Post MSB Interview With Snitch

The Mid-Season Brawl is over and the Dignitas players has returned home to practice for Phase 2 of HGC. We caught up with Joshua "Snitch" Bennett to hear his thoughts about one of the most respected tournaments on the Heroes esports Calendar.

You’ve been away from home about a month now. First, bootcamping in Katowice, then the MSB group stages in Stockholm, then DreamHack playoffs in Jönköping. Was it nice to get back home?

Snitch: Actually, it feels kinda weird to be home again because we spent such a long time on the road, I guess. It feels weird to be returning back to the daily routine, but it’s definitely nice to see my family again and just kinda get to cool off a bit. At least for a few days, after the tense schedule that we had during the preparation and MSB.

Talking about Sweden, how did you like your stay? You’ve been there before. Was it any different to walk around in Stockholm and Jönköping now that you know the area better? Did you see something new or try something new?

Snitch: It’s surprising to me how well I remember it from the last year, actually. I kinda knew how everything was. I guess we were a bit more adventurous with the food this year, we tried sushi a few times, and some of the other Japanese dishes at this Sushi place at the local mall. We didn’t get to do too much sightseeing. The setup was really nice in Stockholm again, it was a similar setup to last year. We had practice rooms in the hotels which is super convenient.

I love that Blizzard would provide this because it makes it really easy for us to schedule around, you know, our sleeping and getting to practice really conveniently. Being able to practice in the hours we want because it was so accessible. It was a really, really nice environment again to participate in.

Enough about tourism, let’s get into the eSports stuff. We hear from many players that they really praise the Mid-Season Brawl for the format. Do you agree that it’s one of the best tournaments of the year if we take the prestige away from BlizzCon?

Snitch: Yeah, I definitely think the format is really, really nice. It gives every team a lot of experience and a little bit of showtime, which I think is better for everybody. You know, getting to play on stream or on the stage if you make it to the knockout and getting a lot of experience against many international teams and styles. It feels like a very rewarding format to play in because you do get so many games in. Even if you don’t make it through the group stages, I still feel like you get a lot of games in, and it’s really nice to be able to test yourself against all these other teams even if you’re not a knockout caliber.

As for the knockout format, I also think it’s really nice. I like the double elimination bracket, I think it builds up very good storylines every time double elimination is used. It’s always like a Cinderella run. So yes, I do think it is probably the nicest format in the end if you get to strip off the pedigree or whatever from BlizzCon. It’s definitely a much more interesting and exciting tournament.

It’s the first global tournament where we see the effect of the new system regarding the teams from the minor regions and the perk of an extra team for the clash-winning regions. Do you think these new changes had an impact on the quality of the tournament?

Snitch: I think this time, at least from our side, it wasn’t too impactful, mainly because our two other teams were going through roster difficulties. But I still think it was nice that we got a sense of reward for performing well throughout the phase because our region did well. We got to have that extra boon, empowering the other teams. I definitely like the reward system. I think it was very beneficial for Korea, I think all of their teams were very, very strong, and I think if Tempest didn’t get a chance to come or Ballistix didn’t get a chance to come it would have been a very different tournament and much less exciting.

I think the fact there were three Korean teams here, because of their success, was really, really cool, and it showed they deserved to have three teams, and those three teams deserved to participate. So, I think it was really nice of Blizzard to make that change.

Let’s go into some specific plays that happened during the Grand Final. Talk me through the ending of the Towers of Doom game, from the last Altar basically to the end of the game.

Snitch: I think we really quickly realized we weren’t gonna get level 20. I don’t think we fully realized they can end the game at first, we kinda were just thinking “Ok, they’re gonna get four shots, they’re gonna cap, we’re gonna have one life, and we’re gonna play it from there”. I think we got a kill on the Dehaka. From there, we were just racing around getting structures where they couldn’t play us, because even though they were 20, they couldn’t fight 4v5. Basically, we were trying to get structures, trying to grab everything we could experience wise. And then, as we were taking towers top, we realized, "Oh, they can get the bottom fort." As soon as they get the bottom fort, they would have had five shots, which would have killed us, obviously. So, we immediately started running down.

I saw everybody was criticising Ttsst for canceling his cap, but it was pretty obvious that it would have ended the game. So, we make the call and run there from top lane to the Altar, originally we were going to conceive it. POILK manages to narrowly interrupt it with a Blink -> Magic missiles at the last second. We ended up having Blaze in the top position at the Altar where it’s pretty much impossible to stop him from stalling unless they all-in us. They had Garrosh, so their composition really struggled at running against us and engaging if we just kept walking back. Maybe they could have played better trying to zone, but I was ready on the left side, and Zaelia was on the right side.

I think they actually felt a lot of pressure in this situation, just in general, because I thought they were kinda scared to fully take a fight. I think, because they were so far ahead, they didn’t want to throw, obviously. But, we were managing to stall a while and ended up getting level 20. I think we took the first engage, but this is when Garrosh had his unstoppable, like a self-cleanse, they had Gust, and they ended up blowing both. I think either team traded, I ended up almost dying, but I had everything up and I managed to get into the Bunker and everything was fine. I think both teams were tabbing then, those who could. I actually think I was the only one from our team. I was the only one that was super low, while the others were okay with the Stukov healing, but I think three or four of them tabbed.

We ended up all coming back and postured on the top right side, and KyoCha was trying to fire the Isolation and missed, which is probably pretty key. When they tried to switch to take the camp, we got a pick on Garrosh with the Varian Taunt, which then snowballed into a full team wipe. Straight after this Wubby’s call was that we needed to get as much value as possible. The top wave looked pretty good, maybe we can take everything. So, super quickly I say I can go top, Zaelia is like “I can go mid”, POILK is already doing our bottom fort, and Wubby is like “Okay, Jay, we can go their bottom fort and pop Bunker to take that down.” We got everything literally at the same time, which is super key.  

I’ve never seen this situation before, but as they spawned, their towers were still building, so I think we got two or three shots in the time period where they couldn’t do anything because the towers were still regenerating. After that, we had to defend wherever they pushed. They tried to siege mid, but I think it’s hard to siege mid because they pretty much have to play around the engage with Garrosh holding the front line, but it’s very, very easy to kill Garrosh if he is not fast enough with the self-cleanse, or even if he is in too bad of a position, he is going to die anyway through the self-cleanse.       

They tried to rotate bot and then I went a little bit wild, ran bot to try and steal as much time as I could. This is when I just E’d through them to try and make space. I narrowly sidestepped the Malfurion root and ended up X-Striking the Hanzo Arrow, as a kind of reactionary thing. I don’t think I would have died if he hit the arrow, but it was a tense thing and you obviously don’t want to take damage. So I managed to X-Strike the arrow in time. They committed the Gust to try to stop us from defending, but then Falstad ended up tanking the Fort, and I realized that he is low enough, and end up sniping the kill.

When Falstad died, we managed to get an engage with Stukov on Malfurion at the same time, but it was very fast-paced. It was quite fortunate then, because we got all the experience before. I think we just left the waves in good positions to build, so the fact that we won the fight, and then we were in a very good position to take all the forts at once. It wasn’t set up, but it was super convenient that it worked out that way. We managed to hold on to all the forts the way we did.

I’ve never seen anything like it, I couldn’t sit in my seat. It was outstanding.

Snitch: I’ve watched the VODs and they were really hype. Watching the VOD it felt really slow, the way it happened, but I think the rush of the crowd was really cool. It felt really awesome that we won that game. You feel in yourself, you know, how hyped you are, and then when you take the headset off and you come back to the world… Everybody stood up cheering and clapping, it felt incredible.

The final moment, the final percent that was taken away from the core by the Final Cut from Genji. What were your voice comms like? What were the feelings on the stage afterward?

Snitch: We thought it was super awesome to make that play. There was a top shrine that happened right before, and we really didn’t want to fight it. They had vision, it felt like a really awkward fight. I really wanted to fight the Boss instead, Wubby was thinking the same thing, so we decided we’re just gonna fight the next Boss. We kinda went there as a group, I think we took a fight right before or something because we didn’t have cooldowns. Maybe we were trying to get a pick, or something like that. When the Boss started, we started taking it, and then we didn’t have Water Elemental and Isolation. So, we were missing both and it slowed us down on bursting the Boss and we really didn’t take in the fact that they were gonna look for the ultimate win condition. It didn’t clue into us straight away. There were still like three of them around the Boss, so we couldn’t really be sure if they wanted to fight or not.

As soon as I realized, at least, that they were just going for the temples in the end, I immediately Gusted the Johanna and flew down bot to try and fight the Malthael, Wubby dug as well, we killed Malthael. And Last Rites didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t actually respawn, which I thought was quite surprising. When I was watching the VOD, I was thinking, “If he just respawned here, maybe we’d just lose anyway”. Because he’d just run all the way back from the base, but he ended up not using his 20 which was kinda strange.

They started running down the mid with Li-Ming and Monk, so I tried to recall off bot straight away back to the defense. I mean, I think our target focusing wasn’t that bad. It’s just that, ever since the things went wrong, we missed the Storm Bolt and the Root barely didn’t connect. And they had really good cleanses as well, Sake played it really well. When Muradin was chasing in mid, and he lands a perfect Storm Bolt on Li-Ming, the Monk cleanse is so fast it catches it. He definitely played it well coming towards the core. But, yeah, it was really, really close. I think Genji even X-Striked to live the mid temple.

It was really pretty sad, because if he didn’t get the kill on the core with the Final Cut, we definitely would’ve won. He even died in his (E). It wasn’t like his (E) touched the Core, it was just the Final Cut, so… in the moment, I didn’t actually realize how close it was, it felt more like one of those situations where it looked really close.

That’s how I felt at the time. I don’t think I truly realized how close it was, it would’ve changed how I felt, because honestly I was so full of adrenaline still and it just felt like we played an amazing series from both sides. It was very, very difficult to be upset, especially with how happy Rich was, and how happy they were hugging and laughing and stuff with the trophy.

It wasn’t like last year when the last game was just such a mess and we just got destroyed. This year, it felt like an incredible series and I just lived in that series. It was amazing to be a part of it. To be a part of what I personally consider to be the best series in Heroes history. It was amazing to have played in that peak level and have such a close and exciting Bo7. I didn’t even care that we lost at that moment, this is what competitions are about. It felt incredible, just being on that stage and playing those games at that time. So, it didn’t matter to me that we didn’t win, I was just happy this series happened.

Can you explain the complete neglect of Maiev in the drafting?

Snitch: We definitely practiced her before the tournament, but as the tournament continued it felt like she wasn’t gonna fit well into what everybody was playing. The meta kind of evolved into this triangle of Garrosh, Johanna, Blaze. These three picks were kind of controlling the start of the draft. Everybody wanted to play Garrosh, but he was kinda losing into Johanna. So, Johanna was getting a lot of popularity and then Blaze was beating all of the hypermobile assassins like Tracer. Even though she didn’t see much play, she struggles against the Blaze. Genji struggles against the Blaze. Blaze was controlling a lot of the ranged picks, whereas Johanna was controlling the front lines, and then Garrosh.

Because these three picks were so heavily contested, it felt like Maiev didn’t really have a spot, because you didn’t really want to play her with those heroes. The double-ranged comp fits better. And you didn’t want to play her against these heroes because she’s not too great into Garrosh, not great into Johanna, and struggles against the Blaze because of the Bunker and all that. Just because of her teamfighting style, she didn’t really fit in the meta, especially towards the later stages with Gen.G’s meta. They loved playing these heroes and prioritizing them, so it just didn’t feel like any of the games were great Maiev games and it felt more suitable to play double-ranged styles.

Totally amazing series! So, how do you think the gap between the different regions looks now after the Mid-Season Brawl?

Snitch: I have to say that I think the first seed of every region outperforms the region itself, if that makes sense. I guess you could still say Korea is probably the best, just because they had more depth at the top. I guess Korea was the best, and then Europe, then North America and then China, as far as the main regions go. Kind of like the best team of each region outperformed the rest of the region, because obviously we did better than Method and Fnatic, and then Tempo Storm did much better than HeroesHearth, and Gen.G and Tempest did better than Ballistix.

So it felt like it was a very top-centralized tournament, if that makes sense, where we had the best teams regardless of region competing the most. The number one seed of all of them. You could definitely see that Korea and Europe are still strong and then the other two. China still looked pretty weak in general, which I think is a shame.

Do you think that Ballistix just had a bad tournament or was Tempo Storm really showing up?

Snitch: I think it was a bit of both. With Ballistix, I think in some ways their meta was a bit weird, in some ways their plays were a bit off in terms of synergy. At the same time, Tempo Storm was really, really strong and had a very clear identity of the way they wanted to play and what they wanted to do. They’ve obviously practiced that style very well. I don’t think it’s fair not to give any props to Tempo Storm. I think they’ve played a very solid tournament, even if they went out the way they did to us. I still think that in that Ballistix set, they really gave it their all. Maybe that’s why they lost the way they did, maybe sometimes you can only give your all for the one series. It is what it is. It definitely showed that they were a force to be reckoned with. They had a really solid tournament.

Do you think that you will be dominating the HGC League play in Europe again this phase or do you fear any of the new rosters? We have, for example, the old Expert roster coming back together, the team that knocked you out of BlizzCon last time.

Snitch: I think it’s very unlikely that we’ll have the same dominance level like we’ve had in the previous phase. Rosters have just gotten generally better. There’s pretty much improvements almost all around, in Method, in Fnatic, in Liquid. All these rosters will have better cohesion and it feels like it fits the players and their roles better. We’ll definitely have a much more tempting season, but if we work hard and continue to put in the effort that we’ve put in before, or even more if required, we’ll still be the best. We’ll still be maintaining the number one, but it will be a much harder challenge than it was previously.

Do you think it will take some weeks for the new rosters to play together in a more effective way, or do players already know each other well enough in EU?

Snitch: I think some of the teams like Fnatic will have a sense of comfort to them, and they’ll pick it up quite quickly. Same with Method. Obviously, both of these teams have players that have played a lot together before. Even if you say Mene and scHwimpi haven’t played together, they both have played with the rest of the Fnatic line-up, except for LastHope, maybe he’s the only question mark for that roster. Method’s team have played together in the past, so they’ll be able to slide into the way they used to play pretty quickly. Even things like Liquid are interesting because they got some role shifts, I still think they’ll be able to pick it up quite fast.

Everybody is already putting a lot of time in the scrims and it’s not like any team is slacking. We need to assume every team will put in their best effort pretty quickly and not underestimate anybody based on the amount of time they’ve had.

What can you and the team work on now to make sure you bounce back even stronger for BlizzCon?

Snitch: I think that, at least for this event, it was pretty clear we were as good as Gen.G. You can definitely make the case where we could be argued as the best in the world, but obviously we didn’t win this time. The games in the Finals could’ve gone either way. So I think it will be us just maintaining our level and perhaps trying to innovate even more with the meta shifts and putting a lot of time in keeping up with the meta. Obviously, it will be very difficult by the time that BlizzCon rolls around.

There will be a lot of patches and probably two or three heroes added by then. So, I think it should mostly be about us maintaining our work ethic and maintaining our motivation, working hard to make sure we’re still on the top all the time. Try to put in more and find new ways to improve our game even in little things, and make sure we stay ahead of the other teams.

Right, I’ll let you get back to your practice - Do you have any shoutouts?

Snitch: Huge shoutout to Team Dignitas and our sponsors (Buffalo Wild Wings, HyperX, Mountain Dew, WD), and all of our staff that helped us at the event - Bakery, MepH, everybody was really great. It was very nice to have a supportive backline behind us. Huge shoutout to all of our fans at the event, especially our favourite “Dignitas Guy No. 1” and his crew, they were cheering for us every game. Feels really nice to have live support at the event! It was really nice to have my girlfriend there as well, so I have to give her a special shoutout. We’ll continue to work hard throughout the rest of the year, so I hope you keep cheering for us and thank you very much for reading this interview! Oh, oh, oh, and shoutout to the DIGscord! Wowee!