Rdu: It’s a lot of work and practice

He is one of the youngest but at the same time one of the most succesful Hearthstone players. Romanian Dima ‚Rdu‘ Radu is definitely on a roll at the moment. In this interview with escene.de he talks about the importance of being a member in a Hearthstone team and what the future development of Hearthstone could be like.

escene.de: Hi RDu, first of all I have to say thank you for taking the time for
this interview. When did you start playing Hearthstone and did you
always want to become a pro player? Was that what you were aiming for or did it just
happen?
Dima ‚Rdu‘ Radu: Hello. I started playing Hearthstone almost one year ago just
because it looked like a fun game and no, i didn’t think of being pro at
that time because Hearthstone was new and there were no tournaments at that
time. After tournaments started to appear i played in almost all of them
and won a lot 🙂

Out of all the nine heroes, which one is your favourite and why?
My favourite is warrior because i like the concept of control.

You
are currently playing for MeetYourMakers. How important is it for you to
have such a strong team behind you and does it help you a lot in
competitive play?
In hearthstone,having a team helps alot because you want
to practice in silence,without letting your opponents see what you
play.

While looking at the players of professional teams in other games like LoL or DotA,
they are not only playing under the same banner but also have to play
together to achieve victory. In Hearthstone you are on your own. Do you train or
interact a lot with your teammates anyway?
As i said earlier,practicing
together without letting opponents from tournaments see what we play is
the best thing and helps a lot in HS.

Hearthstone is still quite small compared to other e-sport games. From your point of view from the top of the Hearthstone scene, how do you think the game is expected to evolve over the next months/years?
I think hearthstone will last for more than 10 years if they keep updating the game constantly with new set of cards.

Growth comes hand in hand with changes. Do you welcome major changes to the game or would you appreciate it more if it stayed nearly the same?
I appreciate all the updates and i like them because they also increase the popularity of the game and keep it fresh,thing which is really important for the health of the game and for tournament play.

You won several tournaments in recent weeks. I think we can say you are pretty successful at the moment. How much work is it to stay at the top?
It’s a lot of work+practice.The deckbuilding matters a lot and knowing what you expect from the meta definetly helps.

Even if the prizepools and fanbases are smaller, there are plenty of good Hearthstone players. How much of a connection do you have to other pro gamers?
Yeah,i have a lot of connections in the scene,knowing most of the pro players and not having too many enemies :).I am a friendly person and i respect my opponents.

We all know that e-sports is getting bigger and bigger, also at Blizzard Entertainment. With their new game Heroes of the Storm coming out, do you think Hearthstone will fade into the background or is Hearthstone an absolute term for e-sports now?
I think hearthstone will continue to get bigger because it’s a card game that is very interesting and easy to play at start,very hard afterwards.

What do you think about the upcoming nerfs for Leeroy and the starving Buzzard? Are there other cards that could/should receive some nerfs or even buffs?
I like the buzzard nerf,even tough it’s too hars because hunter was getting out of limits.I think the leeroy one is unnecessary and if they wanted to do that,they had to do it a while ago.

As a player who reached the top, which advice would you hand out to players who want to become better and even want to take part in tournaments?
They should definetly watch streams and tournaments and play a lot to see how the meta looks like and then find out decks that beat that.

Thanks a lot for your time and I wish you the best luck for your upcoming tournaments. And of course, the last words are yours.
Thank you for the interview!I hope that i will become better and better and i also hope that HS will get bigger and bigger through time 🙂
Pictures: dailydot.com, dreamhack.se, www.hearthstone.net