Prior to their fourth-place finish in the M5 World Championship, EECA representatives playing in the M-World series only qualified once for the knockout stage and ended up winless in their first two appearances.
What made EECA’s M5 campaign successful, relative to their past appearances, was a change in mindset and approach to the game with the entry of polarizing figures in the team, such as the experienced laner Mathaios “Kid Bomba” Chatzilakos.
“Kid was one of those pushes to improve our game significantly in a short period,” said Stanislav “SAWO” Reshnyak, who was the main roamer of the EECA team that competed during the M1, M2, and M3 World Championships.
DeVu showed massive improvement in the tournament, successfully avenging their 2-1 group stage loss to Geek Fam with a 3-2 reverse sweep in the knockout stage.
“This time, I think players are taking it more seriously. Back in M1 and M2, it was like a bunch of players just playing. They’ve come to realize that you can’t win like that. You have to work harder and be more dedicated,” explained SAWO in an exclusive interview with Tiebreaker Times.
“This time we’re more like a family than a team. And I think that’s the main reason for more successful results compared to previous M-series.”
SAWO became the epitome of EECA’s improvement as he received online traction, courtesy of his impressive performance with the Diggie pick, drawing comparisons with Blacklist International’s Jonmar “OhMyV33NUS” Villaluna, who popularized the pick.
“I think we have absolutely different styles of playing Diggie. OhMyV33nus is more of a support. She has a really close playstyle with Renejay. Personally, I prefer to play crowd control heroes. And because of that, I know how to play against crowd control heroes while playing Diggie,” he said on why he was very effective with the pick.
But SAWO refuses to dwell on the spotlight and focuses only on one thing: to win it all, which they fell short of this time.
“I’m only interested in victories. I don’t care about popularity or making a name at home. For me, it’s all about winning.”
Deus Vult will surely be one of the highly anticipated teams in international tournaments next year after their stellar campaign in the M5 World Championship.
