LGD.Yao: “Every decision we’ve made is to prepare for The International”

As one of China’s biggest Dota 2 teams, LGD is a team that was hit rather hard by the great Chinese reshuffles after The International 2013 (TI3). Falling from being the second-strongest Chinese team during The International 2012 (TI2), LGD has been struggling to regain its dominant form.

I got a chance to interview LGD’s captain Yao ‘Yao’ Zhengzheng about the current state of the team, their plans for The International 2014, and his thoughts on aspiring pro players.

LGD’s roster changes

After The International 2013 (TI3), the Chinese scene had been shaken by two major reshuffles and LGD was hit both times. Liu ‘Sylar’ Jiajun left their team shortly after TI3 and was replaced by Wang ‘xiaotuji’ Zhang, who also goes by the game handle ‘Rabbit’. After Chinese New Year, LGD’s former captain Zhang ‘xiao8’ Ning left to join Team Newbee.

(See: Team Newbee: the Chinese Dota 2 dream team is here)

Xiao8’s departure brought bigger changes to LGD. First, they signed Yao ‘Maybe’ Lu to play solo mid and assigned Yao ‘Yao’ Zhengzheng as captain. However, this roster lasted only for a month and LGD replaced Maybe with Peng ‘Icy’ Wang. Yao was moved to the solo mid role and Icy played offlane. What caused the replacement? According to Yao, it wasn’t a matter of potential, but was more of player experience and team synchronization.

Maybe is a competitor with a lot of potential, and his skills [mechanics] are excellent, but in recent matches and training, he wasn’t able to harmonize with the rest of the team very well. Also, for a new player, the intensity of this [pro eSports] environment might be a bit much, and the pressure was stifling him, which is not good for his development. So after comprehensive consideration we decided to move Maybe into training and development. But he is still the future of LGD. Icy is a veteran, but he’s still pushing hard to get better; that’s the reason we brought him onboard.

Although the two of them play different roles, this recent change will most likely affect LGD’s play style as well. According to Yao, Maybe played a more passive style of laning and farming while Icy is more of an aggressive ganker. “[With Icy,] our team will be more aggressive,” he said.

Whether or not the roster change was for the better will only be evident after the team has played more official matches. In this light, Yao noted that the new LGD roster will be entering a breaking-in period and he mentioned that bad performances will come up from time-to-time. “The breaking-in period after changing a member will always be a low point,” Yao told me, “so there must be mutual trust among the team and everyone needs to work hard to collectively build a positive and hardworking team atmosphere.”

To accomplish this, aside from training every day, LGD also goes out together to eat and watch movies. Their coach Zou ‘820’ Yitian also helps not only in training, but also in building team spirit. On the other hand, Yao’s job as a captain is to unify the team and discuss strategies with them.