Miracle joins fnatic and LevenT goes inactive - the news from yesterday. fragster talked with KuroKy, who wants to build up a new team with Puppey and JoliE. The focus of the interview is on the tactical aspect of DotA and the aggressive play of Razer, former Kingsurf.int.

fragster: How would you describe the playstyle of Razer in detail?
KuroKy: Our playstyle is simple: ganking and pushing, so we always keep the pace in our games.

What do you need to play such a strategy? The lineup, good teamplay, ...?
KuroKy: To realize a ganking focused strategy you need a close to perfect teamplay and a superb individual skill as well. A flawless play is the core, and more than one or two minor mistakes during the laning phase can cost you the game. A fitting lineup is important as well.

How did you see the time before and after DL Masters? Why nobody could beat you?
KuroKy: There are quite a couple of reasons. The biggest part was the version 6.57 in my opinion. This version was fitting us very well, but since v6.59 and later releases it changed. Games were played more and more defensively, and heroes like Undying were still mentioned to be imba after four months. Pushing and farming kind of games have developed a lot, but ganking got some kind of abandoned. So it's close to impossible to play an aggressive game these days.

What did exactly change since .59, so that the ganking style didn't work out anymore?

KuroKy: Like I said: the farming and pushing part grew strong with the latest releases. It’s still easier to farm with heroes like Morphling, Kunkka, Undying or Necrolyte, because in the long run there's no way to keep them away from showing their potential if played well. Necrolyte for example just needs to run into a creepwave, hit "d" and gets 4-10 creep kills. And all this within like ten seconds. The whole game is fixed to core heroes like those today, and if you try to gank them the opponent just uses two or three portals to save the carry. This in combination with the Necrolyte’s heal, Morphlings abuse of his morphing skill and waves out of the action, or a Kunkka tanking all the damage with his ultimate is simply too much.

But there were no changed on Morphling, Kunkka and Necrolyte for a long time?

KuroKy: The game evolves with the heroes used. Items like Mantastyle and Phase boots benefitted this a lot, and beside these changes the general style of play simply changes. Finding out the real strengths of heroes within the period of one version takes some time, and sometimes it takes a couple of months until heroes get played on their edge. And Necrolyte got a buff on his aura in v6.59, Morphling got the mana needed his ultimate reduced and a much stronger adaptive strike now. The morph skills got enhanced also.

The implementation of Pipe made the turtling a lot easier, didn't it?

KuroKy: It's not only about the turtle-style, it's the defensive play in general. You can farm two pipes and run around as a stack after this. But items like Hood are part of the games since more than twelve patches and still imbalanced: 2000 gold for a close-to-immunity to all nukes.

Which strategy grants the most success at the moment?

KuroKy: Simply the push and farm kind of strategy. Putting pressure on your opponent all the time by pushing, having heroes who can tank very much in the lategame.

Let's take the game against MCiTY as an example: Picking Clock, batrider, Nerub, Lina and Veno you played an aggressive gank-lineup, while MCiTY picked many carries: Undying, Rhasta, Sylla, Visage and Ench. What went wrong?
KuroKy: We had a strong early game, but like I told you before: one or two mistakes and you can forfeit the whole thing. We engaged in the wrong fights and lost control of the match flow. At a certain point Syllabear and Visage were farmed well enough to overcome our defense in short time. It was impossible to push into their base since their heroes just tanked too much. But we made minor mistakes after the early game was done as well, and this made us lose the game in the end.

Why didn't you just change your strategy to push and farm tactics?

KuroKy: Because it's boring. We don't earn serious money with DotA, so we still play for fun. Within the last weeks we were not able to win with our ganking focused strategy, but if you win this way it feels great! Aside from this we would disappoint our fans if we start playing this lame game. We still believe that we can win our way, and if we won't believe in this we would not play like we do now.

Could you connect certain strategies to certain top-teams? Which team got the most "annoying" playstyle?

KuroKy: What's "annoying" ? Teams develop their game with the versions because they want to win, and so they all play annoying nowadays. The strategies of teams don't differ more than nuances because the strategic part of DotA is practically dead in my opinion. You pick the most imbalanced heroes and that's it right now.

What needs to be changed on the game to make it faster and more aggressive?

KuroKy:
- Bottle as in .48b (200 hp + 100 mana on one charge) + add it to the side shop on the lanes
- Dagger exactly like in .48b for faster gameplay
- less money gained from creep kills, more money gained from hero kills
- hood nerf (raise the price to 1.000 for recipe)
- remove pipe
- nerf heart of tarasque to the one from older versions (11 regen / sec instead of 1%)
- make rune spawns visible for all players
- raise mantastyle costs (by 1.000 or 1.500)

As far as I know IceFrog already got those requests. Why won't they be implemented probably?

KuroKy: Why? I also want to know why, why, why … I got some questions for IceFrog, too!

Since when did you find out that you can't move on like this?
KuroKy: We found it out one or two months earlier. We tried to go on with our lineup, but without success. I had a feeling that Levent lost the motivation and energy to play on. But Miracle made his decision to leave the team after gamescom. Both of them grew up with Kingsurf.int and we had a great time together, but sometimes what you need is a fresh breeze.

Is it true that LevenT was not online since gamescom?

KuroKy: He was available via MSN but not online in IRC, so he didn’t contact us.

You and him didn't have contact either?

KuroKy: I had a chat with him before he went home after gamescom, so there was no need for another talk. He want’s to focus on real life as far as i know.

LevenT said in an interview to fragster that Miracle would never play with Loda in the same team. Why did that change now?

KuroKy: According to what I know Loda and Miracle are friends, I don't know anthing else, and this was also the reason for his decision to head over to fnatic. Loda was trying to take Miracle from us since his time in SK Gaming, and now he succeeded! (laughs)

You need two new players. Anyone in sight?

KuroKy: We already found substitutes, and they will be announced soon.

Will you change your strategy and way of playing?

KuroKy: For sure not!