Davai Lama interview: “You open a lot more opportunities for yourself by learning a new language”

We had the opportunity to talk to Davai Lama ahead of DreamLeague Season 22 and learn quite a few things about himself and about Heroic’s goal at the beginning of their road in the Dota 2 scene.

Heroic made their entry in the Dota 2 space this year by building a South American team based in Brazil. However, the need for offlane players in the region and the fact that he speaks Spanish, opened the door for Cedric "Davai Lama" Deckmyn to join the team.

When we sat down with Davai Lama we were curious to learn about how the roster came together, and what are the Heroic objectives for this year, but also to learn from him how he is adapting to a new region.

Does having the best nickname in Dota put any pressure on you to perform?

Yes, thank you, I agree. I do think I have the best nickname in Dota as well. It has such a nice ring to it, and I think the pun is quite funny. I settled for this nickname when I was 15 years old, I think. I started to play Dota 2, I heard the word "davai" in my games and I was learning Russian at that time as well, and I had this brilliant idea; what if you mix “davai” with Dalai Lama?

It's been eight years now since I have this nickname and I still love it. I've since become Lama, I think more people know me as Lama than my real name, and I like it.

So, after trying a couple of years in WEU and NA, you are now with an SA team. What made you decide to switch to SA?

I am just doing a world tour. I started in the EU, I went to NA and now it's time for SA. Next year I will go to Southeast Asia. No, that's a joke.

It's just opportunities that I followed. I've been open to proposals and opportunistic with the teams that I've joined. I've always been very motivated when joining teams, no matter what region they were from. I joined a team in NA because it was the best team that I could join at that time. It was pretty rough playing from Europe in NA. I had to go to sleep at 6 a.m and wake up when the sun was going down in the winter, but it was the best thing for my career, so I did it.

Joining Heroic now came pretty naturally. I knew Hector (K1) and 4nalog a little bit, and since Wisper left SA to play with OG, they were looking for players to build the new all-star SA team. And without Wisper they had to look for an offlaner and there weren't that many options in South America, so they approached me.

When we had the initial talk, they were happy to learn that I also know a little bit of Spanish. I studied a year and a half of Spanish in high school, so I have some basic knowledge in Spanish and I was confident that with some practice I could become fluent on a pretty short-term basis. So after they found out that I could speak some Spanish and that I would be able to communicate with Scofield in the lane, it was pretty much a done deal.

You are full of surprises, Davai Lama. You mentioned that you were learning Russian at 15 years old and you were also studying Spanish in high school. I assume you also speak Dutch. In what other languages are you fluent?

I speak more or less six languages. Dutch is my native language, I've learnt English since I was pretty young, I learned French in school and I'm quite fluent in French, my Spanish is relatively good, especially now that I have been practicing for the past few months and I speak with the team on a daily basis. I also studied German in school. My German is pretty basic, and most of my German knowledge derives from Dutch because they are very similar. And then my Russian is relatively basic. I can have basic conversations in Russian and talk Dota 2 stuff, but I haven't actively spoken Russian in quite a few years.

So you understand what they yell at you in pubs and you can answer them if needed?

For sure, exactly. That was the main goal when I started to learn Russian. No joke. I just wanted to know what the words that they are screaming at me mean so I can respond to them.

That's pretty cool, we don't really have players who speak so many languages and I'm pretty sure that when you were in school you weren't thinking of learning new languages just so you could play Dota 2 with various teams in different regions.

I always liked to learn a new language just for the sake of it. I did not expect that learning Russian would actually give me an opportunity to play with a Russian speaking team. I did actually get offered by a Russian team recently, but I decided to go with Heroic.

I think other players should realize this as well. Languages are a big thing. If you learn a new language, if you don't speak English very well, but you work on improving it, you suddenly increase the number of teams that you could join by a lot. You open a lot more options and opportunities for yourself by learning a new language.

We saw your celebration pool dive from the balcony when you guys qualified for DreamLeague. What should we expect from you next? What are you going to do if you guys qualify for Riyadh Masters or TI?

I guess it depends on the setting. I would love to do more stunts. The pool jump was very convenient at that time. It was a very nice pool with a balcony above.

Did you practice that?

No, it was the first time I jumped from there. I studied the situation a little bit, though. I knew that the pool was deep enough to not hurt myself. I thought of it before and when we won those qualifiers, I knew that was time to make that jump.

Let's go back to talk about the team a bit more. Heroic is an organisation with a rich history in Counter-Strike, making its first venture in Dota 2. How is the vibe in the team, how are you guys adapting to each other?

The vibe is great. The team was formed with the idea that the players on the roster would work very well together. And that's better than forming a super-star roster hoping that they will bring results instantly. The super-star term comes with a lot of ego in Dota 2. We don't have that, we don't have big egos clashing, we are just very motivated to work hard together and become the best as a team.

Did you guys set a long term goal when you formed the team, are you taking it one tournament at a time?

We want to do things step by step. The first step was to be the best team in SA and qualify for international tournaments and that was the first goal set by Heroic as well. We succeed in that. We qualified for DreamLeague Season 22 and for ESL One Birmingham 2024. We didn't qualify for BetBoom Dacha and it sucked to lose to nouns, because we felt like we should be able to beat them.

The schedule was also messed up because we had to play a couple of open qualifier matches for other tournaments, and the BetBoom Dacha closed qualifier grand finals on the same day. So by the time the grand finals started, we felt tired and lost composure in the games and that's why we lost, which was quite upsetting.

DreamLeague Season 22 is Heroic's first tournament. Did you set a goal for this event?

We don't really have a goal for it. This is our first big tournament, it's the first time when we play outside the SA or SA plus NA qualifiers, so we have no idea how it's going to go. Long term, we do want to go deep at international tournaments, get top 8, then top 4 and become a very competitive team in an international competition. But for DreamLeague we didn't put any expectations on us, just because it is the very first tournament for us.

A total of three DreamLeague events will be part of the 2024 ESL Pro Tour as well as two ESL One LAN tournaments. Unfortunately, Heroic were eliminated after the first group stage at the currently ongoing Season 22. They are, however, qualified for ESL One Birmingham 2024, which will represent the first LAN tournament for the team.

The team’s participation at DreamLeague Season 22 brought Heroic just 98 EPT points, but there are $1,000,000 and a total of 26,640 EPT points on the line next month in Birmingham, which is the next pit stop for Heroic this year.