GosuGamers caught up with Neta "33" Shapira ahead of DreamLeague Season 22 to discuss how he is integrating at Team Liquid and how he likes the new captain role.
Joining a group of players who have been on the same roster for over four years can be tricky. More so, when the new player is coming after a long stint with a TI winning team. With that in mind, we were curious to hear from Neta "33" Shapira, the TI11 champion with Tundra Esports, how is he adapting and integrating at Team Liquid, how he embraces the captain role for the team and what kind of challenges he is facing at the beginning of his new journey.
We also touched on the 7.35 meta, and while 33 expressed his opinion on what is broken and should be fixed, the interview was conducted a day before Valve released the 7.35.c balance update.
How does it feel to be in the captain role? Is it something that you find to be difficult to do from the offlane?
It's the first time for me doing it, so it's a bit hard to say, it's hard for me to compare, but so far I'm enjoying it. It can be a little bit hard because I have to think about other things that are not just specific to my role and to my heroes. I have to think a bit about other heroes, for other positions too, which I always did, but now I have to do it even more. Of course, I kind of need to get input from everyone, but still, I need to have the last word on that, on what heroes I feel are really good. It's a new experience, but I get a lot of help from the team, and so far things have been working nicely.
How was that decision made to take the reins from Zai? Did you discuss from the beginning that you would also take the captain role, take care of the drafts and everything that Zai was doing for Team Liquid?
Yes, it was discussed from the beginning. Blitz told me that they are looking for someone to pretty much take over the leading role that Zai left empty.
Team Liquid took 3rd place at ESL One Kuala Lumpur, 2nd at BeBoom Dacha Dubai, should we expect you to take 1st in DreamLeague now?
That's the plan and we are going to try, for sure.
What do you feel different coming in the playstyles of Tundra and Liquid?
In Tundra the playstyle was a lot more methodical. We usually liked to play a lot slower, which I think in some instances it was good and in some instances it was bad.
I think coming into Liquid I kind of learnt a lot about how they like to play the game and also I can bring some of the stuff that I like to do. It's going to take some time to get the playstyles in sync. We already started working on it and I would say that I can benefit a lot from learning how they view the game and I think that I can also bring a lot of what they were maybe missing, that in Tundra we knew how to do very well. So, yeah, it's going to take some time, but hopefully, we will be able to get the best of both worlds.
Is it difficult to adjust to playing with three players who have played together for a long time, especially coming from a team with whom you played for nearly three years?
It definitely can be a bit more difficult to get into the same team vibe, I guess. It was a little bit slow at the start, especially because I couldn't go with them to Kuala Lumpur. Basically, I've been on the team for two months, but we actually only played one qualifier.
On the bootcamp leading to the BetBoom tournament and in the BetBoom Dacha itself, everything kind of fell into place, and I didn't feel like the odd man out anymore. So all it took was one tournament, it was very easy. Everyone was very welcoming and made sure that I felt like a part of the team.
Now that you have had some time to look at the format of the current Dota 2 season, do you prefer it to the DPC Leagues system?
Yes, I think what we will have in 2024 will be a lot nicer. From what I understand, there will be a lot of tournaments with very high prize pools compared to last year, in which basically almost everything was just qualifiers to TI or Riyadh. The DPC leagues and the Majors had quite small prize pools, compared to what we have now and especially compared to how huge Riyadh was.
The DPC leagues were also kind of boring to play, honestly. There wasn't much intensity in it, because it was just a group stage into tiebreakers every single season. So yeah, I am happy that we have a lot of tournaments, a lot of LANs to play now and hopefully, this year's TI and Riyadh will also be good.
How does the offlane role feel right now?
Offlane feels ok for me. Everything is kind of the same, always. I don't think that I ever felt like "oh, I hate this meta." You can always play whatever you want as long as you know how to make it work.
I would say that maybe the zoo strat is a little bit weak right now. I wouldn't mind some zoo buffs, but it has been very OP for so long, so it's fair enough that it's not strong right now.
What changes would you like to see in the next big patch?
It's hard to tell which heroes are really imba and which are not because the game has two broken items right now, Shiva’s Guard and Mage Slayer. And there are heroes like for example Ember Spirit, which I think no one will touch if Mage Slayer gets nerfed. It can be the same with a lot of other heroes if Shiva’s gets nerfed. For example, Doom got some buffs and the ult is very broken, but if it wasn't for this Shiva's item, the hero would be a lot weaker.
There are a lot of heroes right now that really, really depend on these two items and I don't know if Valve wanted it this way, but I think if they maybe fix these items before making any grand conclusions about heroes, it will be nice.
If you go and just nerf every hero that is really popular now, while at the same you nerf the items that are the only reason these heroes are good, you might end up with super weak heroes. I'd like for Valve to be a bit careful with that and first address the items and only then move to the heroes.
33 and Team Liquid are coming into DreamLeague Season 22 after placing second at the recently concluded BetBoom Dacha Dubai. They are joined by 15 other teams from around the world in the battle for the trophy and a share of the $1,000,000 prize pool.
Additionally, as being a part of the ESL Pro Tour, DreamLeague S22 has also a total of 18,550 EPT Points to offer. At the end of the season, the top 8 teams with the highest EPT points will be directly qualified for this year’s Riyadh Masters event at the Esports World Cup 2024. Team Liquid are currently standing in the 4th position on the EPT leaderboard with 3522 points.
