ESL ONE Berlin Major: First day + Interview with Tofu
Yesterday, only six maps were played. Three matches, and three 2 - 0. Several thought that the results would be different, but if there’s one thing this patch made very clear is that anything is possible when the whole meta changes.
Yesterday's first game was Team Aster vs Team Liquid, where the last team representing the Chinese region in the competition, with the addition of SumaiL, replacing Xwy, who unfortunately did not get his visa in time, fell to Liquid, who is going through a very good moment both in the tournament and off it, despite being in the Lower Bracket.
After a rough first game, Team Aster second match was much better, reaching the 54th minute and showing an incredible performance of Monet’s Slark, who ended the game with 12 kills and 0 deaths, despite losing.
The second game was where many bettors lost their minds. Evil Geniuses, the surviving South American team, beat Talon Esports in a very dominant and decisive way, winning the second map in just 25 minutes, and giving the Asian team a ticket back home.
Finally, Liquid won again, eliminating a team from their own region, Tundra. With two very solid games and few mistakes, Liquid dominated the two maps without much issue, showing their strengths in a very convincing way.
Here’s an interview with Tofu, conducted during the first day of the event.
How did the changes influence your play style? What has changed in the last few months? Lima to Berlin?
We've been playing for a long time together now, and with the addition of Quinn, we are now feeling pretty confident with this roster. Everyone is playing to their best ability while also we are pretty close, I think closer than other teams, in terms of how we interact with each other, like what sort of friendship level we have. We eat and play together, we hang out and that plays a big role in it (playing), but also with having good ideas and the skill to compete, I guess. Coming into the new patch was... I don't want to say shattering in a way, but we had a solid foundation, and we were on top of the world, and suddenly it all changed a lot. So much so that we started doubting our abilities.
We were joking around because I play duo queue with Ace a lot, and we went from being the top off-lane duo to some random trash now.
The first two days after the patch there was a lot of experimenting and trying, seeing what heroes we thought were good, just playing and trying to get into it.
Then we had the DreamLeague final against Liquid. It was the first game we played on the patch as a team, and it was pretty chaotic. We were not following our usual game plan, the flow of the game was broken because there are random watchers, every three minutes there's Lotus, minute 7 runes, the map is bigger… So there are a lot of things that got you out of your comfort zone. The issue was that we were upset with our own performance. We needed to give ourselves some more time to learn and adjust, but we went into a series right away.
I think that now, comparing it to the beginning of the patch, we have found heroes and ways we want to play the game. We feel confident again, everyone has to adjust, and I think we are on top of it again, and I'm happy that we have already achieved the top 3, but we are not done yet.
If you could ask for more time to study the changes and adapt to the patch, would you do it?
It's a cool experience to put teams under pressure in a short amount of time to see what they can come up with, or how fast they can adjust, but I think it would be fair to everyone to give the teams some more time. Starting right away in this group stage, some good teams could have been kicked out just because they were misunderstanding some very simple things, or their heroes got nerfed. It can backfire a bit. I think that, right now, the patch and the meta is settled already, and people know what they are doing. It is fun to play again, and it is good to have some changes every once in a while, especially with map changes. It feels like something different again, it's refreshing.
What are the major differences between a major event in South America, like the Lima Major, and one here in Europe?
Personally, I enjoyed Lima a lot because I like to travel and see places, and I've never been to that side of the world. Also, I could learn a bit of Spanish, so it was cool because I could understand little bits. I also prefer sun and beach over mountains and snow, so it was a nice place for me. It all felt very "sunny", friendly, warm, welcoming, and the food was really good. I had a pleasant stay there.
I grew up here in Germany, so it is really nice for me to have the opportunity to play here. My family is coming, I have some friends coming, so it's cool for me to have them cheering for me.
I think the biggest factor might be that, being somewhere else, you can purely focus on the game, because you don't have other things to think about really, while here, there are small things like friends and family: How are they doing? Should I meet them? Are the happy here? Are they enjoying the event?
It's a bit distracting, but also really rewarding. It's just different.
Who would you choose to get in the final?
At the Lima Major, when we played Liquid, I was really upset that Boxi couldn't make it because of the medical problems.
I was looking to play Liquid the most because they were the best team at that point, and in DPC they were the only team that beat us. But ok, we won anyway, and I was happy for it, whatever… Then in DPC we played them again, and we won, but it didn't really fell the same.
Then we got another shot at DreamLeague, we played them, we beat them, and it was like: Fine, it's settled.
Now I feel like we played too much, we don't need that one again. After seeing the groups play out, it was Tundra I wanted to play the most. They seemed to have understood the patch very well, they are from our region, we already played with them before, so there's some sort of rivalry.
We were both on top of the groups, so we are both obviously doing well, but who's better? They dropped to the Lower Bracket now, so I am not sure if they are going to make their way up. It would be nice to play them, but if it is anyone else, they deserve to be there, and I am looking forward to it.