Kaffs interview: “We are doing something different, something that has never been done before in South America”

HEROIC have constantly put South America on the Dota 2 competitive map and are no longer entering tournaments as underdogs.

They are coming to PGL Walachia Season 6 as true contenders for the title and one of the most feared teams. At the beginning of the previous competitive season, they claimed the trophy in Bucharest, bringing the first Tier 1 tournament championship title to South America. A lot has changed since then, including their team line-up. On the eve of PGL Wallachia starting point, we’ve been able to catch up with Igor "kaffs" Estevão, HEROIC’s coach, who was up to talk to us about how the latest changes impacted his team and what the expectations are heading into a new competitive season.

Hi Kakffs, I’m happy to see HEROIC at yet another season of PGL Wallachia. This is the place where HEROIC won the first Tier 1 championship title for South America. It was at PGL Season 2, just at the beginning of the previous competitive season. We are again at the start of a new season, and you are coming here after a top 4 placement at BLAST Slam in Singapore. How do you feel about your chances of repeating the Season 2 feat here?

Honestly, I feel very good. We are confident. I think we got a little lucky with some of the matchups in Singapore, you know, to get the top four. I’d say we didn't really show up against Falcons. Perhaps if we had faced another team, like MOUZ instead of Aurora, in the quarterfinals, it might have been rougher. Of course, we could win, but it felt easy against Aurora.

At PGL Wallachia, we have no Falcons; in Singapore, we had no PARIVISION, but we have them here, and we also have more teams in this tournament than we had in Singapore, so it’s a slight change-up.

I think it's going to be a rough tournament, but I’d say we are in a good spot. I've been used to being an underdog, so it's rare to go into a tournament with this true feeling that you can actually win it. But I think we kind of have it here. So it's good. Let's just take it match by match, because I think, as much as we show that we're really good, we can also lose to any team.

We have a super-packed season, a lot of tournaments, and you've already taken quite a few trips between continents. It can’t be easy. How do you balance rest and recovery with the need to stay in top form for every tournament?

You don't. You're just losing many things. We messed up and got burned out last year trying to play everything. And then later on, we took too long of a break because we were trying to deal with the burnout. And then we weren't ready for tournaments, so it's really hard to know exactly what you have to do. But right now, honestly, we have to accept that we have this advantage that we didn’t have to play qualifiers. The qualifiers are the main thing that completely destroys us. When we have to go and play qualifiers, it's really bad, because it adds a lot to the traveling, and for us, it's always long flights. All this while all the good teams are usually resting, while we are playing qualifiers.

Currently, we are in a good spot because we performed well at TI, which allowed us to skip qualifiers at the start of the season. As a result, we are now playing only tournaments. But even so, we are playing every single one, right? Many of the top teams are taking breaks, not competing in one tournament after another. So, we'll see how it goes.

I think we'll have problems in January if we have to play qualifiers, as our end of the year break is two weeks. And no more breaks throughout the year.

If we perform well in the tournaments until the end of the year, then we can just rest in January. Hopefully, that will be the case.

I didn't get to talk to any of you after TI, so I’ll take this opportunity to say congrats on that top six. How do you and the team feel about the result at TI this year?

I think everyone was happy about what we did. But at the same time, we wanted to at least have beaten BetBoom, because we had the game and we were playing better than them. We had better ideas than they did. It was such a close series, and we could have been in the top four. I think everyone would have been 100% happy with the top 4, and then anything else that could have come would have been extra, right? Also, if we had won one more series, it would have been the best result on a TI for South America. We are tied with Thunder Awaken. They also finished 5th-6th place in 2022, so it would have been very good in many ways to secure a top-four finish this year.

Do you feel that HEROIC and the SA teams in general are gaining more respect internationally, or is there still a gap between perception and performance?

I'm not exactly sure, but people should be smart enough to see that we are no longer a fully South American team. Yuma is from Nicaragua, but he lives in Europe, and he's been playing in Europe for some time, and we also have Davai Lama. We also boo camp in Europe a lot, and we have basically changed the way South American teams play Dota.

We have our own things, of course; we have our own style, and we bring our ideas to the game. However, we strive to establish a structure and culture similar to the best teams, which have historically been Western and Eastern European teams. We are doing something different here, something that has never been done before in South America. I’d say we are completely different from every single other team in the past, and there is no other team right now in South America that matches us. And we also have the support of a European organsation, HEROIC.

They should see us that way, as a mixed team that is just getting stronger and stronger with each tournament. We still have a lot of potential, a long way to go. Many more tournaments this year. Let's see what we can get.

Whisper made a role swap after TI. How did switching to mid lane affect the team’s dynamics and your work overall as their coach?

He used to play mid a lot in his pubs. He was very used to this role. It's just around the comms and the map movement in competitive games that changes a little bit. Like, sometimes mid laners have to make some stuff happen inside the game. We knew that this could be a problem, and it's not perfect yet, of course, but it's been going really well. I think everyone's impressed with how he's been doing, and honestly, it didn't change much the way that we've been working. I would say it's even easier in some ways.

What changed the most is that we used to have two coaches and now it's only me. So I'm trying to find my way of doing things by myself, because we had the work divided, and now I'm doing everything by myself, so I need to go and find the right balance. I need to accept that I can't do everything that we did before; I'm just one person, and I just need to find what works for this group and for me.

Do you have something to say to HEROIC fans to wrap up our interview?

Every time that I get the opportunity I like to at least remind everyone that we are always watching, we see who is supporting us and we are very grateful for it. I hope we can bring more pride to South America. I'm usually more concerned about how I want to win a tournament for South America. I want to do well so I can bring more opportunities to South America. I'm a different type of nationalist. I just want to give them a chance to improve everyone's conditions so they can pursue their dreams. Winning tournaments helps with that.

No other team was getting real opportunities to go and play international tournaments, and they were getting no support towards doing it. So after we got this top 6 in TI and we started doing well right after TI, I would say we are giving a bit back to South America, and that's important to me.