"Made it much harder for ourselves": NaVi's midlaner after reaching the BLAST SLAM VI semifinals
The midlaner of Natus Vincere, Artem Niku Bachkur, gave an interview to analyst and commentator Andrey Ghostik Kadyk after the team’s sensational first-place finish in the group stage at BLAST SLAM VI, where he подробно analyzed draft mistakes, issues in lost matches, and key moments of prolonged games.
According to him, risky decisions during the draft stage and insufficient adaptation to opponents nearly cost NAVI a playoff spot, but ultimately became an important lesson for the entire team.
We honestly picked complete nonsense against Team Yandex and Heroic. We had comfortable heroes like Clinkz or Windranger, we could have taken Enigma or Venomancer against Ursa, but instead we decided to experiment and made our laning phase much harder for ourselves.
Continuing the discussion on the meta and uncomfortable heroes, Niku also focused on how the team adapts to very long games and what conclusions they drew from the 85 minute loss against Team Liquid.
Such games don’t happen often, but if you don’t break them down frame by frame, you’re just throwing that experience away. In that match, we made too many wrong decisions after the 40 minute mark. We knew about their smokes, we could take fights on our terms, but a couple of times we chose to farm instead of fighting, and that punished us.
It is worth noting that Natus Vincere finished first in the group stage, which allowed the team to advance directly to the playoff semifinals. The squad reached this tournament through qualifiers, where they defeated PARIVISION in the final round, denying them a spot at the championship.
- TarasgotthejuiceLynnykov
- ArtemNikuBachkur
- YuriipmaProts
- BakytZayacEmilzhanov
- StanislavRiddysMitroshkin
BLAST SLAM VI runs from 03.02.2026 to 15.02.2026. The main stage of the tournament will take place from 13.02.2026 to 15.02.2026 in Malta. Twelve teams will compete for a $1,000,000 prize pool. You can follow the tournament in detail in our coverage.
Earlier, Cyberscore reported on the most notorious “322” case in Dota history, which occurred at European Pro League 34.
by CyberScore