Gaimin Gladiators are one step away from securing a second Major title in a row and a third tournament title in the span of two months.
Ahead of their grand finals series at the ESL One Berlin Major, we had the chance to sit and talk with Marcus "Ace" Hoelgaard who gave plenty of insights on what makes this team perform so well and stay at the top of the competition through different patches.
We went on discussing how things have changed for Gaimin Gladiators from TII11 to now, what sort of impact Aske "Cy-" Larsen, their new coach on the team, how Ace’s personal role swap when joining the team changed his mentality on the game and of course we dissected a lot of aspects about the New Frontiers patch.
Hi, thank you for taking the time to talk to us when you probably want to use your days off to practice or scrim as much as possible on the new patch
Actually, we are not scrimming that much at this Major because we've been playing so many tournament games for the past few months. It's like non-stop, back-to-back official games, so we decided that when we have days off, we should use them as they are, and take actual time off. That said, we've been scrimming a bit, but it's nothing at stake in scrims right now, so it's not trying as hard.
You are the Major title defenders, you just won DreamLeague Season 19, the first team to win a tournament on the new patch and now you are one step away from winning the ESL One Berlin Major. What's the magic behind your absolute dominance on LAN and in the online format?
I think the magic comes from the synergy in the team. Everybody is having a good time with each other, we talk to each other a lot, we go out together and do things together outside the game. On some other teams, sometimes people don't talk to each other that much, they play the game or they do the practice and then they go back to their room and do nothing while we are pretty close together and that makes us able to talk about Dota and theorize or strategize so much more easily.
Photo credits: ESL One| Stephanie Lindgren
There's been a few changes in the team since TI11. One is the coach, the other one is Quinn who seems to have the best days of his life with Gaimin. Let's talk about the coach. You were with ImmortalFaith and as far as I know, he had a more hands-on approach to drafts, he had the most say in that department. Has that changed after you got Cy-?
Yeah, we had ImmortalFaith for a long time with us, and as you said, he was more dictating, he wanted to do the drafts, and he wanted to use his ideas and stuff, but on this team, we already have a lot of smart players, very creative players and everybody has their own good ideas. So, we just felt it would be better if we can use our own ideas more, and when we started to look for a new coach, we went for someone who fits this mentality.
Cy- is very good at getting everyone's ideas out and having conversations, conducting the discussion, if you want, towards a decision made together. He empowers our ideas and helps with whatever he can all the time so that was the change that we had in mind and it's exactly what we have gotten with him joining the team.
You personally made a change when you joined the team back in 2021 when you were still Team Tickles, swapping from carry to offlane, and from the outside it looks like you also enjoy your new role a lot. Is it like that or do you miss the carry days?
Yeah, I do really enjoy playing offlane. It took me a little bit to transition to the new role because it's like completely different than the carry position, you are more selfish in a way as a carry, all you think it's your farm, and if you die as a carry is bad. But as an offlaner you buy items in order to empower your team, of course, now we have this aura-man meta that is only about that, but even before the patch, I'd buy items to make Quinn even stronger in fights, or to help my supports.
To be honest, it takes a while to get into that mindset when switching from carry to offlane, but I do enjoy it now! It's more chill in a way, less stressful if you want. I'm probably not going back to carry anytime soon.
How do you like the current aura-man meta for the offlane?
It's very boring, all you do is buy aura items. It's like "I buy Pipe now, what's the next aura that we need? Ah, we need Crimson, ok I bought that, what next, are we missing Vlads, ok I'll buy that." It's boring and a little bit OP. But, at the same time, I don't know how you could balance it out. It's definitely more fun if you can play with a Blink Dagger, or some Force Staff, or some Harpoon and play on actually good positioning and plays instead of being only about auras.
We saw you already trying a universal hero at the Major by playing Ogre Magi in the offlane. So, talk to us about the universal heroes. Do they feel OP, should Valve look at balancing a bit the damage gain numbers from strength?
I think these universal heroes are a bit weird as they are right now, some just feel kind of broken and some feel kind of bad. I'm not sure how they can balance it on how damage gain works with stats. But overall, I do feel in general the concept is kind of broken. Some of these universal heroes just get way more damage with every level than other heroes, so you just buy stats and you build way too much damage.
You can see it happening with Void Spirit here at the Major.
Yeah, exactly, even Windranger is being picked again in core roles because it became universal. It's also unbalanced because there are some intelligence heroes that went universal now and intelligence heroes are just kind of bad in general, but now that they become universal they are actually really good, while a strength hero that went universal now is kind of worse, because strength is the best stat in the game. It will probably take a while to balance it out.
Meepo is one of your staple heroes, but until the change in this patch, you haven't played him in a long time. You played it in the group stage here, do you like the changes made to him?
It's funny because I just played it once here and I haven't played him one single time since the patch, not in pubs not in scrims, I didn't touch it. The game I played in the groups just felt like a really good Meepo game, it was against Anti-Mage. But overall, I think he is viable again, he feels like he should be good, not only versus Anti-Mage.
To wrap up all this discussion about the patch, what are your overall thoughts on the New Frontiers?
Overall it's pretty cool with all the changes and stuff, it's like a breath of fresh air. Some things are not working really well right now, but we will have balance patches for sure. For example, we have these Tormentors and I don't want to reveal too much, but a lot of people are like "take the Tormentor, take the Tormentor," but a lot of times it is not worth it.
So, all you do is go to these corners of the map and you kill it and nobody gets anything from it besides maybe the poorest guy and the thing he gets is not even that impactful or useful most of the time. So, you waste all the farm the cores could get in that time, you also pay with a lot of HP and you don't get anything from it.
Did you expect to be so successful on a new patch right from the get-go?
We definitely didn't expect to go like this. I mean, when me and Tofu started playing out together, I did expect us to be a good team, but I didn't expect us to be this good so fast.
Do you have anything that you would like to see changed in the next year's DPC format?
I didn't think exactly about what should be changed, but definitely in our region right now there are a lot of good teams that keep dropping to Division 2 and it's kind of sad to see. They drop to Div 2 and it's like super despair for them from there on. So I don't know, it feels like there's not enough room for these teams in our region.
Alright, thank you again for taking the time to talk to us, and if you have any shout-outs to do please go ahead!
Shout out to GG, our organization. They do so much for us and take such good care of us, and shout-out to our fans and to some of my friends at home who lately started watching our games again.
Gaimin Gladiators will return to the Velodrom Arena stage from Berlin, Germany on Sunday, May 7 at 16:00 CEST to defend their Major title against the winner of the lower bracket finals 9 Pandas
vs
Team Liquid so make sure you catch all the action live on ESL One Twitch.tv channel and check our tournament HUB for the latest updates from the ESL One Berlin Major.
