Neutral Creeps - Dota 2 News From Around The World

Can you introduce yourself to our readers?

I'm Ant, member of team Zenith, Singaporean DotA clan. 18 in a few weeks, been playing DotA for about 4 years.

Can you tell me your lineup and each players role in the team?

I'm currently co-leading Zenith. We don't really have a set lineup. As for players, LuX is our battle commander, he usually plays an AoE hero to initiate big battles and makes very good calls. Occasionally he can play carry too, but usually his abilities in engagements are too valuable for him to play those heroes. Tofuboi is almost always our carry hero, or any other hero that is very effective late game with lots of items. IceIceIce plays everything we need him to, except he stays away from key engagement heroes like the type that LuX is really good at. Myself, I play mostly what the team needs too, but can't do as much as ice. I usually play late gamers too, but when there are too many late gamers either me or tofu will switch to support. He basically fulfills whatever the team needs, support, carry, backstabber, etc. he has a knack for making holes in the opponent's base without anyone realising until it's too late. Xmusica came into the team with the purpose of helping LuX, also playing the key AoE engagement heroes like LuX does, but over time we realised he too is proficient to play late gamers. So he's very versatile too. GPS is quite versatile too but he mostly helps with early game heroes and support.

Can you tell us more about the DotA Singapore scene? I heard there are big LAN events there sponsored by Intel.

We have a lot of LAN events, held over the course of 1 to 2 days where the entire tournament is completed. I think there's about on average one tournament every forth night. Prize pools can range from 1.5k SGD for some smaller ones run by community centres or other LAN-shops, to 10k SGD with some bigger sponsors like Intel etc. (around 900 to 6000 USD). we even have inter-school DotA coming up which we are very excited about! So since everything is run over a short period with rather large prize pools, we're used to working little to get a lot and spoiled by lagless LAN too. I think having an inter-school DotA LAN competition is something worth being proud of.

What do you think about the rules in the MYM tour? Are you more happy that it's -ap draft that your more used to?

Well the part we're most happy about is that it's only one game per match, which saves a lot of time. We're actually fine doing sent/scourge but it does get tiring playing so many games. MYM plays a completely different AP draft too. No Backdoor, sharing control, and drafting 2 heroes at a time instead of 1. It'll take almost as much getting used to as playing sent/scourge. Actually after playing IHCS I think my teammates prefer the share control thing anyway. But we'll rely on this tournament to see how differently the game is played with a different set of rules. We're happy enough to play against foreign teams anyway. Yeah the main problem we had with sent/scourge was the time sink, and now it's gone, so we're happier.

OK finishing up, have you got any shoutouts to any friends and sponsors?

Shoutout to our sponsors Compaq and AMD for all the support and helping us go this far. And as a final message, Musica is still a feeder!!! oh and ofc thanks to poddy for getting us into the wonderful world of IHCS. You can find more info about Zenith with our own blogs at from-a-to-z-.blogspot.com or u can check the dota scene out in Singapore at www.dotasg.com