a bit concerned coming into the match, so we sorta just were testing the waters to see if we could be greedy against these teams as well, and DK completely punished us and really actually helped us understand this “new” meta that was coming into play.



In the past DK have stayed back whilst allowing BurNing to farm, were you expecting them to be more passive in the laning phase?

Fogged: ﻿No, DK is a very strong team which adjusts depending on which team they are playing against so we didn’t underestimate their brute force or aggression by any means, we just gave them all the cards they wanted and they used it to their full potential.

When you played next against MUFC, the team seemed to hit it’s stride. Were you all feeling confident going into this matchup?

Fogged: ﻿We came into the tournament feeling a bit wishy washy but still had pretty high confidence even going into the DK game, and after they demolished us, we reconsidered and didn’t want to even go into the games vs MUFC feeling too overconfident. We still had some confidence but we just looked to MUFC as any other team in the tournament.



Timbersaw is a relatively new hero to the pro scene, but you guys drafted him mid quite a few times. What's your opinion of the hero and his place in the current meta?

Fogged: ﻿I think he’s still a very situational hero pick for middle, even if he does such an insane amount of burst damage and has his great survivability. There are many heroes who do very very well vs Timbersaw not only in the laning phase but into mid game, such as puck or queen of pain. These high burst high survivability intelligence heroes; as well as the fact that puck has a built in silence; really hurt Timbersaw since his armor is only for physical damage. And for the most part you’ll see a QOP go for an early orchid to really shut down the Timbersaw.

Against Na’Vi, you drafted a support Zeus, what was your strategy for this hero? Will we see him again?

Fogged: ﻿We had actually used this similar strategy in practice a few times, unfortunately we attempted to do it against a Lifestealer, and the plan is just to really constantly fight and since the damage and global aspect from giving the Zeus and Furion early levels makes it become quite ridiculous to fight against. Unless you have a obnoxious magic immune tanky Lifestealer tearing through everything.

You were able to 2-0 LGD on the first day, but ended up facing them in a tie-breaker on the last day of preliminaries. What was the team's mood going into that match?

Fogged: ﻿To be honest a bit annoyed because we had already beaten them twice and thought that it would factor into our advantage, but we knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault, especially not theirs. We had expected at least maybe a bo3 or a bo2 or something to decide the tiebreaker, but either way we were very ready and excited to play against them again. Unfortunately, after a great start in the early game, we had a few misplays and ended up getting demolished.



Orange was ultimately able to knock you out of the tournament, what happened?

Fogged: ﻿We had a really rough start in the beginning of the game, which caused the majority of the game to be played very carefully and trying to avoid getting picked off. But too many of us died in quite stupid scenarios which let their lead continue to build up and eventually completely overpowered us even when our bear was getting an immense amount of farm.



Are you happy with how you performed overall?

Fogged: ﻿Definitely not, we knew we were the underdogs but still felt confident enough and thought we had a great chance to be at least in the top 8.

With hindsight, do you have any particular regrets about in game decisions?

Fogged: ﻿Its hard to say since decision making is done in such a quick manner in DOTA, but I think if we had just been more patient and had less deaths overall across the board we could have had a shot toward fighting Orange in the late game with our Alchemist/Lone Druid.



What lessons have you taken away from the International, are there any specific areas the team is looking to improve?

Fogged: ﻿I think there’s a ton of room for improvement across the board. Power of friendship is one aspect we are striving to accomplish. After the tournament I can say that there is a lot of stuff we have to work on and I have to work on as an individual.





What can we expect to see from Team Dignitas in the future, can we expect to see you again at TI4?

Fogged: ﻿One big thing I can say, or hope to say at least, is much more consistency and overall better and smarter DOTA. #RoadtoTI4, hell yes I 100% plan on being there again.



What was your favourite personal experience from Seattle?

Fogged: ﻿One was definitely proving to all the people who thought we were total garbage or didn’t deserve our invite or anything that we had what it took to compete vs these teams. But as for MY favorite personal experience, was when my girlfriend arrived at SEATAC on the 6th before the official tournament started and I was so happy to have her there with me and supporting me.



Sneyking has left the team, will you all still remain friends?

Fogged: ﻿I believe so, there has been our ups and downs together but we will for sure still talk and remain friendly.

Thanks for your time, do you have any shout outs? PLENTY!

Fogged: ﻿Shoutout to Alienware, Scan, Creative, be quiet!, QPAD, TwitchTV, Intel, Western Digital, iiyama, Killer, Mad Catz and Multiplay. And also a shoutout to my family for their great support for coming to Seattle and rooting us on as well as my beautiful girlfriend Daniela.