The Long Game
Michael “PolarBearMike” Heiss on His Season With The Jade Dragons and Playing it Slow
Michael “PolarBearMike” Heiss celebrates a victory during the Season 9 SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
Michael “PolarBearMike” Heiss is a patient player. Over a period of four seasons, his teams made just four roster changes. In a league characterized by tumultuous roster turnover (the streaking Warriors replaced their support after just one loss), Heiss’s teams are remarkably, almost impossibly steady. After three seasons spent largely with fineokay, PandaCat, and Sam4Soccer2, Heiss teamed up with another staple of SMITE stability: Nika, Dardez, and Vote—the core of the old Oni Warriors who had played together for several seasons.
Often criticized as stubborn, the Nika/Dardez/Vote trio rejected major roster changes even as they struggled to perform to their perceived potential. Before Vote joined the roster, Nika and Dardez were eliminated in Season 6 with a heartbreaking reverse sweep in the World Semifinals. With Vote added, they were once again reverse swept in the World Quarterfinals of Season 7. They failed to qualify for the main bracket in Season 8, and were swept in the first round in Season 9. This is the roster that Heiss, who had grown accustomed to excellence, chose as his home in Season X.
It makes sense. Stability is one of Heiss’s calling cards. He plays a long game, building up his team’s chemistry for the ultimate goal of lifting the hammer. What matters is clicking at the right time; he knows—perhaps better than anyone—that winning all season long doesn’t guarantee a Championship.
But Heiss is patient, not stubborn. His Dragons did eventually make a roster change, though, despite their struggles in Phase 1, it came after the Warriors and Leviathans made changes of their own. The move brought in rookie ADC VaporishCoast to replace Vote. As Heiss describes, he watched hours of SPL VODs from Coast’s perspective—if he was going to make a roster change, he needed absolute confidence.
Even with Coast, the Dragons failed to take games off of the League’s top teams. Still, the team improved to secure a top-4 seed at the SMITE World Championship next week in Arlington, Texas, and Heiss is confident the team is closer to contention than they may appear.
I sat down with Heiss to talk about his SMITE career, his season with the Dragons, and what might be next for him after SMITE.
[The following interview has been edited for clarity.]
The Long Lane: I wanted to start with a question about your podcast with Aror, Traveler’s Proc. A lot of people have this impression of you, at least back in the RivaL/Ghost Days, as a no-nonsense kind of player. You always approached the SPL as the primary thing. You didn't really stream, and you sort of loosely discouraged it among teammates. And now coming into this season, you've kind of branched out. I think that's been coming for a while, like streaming more with the old Dragons roster last season. But is that a shift that has occurred in you over the past several years, culminating in the podcast, of wanting to do more SMITE related things that aren't the SPL?
PolarBearMike: It's all a balance. Early in my career, for example, I used to stream a good bit, like in Seasons 2-4, maybe 5. What I discovered was that, especially as the league transitioned to more normalized scrim times where we weren't playing at 7 p.m. and we were playing at 11 a.m., 2 p.m., double blocking, etc., I realized that, for me, it induced a lot of burnout when I was streaming and scrimming. And then I've always played roles on my team where I'm very engaged in prep or watching VODs or generally trying to figure things out. Something I noticed with teammates as well is I don't mind if people want to stream. I played with a lot of streamers throughout my career. I think the most prominent would be fineokay, for example. I've never had a problem with them streaming.
I've just always mentioned it to them. Everyone's going to get burnt out, you know? We play a game as our job and of course it's fun, but you're going to have times where you're just playing way too much. You're playing 12 plus hours a day, especially on new patches, new seasons. There's going to be times where you're scrimming a lot or you feel stressed, or maybe you don't like the patch that much. I just think moderating burnout is really the key because you just don't really have a choice. Unfortunately, you do have to scrim. You do have to play games when they're assigned. So, what I discovered with the podcast was that it was a more fun form of content for me that didn't give me burnout, because I'm not sitting there and playing a ranked game and getting annoyed that my ADC doesn't hit the wave. I'm just able to sit there, talk to Aror, who is always fun to hang out with, and we can talk about SMITE. We can provide SMITE content, and it's fulfilling. It's something the fans can enjoy, and it doesn't really feel like it costs me any competitive disadvantage.
TLL: How did that podcast with Aror come to be?
PBM: It was somewhat random from my perspective. Aror came to Hinduman in the past, and I had also mentioned it would be a cool idea to do it, but nothing really came of it [back then]. And then Hindu told us, 'hey, we have open time slots. Maybe we could provide the studio. I think you two would be good at doing [a podcast] together.' And he approached me with, 'do you think you'd be open to doing this with Aror?' Then Aror decided he wanted to do it as well. So, I said I'd be open to it, but in the end it wasn't my idea.
TLL: Have you been surprised with how the community has responded to it and been interested in it?
PBM: Not really. Honestly, it was just a gut feeling that it would work out because I just think Aror and I both can tend to be—I'd say him even more so than me—can be pretty private about some things when it comes to scrimming at the moment on certain patches or certain metas, or specifically the way we see our role or the game. But when we're talking about things that happened in the past, we don't really have to be that ironclad about it. It's just nice to share those sorts of stories. Something I've learned is that there's quite a lot of my fans currently that weren't around back when both of our careers started. So there's a lot of things that people haven't gotten to hear about or they haven't experienced. And it's kind of nice to give them that walk back in time and also add more context to it. It offers [the fans] a lot more history of both myself and Aror, and also just the game in general.
Heiss (left) deliberates picks and bans with his teammates during the Season 9 SWC. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: You mentioned your early career. You came up with an Eager team led by Zapman and Lassiz—veterans even back then [in Season 2]. And lately, we've seen a lot of the rookie teams really struggle to adjust to the Pro League. Most notably, last year's Valkyries, who have split into really two different rosters and that are still trying to figure things out, versus, say, Pegon, who came up with a team of all veterans and has been really successful, really from the jump. How much of a difference does it make to come into an environment like that, where the players are really established and have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge?
PBM: It definitely makes a world of difference. The Qiu brothers are a huge example, like you mentioned. Benny is a really talented player, but it's not only coming into a team environment with people who can give you more knowledge, it's also confidence. When we picked up Pegon last year, we didn't really feel pressed on time. We knew that we would do well enough in the regular season to always qualify for tournaments. I always felt like we had a chance, so it was really more about letting him do his own thing. Whereas if you're someone in Benny's position, not only do you have to figure out your own role and all of those things yourself, but you also have to help your teammates who maybe aren't as confident because they have their own learning curve that they're going through.
When I first came into the league, it was a unique situation because not only were all four of my teammates veterans, but we also had a coach which back then was not the norm. We were one of 3 or 4 teams who had a coach, and even more than that he [Krett] was a very active coach. He lived in a house with them, he watched every scrim, he was always around to help me or watch VODs or give me tips. He was very hands on, and it was a really easy environment for me. And I also think when you're playing with more experienced players, it feels better to make mistakes. People are a lot more insightful when it comes to how to fix something.
I think I've told this story before about the only bad experience I had, which in hindsight was a great experience. There was a play where I was GEB and I didn't blink-ult to start a fight, and my team was annoyed, like, 'why didn't you go in here?' And Zap said, 'he just didn't see it, man. He just doesn't get it. He just doesn't have the instinct for it.' But there was so much truth to that. You just see small plays like that, and you realize, 'oh, they want me to play freely. They just want me to rip it. If I see something good, they want to trust me to go for it.' And when you have that sort of feeling, which I think is much easier to get from veteran teammates, it opens a lot up for you.
TLL: So, contrast that experience you had as a rookie versus several years later. I know we mentioned Pegon, and now you are playing with Coast on this new team. How have you approached being the veteran presence with these promising rookies around you?
PBM: Honestly, it has been pretty easy because a lot of the work was done beforehand. Both of those players are just incredibly talented, but also they both came from experiences with really, really experienced junglers in the SCC—Cyno with Pegon and Adapting with Coast. They were both world champion junglers who had stepped back from the for their own reasons at the time. But getting to play with those two, it gives you a lot of confidence. It teaches you how the game gets played at a top level, and it just makes it easy because when they get to the SPL all they really have to learn is player tendencies, finding their own identity, trying to understand how we go about scrimming and we approach preparation, those sort of things. But when it comes to backing at the right time or playing disciplined around objectives, they kind of already have that stuff figured out.
TLL: When you were still new-ish to the league, everyone really saw the potential and the talent, but things didn't click into place until you wound up on that EUnited team with PandaCat and Benji, and of course you had a lot of success, winning a World Championship in Season 4. Now, when people look back at the story of SMITE, PolarBearMike and PandaCat is going to get a chapter of its own. What was it about that connection [with PandaCat] that really enabled that success?
PBM: Panda was always the interesting one within that team dynamic. The way I joined that team was they were going to kick Screammmmm, and I couldn't believe it. I wasn't even trying to get on to the team, but I was talking to Benji and Khaos, who were friends of mine at the time, and it didn't seem like the change was set in stone. And then Screammmmm had came up with the idea of kicking PainDeViande and keeping him on the roster, and that's what we ended up doing. I was actually more excited to play with those three, Khaos, Screammmmm, and Benji, because I knew all of them a little bit better. I didn't really know Panda at all, and I remember when I joined the team, Panda wasn't even a part of that call at the time, like when they were going through that decision making process. They had messaged him, but he was already in bed. I think it was quite late after their scrim session, probably like 11 p.m. or something.
I didn't really know what to expect and Screammmmm just told me, 'I swear he's the best in the world. You're going to love playing with him.' And I was like, 'yeah, yeah, he's probably just talking.' And then literally like a week into scrims, I was like, 'holy crap, he wasn't kidding.' it just clicked instantly. He was just a really good player, especially as he gained more confidence in me and as we gained more confidence in the team. It was perfect because Screammmmm, and I tend to be pretty big over-thinkers, or we got really frustrated if we were losing back then when we were younger, and Panda was always the one who kept a lot of confidence in the team and always believed in people and staying the course. So it was a really good experience from the jump. It wasn't even a planned thing where we wanted to play together, we just kind of struck gold a little bit.
TLL: The two of you never won another title together, but you got close several times. What makes it so tough to win again and stay dominant?
PBM: Metas play a lot into it. Also perspective matters quite a bit. Being able to zoom out is something that, in hindsight, I wish I was better at and I wish our whole team was better at on those old RivaL and Ghost teams. Not being so rooted in our own opinions or the way that we were having success. We were very good at specific styles, but we didn't spend enough time giving respect to what could beat us. And in part, it made sense. It's not like we were stupid and arrogant, you just always have to plan for the unpredictable a little bit, as weird as that sounds. When you're so deep into a metagame and you've played the same patch for multiple months, or you've played the same style for the whole year, you start to think you've seen it all and it's just never quite the case. There can always be some random idea that people have seen.
We didn't really branch out as much as I wish we did. You get overconfident in that way. I wouldn't say we disrespected our opponents, but we took different playstyles for granted. We spent so much time being the best at what we were already really good at, that it didn't really let us branch out. It didn't really let us get a perspective of 'what would it feel like if we played this completely different style and try to get really good at that?' We tried it a little bit on the Dragons teams, but it's just really tough. There's a lot that goes into it, and at the end of the day, tournaments tend to be a mix of what the current meta is and how comfortable you are with it, but also you just have to play well. Looking back at the Ghost year specifically, I still think we were the best team that year. I just think we didn't play our greatest in the finals, which really sucks. It's always going to leave a bad taste for all of us, but that's part of competition. There will always be upsets, there will always be teams who have good runs or figure it out. And while it can also be really frustrating, it's also what makes the job really fun.
TLL: I was going to ask this later, but it makes for a nice tangent. This season the developers have really pitched the idea of lots of changes. They had the sense that the previous season felt stale, so they wanted to do a lot of switching up. As a result, the meta has changed substantially several times this season. Has that made it harder to get your footing this year, and does it make things kind of feel like they're more up in the air as opposed to other years?
PBM: I personally prefer it. I don't know what the general pro player-base thinks of it. Part of the job is being able to adapt to different styles. The part that makes this year a little bit weird for people is that there's two different things when it comes to style. There's what style your team is good at in terms of players—if you think of people like Aadapting, the picture that would pop up into most people's head is hyper carry, late-game junglers that clean up. So you can have a player archetype and then you also have the style of the meta.
The healing patch, for example. Of course you saw a lot of Hel and Aphro support, Guan Yu solo, all that type of stuff. The problem that really comes is, when you have big patches so frequently, it's hard to figure out how to mix the patch with what your players are good at. And that's really the puzzle that's hard in a short time frame. That's part of the reason The Ferryman have a lot of success, because those players are very good at knowing what their own strengths are. So when they see a patch, they can really dig deep into, 'oh, I want to play this style.' Cyno is a great example of that. He is a player that is very scrutinized for it, like when we saw Surtr Jungle earlier on in the year. But the benefit of that is it makes it a lot easier to adapt patch-to-patch because he's trying to stay consistent within his style. I'd say someone like myself, for example—I try a lot of different styles, a lot of different characters, and that can make it really hard for yourself and your team to figure everything out and have it all click.
TLL: I want to return a little bit to the previous seasons. Season 6, you were still with PandaCat, but he moved out of the duo lane and into mid. What went into that decision to grab Arkkyl and move PandaCat to mid, and how was the adjustment playing with PandaCat but not in the same lane?
PBM: The initial reasoning for it was actually unrelated to Panda. I didn't think the EUnited team was going to stick together, partly because of the LAN format change and moving people to Georgia, and Screammmmm, for example, had to finish high school. Also, we just weren't having the best scrim environment, in my opinion, at the end of it. I think all of us had wanted a change on that team. We were all young as well, so it probably felt worse than it actually was at the time. I just wanted a team that I felt like was going to be a little bit more professional in scrims, a little bit more tryhard. I think that was something [EUnited] weren't great at.
It started by me playing with Twig, and I had asked him what he thought of other European players since mixed rosters were a possibility. And I had played with Arkkyl at the EUnited Invitational earlier that summer in season five. I thought he was a really good player and he played well on Dignitas, so it made sense to me to try that out. And at the time, there actually weren't a lot of midlaners who were moving to Georgia. PrettyPrime and Yammyn were the two big ones that weren't willing to make the move to Georgia. One of the options was Dardez, who had role swapped at that time, and the second was Panda.
To me, it made sense because he's such a good teammate when it comes to being tryhard in scrims. He's pretty good at giving his team confidence and he's a really vocal back liner, which is important to have in mid. It's really important to have somebody who is vocal and they're confident around the map and they give you an idea of what they can do around objectives or when they could kill tanks. I actually preferred Panda in mid instead of ADC, which I think most people would think is crazy to say. But throughout most SMITE metas, I'm playing more in midland than I am in duo lane. Throughout the game, I see the midlaner way more than I see the ADC, and especially [Season 6] when it was the invade meta, the supports were playing in mid pretty much the entire game. So even though he wasn't in duo lane, we were basically still 2v2-ing. We were playing a lot of 2v2 combos at that time, and I felt like Panda actually had more control in mid because he could control when he was securing objectives, when we would rotate to different lanes, etc. I had a lot of fun that year. I thought it worked out really well.
Heiss takes the stage prior to the Grand Finals, Season 6 SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: And for what it's worth, that roster struggled to find stability in mid after PandaCat went back to duo lane. In Season 7, people look back at that Ghost team as one of the most dominant teams ever, and for good reason. You won two out of the three tournaments, you had a very, very impressive second split and in that finals against the Pittsburgh Knights, you really lost that series on a knife's edge, right? It was ultimately decided on a couple of plays and a couple of fights that were very close. Are there regrets for that set in particular, things you wish that you and your team would have done better? Or was it just an unlucky roll of the dice?
PBM: The only really big one I have—I think I've shown it on stream once—but I thought we could have ended the game in Game 5. I showed it from my point of view because, especially while we were all playing at home [during the pandemic], I record every scrim and every game I play, so I have my point of view and the comms from that set. There was a siege where we had fire giant and fineokay killed Zapman by himself, so we were in a 5v4. Paul was on The Morrigan and he was trying to flank. Alec and I heard him and Alec hit him out of stealth and then I Khepri rooted him, and we burnned both of Paul's actives and his Morri ult at the start of the fight.
We backed up, we healed a little bit with fire, and then I plucked Cthulhu and we Krakened him, and we got Cthulhu ult and Kuzenbo ult and their thorns. Basically, we were in a 5v4, and all of their ultimates were down and PandaCat and I were full HP, and I had Khepri ult. I was calling to end the game and people didn't sound that confident in it. We thought we could make a slower play and be in a better position to win. And that is something I'll pretty much always regret, is not forcing us to end the game.
I am still confident that we would have been able to do it. But for the rest of the set, it's hard to say if I have regrets because I feel like we played the way we wanted to play, for the most part. Things felt a little antsy, like the way our comms were. People felt a little bit more on edge. That's not to say I wasn't a part of that as well. I think, you know, it's part of the game. People get excited, people get a little bit too ahead of themselves. A lot of plays just didn't go our way. Some of that could be preparation, some of that could be us being too overzealous in the moment. Sometimes it doesn't fall your way. It's also really easy to look too deeply into everything you could have done. At the end of the day, they played really well as well. Fred played great in that set. I thought Paul of course played great. Sometimes that's how it goes.
TLL: In the five seasons since you won the World Championship, four of those seasons have been ended by Paul's team. And when you think of the revolving door of midlanders that you had on the RivaL/Ghost/Dragons rosters, was there ever a consideration of, maybe, you go out and get Paul and see if that puts you over the edge? Obviously that didn't happen, but was that ever a conversation?
PBM: I wanted to. He had asked to join after Season 7 Worlds, because that Pittsburgh Knights team didn't want to continue playing with Zap. Paul maybe wanted to join in general. He talked to Sam after that set [in Seaspm 7] and Sam had tweeted, 'even though we lost, I still don't regret leaving the team.' Paul said to Sam, 'that's a pretty powerful thing to say. I'm surprised.' And he asked Sam about it. He had asked me and Sam to join and I actually wanted to do it, but the general consensus was that people felt more like they wanted to try to beat him. My personal opinion is that there was a little bit too much ego and pride in it. I always want to do whatever gives me the best chance to win. I do think Paul has been one of the best players, if not the best player, since he's joined the league. He's proven that time and time again. I don't really think there's much up for debate on that topic. And I did want to do it.
It's less about getting Paul, though. Something I have learned in the past is that a lot of the success I've had and a lot of the styles that we played—I'd even equate the current Warriors to this to an extent—you're just kind of playing SMITE better than people, but that has a really short lifespan. Everyone in the Pro League is a good player. Everyone tends to be pretty smart, especially when it comes to tournament time and figuring stuff out, how they want to prep, and how they want to play for a certain team. The big thing that we lacked in mid specifically was that, with the exception of Twig in the fall of Season 7, we didn't really have playstyles that we needed. A lot of the SMITE that we played on those teams was 'we're just going to play the meta better than these teams.' Generally speaking, that's not really a great recipe for success. It doesn't differentiate you enough and it leaves it very open for, well, 'what if you just have a bad day on that day?' Because that is going to happen. To me, it's not the most sound strategy. We tried it with Hurri and we tried it with Twig, and I did like what both of those players brought to the team.
But in the long run, finding a style with a midlaner wasn't the hardest thing. It was adapting the other players to the midlaner that I thought was really difficult. Hurri and Twig are the best example. They played really good styles with us. Hurri had a tournament that he pretty much carried us by himself on Janus. He had it perma-banned from nearly every game, and every game he didn't have it banned, we just won outright. Twig was very similar. He had a lot of picks that nobody else was playing that he was very good at. But I feel like we were using them to help the rest of us rather than the other way around, and I think mid has been one of, if not the hardest carry roles in the game in the past 3 or 4 years. Playing through your midlaner is really important. We never really made a conscious effort to do that.
TLL: Paul on the Dragons might be the biggest 'what if' in professional SMITE history. That's a 'Kevin Durant to the Warriors' type situation. Going into this year, the roster really switched up. I think everyone needed a change of pace. You wound up with this core from the Warriors last year of Vote, Dardez, and Nika. And I know you’ve had a roster change and we'll get to that a little bit later. But that that roster in particular had been pretty heavily criticized in terms of being too stubborn, maybe sticking together for too long when the results weren't quite there. What made you think that this was the right place for you?
PBM: I wanted to play with Dardez. It comes down to what I've learned throughout the past couple of years. When a lot of people think of me from the EUnited, the RivaL, the Ghost years, maybe even the Dragons to some extent, they think of me playing very aggressive characters and trying to snowball the map and trying to invade and do all of these things. But truthfully, I've been pretty against that playstyle ever since season eight. Since the start of it, I have repeatedly said to my teammates that I didn't think it was the best way to play the game, and the game has changed so much that I wanted to adopt different play styles. And for whatever reason, that didn't work out. Maybe part of it was me crutch picking those characters. If you're trying to change something and then it's not working and people are getting frustrated and morale is down because maybe you're losing scrims or you're losing sets, it's really easy to go back to what you know, go back to what you're good at.
In the long run, it did hinder us quite a bit, and I wasn't a big fan of it. Tank meta memes aside, I do think carries have had the better hand of that discussion for many years now. Really ever since the end of Season 7 when they nerfed thorns. They just get more farm than the other roles. The items are very skewed in their favor as well. In the late game, Qin's Sais and Soul Reaver and other items alike. Dardez is someone that really fits the way I see the game and fits my playstyle, and I don't think he's overly selfish. He can play games where he's a character like Morri or Hera, and he can carry the game, but he can also play something like Erlang mid this year and he's like facilitating for everyone else because he still has that in the back of his head. He still has that support brain in him from when he used to be a support years ago. He's also a really easy person to bounce ideas off of, so that was really the main attraction for me at the start of the year.
A lot of the scrutiny and criticism given to that trio is warranted. But from the outside looking in, people don't really get the full picture. I had my own concerns and my own guesses as to, you know, 'why do they keep playing together? Why do they not have the tournament success?' And it was something that I asked all three of them about. Being on the inside of it, their scrim environment probably wasn't as productive as it needed to be in the past years. I don't think it's because any of them are unprofessional, but I'd equate it to the way that I felt with Panda and fineokay towards the end of our tenure together. You just get really comfortable being around the same people. If you see someone make the same mistake that you're used to them making, you kind of get exhausted of bringing it up. Or maybe, you know, there's a character that you think is really good, but you know your teammates don't want to play it, so you don't really fight them on it. You don't really bring it up. You get caught in what's comfortable and you try to get the best at what you're comfortable on.
To some extent that can be a winning formula. It is good to know what you're good at and to play to the best of your abilities. I think that is the reason that trio in specific, whether they had Neil and Fred or they had Raffer and Cherryo, anytime Dardez got his signature gods they would just win the game, and you'd see him be a very, very highly banned out player on that team. But the downside of it was, if you didn't have those characters, if you didn't have those comps that you were comfortable with, what does the team really look like? What is the identity? I think ultimately that is what was lacking on the team and is what led to the roster change. But as you said, we can mention that later.
TLL: Now's a good time to mention, actually, what went into that roster change. I know that a lot of other teams made roster changes with a much quicker trigger. We saw the Leviathans move on from Zapman. We saw the 15-1 Oni Warriors move on from AwesomeJake. But the Dragons played it slow, and that's something you've done in the past. What led to finally deciding to move on from Vote and seek out VaporishCoast?
PBM: I didn't like the energy and the atmosphere that was going on around the team. I didn't mind—I don't want to say I didn't mind losing because I hate losing. But what I mean to say is, the way we were losing, I didn't feel like it was hopeless. There were a lot of sets and a lot of games that we should have won or we just made pretty simple-to-fix mistakes, whether it be positioning or someone misses an ability or whatever. I'm never quick to be upset at that type of stuff. What I really didn't like, though, is we would go into games, and I felt like people weren't as confident as maybe they should have been, or it just felt like we were playing on a knife's edge a little bit when it came to some scenarios or some drafts. And from my perspective, something we've been good at in tournaments throughout the year is drafting through specific win conditions, drafting through specific characters and comps and things that we know we can do well.
Any time those win cons got banned out, Dardez and I specifically would be trying to open up the draft and trying to get an idea for what people wanted to do, and I felt like nobody was really being assertive. I don't know if that's because they weren't confident, or if it's because they didn't want to have a clash or disagreement during the actual draft within a set. But it felt like the energy wasn't quite right and I felt like in scrims, it kind of carried over as well. I don't think people were complacent in terms of trying to get better as a player, but I felt like there were just some topics that just weren't getting touched anymore because we were just like, 'oh, that's just how it is.' And I just felt like the environment was due for a shakeup.
From what I learned from the outside looking in against that trio of players as well as playing with them, I think they did just need a change. Nika talked about it a little bit on stream, but we had talked about either one of him or Vote being swapped out. It really sucked at the time. It was really stressful because I didn't lose belief in either of them as players. I still think Vote is a very good player and he was never a bad teammate or anything like that. It's just one of those spots where they just needed the environment shakeup. They needed something to feel different. They needed something where you're coming into scrims and it feels new, it feels fresh, it feels like you're working towards something. That's pretty much exactly what Coast had given us.
Heiss (second from right) during a Quarterfinal match at the Season 8 SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: He came in and made a pretty big difference immediately. I want to get to that in a second, but before I do, we saw the Leviathans pick up PandaCat. He came out of retirement, and a lot of people were wondering what it would be like. He wasn't exactly successful in the SCC. Seeing the impact he had immediately on that Leviathans team, were you surprised at all that? And what does it mean to you to be able to compete against PandaCat?
PBM: I was not surprised. It's kind of funny. I don't think I said it publicly because it's kind of weird to say to other teams, 'we think your player is going to get kicked.' But I actually did say instantly that I had thought that he would end up on that roster. It was a gut feeling thing. He's always been friendly with Ronny and Sheento, and of course he's good friends with Alec. That was just the type of roster where if they had a slow start, I thought it made sense that they would make a change and that he would be the perfect one to fit it. So I wasn't surprised that they got him or that they did well with him. The great part about playing with Panda is that he's extremely confident in himself, and he kind of gives that aura of confidence to the rest of his teammates. He really he gives you a belief that, 'hey, if you get me ahead, if you play the map this way, I can win us the game.' And he's very experienced at doing that. He's very good at doing that. So I wasn't surprised that they got him. I wasn't surprised that they had a good amount of success with him because think he's such a good plug-and-play player, especially if the problem that you're trying to fix is that you don't feel like you have a spot to play through on the map. He'll kind of always give you that spot. He'll always give you that confidence.
When it comes to playing against him, it's really fun. We haven't played against each other in quite a long time. We've always had the discussions or of course the idea always comes up in your head every now and then of 'what would it be like for me to play with Cyclone and him to play with Aror?' for example. Because as duo lanes we played against each other for—I don't even know how long—six years, five years. And you always have thoughts like that back and forth. And we would always make jokes like, 'yeah, if I was playing against you, I would own you,' that sort of thing, just in good fun. So it's really cool. It's always going to be like a friendly rivalry. And we've only played each other twice, if I'm not mistaken. And we both 3-0'd each other, so that's about on par for us.
TLL: A lot of people had frustratingly seen this team get these leads in these sets, a lot of 2-0s, that you know, failed to bring home. And then for Coast to come in and you not only get the 2-0 lead on the Leviathans, but you bring it home in a third game. What did that do for team morale to get that huge win over the Leviathans? Was a moment of, 'okay, we're in this'?
PBM: It's weird to say ‘must-win’ for a set like that, especially because at that point in the split, we were pretty much guaranteed not going to catch the Ferrymen for the first seed in the group, or the Levis for that matter, even with beating them. So it was really a must-win in the sense of we just needed something to get people rolling. We need people's confidence to come back. I knew that Coast would do really well that set. When we were going through the roster change, I watched literally every single one of his VODs from his point of view, like I watched every single game he played in the SPL, because if I was going to try to do a roster change like that, I wanted to be certain of it. And I just knew that he would dominate. He's just such a talented player. He's really confident as well. It's kind of the same thing I was saying with Panda.
When you have a player like that who is very confident, is very assertive when they're ahead, that can say 'hey, if we do this we're going to win this game.' It makes the entire team believe in their role a little bit more. It makes everybody feel like we have a direction, we have a path to play through. That's kind of that's actually a better way of articulating what I was saying earlier. Dardez, for example, if he's playing on Morri and we go into the game, every fight is planned out. We know exactly what he wants to do. We know when he wants to fight, when he wants to rotate, what target he wants to go on, how he wants to do everything. And there are a lot of characters we have on this team that are like that. But it's also nice to be on the other end of it where it doesn't matter what characters you are, you get a player ahead and you feel like you're going to win the game. That's what Coast brought to the team and what he brought to us in that set. Just the feeling of that was kind of different for them, and it helped morale quite a bit.
TLL: And then you finished the regular season pretty strong with wins against the Kings and Hounds. But you did go 0-3 against the Ferrymen and 0-3 against the Warriors. Now, those are the teams virtually everyone is chasing. Everyone's looking to catch them. It's easy to look at the 0-3 and say, 'okay, the Dragons aren't close,' but from your perspective, how close are you to being able to compete with these top teams more consistently?
PBM: Very close. Against the Warriors, that was a tough game one. I was just pretty much useless in that game. They did a really nice job of flexing Athena, which they hadn't shown the entire split. Panitom hadn't played it once. It had always gone to Genetics. Then they had counter pick for support, and they built a draft that was really, really hard for me to play frontline against and believe I was the only frontliner in that comp. So in my opinion, they just out drafted us. And then game 2 Dardez and I just absolutely inted. I died to an Athena ult invading purple at level 4 for no reason. He invaded a red buff as Baba Yaga. Two lanes that were otherwise winning and were otherwise free farming, we just inted both of our leads at the time and it derailed the game completely. Game three of that set, we were actually stomping them and then we had a mis-comm. I told Nika, 'hey, they're going to look for you here.' And he had thought we were baiting him, but we weren't. And we blow a lead where we have a Phoenix down and we've won every fight for like 15 minutes. Then he gets picked and we lose the game off of it because we chain died.
The Ferrymen set was a little bit different. I always hate blaming draft. It's really cope to blame draft. I do think I would have played things differently knowing what I know now. There were a couple picks that they played, specifically a few flex picks like Amaterasu jungle and Poseidon solo, we really didn't have much experience playing against. We played against it a little bit in scrims, but to be honest, Baskin played those characters better than the practice that we were getting in the week. I don't know if that was people just being kind of lazy in scrims, or if Baskin is just better at those gods. That's not really up for me to decide. Our priorities were just not up to par against those two teams in terms of how we played the meta and the way we played the map.
I guess the last little piece of thought is, especially against the Ferrymen, Morri has been a really big pick for us against that team, and she had been comp banned for our past three sets. So we had beat the Levi's, we had beat the Kings, and then one of the core things that we're drafting through this split just gets completely comp banned, and it changes drafts for enemy teams quite a bit. I do think that it played a big part as well, because it went from us having a god that we know if we get this, we're going to win. And if they ban it out, we're going to have something else open to. We don't have the character at all and now they get to ban something like Anhur or Rat that Coast and Lasbra have been very successful on. That does play a part. But at the end of the day, we played bad in those sets. I don't really feel like we're far off on those teams at all, but we definitely haven't showed that yet, unfortunately.
TLL: They were competitive games, just struggling to scratch across the wins. Speaking of the draft, you've been criticized a lot this season for coming back to the Aphrodite, and it's easy for fans to see a team that's losing and look for a scapegoat. People would say 'oh, Mike is playing Aphrodite, even though it's fallen out of meta and nobody's playing it anymore.' What is that process like behind the scenes? How do you evaluate picks and, despite the losing, what made you think that Aphrodite was something to keep coming back to?
PBM: In the first phase, I would have been on board with everybody. The first phase was really frustrating for me because we had played the character right when she came out—I say that that because she basically got re-kitted with the way they changed her at the Season of Hope patch—we were 7-0, 8-0 on it in scrims. And all the games were stomps and, and in all of the games, Lasbra and I played a very specific way together with the way we wanted to play the map. And then when we picked it in the SPL, we just didn't play that way, and it was a source of frustration for me because we've scrimmed with this so much and then we went into the SPL and we played a completely different way with it. It was really annoying for me because I felt like we weren't doing what we knew we could on the character, and that led to me stubbornly picking it in spots where we should have taken a step back from it and we should have worked on other issues that we were having at the time. Looking back, that that was definitely on me. I just think the character's kit is good. I've always thought it was, even before the changes. It was a god that I wanted to play at prior seasons for different reasons, depending on the meta. This split, we've been really successful on it. I don't think the record would show it, but I don't think our record would show that any pick is that dominant.
There have been a lot of games, for example the Warriors game I was just mentioning—we rolled every single fight in that game, and that was an Aphro game and we lost that game. But we didn't lose because I was Aphro. We had just previously played it against the Levi's and we 3-0'd them. It has been a pick that's been good for us. And stubbornly evaluating a pick is important when it comes to what your core beliefs are in the game. I'll use Netroid as an example. Netroid has played through duo pressure the entire year. So if character like Izanami gets nerfed, you still see him go back to it from time to time when his team is struggling because he knows what he can do on the pick. And that's what I was trying to build with Aphro early on in the year, because it was a character that I believed in so much throughout my career, but I think I rushed the work on it. I wanted to cram all of the work that I wanted to do with the character into a short time period, and it was not wise to do that, because we had Dardez on ping at the time and Lasbra and I were still getting used to playing together. Once we had that break between the splits and we were able to scrim and we were able to figure it out, we're all on the same page with how we want to use the character, how we want to see it, how it plays out in fights, how it plays out in games. It's something we're all a lot more confident in now than we were before.
TLL: There's a rumor going around that this could be the last season of the Smite Pro League. Obviously, I can't ask you to comment either way on that, but I did want to know, have you thought about what's next? We in the SMITE community have been really lucky to have you. Have you thought about what you're going to do after?
PBM: I've gone through it back and forth in different offseasons. The way I've always approached it, or anything, honestly, is I trust my gut with that type of stuff. It's really hard to know because I am so focused on the Pro League currently. It's really hard to like give my time to something else professionally. I had flirted around with other hobbies or other things that maybe were little passion projects. But at the end of the day, I do like esports a lot. I do like gaming a lot. I do like the industry as a whole. I definitely have gotten to experience a lot of different avenues and a lot of different connections through that. Ideally I'd like to explore something within that industry, if it made sense. I don't know if that would mean streaming or if it would mean working with orgs or whatever. The current state of esports has not been the greatest the past couple of years bouncing back from Covid. So I'm not really sure. But I do know that I've definitely loved the job that I've been able to do, and doing something somewhat associated to it would be really cool.
TLL: Well, I wish you all the luck. That's it for my questions. Is there anyone you want to shout out here at the end?
PBM: Thanks for the time. Just shout outs to the fans, of course. None of us would be able to do what we do in the Pro League if it wasn't for the fans who enjoy watching. So whether you love a certain team, hate a certain team, we definitely all appreciate that people love the game that we love and they want to take their time to watch it and pay attention to it.
PolarBearMike and the Jade Dragons will return to action on Friday, January 12th in Arlington, Texas. The SMITE World Championship will be held at Esports Stadium Arlington and broadcast at Twitch.tv/smitegame.
