33: "The prize pool of a tournament makes it more prestigious, whether it is TI or Riyadh"
Neta "33" Shapira sat down with BLAST for an exclusive interview right before the Riyadh Masters 2024 as he talks about joining Team Liquid, being a captain and taking on more responsibilities, Team Liquid’s struggle and corrective measures, Patch 7.36 and expectations heading into Riyadh Masters and The International 2024 (TI13).
Joining Team Liquid and becoming a Captain
33 joined Team Liquid as a replacement for the outgoing Ludwig "Zai" Wåhlberg and immediately took on the mantle of captain.
He said, "I’ve been enjoying [being a captain]. There’s a little bit more responsibilities, but overall, I was doing a lot of this stuff already in my previous teams [Tundra Esports]."
But being a captain has its setbacks. It’s difficult and more time-consuming and leaves little time for individual practice as the majority of the time is spent on drafting, understanding the team dynamics, analysing opponents, etc., to name a few.
33 finds the new role interesting and is improving his ability to balance team dynamics and individual self, which has been working well lately. He has realized that irrespective of the additional responsibilities, he cannot afford to lose out on individual practice.
Dota 2 teams have thrived with support players as captains such as Puppey, Kuroky, Insania, Seleri, etc., but it’s unusual to see a core player captaining the team. 33 doesn’t think there’s much difference between the two other than core players generally requiring more time for practicing the mechanics and heroes a bit more than support players.
He said, "Practicing the mechanics and heroes for core players is a bit more intense usually. As a captain, especially during tournaments, it’s difficult to squeeze in even 1 pub game compared to 3-4 pubs as only a player."
He believes that if a core player allocates proper time and finds a good balance then it’s not a problem for it [the core player] to become a good captain like the support players.
Team Liquid’s struggle and corrective measures
33 doesn’t believe Team Liquid’s year is as bad as the fans think barring a few exceptions. It wasn’t exactly the worst but also not where the team aspired to be.
He said, "We are probably the fourth or fifth-best Dota 2 team in the current season, which to me, doesn’t sound as bad as people are putting up. It obviously could have gone better after a good start to the season but it’s disappointing to go downhill sharply in the later half of the year.
A lot of the underperformance came from putting in less effort than other teams and having a lesser drive in some tournaments. As a countermeasure, it was decided in a team meeting to put in more effort this time and that’s exactly what every member has been doing lately leading up to Riyadh Masters 2024 and The International 2024.
“We are hopeful to get back to peak form, or perhaps even better, especially now that we have adopted a different practice routine for individual and team games,” said 33.
Patch 7.36c and the current meta
Team Liquid enjoys playing the new patch and the players are happy to discover new things in the game with the introduction of the facets and innates. 33 thinks it’s a good change because the previous patch made the game stale and boring.
He said, “People were a little bored with the game but now there’s a lot of new and exciting stuff to find out. A lot of old strats are viable again and for me, the heroes I liked playing, but were terrible in the previous patch, are suddenly buffed so I’m enjoying playing those again.”
He’s currently playing heroes like Beastmasters, Broodmother and Visage in Dota 2 pub games and while it looks fun, he’s unsure how they’ll pan out in a tournament setting. He also likes that Shadow Fiend, Nisha and Micke’s signature hero, is viable again in the current meta, giving Team Liquid additional flexibility.
33 thinks there’s still a lot to discover as the patch is new but the general meta is peculiar to the high-rank pub games with teams focusing more on picking the broken/buffed heroes and setting the stage in the drafting phase.
Expectations at the Riyadh Masters 2024 and the importance of TI
33 is confident of Team Liquid showing up in good form at the Riyadh Masters 2024 but at the same time is cautious about not becoming overconfident. He wants to take it one tournament at a time, gauge the team’s performance and then define their new set of expectations.
He said, “We’ll see how we perform at Riyadh, then see how our boot camp goes before TI13 and set our expectations accordingly. We might play a completely different game at TI than we do at Riyadh.”
Speaking on the importance between TI and Riyadh, 33 hopes that the prize pool at TI13 is at least comparable, if not more, than Riyadh Masters. Losing at Riyadh last year made him feel more terrible than losing at TI12 – owing to the significant drop in the prize pool at TI compared to previous years.
“The prize pool of a tournament makes it more prestigious, whether it is TI, Riyadh or any other tournament,” said 33.
At the same time, he’s also excited at the prospects of more tournament organizers entering the Dota 2 scene, including BLAST, and is happy that next year there’ll be more tournaments to play.