Insider Gaming spoke to GamerLegion Support, Paul ‘Speeed’ Bocchicchio, at ESL One Birmingham 2026 to discuss GamerLegion narrowly missing playoffs, advice for NA players, and what made Melchior ‘Seleri’ Hillenkamp so special.
GamerLegion fell agonizingly short of playoffs in Birmingham, but speeed believes it is “a matter of time” until GL break in to Tier 1 event playoffs.
What are your feelings about narrowly missing out on the playoffs in this tournament?
We were one game away, you know, we had like a 14k net worth lead against BetBoom. If we won that game, we’d be on the stage, and my goal for this year was actually to make it to a playoffs.
I mean, I want to make top four, win a tournament, but like the next goal is make a playoff, and we thought we had it, like our whole team in that game thought we had it, and we just threw it.
So, I’m a little disappointed, but I also love being here, so mixed feelings.
So, are you going to take that lesson and tighten up your game in advantageous positions?
Yeah, for sure, I think it’s a lot of mental, right? You get in that situation and your mind starts thinking, ‘Oh my god, we did it, like we killed the storm and no buyback,’ and my brain’s like, ‘Is that it?’ You know?
Then you lose a bit of focus, because you need to tighten up your brain when you’re playing these intense games, and you loosen up a bit, and it can cost you.
So you just gotta stay more level-headed, for sure.
In terms of ending games with the new patch, do you feel like it’s gonna have a difference in terms of ending games in the new patch?
When new patches come out, people don’t exactly know what to do, and so games tend to draw out. However, it seems like the games that are being played, people are playing very high tempo.
There’s also some items that I think are allowing for that, so no, the meta seems pretty fast, but usually patches do slow the game down.
You’re known as one of the more analytical players, partially because of your content. What are you looking at with the new patch?
The first thing I always look at is my own heroes, selfishly, of course. You know, I also had to read the patch before my series, so I really only just looked at whatever would impact me, or primarily what would impact me.
I mean, they changed up the five pool a lot, which was nice. I was playing the same hero, I was playing Warlock like every game, so it’s nice that he doesn’t have Black Grimoire anymore. He’s not bad, but that’s not what he was.
With the creep equilibrium, how is that going to change the game?
It’s huge. It’s going to affect pre-game a lot, right? Before the game, teams would go behind the tower and block the wave.
You would develop strategies around, like, ‘Okay, what lane needs the most help because of the starting equilibrium?’ And I honestly do think the safe lane was a bit too good.
I think it was a bit too hard for offlane to win. As a result, strategies for the offlane were very sacrificial. There was a lot of wave dragging, a lot of ‘Let’s just sac the lane, make stacks and recover,’ which is why Batrider and stuff like that were particularly good.
So I think it’s good that the offlane has more options. You can more likely win the lane because you’re not just starting under the tower. So I think it was a good change.
Speaking of Position 5, Seleri announced that he would be stepping away from Dota 2. What do you think made him like such a good player?
I think his consistency in his hero pool was really important for Gaiman. You know, his Enchantress, his Chen, all of his wave shove. I think he was very ahead of that when it came to Gaiman, when they had a lot of success.
I’ve watched so many of that guy’s replays and his consistency. When him and Tofu were dominating the scene, I’d watch these guys play, and you could just tell they were on the same page.
They’re coming mid at the same, the same two-second window. They’re hitting their move at the same time.
I mean, they clearly had a playbook, but he was so good at executing on it with these unit heroes and just keeping the tempo of the game. So he really pushed that forward. He definitely pushed that meta forward.
You guys are kind of the NA flag bearers. Is it pressure? Is it privilege? How do you feel?
I think it was initially very much a privilege. I think it helped us get into the scene because frankly, we had less competition. I don’t love saying that, but it’s true.
Now that we are getting to play in these tournaments, partially because of that, I do feel pressure to actually perform and take games off the top teams, which we’ve been able to do, and that’s been super exciting for me.
Say there’s a 20-year-old talented NA player, what advice are you giving him in terms of how to progress?
I would say play EU pubs, you have no choice. So if you’re high-ranked on NA, it’s fake. You need to go play EU. I mean, it is what it is. It literally means nothing.
Like, rank one NA is like 10k MMR. It’s like rank 2000 in Europe or something, maybe lower. You need to play EU pubs, and you need to make friends.
This is kind of how it goes. You top 200 EU and make some friends. That’s just how it goes.
In terms of your content, Dota has a strong tradition of using content creators for broadcast talent. Is that something you’re interested in for the future?
Yes, but only after I feel like I’ve won enough in pro Dota. My main goal is like win a lot, and then maybe I’ll slow down because it is a lot. Playing pro Dota is very stressful. So yeah, maybe for sure.
In terms of moving forward, what are the concrete things you’re working on to make the step to playoffs or to Top 4, as a team?
I think as a team, we’re honestly on trajectory. I’m going to keep it real. I don’t think we need to change much.
I think our last bootcamp, we worked exceptionally hard. I’m personally under the impression that our team is genuinely working harder, potentially than almost every other team.
I’m not saying that just to be cocky or whatever. I do genuinely believe that. I think individually, every player on our team is also working exceptionally hard. So I’m under the impression that it’s a matter of time.
I feel like our results are showing that to some extent as well. This tournament, we took a game off Tundra, who’s literally destroying people. We took two games off Parivision, who, I think took a step forward.
So I think we’re on pace, just a matter of time, in my opinion. Maybe it’s cocky, but that’s how I feel.
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.
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