Ekki interview: “Now's the time when tier two teams can start emerging”

Ahead of DreamLeague Season 22, we caught up with Ekki, Team Secret’s former coach now position 4 support, to learn more about his journey in the professional scene.

DreamLeague Season 22 represents the first tier one tournament that Marcel "Ekki" Hołowienko gets to attend as a player. He qualified for this event with Team Secret, but although he is fairly new to the professional scene, Ekki has actually already made his debut at The International and Riyadh Masters, but from the coaching seat.

Just before DreamLeague was about to start we had the chance to talk to Ekki and learn more about his beginnings in Dota 2 and his interesting path from grinding in Division 2 in the Dota Pro Circuit system, to coaching and back to active play.

How did you start playing Dota 2, how did you discover the game?

When I was younger I watched my brother playing it. I was about 13-14 years old and to be honest, I didn't think too much of it back then. I was just asking my brother some questions about the game, but I didn't pick it up until I was like 16 or 17 years old. But at that point, I found the game super interesting and I got really hooked. I kept playing it casually and then one day I reached 8K MMR and that's when I said, "ok maybe I should rethink this, maybe I can have a career in this game. It kind of started from there.

You were grinding for a couple of years in the tier two scene before joining Team Secret, but you also worked with tier one teams as a coach, especially last year. You've been with TSM at TI12 as a coach and with Team Secret at last year's Riyadh Masters edition.

Yes, I worked as a coach with Team Secret even before that, through the DPC leagues. It wasn't very announced, because I didn't really need it to be. I was kind of learning what the scene looks like, what a real professional tier one Dota 2 team looks like.

I think that I learned so much from those experiences with TSM and Secret that when I got back home I grinded from rank 100 to rank 20 (on the European leaderboard) in a month. Then Puppey was interested in me again because they needed a position 4 support. At that moment I instantly understood that I have a chance as a player and I think it's very interesting, it's hype and I'm ready to play!

You just mentioned that you reached rank 20 in a month. When should we expect you to reach 13K MMR?

I am at 12,300 right now, so I hope that after the DreamLeague ends, if I have a moment, I hope to reach 13K. I will try my best to do that. If not 13K, I would like to be at least top 10 on the leaderboards.

Would you like to give a tip to the casual support players on what to spam in pubs these days to increase their MMR?

Position 4 players, if you play a lot of Tiny, Hoodwink or Techies, you will most likely win a lot of your games. If you want to watch some pro players for these specific heroes, I would recommend 9Class for Techies, Saksa for Tiny and if you want to watch something wild, like Centaur Warrunner pos 4, you can watch my replays.

I was about to ask you about how you came up with Centaur position 4 because as far as I'm aware, you are the only one running it.

As a player, I always enjoyed things that other people didn't really pick up on. I was one of the original players to play Batrider support, before it became cool. It's the same with Centaur. If you go into a pub and play Centaur 4, you will see that you deal 800 damage at level 4. That's crazy. You have a blink stun with Centaur, there is burst damage, and there is a Stampede.

I think that new heroes that shake things up make people get confused and they are exciting to play.

How does playing for a big team like Team Secret feel for someone with such a relatively new career?

I would say that they are definitely very clear with what kind of ideas they think are good, and what the game plan is. It's a very nice atmosphere because everything that you do is very structured and you just have to find your spot in the game plan.

You are trying to adapt yourself to the best towards understanding everything that is going on on the map and how you, individually, can help every single step along the way in executing that game plan. I would say it's an interesting and exciting process.

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?

The current system is for sure better because it brings out the most for the teams. It makes it so that if you don't show up in a qualifier, you are going to miss out on a part of the year. That's making the competition to be at the highest level it can be, because no one wants to miss out on tournaments.

Also, every tournament is like a qualifier for the Esports World Cup (EWC) or for some other major event. I think it's exciting even for the newer teams because now's the time when tier two teams can start emerging and show that they can beat these tier one teams, so I am very grateful for the new system.

How do you like the changes made in the 7.35c patch which was released just in time for DreamLeague Season 22?

What troubles me about this patch is that some of the nerfs were insignificant. In my opinion, nerfs like the one applied to Vengeful Spirit didn't change enough about the hero to remove it from the first phase priority in the drafts. I think that what should happen with every patch is that there should be an introduction of a hero that was completely out of the meta. It should also change how the priorities for the heroes come.

In this patch, we had only one buff, which is Leshrac and I think that this hero isn't even particularly that strong yet. Or maybe we haven't figured it out completely, but I don't like patches which only introduce nerfs. With that said, I still think that the item changes are significant in a way that they will change what builds will happen on certain heroes.

DreamLeague Season 22 unfolds between February 25 and March 10 with 16 teams from around the world fighting for the title and a share of the $1,000,000 prize pool. As being a part of the ESL Pro Tour, DreamLeague Season 22 also offers a total of 18,550 EPT points to be split among the 16 participating teams.

Before the tournament started, Team Secret were in 10th place on the EPT rankings with 546 points. 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.