Puppey Talks About Armel and Yamich's Addition to Team Secret's Dota 2 Lineup

In the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) Western Europe (WEU) 2023 Tour 1: Division II, Team Secret suffered arguably the most disappointing result in recent years as it was relegated to Division II. A reorganized roster was assembled with Armel "Armel" Tabios and Daniyal "yamich" Lazebnyy joining, and the team has debuted with an impressive victory against Alliance in the DPC WEU 2023 Tour 2: Division II.

After the win, Clement "Puppey" Ivanov, captain of Secret, provided details on what motivated the team to recruit Armel and yamich. Seeing the old roster was headed for a major change, Puppey said he brought in young players in the form of Armel and yamich who would have high levels of motivation. The 33 year old also discussed the impact that the addition of players from other regions has on Secret.

Puppey explains why Secret changed its Dota 2 roster and recruited Armel and yamich

After defeating Alliance 2-0, Puppey appeared in a DPC interview for the first time after the team changed its roster. The team changed its roster a month ago. In the interview, Puppey spoke of the decision behind the change and what prompted him to bring in two young players from other regions.

“After going into Division II, I felt like the team is not really capable of bringing themselves back - the previous one. So I decided that we are in kind of a full disband mode in a way and you know there are some people in Dota who are really good at Dota like Armel whose team disbanded and shit like that.

And I was looking at him. There were other options but at the end of the day, I chose people who are skilled enough and young enough to be motivated to win tournaments. I think Armel is one of them, Yamich is one of them.”

Miroslav "BOOM" Bičan also switched from midlane to offlane as part of Secret's roster change last month. Puppey shed light on this change as well happened since BOOM had just started to rise through the ranks and pick up pace in the midlane.

“The offlane pool of players is very small actually so I kind of asked BOOM - do you wanna try it up? Because working with him is really nice. He’s a really good guy and we just went with it in this sense.”

With Armel hailing from Southeast Asia (SEA) and yamich from Western Europe (WEU), Puppey was asked to explain how players from different regions usually adjust. Contrary to what may appear to be the norm, according to him, the team does not dictate its playstyle to them, but rather gains insights from them in various aspects of the game.

“No, it’s quite the opposite actually. Every time you have some kind of guy coming from a different area, all you do is like - you just try to get as much information on what you think is good or what’s going on over there because every type of small information can get you some kind of lead in draft or understanding of what you can do.

It’s basically CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] players think about timing and tempo much more in that regard. EU people cheese a little bit more, I don’t know. It’s just hard to say but every time someone comes from a different region, you instantly feel like - what’s up? Tell me what’s in there?”

In its first series, Secret won, but it is only the start of the young roster led by Puppey. It will be interesting to see if it can keep delivering top performances and go back to Division I. Since Division II is also stacked this season in WEU with teams such as Old G, Alliance, and Into The Breach, it won't be as easy as it has been for some of the other top teams in the past.