On the day off between the group stage and the playoffs at Bali Major, each of the top seed teams met with the press for a round table talk.
Our team on-site in Bali was present at the Team Liquid Press Conference and here are the highlights from the Q&A session.
On the current state of the game after a few months on the big New Frontiers patch
Zai: I think people got kind of used to the new map. The Twin Gates gave a nice change of pace in the game. The game was pretty stale for a long time and all the changes are very good in that regard. I would only remove the Blood Grenades because I find them stupid and I don't like them.
On the no Battle Pass announcement for TI12
iNSaNiA: Obviously, the Battle Pass is something everyone cherished and loved, but I think whatever Valve will come up with instead, it will be something that we can enjoy and cherish just as much as we did the Battle Pass. Honestly, I think the Battle Pass makes way too much money for Valve, so if whatever they come with can't fill that gap, they wouldn't be happy with it either. So, I have a lot of faith that they will put a lot of effort into figuring out a nice new thing to replace the Battle Pass.
Asked if the pressure was removed after they qualified for TI12, Boxi said: "We took it a little chill after we secured our TI slot around DreamLeague and we didn't almost qualify for this major as well, which would have been pretty sad. But, now that we are here, we really want to win the major.”
Going into more detail, we asked what has changed for Team Liquid between DreamLeague Season 20, where they got knocked out in the last place and the Bali Major, where they placed first in their group.
MicKe: We just started to play more Dota, that's it. Talk a lot more Dota and play a lot more Dota.
Zai: Going into DreamLeague we were coming after a long break. We hadn't played that much individually and pretty much nothing as a team. We came into DreamLeague kind of unprepared, and we also didn't have time to fix that many things during the tournament, so we got last place.
We also wanted to hear their opinion on the Pugna - Storm Spirit duo that became very popular during the group stage in Bali, especially because Team Liquid boasts a 100% win rate with it.
Zai: Pugna is definitely a little bit too stupid. Traditionally, Pugna has been played on the Nether Ward, he was a great tower pusher. At TI4 I lost my base to Pugna at 11 minutes and then, after that, the Nether Ward countered all the spell casters. But now, I feel like he literally exists just to give mana and health to someone, which is a pretty sad version of Pugna.
On not having Last Chance Qualifiers for TI12
iNSaNiA: "I guess we are a very biased team on this topic because we were an LCQ team last year and we obviously went pretty far at TI11. It felt, like a very cool thing to bring all the best teams from all the regions on LAN and have them play against each other and see who really deserves the most those extra slots at TI. So, I personally really liked that format and it's sad to see it go away. Again, I'm very biased on this thing because there would have been no TI for me last year if it wasn't for the LCQ.
Team Liquid will open the playoffs stage at Bali Major with the Quarterfinals series against PSG.LGD on July 5 at 10:00 SGT/04:00 CEST so, stay tuned for more content and more interviews from the last major before TI12!
