Zai on Team Secret roster change: “MATUMBAMAN was the first option”

January 20, 2020 Archie Maraasin

 

 

Team Secret’s offlaner Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg sat down with Maincast ahead of the group stage matches at DreamLeague Season 13: The Leipzig Major and talked about the post Ti9 shuffle, about the state of the game nowadays and about how he sees the offlane role now.

Asked about how it feels to play alongside Lasse Aukusti “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen he said:  “It’s a lot of fun, he’s a great guy, also extremely talented. The dynamic is a bit different now compared to last year’s roster with Nisha in the safe lane and MidOne in mid. It’s different, but Nisha stepped into his new role pretty effortless.” Regarding on how the decision was made to bring in the TI7 champion, Zai explained: “Matu was the first option, to be honest. We talked to some other players, but then someone just proposed to ask Nisha if he wants to play mid and he was like “sure” after that Matu seemed just the perfect fit because he was a free agent.”

Switching the topic on how Dota 2 has evolved as a game and if it feels less creative compared to the old days, Zai said: “I wouldn’t say it’s less creative. I would say it’s more creative than ever. Back in the day people were not that good at the game, us included. A lot of the stuff that worked out back then were noob strats. If you tried them today, it would be ridiculous, people would laugh at you. As the game evolves and people get better and better, it kind of eliminates some of these “surprise” strategies, cheese strategies. I will give an example:

At TI4, in a match against Team DK, we did this Enchantress-Ursa thing where we went for Rosh at level 2 or 3. That would never happen today, it is impossible, partially because the game mechanics have changed, but also because just one guy going to the Rosh pit so early would just ruin the game for his team. At the same time, I think that a lot of cheese things still happen. The last pick, for example, most of the time is just a cheese hero.”

When talking about his role in the game and about how the laning stage goes today, Zai expressed his unhappiness about the trilane versus trilane strategies: ”for me, it sucks, for the game, I’m not sure if it sucks, but I do think it’s kind of boring. In the Singapore tournament, the grand finals were a bit different, but most of the games we played it was just trilane vs trilane, it was like playing five years ago. I hope it will change for this tournament.”

Asked about what he likes about how the offlane role changed over the years he said: ”I really enjoy the fact that I don’t have to carry the game anymore. My role now is to make the carry life easier and it’s also about messing with the enemy team as much as possible, which to me, it’s extremely fun.  It’s one of those elements in the game that perhaps goes unnoticed that much, how much pressure you put on the enemy team. High level of Dota is all about pressuring people, making them feel uncomfortable, forcing mistakes from the enemy team and forcing that kind of stuff from some of the best players, it’s extremely satisfying.”

Maincast’s interview with Zai covers a few other topics and can be watched in the video below.

Team Secret placed first in Group B at the Leipzig Major and will resume their quest for the trophy on Wednesday, January 22 at 12:30 CET in the upper bracket quarter finals series against Fnatic.

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