OMEGA League interview: Сlement "Puppey" Ivanov

August 22, 2020 (after winning over Vikin.gg with the 2:0 score)

Rich: "How are you feeling after that victory?"

Puppey: "I feel alright."

Rich: "It's a great answer."

Puppey: "I know."

Rich: "You're pretty good at answering questions."

Slacks: "I got a real question for you. Are you guys getting bored of losing by now? Does it annoy you in any way? You're a guy who loves a challenge, and you like to be the king, but you also like to fight for it. It just seems that you guys are so dominant. It must be sad. How do you feel about that?"

Puppey: "I just don't like losing, man. I think that's our biggest problem - we really hate losing. I'm not saying that we're trying our best a lot of the time or something like that. But once we start losing, we really, really, really get our things together, at least. There has to be losing time, and it's going to come sooner or later."

LizZard: "What can you tell us - how do you feel about the meta right now? Do you think that OmniKnight fits it, or is it something that really worked for this current game only?"

Puppey: "Only some teams are ballsy enough to pick a hero like Omniknight. I think OG would be one of them because they've always used Omniknight as a counter-pick to the heroes like Void and Magnus. I took an idea from that page and just tried to make it work, and it's not that big of a deal if I lose this game in order to see that it doesn't work against Magnus. I guess it did work against him, but I'm not really sure if it was the Omniknight really doing everything for it. I just need these things figured out, and these are the perfect times to do so."

Slacks: "I have one final question. What happens when YapzOr buys Monkey King Bar on every single hero? Is there any discussion? Do you yell at him not to, or is this just his deal now?"

Puppey: "I think that's his deal now. That doesn't work - yelling at him. He's going to buy it anyway. He's been on this team for like ten years. He knows that he can buy MKB's now. He's happy. He can do whatever he wants."

Rich: "I want to ask just one more thing before we do let you go. When does that fulcrum shift, when do you get the moment where you're like, "we can't afford to play around anymore"? Is it when you're out of groups? How do you actually make that decision with "I can experiment," and it's your "do or die" time?"

Puppey: "I think it comes pretty naturally for the whole team. Overall, I'm not necessarily experimenting. I'm using ideas that I think should work. If they don't end up working, then it's the issue. Because it's not necessarily an experiment if I believe that Omniknight does actually work these things, and you know OG has used it in the past in the TI that we just played. So it's not necessarily an experiment - a lot of these times they're just ideas that should have worked back in the time that I wanted to use them, and didn't have the chance to use them, not get to use them and all those things. Plus, Omniknight did get buffs, by the way. This hero is not that trashy as people say."

Rich: "It's a hypothesis. I guess you would say."

Puppey: "Come on, it's got some buffs, right?"

Slacks: "Yeah, he's got a few buffs. I'm not great. I don't know how good he is."

Puppey: "You're not playing? Why are you not playing?"

Slacks: "Omniknight? He's really hard. I stick to Techies, my boy. Where is your support Puch, huh? When am I seeing that?"

Puppey: "Meta changed, man. I changed the meta, Slacks."

Slacks: "Nah, excuses. You're the best player in the world - you can make it work. I'd better see that before the end, Puppey."

Puppey: "Yeah, maybe."

Rich: "Puppey talks about meta changing. I want to say, Puppey, thank you very much for jumping on this call. Thank you very much for the interview. We wish you a bunch of luck in the future."

Puppey: "Thank you, bye-bye."

Rich: "I always love getting to talk to Puppey."