Team Dignitas is once again heading out to one of the world's greatest Heroes of the Storm stages at DreamHack Summer, to represent some of the finest play Europe has to offer. We had the chance to sit down and ask Team Dignitas' Flex player Joshua "Snitch" Bennett about his thoughts on the competition and the current meta.

In the playoffs series against Team Liquid, it looked like you guys were really finding your stride. What was it in particular that allowed you guys to seem so dominant in that series?

Snitch: I think we just came into the series with a stronger, more prepared meta and were just crushing them in the draft from the start. It never really felt like we didn’t have control of the game even when we weren’t at proper talent spikes because it just felt to me like our drafts were a lot better.


In that same series, Anub’arak seemed to be a large part of your drafts. What are the strengths of this hero in this current meta that make him first pick or first ban worthy?

Snitch: He kind of just has a lot of pros - strong against mages so he denies them from the enemy draft, has a lot of CC so he’s good in general, a lot of survivability in general with his many shields and Nerubian Armor and Cocoon is just the most broken heroic in the game currently probably as it opens up so many draft styles for you and forces the enemy team to play around it at all times or get punished hard.


So we noticed a lot of hero swapping between you and Mene, especially with who plays Zagara, Tychus, and Greymane. What decides who will play a certain hero from game to game?

Snitch: Most of the time we have some general rules - Mene always play mages, I generally always play the split push/global and I’m normally on Greymane and Tychus. However, obviously in the Sky Temple game we ended up with a clashing situation where we had both Greymane and Zagara and Mene just isn’t particularly comfortable or well versed playing the global Nydus Network style that is popular so he just asked to play Greymane in this game. For the Towers of Doom game he actually felt like his performance wasn’t strong enough on the hero before so he asked to play Tychus here. I think I’m a flexible enough player to be able to make these changes of role in the moment, so Mene can play whatever he feels he’ll be most effective on or if he feels uncomfortable playing something.


Talking about Zagara, what brought her back into the meta suddenly?

Snitch: Towards the beginning of this half of the season, we started playing this funky strat involving picking Dehaka and Abathur together which kind of ended up snowballing into it either getting banned or every team playing it straight away. Since it led to a lot more globals getting banned, Abathur actually ended up becoming a very valuable first rotation pick as he was so dominant in these games where the enemy team didn’t have Dehaka available, as he’s much harder to find and punish for something like Falstad with an Abathur comp. Zagara with Nydus Network kind of arose as a slightly safer split pusher with a lot stronger impact in the early game which is obviously extremely valuable against Abathur and far higher split push pressure in the mid/late game. Since Abathur comps normally have to group as four almost all the time to be effective, smart use of Nydus Network and rotations can put huge pressure on side lanes and it’s hard for the team with Abathur to deal with.


We see Genji being played and even banned by teams in all regions. Where do you think he will fit in the meta? Is he a top tier Ranged Assassin? Or does the composition need to revolve around him?

Snitch: I think he’s fine on his own, or fine with support. He’s just a very flexible assassin that has no real weakness due to his immense amount of escape and safety tools. With the combination of Cyber Agility, Swift Strike, talents like Dodge and even sometimes X-Strike he becomes almost impossible to pin down and kill. There’s been situations in practice where Genji can hold a tribute spawn or something for upwards of a minute in a 1v3 situation just because he’s so impossible to pin down. Dragonblade Genji can also be extremely dangerous with a committed support too.


Now that we’ve completed 10 weeks of League play, what are your thoughts on this new format? Do you like it? Are there any improvements that could be made?

Snitch: I think I enjoy the format a lot more personally. Something I struggled with last year was trying to actually see our team’s growth, as during it’s hard for all five players to take every game 100% seriously all the time so it’s hard to actually see your progress as a team. This year we have consistent matches to play so it’s easy for me to see situations where things have gone wrong in practice and we nail it in the tournament, and that feeling is really important for me so I like it a lot more.


Talking about format, what do you think of the tournament format at the Mid-Season Brawl? Is the point system with 2 game series the right format for the group play? And what about the favored double elimination bracket afterward?

Snitch: I think the Gold Club World Championship of last year was one of our favorite tournaments from a format perspective. The chance to play so many games against so many different playstyles and regions was an incredible experience and I think we learned so much in this sort of group stage. I think the similarity of the format at the Mid-Season is something we all like a lot and would like to see it in further tournaments too.

It seems like the pro players around the world are very divided in their opinion on D.Va. Do you think D.Va will see play in Sweden?

Snitch: It’s tough to say - players aren’t very good at her so soon after her release and all she seems to be right now is kind of irritating. I think she has a lot of interesting tools though, between the consistent interrupts of Boosters, the damage reduction she brings and the massive zoning tool of Self Destruct. I think the utility and value is definitely there but I’m not certain if she’ll be strong enough yet to be played at the Brawl.


You’ll be heading to bootcamp soon to prepare for the Mid-Season Brawl. Is there anything in particular you want to work on as a team?

Snitch: I think we’ve kind of reached the fixing “in particulars” of the team at this point. We’ve very much grown to a level where all I think we need to focus on now is expanding our hero pools and things we can play to make our drafts scarier and just keeping our synergy sharp.


After your final playoff games, Bakery said that Korea is looking weaker than ever going into the Mid-Season Brawl. Who do you think is your biggest competition?

Snitch: Even if Korea isn’t looking as strong as usual, it by no way counts them out and I’m certain that both teams from Korea and Fnatic will be our toughest opponents.


Are there any teams in the Mid-Season Brawl that you think are secret powerhouses? Any teams you think will put on a surprising performance and perhaps cause some upsets?

Snitch: We have so little information about China, and the little we have and have seen don’t really show anything groundbreaking, so I’m kind of in a state of “they could be good, or they could not” with regards to their teams. I think the bo2 format in the group stage can be a little encouraging of upsets, especially when it’s hard to get information on some teams or adapt properly in such a small amount of games. I’m mostly excited to scrim all the other regions to get a feel of where everyone is at but I don’t expect anybody to take down the stronger teams in any series once we get past the group stage.


Throughout the year the players on Team Dignitas have been saying that this roster has a huge potential and that we have only seen 60% of what you can really do. Will the Mid-Season Brawl be where we see the full potential unfold?

Snitch: I think we’re definitely getting there. I feel much stronger and more comfortable on this current roster than we ever have before, and I think Zaelia was by far a very good fit for the final spot. I think this could be the tournament where we come out full force for sure.


Bakery mentioned that it’s very important for teams to have realistic goals to aspire to, so what is the goal for Team Dignitas at the Mid-Season Brawl?

Snitch: As a team, I think this is our first debut where we feel a little more confident in our own ability. The Western Clash was very muddy for us in terms of where we were as a roster and we definitely didn’t expect ourselves to be able to perform and win how we did, but this time I think we’re a little more comfortable as 5 so I think our goal is just to perform well and get as far as we can. If we were going to lose to any team, I think it’d either be Fnatic or the two Koreans, so I guess assuming those three are also in the semis that sort of area would be our minimum goal.


Thank you for your time. Do you have any shoutouts to your fans and sponsors?

Snitch: A huge shout out to Team Dignitas and our sponsors. I’d like to thank the fans who support us and I hope we can give you a good tournament at the Mid Season Brawl to make you guys proud! You can find me on Twitter @SnitchHots and I’m streaming daily on my Twitch here, so make sure to come check both of those out!