HEROIC Davai at BLAST Slam 4: “I used to want to have as broad of a hero pool as possible. Now, I believe in keeping things simple”

Cedric “Davai” Deckmyn (yes, he just goes by “Davai” now) is one of the hardest workers in the competitive Dota 2 scene, having worked his way up from Division II of the now-defunct Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) to now playing consistently at the highest level. I sat down with him ahead of the playoffs at BLAST Slam 4 in Singapore.

Patrick Bonifacio: Alright, Davai, so you’re someone that made a name for himself in the North American scene, specifically when the DPC was still around.

Would you say that it was effective at what it set out to do in its rather short existence?

Davai: I think so, yeah. I think when the DPC came out, the goal was kind of to provide a stepping stone for tier 2 players, and to just make a more solid structure for the competitive scene. I think the “solid structure” part was a bit overdone, maybe. The top teams probably had to play DPC games for too much of the year, and it wasn’t very practical for them. But I think for the tier 2 teams, there were only benefits.

What would you say were the two or three most important lessons that the DPC taught you as an up-and-coming player?

Davai: I played DPC for quite a while; I think it was almost two years. I learned many, many things. I can’t just reduce them to a few lessons, because I think the first half of my career as a pro player was during the DPC years.

Patrick: Talk me through the process of how you got signed by a South American team, that being HEROIC after playing mostly for NA teams during your career.

How’d that come about in your first stint with them in 2024?

Davai: I played in NA, and I played in some European teams, and even narrowly missed out on TI12, I believe. My team Luna Galaxy and D2 Hustlers, we had been falling apart then. People got poached, and I was the last one remaining. HEROIC was a new South American team being made, and they were looking for an offlaner. 

They didn’t have too many options in South America, so they started looking. Then, they approached me and I told them, “Oh, by the way, I can speak some Spanish”, and I could definitely improve and learn more Spanish. That made it pretty easy for them to get me on board.

I was actually going to ask this as a follow up: have there been any communication issues between you and the team?

Davai: Well, Scofield doesn’t speak English. He understands some, but we mostly speak in Spanish, which he understands. My Spanish isn’t perfect, and there’s always going to be some kind of language or cultural barrier, of course. I think for most international teams that’s the case. But yeah, our team speaks a mix of English and Spanish.

Patrick: Yeah, and it seems to be working really well. According to an interview between you and fellow journalist sayang earlier this year, your mom was supportive of your choice to become a pro gamer, but your dad was a little more conservative in this regard.

Has your dad come around to the idea of you playing video games professionally since then?

Davai: Oh, yeah, after I started making the first real paychecks, like when the DPC money came rolling in. It wasn’t much in the beginning, but it was enough to kind of justify what I was doing.

Patrick: Actually, as a Southeast Asian, I know what it’s like to have parents that might not necessarily like non-traditional career paths like esports.

But for you, as a Belgian-American, is there anything that you would say might be similar in that sense between your culture and Asian culture, knowing what your dad thought of your choice of career?

Davai: Yeah, because my dad’s side of the family is like, to them, ideally you want to pursue an academic career, and I was interested in that as well. I studied history for a year or a year and a half in university, and it was interesting. But finally, I just decided I wanted to try going pro in Dota, and the only way to do it was to quit studying.

Patrick: Do you plan on maybe going back to school in the future?

Davai: Maybe. I mean, when I was studying history, there was a guy that was like 40 years old, and he had his own taxi company. And he said, “Oh, well I sold my taxi company, and I started studying history again”. I was like, wow, that’s a cool story, making the decision to basically turn your life around, like as a half-life crisis. It was pretty inspirational, so who knows? After I’m done with Dota, there’s, you know, a whole new life to start.

Patrick: Moving on to your current stint with HEROIC, you guys have been killing it to start the season, and you haven’t even had to radically change the team’s identity in the process.

In your opinion, what’s the biggest reason you’ve got so much momentum so early in the year?

Davai: I think everyone’s just playing really well. The team just has very good players. Everyone’s playing at a really high level, and we have a very good idea of what to do, how to play the game, and we have confidence in our ideas. There’s a bit of a honeymoon phase as well, since I just joined the team. As long as you keep winning, it stays easy. We had our ups and downs in the last tournament (FISSURE Playground 2), but hopefully we’re still on a positive path.

Patrick: You and the rest of your teammates are famous around the Dota world for having one of the deepest collective hero pools in the competitive scene.

When you all talk about which heroes to draft, how do you know when to lean hard into that depth, and when to keep it simple?

Davai: I actually changed I think a year ago. I used to want to have as broad of a hero pool as possible. Now, I believe in keeping things simple. Sometimes it depends on the person, because each one of us has a different opinion on what the draft should look like. But in the end, it’s our coach Kaffs that makes the final decision and manages how we draft.

Have there been moments where your teammates dipped into that hero pool and then you realize like, oh, I think we might have overcooked the draft a little bit?

Davai: For sure. If you try to do the things that we do in drafts, then of course sometimes you’re going to overcook, and you’re going to end up shooting yourselves in the foot. It’s worth it, though.

Patrick: Extending that to pub play, is there any piece of advice that you can give us regular pub players on how not to overthink that side of the game?

Davai: I think for regular players, just keep your hero pool simple. Play six to eight, maybe 10 heroes, and get comfortable on them.

Patrick: They say that’s the secret to gaining MMR, right?

Davai: For sure. A lot of high MMR players, they only play like three to four heroes.