“I’m sad to say it looks kind of like a graveyard” – Virtus.pro Fly on NA Dota 2

Insider Gaming spoke to Virtus.pro’s Tal ‘Fly’ Aizik at ESL One Birmingham 2026 following his roster’s elimination in the group stage of the event.

The veteran Support spoke to Insider Gaming about the 7.41 patch, what Virtus.pro need to fix for future events, and the (lack of) hope for NA Dota 2.

Obviously, a group exit is not ideal. How are you feeling about the event?

It’s, of course, a bit sad to miss out. I think it was close as well because we were one win away from potentially going into tiebreakers.

So it makes it a little harder to take the loss. And we had like two really bad days. It was a bit rough.

0-2 losses to Aurora, Spirit, and Falcons seems fair enough – they’re very tough teams. Is it dropping games to OG and Nigma that comes to mind as points to regret?

I do think the three teams we lost to in the end were definitely like a level above us, for sure.

The teams we played previously, and we lost to, we were on closer footing. Looking back, if we had one more win against whoever, OG or Nigma, I think it was a bit more realistic.

But I think even thinking back on it, in the series against Falcons, I think we were in a decent position to at least win the first game. It’s just, at the end of the day, they executed better and won. But it was still a game, I think, we could have won.

Aurora games were not even close, to be completely honest. I think those were a complete shutout. But yeah, definitely a lot of junctures we could have gotten that extra win.

What did you think of the patch coming out?

I mean, first of all, I’m happy there’s a patch. I think it’s interesting for something new. And then I realised supports are getting a lot less XP on the map.

That was my first experience. I was like, ‘Huh, I’m usually level six by now, but I’m not.’ Then, the wisdom rune changes and stuff like that.

So I do think it’s overall an interesting change. The game feels more linear. Power spikes are not as huge compared to before.

So I like it. It’s going to take some time getting used to, and supports are going to need some extra XP somewhere. So it’s going to be interesting.

One of the heroes that you’ve played before is Tinker, and for some reason, Valve decided to kill him. Any thoughts on that?

I’m fine with Tinker being gone. He’s very toxic. You know what I mean? Like the hero, he kind of warps the games.

Some heroes just straight up change the way the game works, and he’s one of them. So I’m fine with it.

We’re not like, we’ve never been a huge Tinker team. I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ I like the hero, but he can go in the grave for a while.

Unfortunately, you didn’t make it to the stage. Have you had time to see what’s going on? Have you watched some of the games?

Yeah, I’m still watching the games. I’m still a Dota fan at the end of the day, and we have a competition coming up, so you want to see what the best teams are doing. So I’ve been watching games.

Yeah. So what do you think of the event?

The event is cool. I think it’s nice to see the fans turning up for this tournament again. So I’m excited to also get the feel of the crowd now that I’m here, and I’m going to watch some of the game.

It’s also interesting to see what teams come up with because you don’t have much time. I feel like a new patch needs at least a month, with a patch this big. So it’s a lot of chaos.

Now we see, Alchemist first picks, so it’s interesting to see what teams are going to bust out. And clearly Largo is still toxic, as Tundra showed us the other day. So we’ll see. We’ll see. It’s interesting.

You’re half Canadian. Do you think there is any hope for NA, or is it just despair?

It’s pretty despair, I would say. I feel like GamerLegion is really the only true North American team left that has some new talent with RCY. He’s very young.

But there are just no new players for Dota in NA, so I’m honestly sad to say it looks kind of like a graveyard.

All new players are mostly from Eastern Europe, so unless some organization was interested in picking up a roster and importing people, maybe building around like one, two, or three NA players, it’s pretty hard.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, just in terms of like, you know, so you guys are going to go away from this tournament line and work.

What are you guys looking at to improve moving forward?

I think some of our fundamentals were lacking. For example, against Aurora, we got exposed in our laning phase very hard. So in the game, we never got the game to a stage where we could actually play.

We’re looking at all the small things we could do better in terms of laning. And then some of our map movement, our decision-making, and how we want to contest objectives, because I feel like every game was a bit of a different loss.

But the biggest difference between the best teams and us was noticeably the laning phase. So I think we’re going to start with that because I do think we have good ideas of how to actually play the game once we get out of the laning.

You can discuss the state of NA Dota 2 on our community Discord.

For more ESL One Birmingham interviews, see our full interview with Seleri.

Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.