While we all sit in our comfortable chairs, waiting for BlizzCon to commence, Dignitas’ Heroes of the Storm team has already started the tournament. During the past few days, BlizzCon Opening Week has featured all the qualified teams, split into two groups, fighting for their spot in the main BlizzCon tournament.

All of the teams have been battling it out in best-of-two series against every team in their group to be seeded into the main tournament taking place at BlizzCon.

To help us take a look at the group stage matches, we met up with Coach Nabby who has been around the team both on and off the stage.

Before the group stage games, the team bootcamped in Korea. Nabby was not present, but he was in contact with the team all the way through. He knows the players better than most, and he has made his own observation of the team environment.

Nabby: "I think our scene is stronger than Korea, so going there gave the team really important scrims. Not only that, but I also think it’s important for the team to get away together to build team chemistry.

As a team, we are very competitive, and we believe that we can be one of the top competitors to the BlizzCon title. But we can’t take away from these individual players that they are hardworking, they always believe that they can improve individually, and as a team. We don’t have any inflated egos, we have a very joking culture off the stage and that gives a good environment around the players in general.

When the team went to Korea they picked up on the Korean meta during the hard scrim blocks. We tried out a lot of different things against them and figured out what would work for us as well. This has led to the increasing popularity of Tyrael and Anub’arak.

I think it’s important to mention that we did not change our playstyle to be like the Koreans, instead we looked at it to see what would fit into our playstyle."

Dignitas vs. Leftovers (2-0)

Nabby: "Personally, this was one of the matchups that was really up in the air for me. Leftovers were not able to have a bootcamp, so they were pretty much a dark horse for me. We just went in and played what we wanted to. We respect them a lot, especially what they can bring in a LAN setting."

Dignitas vs. TheOne (2-0)

Nabby: "I was impressed by how confident TheOne were playing on Day 1. That definitely brought them in on the radar as a team that can do well in the tournament. I like how they didn’t change their meta, but instead stayed with their comfort picks in Illidan and Tyrande.

Though they did have good results, we didn’t do extra research on them - we had done a great deal amount of research of everyone. We did try to watch every game on Day 1 to see how every team played."

Dignitas vs. HeroesHearth Esports (2-0)

Nabby: "HeroesHearth is actually my favourite team from NA, I think they have a good mindset and good meta. I think the NA LuL meme is just a meme. They are making a great effort with their new player, Homi. We were prepared for a series with some more spicy drafts, and I was surprised by the Valeera and liked it. We had seen the Uther Tank playstyle in scrims and even tried it ourselves, but it didn’t fit our playstyle."

Dignitas vs. Tempest (2-0)

Nabby: "We had our hiccups in game one, this was definitely a series where we went in and expected a 1-1, but we played it well in game 1 and took it home in game 2. Things overall went pretty smoothly. The solo Support Abathur took them by surprise, which became very apparent in their next series against HHE, but it wasn’t a strategy we had prepared specifically for them. We have played solo Support Abathur in the past and had great success with it. It really takes good macro play and burst engage."

Dignitas vs. Mindfreak (2-0)

Nabby: "We come into all these series in a very serious manner and use them to our advantage. For a game like this, we pulled out some picks that could maybe have an intimidating factor on our opponents in future matches, giving on more of an edge in drafting. For example, we had Alarak, Thrall, and Anub’arak. We still focus on having fun for a match like this, but fun for us also means playing a clean series no matter who we play against."

Overall thoughts

Nabby: "In terms of results, we are on par with our expectations of coming out as first or second seed from the group stage. We did not expect a 10-0 record, but I’m very happy and proud of the team for pulling it off.

We still have the main tournament ahead of us, so my main focus now is not to make improvements on gameplay as I don’t think we can effectively improve a lot. I’m focusing on the environment around the guys, and that the moral stays high."

Upcoming Match: Dignitas vs. Tempo Storm

Nabby: "I’m personally going to prepare as I usually do for HeroesHearth. Tempo Storm have their own niche picks, so we still have something to work on. We won’t change anything, we’ll just do our things. Basically, we won’t adapt to them, they will have to adapt to us as I believe we are generally the stronger team. I don’t expect any big surprises."

Is Gen.G still the biggest threat?

Nabby: "In terms of the bracket, I still think we will go all the way and face Gen.G in the Grand Finals. We do respect Miracle though, we scrimmed against them in Korea, but I still think we will make it.

We are not completely confident against a team like Gen.G just because they lost a game in the group stage. No one should be confident against a world-class team like them. We are excited. Gen.G and Dignitas always push each other to new levels, so both teams are hungry to meet the other.

The environment is a factor. I think we can feed off of the energy from the western crowd, but when the players from both Gen.G and Dignitas put on those headsets it all disappears."