To keep you up to date will all the strong new teams out there, we will continue our series of interviews, this time with [Pl]Shorkan of the team [PI]Prime Icarus. During Cycle 3 in the Gold Division, Prime Icarus managed qualify for Diamond Division and kick out many other strong and well known teams along the way, including [xCet]Not Excellent, [KNX]REXXARS, and [Ogr]Shrek is Love. Only [Dawn]Dawn were able to defeat them and even those matches were extremely close, with 1-2 in the Winners Bracket and 2-3 in the Grand Finals. Many new challenges await this interesting team now, so let's hear what they have to say and then watch them in action in a week from now!
Shorkan: We are Prime Icarus. At the moment we're a fairly new team comprised of Slaskedyret, Znoowy, FiIe, sertas, and me. FiIe, Slaskedyret, and I were part of DONKEKONG with a few other players for the previous season 3 cycles, and for Cycle 3, we asked sertas and Znoowy to join us. With those added players we also changed the name of our team, to show that we were going for a new start.
1. Slaskedyret plays the mid role and he loves playing the hook heroes, especially Gauntlet and Prisoner.
2. FiIe plays the suicide role, and is always able to be incredibly active and loves working together with Slaske in the mid game to get a lot of pickoff kills.
3. Znoowy plays the ever reliant support and also has great game sense for being around the competitive scene so long.
4. sertas is the carry of the team and the heroes he plays are unique in the sense that no one can ooga booga like him.
5. Last but not least, I play the semi-support/jungler of the team and putting a dual mid vs me and Slaskedyret is very dangerous, I also love playing Parasite and am generally incredibly aggressive when I do so.
Where did your current members come from? Not all were on DONKEKONG, if I remember right.
The two players who came from old DONKEKONG were FiIe and Slaskedyret and for the start of HoNTour season 3 I joined after leaving Team CheeseCake. I also knew sertas from long ago when we were not at the level we are now and we've always kept in contact. Sertas ended leaving Dawn and needed a new team, so since we needed a carry player, I was able to ask him quite quickly to join our team. Next, Znoowy, if you haven't heard of Znoowy then you haven't watched a lot of Honcast back in the day. He's been around for a long time doing a lot of casting as well as playing and we asked him to join our team because we knew that he didn't have a team at the time. He was ecstatic to join and incredibly excited about our prospects for Season 3 of HoN Tour.
Your team has a pretty long history as DNKE, please tell us how you initially came together and how things moved on until today.
I was not actually part of DNKE when it was formed, only recently did I join. Slaskedyret has the information about how it all started though. Originally he formed the team with eTrin, who has also substituted along with Oranish a number of times this cycle, so many thanks to them. They knew each other IRL along with all the other original members of DNKE. They were all friends before starting their team together. Eventually players left as they always do, but up until now, the reason DNKE was revived was because FiIe and Slaske wanted to reform the team, and play competitively.
Now that you are in the Diamond Division, is it mission accomplished or are you planning on getting even further, beyond just staying alive there?
Now that we're in Diamond, we have a chance to really innovate and show the HoN community how much we want to stay in Diamond. Originally of course, the challenge will be to survive, and once we've accomplished that we're going to reach for higher aspirations. You've already seen the absolute absurdity of Oogie, but we've got a lot more stuff to show you guys.
There are plenty of good teams in HoN right now. Especially the "mid-field" behind Sync and their direct challengers is filled with strong teams. Who do you think are the most promising ones besides you?
Currently, the teams who pose as good contenders for the place in Diamond are: Night Raiders, Reason Gaming, Dawn, and Nullstone Gaming.
Cycle 4 is coming up in a week, and a tough match against Sync is waiting for you. How do you prepare and how do you see your chances?
The most important thing for us to do right now is practice. Make sure that our strategies are sound, and even try to surprise Sync who are currently the top team out there. We hope to learn a lot about top-tier competitive play from not only these matches, but also the scrims beforehand.
In the last Cycle you impressed with very skilled and intense Oogie and Gauntlet plays. Will we see more of that or do you go back to standard strategies and heroes now?
In the current meta, there aren't many standard heroes other than Rhapsody, Swiftblade, and Cthulhuphant. Usually, two of them or all of them are banned in the first banning stages, but you can definitely expect more Gauntlet plays, seeing as it is one of Slaske's best heroes and sertas will always want to play Oogie so you can expect more of that. We're still trying out new heroes and strategies to see where that takes us.
Are there any other heroes you consider signature heroes on your team?
Parasite is definitely a strong hero especially because of his annoying ability to push towers with very little competition. Slaskedyret also really enjoys playing the Prisoner, especially versus high mobility heroes like Magmus, Kraken, and Doctor Repulsor. Everyone on the team also loves having the Rhapsody on the team because he can completely turn fights with great ultis.
Speaking of heroes, how do you like the current state of the balance? Any heroes that need to be taken care of in the future because they are too strong or weak?
I'm going to put it in a list because there are a lot of changes we would like to see in order to have a lot of variation in the current drafts.
These are the heroes who need to have some nerfs: Parasite, Cthulhuphant, Rhapsody, Cthulhuphant, Silhouette, Cthulhuphant, maybe Doctor Repulsor.
The heroes I would like to see buffed are: Witch Slayer, Monarch, Pearl, Myrmidon, Andromeda, Pandamonium, Defiler, Ellonia, Artesia, Gunblade, Artillery and Moraxus.
Alright, shoutouts please and good luck next weekend!
Definitely a shoutout to my team for having made Diamond this cycle, and the multiple ringers we've had in the cycles before and even this one. (Oranish, eTrin, c0`ff33, King`Nicke, iwaslike, `Attero, and Ubergimp).
Diamond Division will start again with Cycle 4 on Saturday, October 18th at 12:00 EDT | 18:00 CEST with the Round of 8, where Prine Icarus will go against the triple champions of Sync eSports. Good luck with that!
About the author: Blaze
