Interview with RAMZES of 9 Pandas after facing PSG.LGD in Berlin Major

Though the 9 Pandas Dota 2 roster no longer represents HellRaisers following their departure from the latter org in early April, they are still raising plenty of hell so far as their participation in the ESL One Berlin Major is concerned.

In the third day of the group stage, the Eastern European squad, which at the top of their domestic league in order to qualify for the LAN event, took down PSG.LGD 2-0 to continue their run on a good note.

By taking down PSG.LGD, 9P occupy second place in Group A and are currently in a position to advance to the upper bracket of the main event phase. In a group as tight as the one 9P are in, where six teams are separated by at least one game, the team must continue their impressive form if they want to advance out of the first phase unscathed.

Following 9 Pandas’ series against PSG.LGD, their carry Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev talked to Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner for a post-match interview about how they took down their Chinese counterparts and his thoughts on Patch 7.33.

The interview was edited for brevity.

What a pleasure to watch you play especially on Alchemist. Do you [still] feel good about still playing that hero? I remember watching you play that hero five years ago and you kicked ass.

Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev: I think Alchemist is one of the best heroes. You can flex him on three current roles. He can play separate as well so that’s why we picked him. We’re not really good in this meta. We’re trying some things but it works.

On that note, can we talk about the build there? Radiance and Butterfly. It’s kind of risky stuff, right? Can you walk us through the thought process there?

RAMZES: I think you have two or three builds after Radiance. With BKB, you just buy Blink. Sometimes, you buy Butterfly against Terrorblade, maybe Phantom Assassin, Templar Assassin, or Ursa as well. That’s why I got this build.

Can we talk a bit about the Tinker [in Game 2]? A lot of people thought that hero was dead now but the terror of Tinker has returned. What influenced that pick?

RAMZES: I think we feel good when we play with Tinker. We’re not on a timer. We can definitely base [for] one hour or two hours and we have one of the best Tinkers.

I hope I never see a two-hour Tinker defense. It brings me back.

RAMZES: The games are long for now because [there’s] a lot of farm in the map. The game finishes after three or four Roshans and then you can farm, farm, and farm. That’s why Tinker.

Were you guys expecting to 2-0 that one [against PSG.LGD]? They’re a pretty good team and especially after Game 1 it was looking especially crazy.

RAMZES: Game 1 was really hard actually because they had the Medusa. We don’t really know about all the heroes because, after the [new] patch, you need to play everything and yesterday was my first game with Medusa and I didn’t know about the skill and item build. Now, in our first game against Medusa, she’s really uncontestable. We can’t do anything. We just farm but we feel we’re fine. We need to kill the four [other] heroes and maybe Medusa will die if she hits us five heroes.