Team Spirit’s Collapse on TI14: ‘My biggest competitor right now is 33. I don’t hate him, but we’re in the same boat”

I’d say our year was somewhere in the middle, not too bad, but not amazing either. We’ve had our fair share of struggles. Looking back, we only won two tournaments, EWC 2025 and DreamLeague S25. Of course, winning in Riyadh was huge, but there’s always room to grow.

Right now, I feel like we’re close to our peak form. I believe the secret [strength] of Team Spirit is tied to me. If I go off, the whole team goes off, and we’ve a real shot of winning all tournaments. If I’m confident and playing at my best, the confidence transfers to my teammates, and in turn, their confidence grows too.

But at the same time, our biggest weakness is also me. If I’m not in form, it drags the team down. That’s why my teammates sometimes push me to play more pubs because the more I play, the better the odds are for us to win. In a way, that’s both my personal responsibility and the secret behind Team Spirit’s success.

It mostly depends on motivation or maybe on the players themselves. Honestly, I don’t know. Right now, every team in the top eight is strong, and at any given tournament, one of them might be better than the rest.

It feels kind of random, because even if you have an idea of who’s likely to win that year, once you get to the finals, you’re facing teams like Liquid, Tundra, PARIVISION, BetBoom, or even us. And at that point, it’s anyone’s game.

We’re all kind of on the same level, but every team has their kryptonite. We have ours too. I won’t say who, because I think people already know, but it’s not like we’re better than everyone else right now. Maybe we can prove it otherwise at The International 2025, but for now, I’d say we’re great, not unbeatable.

No one is unbeatable right now, and that’s the best part of this year. It has made things way more exciting and fun.

My biggest competitor right now is 33. I don’t hate him, but we’re in the same boat: both of us have won the Aegis twice, and both of us are waiting for the third one. So in my mind, he’s my main competitor.

As a team, I’d say PARIVISION is probably our toughest competitor because we always seem to run into some problem when we play against them. It’s been difficult for us to face them.

It is the absolute peak… no one has ever done it before. You just want to be remembered in history as the first, and maybe even the last, to achieve it because it’s really tough for anyone to reach that level, but that’s exactly why you want it: to be the greatest.

I don’t know about my retirement plans yet. For now, I want to keep playing Dota. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, because it depends a lot on how TI goes. So I’ll wait until TI and then decide, do I want to retire, or do I still want to keep playing?

Also, if I get that third Aegis now, maybe I’ll keep playing for the fun of it, just chasing the next trophy.

Every offlaner has their own style and role in the team. For example, Amar [ATF] usually plays more farm-heavy; he just builds up and then crushes the enemy later. 33 is more of a tempo guy; he likes to run with his team and stomp early, though sometimes he’ll also farm. That’s the classic offlaner approach.

For me, I’d say I’m a bit more adaptable. In Team Spirit, my job is to train more heroes than sticking to the same pool my whole career. A few years ago, I couldn’t even play Brewmaster, and if I did, it was terrible. But now, I’m at least solid on it, maybe even good enough to crush games with it.

That’s where I think I’ve grown: adapting to new heroes, testing out different picks, and playing them at a high level. At one point, I had like 13 different heroes across games, almost a new hero every match. This flexibility is what makes me stronger, and perhaps a better offlaner now, compared to others.

All heroes are mostly balanced right now, but Necrophos might be a good pick in the current meta. That hero might make a comeback in pro Dota, and also, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen him in pro games. Necrophos has been getting buffs since February, almost half a year now, and I think his time has come.

Satanic has great potential, and that’s clearly visible in the PARIVISION. He’s crushing enemies in almost every game, and Yatoro is also the same. But it’s more about who you are as a person than what you are as a player. It’s easier to play with Yatoro because he is more like a chill guy.

Yatoro is a grown man. He has control over his emotions, and it’s always easier to talk to him. As for Satanic, I think he's still a kid. He’s very energetic, likes to jump through the whole room, and at one point, everyone was just kind of tired of his energy.

For me, he could be a bit of a problem sometimes, because he’s got so much energy. He’s still young, and he needs to let that energy out on someone. I think that can make things harder for the team, and that is reflected in-game, where sometimes he struggles to control his emotions.

Over the past year, Rue has grown more confident in the team. Back in February or March, he was really quiet, even in tournaments. Almost like a mouse. He wouldn’t speak up, just sat there waiting for someone else to pick his hero. He didn’t have a voice then, because he wasn’t confident enough.

He’d let us decide what he should play, instead of saying it himself. And honestly, that hurt us, because we couldn’t know what he wanted or what he was comfortable with. But now, he’s much more confident in himself and his heroes.

At Riyadh, for example, he spoke up in a few games and told us directly what he wanted to play. And when he did, we just trusted him and gave it to him. Rue's finding his voice in the team has made a big difference.

Expectations? I don’t know, but I think this TI is going to be one of the fiercest ones. Every team right now feels like it’s at its peak. The top eight are always the same names, but every tournament seems to have a different winner, because all of us are so close in skill.

That makes it tough for us to win, but I believe hard work pays off. Right now, we’re just focused on getting into the groove, practising, training, and warming up for what’s ahead.