I had a unique chance to sit down with Dzmitry “Fishman” Palishchuk  for a short interview just a week away from DreamLeague S21.

We discussed their performance at Regional Qualifiers, his new teammate (Gabbi) and expectations leading into The International 2023.

Credit: Team Entity

Marcus Wong: Congratulations on qualifying for TI12. That said, the results were unexpected, especially since Quest Esports is the fan favorite in TI12 Western Europe regional qualifiers.

Are you satisfied with the team’s performance and do you think the results would have been different if you had faced Quest Esports?

Fishman: Thank you! Yes, the team has performed really well throughout the qualifiers. The results were definitely unexpected. We played scrims with Gabbi from the Philippines with 200 ping for about 2 weeks and 1 day before the qualifiers he traveled to Serbia, but the ping issues persisted. Quest is a strong team and given our form, the results could’ve gone either way. They are a great team, I’m looking forward to playing against them in TI.

What is your team’s mindset going into TI12, especially with your new teammate, Gabbi?

Fishman: Last year I felt that our team got under a bit of pressure with the hype of our performance in the qualifiers and we were trying to achieve something big, We got caught up in the noise and couldn’t really enjoy the main event.

I hope we’ll have more fun and less pressure to garner good results this time. So our mindset is to just try our best and play this tournament like any other tournament.

What was the rationale behind Entity’s decision to bring Gabbi into the team?

Fishman: It’s actually a pretty long story. But if I had to put it in a few words, I felt that Gabbi had the potential and I felt bad that he was wasting his talent on useless streams. I decided to put his talent to better use.

Credit: Team Entity

Marcus Wong: Your regional rival, Gaimin Gladiators have taken the Dota 2 Esports by storm, becoming the first team to win three consecutive majors in a DPC season.

Do you think Gaimin is unbeatable at their current form?

Fishman: They’re a solid team, they have proved it time and again. But I don’t feel they are unbeatable. I would like to go back to the TI norms, where teams like this struggle on the big stage. Let’s see how this year pans out for them.

Marcus Wong: Besides Gaimin, which teams do you consider to be your strongest competitors at TI12?

Fishman: I think Virtus.Pro and Thunder Awaken are two teams who might give us a hard time in the tournament.

Are there any OP heroes in 7.34 that you plan to focus on during TI12?

Fishman: It’s tough to answer this question now because there will be a patch update after Dreamleague, right before TI, we can expect some changes then. But for now it’s Treant Protector for me.

Finally, can you give us a prediction for who will win TI12?

 I strongly feel it would be a team from Europe (wink)(wink)

Read next: Dota 2 Patch 7.34b: Reviewing the Data & Win Rates