Interview with nouns' mid laner Gunnar, where we spoke about nouns' qualification to their first DPC Major and the NA Dota 2 region amongst other things.
Since the beginning of DPC Leagues in 2021, North American Dota 2 has seen a lot of prominent faces move to other regions in search of greener pastures. But one of the bright prospects and a constant in NA has been nouns’ mid laner, Nico “Gunnar” Lopez. Gunnar and nouns recently qualified for their first DPC Major of the season, the Bali Major, which will also be the first ever Major a majority of the nouns’ players will play in. As they gear up to make an impact in the final DPC Major of the year, GosuGamers caught up with Gunnar to talk about nouns’ improvement, the North American Dota 2 region and Dota 2 patch 7.33 amongst other things.
Hello Gunnar! How are you doing, are nouns bootcamping for the upcoming Bali Major?
I’m doing well! We aren’t bootcamping right now, but we’ll fly to Bali on the 24th [of June] and bootcamp there. We only scrim against European teams, and since they’re all at DreamLeague Season 20, it didn’t make sense to fly to Europe and then Southeast Asia.
Congratulations on making it to the Bali Major! This will be your first DPC Major tournament. How do you feel? Excited or nervous?
It will be the second Major I’ve qualified for, but yes, it will be the first Major I play in. The first time was the whole TEAM TEAM incident with Jacky “EternalEnvy” Mao, which I find hilarious now.
I’m excited to play in the Bali Major. I know Luke “YamSun” Wang is really excited as this will be his first LAN event, which is also the case for Jacob “Husky” Fifik.
That should be a great first LAN experience! The deciding factor in the DPC Summer Tour was beating TSM, which you did for the first time this tour. Was it the new patch (Dota 2 patch 7.33) that gave you a bit of an edge, or was it something else?
Over the last five months, all the nouns players have played only EU pubs and everyone has improved. As I mentioned, we only scrim against EU teams and also wake up a lot earlier than before to fit their schedule. We also had communication issues within the team, which is something we’ve gotten better at. Some of our best games were probably on display in the last tour [2023 DPC Summer Tour].
The patch did have an impact. Timbersaw was quite broken, so I had fun!
There was a crazy scenario that Shannon “SUNSfan” Scotten and Troels “syndereN” Nielsen brought up on their podcast ‘We Say Things’, that if TSM had gone through, there was a chance of them qualifying for TI12 directly, leaving the qualifiers open for you. Was that something the nouns players ever thought of?
All the players briefly thought about it at some point. There’s still a good chance that TSM make it through on points, but the more important thing is the Bali Major experience for nouns. Playing on LAN against the best teams in the world is bound to make us better. When we played in DreamLeague Season 19, even though it was an online tournament, it made us a lot better as a team.
The opportunity of playing in the Bali Major will be more important than giving it up for an easier time in the TI12 qualifiers. And if the ultimate goal is to win The International, we can’t be worried about facing TSM in the qualifiers.
The NA scene seemed to be getting more competitive, but with the end of Quincy Crew, it seems like the region has taken a step back. What do you think the region is lacking that makes you play EU pubs and scrim against EU teams? And what would it take to make it one of the strongest Dota 2 regions out there?
NA never had a lot of players to start out with, and the region has been slowly losing players over the years. Around four or five years ago, there were quite a few strong NA Dota 2 teams – Evil Geniuses, Complexity, J.Storm. But over the years, players like Jingjun “Sneyking” Wu and Quinn “Quinn” Callahan have moved to Europe, Syed “SumaiL” Hassan is in China now, and currently, our team is the only Division I team that has all five players from North America. Rodrigo “Lelis” Santos has dual citizenship of Brazil and the United States.
I’ve noticed that some NA pub players have now started playing in EU, but overall, the pubs have hurt the region. After the good players move away, there are fewer high MMR players to play against. To make it better, if I could do anything, I would summon half a million additional Dota 2 players for NA. Only the top 1% are extremely good, and if Europe has thrice the number of players as compared to North America, that’s triple the number of top tier players! I also feel players should be incentivized to win games and there should be harsher punishment for ruining games.
Quinn left NA for EU and found instant success. You’ve already played in EU with Ninjas-in-Pajamas in 2020. Has the thought ever crossed your mind to go back to try and find success in EU?
I have thought about it previously, but that wasn’t a thought this year. I’ve been committed to this team, and I think it is important to do that because teams always get stronger the longer they play together. So I’m not opposed to the idea of playing in EU, but I haven’t thought about it this season.
How do you like the current DPC system? What changes would you like to see?
The change from the six week DPC Leagues to the three week DPC Leagues was a positive one. Now we can bootcamp for the entire tour, rather than selectively bootcamping only before playing the strong teams.
It would be nice to see more slots for DPC Majors and even the DPC Leagues. On the whole, I think the DPC system is in a good place right now. It has given the professional scene more structure. Previously in a region like NA, teams would get created a day before the Major qualifiers! Fiver random players would get together thinking they could do it, get stomped, never communicate again and everyone would continue playing pubs till the next set of qualifiers came around.
About a month ago, Dota 2 patch 7.33 was just released. Do you like it?
I like the patch a lot! The new map is pretty cool. It feels nice that there is a lot of movement around the map. The Universal heroes change was fun at the beginning, but now it’s getting to a point where the line of thought is “I could pick a non-Universal hero, but I could also have 300 damage and 3000 HP!” That is something that needs to be addressed.
I don’t like the fact that Broodmother was buffed in 7.33d, and she is a Universal hero. It scares me that she will be a meta hero again, and we recently went through a lot of months where that was the case.
We’ve already started seeing the Black Arachnia in DreamLeague Season 20! How does the mid role feel right now? Does the mid lane feel like a bit of a dead lane because of the Twin Gates?
The mid lane is slightly weird now, because it is much more stable in terms of rotations for the first six or so minutes of the game. There are no supports checking every Water Rune. There’s also an illusion of choice, where it seems like there are many viable mid heroes, but you end up picking one of the broken ones.
Has the mid lane become more skill based now because of lesser early rotations?
Somewhat, but isn’t highly skill based because there are all these Universal heroes that have high damage, and you have Water Runes. What ends up happening a lot of times is both mid heroes just hit creeps and farm.
What do you love doing when you aren’t playing Dota 2?
I play a lot of video games! I like streaming, and I stream a lot of Dota 2 but I also stream other games. Streaming is like my recreational activity. Outside gaming, I like hanging out with my dog.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Gunnar! Any shoutouts?
Shoutout to my team. We’ve been putting in the effort, and it has shown. And shoutout to my girlfriend Michelle, who’s been working really hard at a lot of Dota 2 events, and I get to see her soon!
