BOOM has been one of the key pieces behind MOUZ’s success, and just before DreamLeague, I caught up with him for an interview.
We talked about the packed tournament schedule, what keeps him motivated, how he climbed from 3K MMR back in the day, how different the grind feels now — and, to finish it off, his go-to offlane heroes for the current patch!
Busy Weeks and Burnout
Q:A few months ago I invited you for an interview, and you said that you have so little time off Dota that when you do get those few days or few hours off, you don’t want to even talk about it. How do you feel about the schedule now?
Last year when you asked, it was just when we made this team. We had to play every single qualifier, and then we qualified to them all. Then we played every single event. As a result, we had a three-month tournament streak during which we had maybe 2–3 days off. It was crazy, but over Christmas we had almost a month off, so now the schedule is way better. There’s also a bit fewer tournaments than last year, but there’s still a lot. It’s doable now.
Q:How do you feel coming into this DreamLeague?
We haven’t had the best results this season. At least we qualified. But the state of the scene is kind of random. There aren’t really any dominant teams, anyone that really stands out. So I feel like anyone can win at any moment. We’ll see!
Q:In my interview with MidOne, he said that there is a chance that MOUZ will get burned out and the results will be bad. You just said that this season the results are not very good. Is it caused by burnout?
I think it works differently for everyone. I think everyone needs different things in order to not be burned out. Someone can work more, someone needs time off more often. And MidOne is also alone in Europe, somewhere in Serbia. He’s been bootcamping for a month already or something. I can see how he could be burned out and homesick. But for me, and I think for the rest of the guys, I feel like right now the schedule is just fine.
Q:And what is it that you like to do when you have some time off from Dota?
One of my favorite things is playing table tennis. I play for a team, so that’s what I do. I compete there. I like sports overall. I like running, I’m working out. Other than that, I like going fishing, but during the winter it’s kind of hard because it’s cold. But it’s getting warmer, so I’m going to go in a few days. So I’m excited!
Q:Are you going alone?
Friends, family, alone. Usually by myself, sometimes with my friends, and sometimes with my dad! He is the one who taught me.
Team Talks
Q:What do you think MOUZ struggles with the most right now?
I think what we’ve struggled with the most recently is confidence. A lot of our players’ performance depends on how they feel.
If we lose a few games and scrims before a tournament, and then start the tournament by losing again, people really lose confidence in what they believed in. When we lose with a strategy we trusted, we kind of lose ourselves because everyone starts feeling bad and the confidence goes down. Even from the draft, we don’t really know what we want to pick, and in the game we have no clear idea what we want to do together as a team, no clear game plan. So everything feels kind of random. Some games we win quite easily, but most of them we lose because the enemies are doing better than us.
“I started before there was MMR...back then I could see the goal...If you’re a new player, even if you start at 4K and see the best players are 16–17K, you’re going to be like, “I am never getting there.”
Q:Can you give an example of a strategy like that? that you really believed in and then it didn’t work and you kind of gave up on it.
In the past, what worked for us was that we would always have a melee position 4. Let’s say we’d have a double offlane, two melee guys who were playing just to survive the lane, and that would give Yamich a lot of freedom to roam mid or gank safelane or do whatever he wanted.
We would usually have a strong midlane, some last pick, because our mid player is very flexible. He can play whatever you give him. So he would always counter the enemy mid and beat him up, and then we would have a strong safelane also.
And this changed. We started playing a ranged pos 4, trying to win the lane more, and our mid was playing more generic heroes, I guess. Maybe it’s also because of the meta change. Maybe the cheese heroes that MidOne used to play are not playable right now. But maybe we will come back to what worked.
Q:Is there any team that surprised you recently?
To be honest, who surprised me last BLAST was HEROIC. Because they had lost some qualifiers even before. What surprised me was that their midlaner is very young, and he was owning. He was going like 15–0, 15–1 every single game, just 1v5 winning the games for them. It felt kind of hard to play against them, to be honest.
Relationship with Dota
Q:What does Dota mean to you?
It’s my job. That’s it. I enjoy the game, I’m passionate about it, but at the end of the day it’s a job. It’s stressful, and it takes a lot of time that you have to put into it. I don’t know what else to say. It’s work!
Q:Has it always been like that?
Not always. The older I get, the perspective kind of changes. Before, when I was younger, I would put all my time into it. Even if we had days off as a team, I would still spend my whole day playing pubs or practicing. Nowadays it’s more like, okay, I get days off, I’m not touching this game.
Q:When did this switch happen?
I think it kind of happens over time, because you realize how much work it actually is and how much stress is involved. I play every day because we practice a lot as a team. I think it just happens slowly over time.
Q:If you had a son, would you want him to be a pro?
If I had a son, I guess I wouldn’t have a word to stop him cuz nobody could stop me, so I would not even try. And I think it has a lot of potential in the future. I think it’s going to grow. I think it’s going to become even bigger. Esports in general,I think it can be a good career. More people are gonna succeed
Q:How has Dota changed your life?
Dota change my life for sure in many ways. Starting even before I was a pro. I became a pro when I was 19 or something, but even before that I sacrificed pretty much everything: friends, family, my free time, school, relationships. When I became one, I started making pretty good money for that age. It felt like a dream job.
I knew I wanted to do this since I started playing at 14 or something. It’s changed my life for the better for sure and my life is very comfortable thanks to it. I can do this from home and I get to travel the world, which is very nice!
Q:When did you fell in love with Dota?
I think I fell in love with Dota pretty much when I started playing it, I always loved video games. I played Counter-Strike and Heroes of Newerth before. So I knew what the game was about. I was playing it with my friends at the start and after a few months everyone quit and I was alone but I really liked this game, so I kept playing by myself. It was kind of rough because I had no friends in the scene. I had nobody. I was just playing alone. I loved the game instantly and I never quit so…
Q:What do you think made it special?
There are endless options. You can do anything and you can always learn. Let’s say I have an insane amount of time in this game, but I only played one role before. Then I decide to play a second role and suddenly I don’t even know half of the things. There’s so much to learn.
You just keep learning. A new patch comes and you have to learn more. The learning part is probably my favorite because it’s the most exciting. It’s when you play pubs and see some random stuff happening every game, and people are trying random things. Then you see it, you want to try it, and it’s fun.
Q:Do you remember your first hero?
I think my first hero was Skywrath Mage. I used to spam this hero mid. I don’t know why, I don’t know what I was doing, but I remember I was playing Sky every game. I definitely don’t remember my first game because it was like 10 years ago. I kind of knew what to do because I played HoN before.
"I fell in love with Dota pretty much when I started playing it...There are endless options. You can do anything and you can always learn."
Behind the Scenes
Q:You started from 3K MMR and I know that because I have a game with you in 2017 at that rank. What was your grind like?
I started before MMR was introduced. At the time, top MMR was like 5K, right? And I started somewhere around 2.5–3K. Back then I could see the goal. The top guy was just 2K away from me, so I just kept chasing him. It felt reachable and close. When I played on 3K MMR, I always felt like I’m so much better than these people I’m playing with. But it obviously takes a very long time because the winrate, unless you’re some insane player, will never be more than 53–54%.
Nowadays, let’s say you’re a 5K player and you see the highest guy in the world is 17K. So he’s like 12K MMR ahead of you. It’s crazy. If you’re a new player, even if you start at 4K and see the best players are 16–17K, you’re going to be like, “I am never getting there.”
Q:Were you stuck at any MMR at any point?
Honestly, I don’t think I was ever stuck at any MMR. I always played a lot, so every year I would get like +1000 MMR. I don’t remember being stuck anywhere. I’m stuck now at 16K!
Q:What did people around you think of your Dota career at the start — your parents, classmates?
My closest friends that I had my whole life, I kind of pushed them away because I wanted to spend all my time just playing and not going out. I didn’t do anything other than playing for a few years.
At school, from the age of 15, nobody really played games. Maybe some guy would play CS once a week or something, but mostly people just studied or did other things. They would always make fun of me.
I used to skip school a lot. I was almost never there, so every single year I had to take additional exams after the school year ended because I didn’t attend enough classes to get grades in like 10 subjects. So my whole summer holiday I would just be going there to do these exams, and everyone would make fun of me.
But I was also going to some Czech tournaments already when I was 15 or 16, and we would be winning some of them. Every player who was trying to play professionally would go there. So when I started winning some tournaments with a prize pool of $2,000, I would go home with $300 and feel so rich. But overall, people weren’t really supportive. Nobody was supportive, even my parents. I was kind of alone. Just myself, doing what I wanted.
Q:Has your Dota motivation fluctuated over all these years?
Motivation fluctuates all the time. Nowadays, there are so many tournaments that it’s hard to stay 100% motivated and give your absolute best at every single one. It’s just tournament, tournament, tournament all the time. You have very few breaks, and between these tournaments there isn’t much difference. It’s just another tournament you play from home.
LAN is different. It feels very different. You get into a hotel, there’s a crowd there. That’s probably when the motivation is the highest and it feels the best to play.
I remember when I was on Team Secret for a bit, I was in a bad mental state. I felt really bad and didn’t really improve for about a year and a half. I felt really stuck, even though I was grinding a lot. I was playing like 10 pubs every day. I felt really bad that I wasn’t improving, so I kept trying to play more. But improvement isn’t something you can force.
It really depends on how you’re feeling. For me, it was about doing stuff outside the game in my free time. Then you come back from running or fishing or whatever it is you like, and you actually feel excited to play and motivated. That’s what really helped me keep the motivation stable, I guess.
Q:If you could change one thing about Dota right now, what would that be?
I think the only thing I would change about Dota is having fewer online tournaments that you play from home and more LANs. The LANs really feel special nowadays because there aren’t many of them. I would love that.
Q:Can you name 3–5 strongest heroes in pubs for offlane?
Pubs are very random. I played some pubs on Earth Spirit offlane and I won like eight games in a row. I don’t know if it’s OP. I think it’s bad, but maybe I just got lucky and won a lot of games.
For pubs, it’s all the strong lakers, Tidehunter, Batrider. I like Razor a lot in pubs, Axe, Kunkka. I usually just play what I enjoy in pubs. If you enjoy it, you’re going to try harder and will want to win more.
