TL Boxi: “Everything is just chaotic a little bit. Even if you play against noobs, you are a noob as well.”

A brand new Dota 2 Major for has kicked off as the city of Berlin plays host to the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit’s second major international event of the year. In the opening day of Group A, Europe’s Team Liquid played China’s Team Aster, which brought in Syed Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan as a stand-in following the benching of Zhai” xwy” Jingkai prior to the Major, to a 1-1 tie.

The result leaves both teams in the middle of the standings for Group A, which also consists of formidable squads like BetBoom Team, Evil Geniuses, Gaimin Gladiators (defending DPC Major champions), 9 Pandas (formerly HellRaisers), PSG.LGD, Execration, and Team SoloMid. With all these teams in order, this Major looks to be another challenge for TL as they strive to repeat their showing in the Lima Major, where they finished as runners-up.

Team Liquid’s Position 4 player Samuel “Boxi” Svahn talked to Jake “SirActionSlacks” Tanner for a post-match interview following the series against Aster in the first day of the Berlin Major.

What an incredible series [against Aster] here. We’ve been seeing a lot of 1-1’s here. Do you have any explanation for that? Is it just because of people feeling the patch or is that how close things are in Dota 2 right now?

Boxi: Everything is just chaotic a little bit. Even if you play against noobs, you are a noob as well so everyone just doesn’t know what’s going on.

Sounds like you’re the rest of us. It’s noobs versus noobs. How does that feel to no longer be on your pedestal as pro players?

Boxi: Well, I mean, we’re still pro players.

Well, fine. Granted. Let’s talk about your journey here. More importantly, I want to know what you think about the other teams. Is there anyone here that you’re really gunning for? We all know that you guys are against Gaimin Gladiators all the time but I’m interested more on the international scale now that you’re back in the Major.

Boxi: We already played against one Chinese team who brought in the king Sumail so that’s why we lost a game to them. Other than that, I think [it’ll have to be] LGD. Maybe they have some cool ideas. The South American teams are those that we played a lot against in DreamLeague so they’re not that mysterious. I guess Southeast Asian teams too [since] we haven’t played them yet. They weren’t in the DreamLeague tournament—maybe they were, maybe they lost. I didn’t play against them.

You’re stepping on cockroaches. You don’t even need to know their names, huh?

Boxi: I mean, I don’t know if they were in the tournament. I only know the teams that we were playing against. No one in particular.

I consider you as one of the best supports in the world right now. What do you think about the new patch from a support angle? What are your thoughts on the Wisdom Rune and all that crazy stuff? It seems Icefrog is trying to make supporting nice, so is this patch a nice one for supports?

Boxi: I think yes and no. If you’re winning, it’s really nice as a support. You get a lot of gold and you get to steal the enemy’s Wisdom Runes. If you’re losing, then it’s really s**t because, if you don’t get experience and you’re not getting kills, then you just end up really far behind and there’s no hope inside and it’s just sad. You kill the Tormentors and then you don’t get the shards, and then in the next shard, your Pos. 3 gets it even though he has 10k more gold than you. For some reason, you’re not allowed to choose. It’s like a lot of high’s and a lot of low’s. There’s too many things to do and it gets a little bit overwhelming, I guess.

Image Credit: Team Liquid