SabeRLight- on mid-tourney patches: “It’s fun when it works out for you. If it doesn’t, you feel like you’ve been wronged by Valve”

After a fairly successful campaign last season with Team Liquid, Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek went on to play for AVULUS for a time this season, but has since joined up with his old Shopify Rebellion buddies in Virtus.pro.

Our editor-in-chief had a chance to speak with him at ESL One Birmingham 2026, to talk about how they got the band back together, how it is dealing with sudden patches in the middle of tournaments, and what he thinks of offlane in Patch 7.41.

How are you doing, SabeRLight-?

SabeRLight-: Hello! I’m doing good. Happy to be here.

Sophie: Have you managed to spend any time enjoying England as well?

SabeRLight-: Not really. I mean, we lost like two days ago, I guess, so I’ve only been grieving — even though last night we went out to drink with some of my friends and my girlfriend. That was wonderful.

Sophie: Oh, you have your girlfriend here as well?

SabeRLight-: Yeah, she’s somewhere in the arena.

Sophie: That’s good! I was kind of surprised that the teams were staying on like after the group stage at this event.

SabeRLight-: Yeah, sometimes they let us stay, and sometimes they don’t. And luckily for this tournament, they did, because we have some qualifiers coming up. So, we’re basically using these remaining days here as practice. Today, we had some scrims and stuff, and you know, it’s a new patch as well. We’re playing pubs and training hard. It’s a nice way to do it.

Sophie: Okay, so the very first thing I wanted to ask you is about just how would this roster came about.

Was it really just like, the Shopify Rebellion guys hitting each other up again, or was there something more to it than that?

SabeRLight-: Well, it’s mainly the BuLba- Shopify. Yeah, I’d say BuLba is at the center of all of this, and that he wanted to make a team. After last year, when Shopify went out of Dota for a bit, he wanted to keep going. I don’t know all the details, but I think he talked to some orgs, and you know, you need to present the roster. I think the initial three were him, Fly, and Abed, and then he convinced Timado, who was close to joining MOUZ, as well — but he decided to go with Virtus.pro. He asked me right at the end of last season [to join], after he knew that I was leaving Team Liquid. I wasn’t super sure, so initially I played for AVULUS for a little bit, and then I decided to join VP. So, I was like the final piece.

Sophie: Yeah, that’s nice! I mean, it’s nice to come together with players that you’ve played with before. And what would you say is clicking the most with this roster? Is it the experience of having played together before?

SabeRLight-: I think that helps for sure, having some experience together and how to deal with one another. I think that our relationships are pretty good, and that everybody on the team likes it. We trust in each other, and everybody also tries really hard to make it work. I mean, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Sophie: I guess that’s exactly it, because Dota is kind of different to other esports in that no team stays on top for that long. Why do you think that is? What’s different about Dota?

SabeRLight-: I would imagine Counter-Strike, where there’s a patch only once a year or something, like a big one. I recently saw that they changed how magazines work. I feel like we get a change like that every few months, so it’s hard to stay on top consistently. I think people, like the people on top, sometimes just get complacent, and they get too greedy. For example, there’s the Gaimin Gladiators roster, right? They were doing super well years ago, and even with the results that they were getting, they still felt like they needed to make some changes. Like, they kicked dyrachyo. Maybe there was more to it than that, I don’t know. There’s too many things that come into it.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of variables in Dota as well. It’s interesting that you mentioned the Counter-Strike magazine change, because that didn’t actually go into the competitive scene [right away]. Dota is the only game out there where the patch immediately drops in. Like League of Legends, Valorant, they play on previous patches.

How do you think that impacts the Dota scene? Like, when we get these game-changing patches in the middle of tournaments.

SabeRLight-: Yeah, it’s a bit random getting it, especially halfway through the group stage. Or, not halfway, but you know, we still had one more day in the group stage. It’s a little crazy. It’s kind of fun, when it works out for you. If it doesn’t, then you feel like you’ve been wronged by Valve, because you had a really good plan on the previous patch, and suddenly everything is different. It’s cool that we’re trying to figure it all out at the same time, and everybody has the eight hours in between the series and when the patch drops to figure it out. I’d say that part is cool. And, it kind of elevates the smart people, I guess. The creative people who really understand Dota, who are very nerdy about it. They read the patch and figure it out better than anyone else at the time.

Sophie: Who’s that person on VP?

SabeRLight-: We have a few people, I would say. I usually get some ideas, and Hellscream also has a lot of ideas on the patch notes. BuLba doesn’t like it when there’s a new patch, so he was kind of angry. He wanted the patch gone. He’s more like, scouting other people, like he talks to all his friends and colleagues to see what they think is overpowered. Then he puts it all into one, and then we discuss it as players.

First one in the bag 😎 pic.twitter.com/PqTWQCjDaL

— Virtus.pro Dota 2 (@virtuspro_dota2) March 23, 2026

Sophie: In some other esports as well, the maker will justify the changes — but Valve never gives any information on why they make these changes. Do you like it that way, or would you want to know why Crystal Maiden has been nerfed for like the thousandth time? [laughs]

SabeRLight-: I don’t know, I don’t think Valve will ever justify it. They just balance it how they want. They got too lazy doing facets for each new hero, so they just decided to remove all of them. I respect the grind.

Sophie: [laughs] They just dropped it two years later. Gone. Never happened.

SabeRLight-: Yeah, exactly.

Sophie: Okay, I had one last question for you, and it is about the patch. About the changes to offlane, specifically. It seems like offlane has come out of this quite well with the creep positioning changes.

So what do you think about that, and how is that impacting your scrimming?

SabeRLight-: Yeah, I’m glad they did something, because I feel like last patch was awful. Not only the lane positioning, but it was also all the sweaty boss fights. They would pick the most toxic hero in the lane just to destroy me, and my position 4 is just picking a random hero that’s gonna leave me minute four. That was just my life for the past several months. I’m hoping this patch changes it a little bit, and I get to play with it more naturally. That would be cool. But I think it mainly depends on the heroes and the meta of the position 4s, like are they actually going to lane or are they just going to leave the lane to go gank? So, we’ll see.

Ready to smash 💀 pic.twitter.com/sh8JLH3nJN

— Virtus.pro Dota 2 (@virtuspro_dota2) March 22, 2026

Sophie: Okay, that’s cool. If you could go back to any Dota patch, which one would you pick?

SabeRLight-: I don’t think I have like a super favorite one, but I would say some Seattle International patch. I don’t exactly remember what was in that patch, but I just remember playing at TI — and I mean we lost but I was like, damn, I had so many more ideas in that patch that I could have pulled out, but sadly I didn’t get to. But yeah, there was a patch I think where offlaners were winning their lane all the time, and then getting to destroy the game.

Sophie: As God intended. [laughs]

SabeRLight-: Exactly, yes. [smiles]