Interview with Mag for Gameinside.ua.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

Let’s put it in this way. After the break, we found out that we had some issues. In communication, in team ideas, and in the way we cooperate together. That’s what we are trying to fix now. When we decided to play with Immersion and young G in the middle of June, we played a lot of srims and we did great. We felt the meta and everything was smooth and well. We just had to work things out that way.

For now, we lost a bit of that feeling. But I do think that we have enough time to improve and find ourselves on the good side of Omega League.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

True, he hasn’t been captain before. But I don’t think that this is a problem. When we played with  Zayac_, he also had minimum experience in coordinating and leading people. The most important thing is to have the will and desire to lead. You don’t have to be afraid of responsibility. Not every player can do that. Immersion is someone with a lot of initiative. Starting from his very first days with the team he had a lot of suggestions and did a lot of the stuff related to our preparation. So, when we asked him if he would also consider starting to draft, he immediately agreed. In addition, we were lacking the guy who would take responsibility in the midgame.

This is a thorny path, because a lot of failures will await you. But at the same time, that’s how you learn things. As the captain, you have to realize that sometimes you can lose because of a wrong call, or a bad draft.

I was the one who was drafting for a long time, but we decided that this was the wrong way. For now, Immersion is drafting and I am just advising him. He tries to pick strong meta-heroes and execute a game plan with them. That’s what we were looking for. When we were looking for the “fourth” position player we were also searching for the captain. Yes, usually the captain role belongs to the five position players, but I consider this as a stereotype.

It’s very important to have someone inside the team who also understands the idea behind the draft and who is able to give a proper explanation to the team during the game, like what’s our goal in the laning stage and what’s the game plan for the midgame or the late stage.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

He’s somewhere in the middle. What I really like Immersion for is that he has his own vision on the game and that he can stand his ground. I think that those qualities are very important for a captain. Irreplaceable.

Generally speaking, we asked Immersion to be a captain simply because he has all the inclinations for such a role. He played for a long time with Misha and although he didn’t do all the captain stuff, he was always interested in it. He is a very serious and hard-working young guy, who is also trying hard as a player. Because of that, he has a huge hero pool. But at the same time, in some moments related to the captain’s duties, he will also devote a lot of time to watching replays, thinking about drafts. In this regard, he is very hardworking. This is a person who lives and breaths Dota 2 24/7.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

I was surprised a bit. I mean that after 7.27 was released, I read it a couple of times, then I played some pubs and I realized that the patch wasn’t as global as the previous one. Usually, Valve changes the game way more by adding shrines, outposts, etc. But this time there weren’t many innovations.

However, Dota has still changed, we got a new meta, new heroes made their way in the pool, but I don’t think that the game changed as much as we used to. We played right after the patch came out with some of the new meta heroes, but after a while, we noticed that something was wrong. We figured out that plenty of the old heroes are still working well.

We do know which heroes are good for us and we are trying hard to play with them during scrims. But I have to admit that we are still not completely confident in the new patch. I played a lot, mostly to try something new for 9pasha. I like how Valve refreshed the hero pool for offlane and now we have way more heroes which were forgotten in previous patches. Darkseer, Magnus, Brewmaster to name just a few. Pubs are way more interesting to play.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

One of the reasons why I became a coach is because people were skeptical about me as a player, precisely because of my age. That made it much more difficult for me to find a team. I think that all depends on the person, but a player can perform at the top level, in one of the best teams in the world even after 30. Just look at Puppey. I am sure he will continue to play for a long time and not once he amazed us with his drafts and high level of play.

Another reason for which I switched to coaching is Ceb. He inspired me to do that. I decided that I was stagnant. As a player, I felt for a while that I wasn’t making any kind of progress and I  realized that I just need to move forward. I felt that my experience could be put into something different and that I can establish myself as a coach. At that time, I wanted to work with SoNNeiKo, because I had played with him before, so I knew that we would be on the same page. This is how I joined NAVI.

Now I understand that I want to develop myself in this direction. I want to take the team to a new level. I believe that we have not reached the level that we deserve, but I will not rest until we succeed. I have to admit that coaching has its own buzz. I tried to do a lot for the team. I’ve been drafting from time to time. This has, in any case, a huge impact on the game, on the result. In addition, there are many more duties that the coach performs. I like it. This is something interesting, something new. I found out that when I watched the game from the sidelines, I started to understand the game better.

Of course, I had to develop some qualities. In the beginning, I had no clear understanding of what would be the right thing to do from the coach position. Sometimes you need to talk face to face with a player. Sometimes, when you see some kind of decline in performance you have to talk to almost everyone. You need to choose the right words after a defeat or before the game. I haven’t even tried this before. As an example, in football, it’s absolutely normal for coaches to give a  motivational speech before the game. As a player, I never even thought about that. And only when I became a coach, I realized that there are other things that need to be done. Like Ceb, who is both a player and a coach. If you look at the True Sight, you see how Ceb is inspiring, motivating his players. For the most part, he performs a lot of functions that a coach should perform, in my understanding.

Plus, we’ve had a psychologist for over a year. His name is Andrey, and I was pleased that we found such a person, who, to some extent, “pumps” me, teaches me how to be a good coach.

Andrii «Mag» Chipenko

Many people may be unhappy with some of the roster changes we made. But I want to say that these changes were balanced, they were made in order to get us to another level in the future. Our goal is the next TI and with the new players, we will be able to reach Tier 1 level. Please be patient. We will try very hard because we want to meet the expectations of the fans and the organization.