Team Liquid's Triumph at PGL Wallachia: Saberlight's Career-Defining Performance Secures Championship Win

With the mightiest of bing bongs, Saberlight lit up the bracket at PGL Wallachia, where Team Liquid’s Dota team raised a championship trophy for the first time with their new roster. And the MVP of that first win? Saberlight.

It was a big moment for Saberlight not only because it was the best showing he had on Liquid, but it may have been the best showing he had in his career. Wallachia represented the first big LAN win that the ever-charismatic offlaner has scored in his career thus far. It was a moment that silenced many of the doubters concerned that he could not fill shoes as big as 33’s and delighted many of the fans that believed he could play as well as he could entertain. 

Monster caught up with Saberlight when he first joined the team a few months ago and now we got the chance to talk to him about his big win, his amazing Aegis steal in the playoffs, playing through a patch that dropped mid-set, and the new immortal draft changes that sent shockwaves throughout the Dota scene. 

Welcome. When we talked last time, you had just joined the team. First of all, congrats on the first tier one major win! How does it feel?

It feels really good. I've been playing Dota for some time now, so it feels really nice to finally win one. 

One of the unique things about this tournament is that Nisha and Jabbz are drafting for you guys. I know that Nisha was feeling more burnt out after the last tournament. Do you think drafting has helped invigorate him? What has your experience been with him in the captain seat?

Nisha drafting has been amazing. I think he's a very talented Dota player, so when he's drafting he's very smart about the game and makes very good choices. At the moment, we are just rotating the person who takes the job of drafting. After this tournament Nisha said he was retiring from drafting so we might not see it for a while. I might do it again at some point, but for Fissure Universe, Boxi was drafting. We don't even know who will draft for us at ESL One Raleigh. I might draft the tournament after, so we’ll see how that goes.

Have you ever drafted before? Is that like a weird position to be in? Is it difficult? 

I have never drafted before, but we have Blitz and Jabbz, who are both really good at figuring out what the other teams do. So I think with their guidance and help it won't be a challenge. I think it will be very doable.

In our last interview, you talked about how it's hard to gel with a team that's been playing together for so long. Even though you said the Team Liquid guys were very welcoming, you guys still struggled in ESL One Bangkok, losing out to Parivision in the finals. What changed from Bangkok till now that has led you guys to win Wallachia? 

The patch definitely had a lot to do with it and the meta just clicked for us. We all had really strong heroes that we felt very comfortable playing. It all clicked after Bangkok because I know our teamplay is usually good. We just needed other things to come together. For example, Sometimes Boxi and I are not on the same page in lane. However, When we get to practice a lot and are constantly talking about Dota, we do well. There are other factors too, like the patch. Obviously the game feels easy if I am able to play a hero I'm comfortable with. I can focus less on the micro and more on the teamplay.

Speaking of patches, 7.38c drops right in the middle of the tournament! it's a fairly big patch. There's hero changes, map changes, and I know a lot of people were tweeting about the patch dropping so abruptly. What was it like to have a patch drop in the middle of your series? 

Yeah, it was wild. I’ve definitely never had a patch drop during a series. So we're playing in the game, we absolutely smashed them in game one. It was not even close. I felt like we had a really good grasp on the patch and then the new one dropped. Suddenly all the overpowered heroes are nerfed and the next game becomes a coin toss. Whichever team comes up with better conclusions come out on top for the series. Someone was getting pictures of the new map and camps, I was trying to figure everything out. 

There was a moment in the game after the patch where Boxi is harassing the enemy heroes and suddenly gets hit by the tower because it was moved forward. It was definitely a challenge. 

So a few months ago, you tweeted, “once I learn how to lane, it's over for these jabronis”, it seems like you learned how to lane! You got the big win. What do you feel changed about you and Boxi’s laning phase from then to now?

Boxi is a good player that is always pushing the limits of his hero. As his lane partner, I have to be very “crisp” in my gameplay. There's a very small margin for error when we lane together. So I would say our lanes can be volatile. When we both are on the same page, we are incredibly strong, but if we are even a little bit off, we can look like we are feeding. Maybe Boxi is playing too aggressive, or I am on a hero I'm uncomfortable with. If we don’t figure out the small things, it tends to snowball badly. To be fair, I also enjoy playing on the limits of my hero, so when we are both on point, our laning styles actually match well and amplify off of each other.

Let’s go to a specific play that you did in Wallachia — The Night Stalker aegis steal. Could you take me through the play-by-play of what happened there? The pause right before makes it even funnier

It actually all felt like a blur to me. The first thing I remember was the moment before the pause. We just lost a fight and I thought I'll just use my Ultimate for vision. Two seconds later, the pause comes through. With the pause, I feel like in their minds they know I'm going for the Aegis steal. There is no reason for me to use my Ultimate. Somehow, they didn't realize and they were preoccupied with something else. I think their keyboard wasn't working or something. We unpause and BOOM I steal the Aegis. It was really important for the game too, to buy those 5 minutes for my team. 

There's been eight tier one tournaments since the last International, and out of the eight tournaments, there have been six different winners: Falcons, Bet Boom, Parivision, Tundra Esports spirit, and now Team Liquid. Do you think this parity has to do with the access to large amounts of information from sites like Dota ProTracker that teams have had in the last five years?

I agree that Pro Tracker plays a role in how ideas get replicated and copied very fast. At the same time, if you are the person who created a pocket pick - for example, Ammar and 33 with Bristleback, they are still always going to be a few ahead of the rest of the pack. I know I'm definitely playing catch up to them when I have to play it. 

Dota is definitely extremely competitive right now. There are so many good teams, all of the teams are really skilled and it's really hard to establish dominance because of how many events there are in a year. I think it's impossible to win all the events. If you win one, you will probably be burnt out and less motivated for the next one, whereas the people that lost are more motivated and it becomes a cycle of each team beating another. 

A lot of players are literally stepping back because they can't handle the burnout. How is Team Liquid dealing with it right now and do you guys foresee it being a problem in the future?

For the teams that are the most successful, we don't have to play qualifiers. While the other teams are playing the qualifiers we have a week or two for a quick break. That time is very helpful. When I was in Shopify, we had to play all of the qualifiers and the event. Back then, there was no one to compete with in North America, we would always win the qualifier then move onto the main event in a different location. I think that schedule was too much. 

This year has been easier, despite there being so many tournaments. It helps that the team environment is so chill. For example, when we lost Fissure Universe there weren’t any hard feelings. No one harbors bad vibes because we lost. When teams do that it can be extremely draining. Playing every tournament and every time you lose, you're changing everything about what we're doing and starting from the ground up. 

Earlier, we got to talk about the new API changes that Valve introduced that affected Dota Pro Tracker. I now want to hear your thoughts on the new immortal draft format, where normal players do not get to watch games over the 8000 MMR mark. What are your thoughts on the change?

I don't like it. I feel like even if you make the best argument for it—which is that teams won't copy each other's ideas and will foster creativity, I don't know why ordinary Dota players have to pay the price. Even if players hide strategies, teams will eventually play officials and scrims. The ideas will still spread through the players no matter what. I think the cost of hiding strats is just way too high. 

I don't think this is good for the ecosystem whatsoever. The only people that will really benefit from this change are maybe streamers or YouTubers. As a high MMR player, I'm now incentivized to upload my replays because that's the only way for people to to see my games. However, I don't have time to stream, so I can't do that anyways. It feels pretty sad to lose the Watch tab.