“Ammar is a special child”: OG’s Taiga praises team after “revenge” win over Liquid

Dota 2’s Taiga has praised his OG teammates after the squad secured a “revenge” win over his former Team Liquid.

OG picked up another victory in the second leg of the WEU DPC season, taking down Team Liquid. The match was postponed after OG's Tommy "Taiga" Le flagged a bug that let enemies see neutral camps being farmed.

OG finally got to go head-to-head with Team Liquid just under a week later in the second week of the tour.

A very back and forth game one set expectations for the match-up pretty high; with OG sweeping in to take the first game after a very close first 35 minutes. However, the series was soon over as OG barrelled over Liquid in game two, securing the victory and a joint spot at the top of the leader board with Tundra.

Taiga sat down with casters SeeknStrike and Avo+ to talk about the match, and the "game breaking bug".

The bug and how OG found it

According to Taiga, it was actually Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf who discovered the bug during one of OG's warm-up games.

They were practicing when the position three player revealed he could see neutral camps being farmed by their opponents.

So it first started with us warming up before our officials. The first game it happened Ammar was like 'I have map hack guys I don’t know why I can see the camps dying when they’re farming it'. We didn't even see the heroes we just saw the camps dying.

He kept disconnecting but then he told us it didn’t get fixed and told everyone in the all chat ‘guys can you see those disappearing when we’re farming them’. So everybody started looking at these neutral camps and they were disappearing.

We don’t know what’s happening so we played out and we started the next game and the same thing happened and it was not a nice game of Dota, it was not a really good practice.

Tommy "Taiga" Le, OG

Taiga decided to fess up about the bug to his former teammates and come up with a solution.

He added: "I don’t want to do my friends and ex teammates like that because it’s stupid. If it happens in officials I think it’s mega stupid so I told them straight out."

Facing up against old friends

The panel were keen to know how Taiga felt about going up against his former team now he's part of OG.

"I was pretty nervous this game," he said. "Playing against iNSaNiA, miCKe, Boxi, MATU, and zai is pretty sweaty, mostly because of iNSaNiA he’s so sweaty.

"I think Liquid was the best team in this DPC season, nothing can convince me otherwise. We put a lot more effort and time into beating Liquid and it shows.

"I still think they’re probably the best team, still the best team in this DPC season even though we beat them. Who knows, they might just do a 5-2 sweep whatever."

Taiga speaking to the panel after his victory over Team Liquid
Taiga speaking to the panel after his victory over Team Liquid

His history with the team made Taiga a little nervous about playing his signature Enigma for OG in game two; but he decided to go for it anyway and let his ex-team sweat it out worrying about the Black Hole.

He added: "They were so scared of my black hole so I don’t have a reason to use it. There’s no point for me to use it if they’re just going to play so scared.

"They might have had in the back of their mind ‘no he has black hole guys run away’. The mindset is always about black hole so its so really hard to play offensive."

How OG prepare for each series

Taiga also revealed the positive vibes felt throughout the team were a big factor in OG's success.

He said: "We go into the game with, whatever happens guys just play Dota, do what’s best and have fun.

You guys are still kids go on just have fun, it’s not school you know, we’re not like sitting still for one hour listening to lessons.

Tommy "Taiga" Le, og

"We’re actually playing a game so don’t be afraid just play games, have fun, just like what you do with your friends."

Whilst the rest of the team had spent some time together bootcamping and heading out for activities together, Taiga has been embracing his old man role on the team, staying at home to grind Dota and Warcraft 3.

"Ammar is a special child"

After ATF picked up a Skull Basher on his Mars in game two, the panel duo were keen to ask Taiga about Ammar and what he thought about the teen's item builds.

It was super surprising, we didn’t know he had a basher queued up until he actually hit it on the NP.

The thing with Ammar is he’s a special child; you believe in him, he believe in us, we let him do his thing, we do our thing, that’s how it works.

He buys his items he thinks is best and if it doesn’t work out yeah you’re gonna get flamed kid that’s how it works. 

We had a lot of discussions about item builds but I guess he’s unpredictable in a way and that’s good.

Tommy "Tagia" Le, OG

He also finished the interview by shouting out to "Ammar the Flower" for being a good boy in the series.

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