Puppey on coaching PARIVISION: “It’s like studying, you know, with your kids.”

ESL One is well underway here in Birmingham with plenty of Dota being played out at the bp pulse Live Arena. Just after PARIVISION’s win against Team Falcons in round 1 of the lower bracket earlier today, I got to sit down with Clement “Puppey” Ivanov to talk about his transition into coaching and working with Dukalis as a captain.

Sophie: How are you doing today, Puppey?

Puppey: Doing good, yeah.

Sophie: Brilliant, okay. We just came off the back of the Falcon series.

Puppey: Yes, brilliant. Yes, of course. Let’s talk like this. Go ahead.

Sophie: You actually have to do the Manc accent. I don’t talk like that. You have to do the northern accent.

Puppey: I don’t know any of those things. Like, if I do a British accent, it’s going to be the one that I know.

Sophie: Okay, yeah. Well, by the end of this interview, we’ll have you saying, “y’alright?”.

Puppey: Let’s see.

Sophie: Exactly. Okay, cool. So very first thing I wanted to ask is if we’re including DotA All Stars. Your career is nearly, 20 years long now.

What motivated you to get into coaching at this point in your career?

Puppey: Nothing, really.

Sophie: Okay.

Puppey: I didn’t necessarily ever want to coach and I was not looking forward to it and it’s miserable. I want to leave. What I’m trying to say is, like, No[o]ne asked me to coach because they lost theirs. I was just playing a tournament, got like a second place. It was a really small tournament with a stack. I was just having fun with some guys and as we do. And so, like, he asked me to try to coach a little bit. I was like, all right with it. I like the vibes of the organisation. I like the boot camp. I liked eating food made by a chef and stuff like that. Working was also pretty alright. Like, the whole concept of what went with PARIVISION. Let’s say like that. Liked it a lot.

So, like, I was kind of like “all right, fine. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay. You know, like, it’s nice. It’s nice here, I guess.”

Sophie: Yeah, okay, may as well. Okay, cool. Whereabouts is the boot camp?

Puppey: It’s in Serbia.

Sophie: Oh, in Belgrade?

Puppey: In Belgrade

What’s your favourite thing about staying in Belgrade?

Puppey: To be honest, it’s really cheap there and everything’s available.

Sophie: Okay. *laughs*

Puppey: Like, if you want to go to a place, have some restaurant food. If you want to, like, get a, I don’t know, just if you want to run around, play ball with friends on a football field or something like that.

Sophie: Yeah, yeah.

Puppey: Soccer field.

Sophie: No, it’s “football”.

Puppey: You guys invented the word soccer, by the way.

Sophie: You know what? I have heard that. I don’t know anything about it.

Puppey: It’s one of the inventions you hate. It’s a lot of those in Britain. So, yeah, like, Serbia is great because it has everything and it’s cheap comparison to, like, a place that has everything. But it’s expensive.

Sophie: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Aside from, like, physically not playing the games, what’s the biggest difference that you’ve seen since moving to coaching?

Puppey: I don’t actually see any differences.

Sophie: Okay, yeah. Your process is still the same?

Puppey: Yeah. I mean, the. The only difference is that I don’t have to play. And that’s the only real thing that needs to, that has changed because, like, drafting and ideas and, like, talking to the teammates and, like, figuring out stuff and it’s all the same. I haven’t really lost any of that. I mean, I have more time to do that now.

Sophie: Sure.

Puppey: If anything, because I don’t actually play that much Dota anymore, in comparison to how much I actually analyse Dota and, like, talk to the teammates and force them to do stuff like, you know, watch replays with me and stuff like that. It’s like studying, you know, with your kids.

Sophie: Yep.

Puppey: And so, like, basically, there’s a lot more of that. So it’s just time. Times where I used to do stuff less, now I do more. No real difference.

Sophie: Okay, cool.

Was it you up at the crack of dawn when this patch dropped, then?

Puppey: No, I actually knew that the patch was dropping.

Sophie: Okay. Yeah.

Puppey: I’m gonna get a good night’s sleep, wake up, read everything, but what most of my teammates did was that stood up and watched it, like, the patch till, like, 3 to 4am. Sleep and slept little and then like did that. I rather take this with a clear head and just like look through it slowly because I can’t really read fast anyway.

Sophie: Yeah. Or understand changes that fast. I need to play the game. I can’t just read and understand.

Puppey: You know, you need to test everything. You need to take it slowly too. Like if you just like read everything at the same time. Well, it’s like, it’s like reading a book at the same time. Like if you do it too fast, you just kind of miss the important parts. You just don’t think they’re important and like there’s always this thing in Dota where like hidden imbalances come out later because people weren’t focusing on it that much. So focus is much more important than, I guess, quantity.

Sophie: Yeah, so what was your approach here? Was it to stick with the same sort of hero pools that you had in the previous patch and sort of hope for the best or were you consciously changing?

Puppey: No, I was not going to think that it’s going to be the same patch. I mean, obviously I’m going to look at all the stuff. I mean, the first thing that I looked at was that new item that came out called wraps or something like that.

Sophie: Oh yeah, yeah.

Puppey: It’s like some clothing, you know, and that thing’s pretty imbalanced, pretty busted. And it’s basically like everybody’s gonna buy it now and you’re gonna have to like think of strategies how to beat that item for a little bit. Because heroes will vary, but the concept will stay, stay the same. Like what is good against this item? Stuff like this will happen right now. So I don’t know. I don’t know what more to say.

Sophie: Okay. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s absolutely fine. Next one I wanted to ask was obviously I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’re one of the most successful Dota coaches (Sophie misspoke here and was very annoyed at herself!).. captains of all time.

How are you working with Dukalis on this captain’s role?

Puppey: First of all, I’m not a successful coach.

Sophie: Well, maybe not yet.

Puppey: That career has only begun and I haven’t won anything yet. So not a successful coach. Successful career, perhaps. And with Dukalis, he’s a, he’s a very hard working guy. So, like, there won’t be any issues about bringing up any topics. So it, if it’s going to be something that he even dislikes, he’s gonna be like, “I will try my best”, you know. So, like, he’s very easy to have conversations about what to do, how to draft. He’s only open to any of these conversations. The more the better for him. Sometimes it’s not good to do it all the time. But overall he’s very easy to work with.

Sophie: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess that makes your job easier, right?

Puppey: Yeah, I guess so.

Sophie: Good. One thing I was really interested in is PARIVISION’s season, the sort of end of 2024 and into 2025 was amazing. Really, really strong season. But they did dip a little bit after the last TI.

So when you came in as coach, what was the biggest thing that you felt needed working on in this team?

Puppey: I mean, the thing is you. Yeah, you never know what is going to happen. I, by the way, think cultures are useless.

Sophie: Okay. *laughs*

Puppey: So I, like the first days when I came there, I felt like you guys have it all under control. I don’t know why you asked me to be here. And then few days go by, I’m like, oh, there’s a lot of to do. But. But it’s like. But you guys can fix it yourself too, you know, but they won’t.

It’s very hard for people to realise what actually is going on. So I, you know, I’m just trying my best for them to realise that, you know, what their problems are and such and such. But the point really is it will take a lot of time usually to figure out stuff because methods are. There’s really many different types of methods for like any case of like a team relationship, understanding, bonding and stuff like that, whatever. And from what I’ve learned in Dota, it’s very sad, but it is kind of more like this. That one thing doesn’t work for everything. Like, if it worked for you in some other team, it’s not going to work here.

Sophie: Right? Yeah.

Puppey: And the most randomest of things fix the team.

Sophie: Oh, okay. Like what?

Puppey: I don’t know. Like it could be incredibly random. Like I can give you an example. Like two guys decided to dye their hair, like green.

Sophie: Okay. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

Puppey: For some reason the other teammates are like, you know, thinking that, you know, that was pretty chill because they teamed up, they bonded or whatever and they look, you know, they start thinking like teamwork or something like that.

Sophie: Yeah, sure.

Puppey: It makes the whole team like, I don’t know, change vibes and not hate each other for a little bit or something like that. Even if they had like some kind of past arguments and stuff like that. So, like, they start a random thing like that can do much more work than actual work.

Because people that play Dota, they’re very. They’re not capable of like. They’re not intelligent. They’re not sure exactly what is happening with me, you know? So you can’t really control them either. So it is what it is. You just have to try a lot of stuff until you see what, you know, what sticks to the wall.

Sophie: Yeah, that’s exactly. I mean, they talk about the Yatoro bald buff going into TI, don’t they? So, yeah, these things do have an impact.

Puppey: They do.

Sophie: Okay. Brilliant. Well, those were all the questions that I have for you. Thank you so much.

Puppey: Brilliant. What’s the other word you don’t say? Magnificent.

Sophie: Splendid.

Puppey: Oh, splendid. Splendid and marvellous. Thanks for having me.