Danil ‘Diamondprox’ Reshetnikov is one of League of Legends’ most experienced esports players, having played at MSI, Worlds, the LCL, LCS and more in over 10+ years with the likes of Gambit, Moscow Five and others.
Now, at 29 years old, he’s ready for his next adventure with Bifrost in Division 1 of the NLC, the UK/Nordics European Regional League. What does he think of his new teammates? What are his top moments from his storied career? And what are his goals this split? Dom Sacco asks the Russian legend in this in-depth livestreamed interview.
Hi Diamondprox and welcome to the UK and Nordics League of Legends scene, the NLC!
Thank you, I’m glad to be here. I’m enjoying the team atmosphere [with Bifrost] so far, we’ve only played together for a couple of weeks but it’s going quite fine.
What made you want to play in this region in particular? And why did you decide to join Biofrost?
Overall, I like playing in Europe. Whenever I had the chance to play with English-speaking teams, I really enjoyed it. I never had a bad experience ever, only some rules being applied that forced me not to play in Europe. I think NLC is one of the bigger ERL leagues, so it’s a good place to be.
Bifrost really caught my eye with their roster. I already knew their coaching staff, we were considering bringing them to Team Spirit because they both speak Russian, but they decided to go with NLC, we had to respect their decision but now I have a chance to work with them. I enjoy the roster and that’s why I joined – that’s the biggest reason I think.
You said before we recorded this you feel like the current Bifrost roster is a good unit.
Yep, definitely. I feel like everyone on this roster wants to win. They don’t want to pull all the resources onto themselves so they look better or whatever, it feels like everyone is willing to sacrifice for the team’s success, to learn and admit mistakes instead of trying to defend useless points, which sometimes happens on some rosters.
When everyone’s motivated to work together, it feels like you’re actually improving. And that’s the most interesting part for me in competitive League of Legends – working together as a team, as a whole organism together, sharing knowledge, helping each other out and stuff like this. That’s what League of Legends is all about for me and I’m glad to have this situation again.
Regarding specific players, I wouldn’t like to hype the players too much, I think some are really good but I won’t say the names! After this split, I’ll talk about all the good things about them, for now I hope they stay humble and try hard!
As someone who has played the game for over a decade, do you feel its esports has become more team-oriented in more recent years and was more solo-focused early on?
I think League became more team-oriented over time, but early on in the game, the team’s that had players willing to sacrifice for their team to win, those teams succeeded. Us as a team in Moscow Five… I didn’t sacrifice as much as Edward, and Darien was kind of playing his own unique style where he doesn’t require anything. He provides pressure and it kind of work, but it wasn’t intentional.
I think most teams realise you need to help each other. Still, some players like to focus the attention on their lines more than others, and it’s not a bad thing overall – it’s only a bad thing when their attention required is too much, and they’re too focused on top or mid lane, or jungle. Some junglers are too hyper carry oriented and the meta suits this play style very rarely.
Speaking of the meta, what are your thoughts on Riot’s recent changes to reduce damage in League of Legends?
I think those changes are actually very good for the game, they’re overall prolonging the fights and making everyone tankier. Before this, the tenacity stat in the game reduces cc, and some cc is 1.5 seconds and it’s usually 1.2 or 1 second. And whenever you got hit by cc, you’d died before the tenacity would help you survive.
Now, you can actually maybe get away with one cc if it’s not chained by other champs on the enemy team. The best time I had in League was when team fights felt longer. In Season 3, the team fights were kinda long, but as a jungler you could still provide something for the teamfights as a cc machine or dealing damage. But in Season 5 Riot made a very bad decision to make junglers play champs without cc and power farm, and reduce their damage. But the damage of mid-laners was so high, you basically became a useless champion after 20 minutes. Now, most of the junglers provide cc and sustain fights quite well, so they don’t feel as useless.
The thing I’m concerned about is every champion received around 85HP at level 3, and that’s where the early game starts for the junglers. Every jungler wants to gank from level 3 to 6 a few times to provide pressure for their laners.
In some situations, it used to be close when you ganked someone, you didn’t tend to overkill people before level 6. Now, after nerfs to the likes of aggressive early game junglers like Lee Sion, Xin Zhao and Viego, even if you play well as a jungler, you might still not get a kill because of those HP buffs. And I think Riot needs to do something about this level 3 to 6 window, where they need to buff jungler damage so that jungler pressure is the same as it used to be before, but after level 6 I really enjoy the HP buff and resistance buff as well.
“I think NLC is one of the bigger ERL leagues, so it’s a good place to be. Bifrost really caught my eye with their roster. I already knew their coaching staff, we were considering bringing them to Team Spirit because they both speak Russian. I enjoy the roster and that’s why I joined – that’s the biggest reason I think.”
Do you think we’ll see a shift in meta to champions that already had good resistances and health. Some people have said Shyvana may be stronger.
I think we’ll definitely see a shift of the meta, but I wouldn’t say Shyvana gets anything from this buff. Maybe the AD version of Shyvana, but AP Shyvana – which I find more useful – I think will be a little bit worse. You used to burst people down so much, people are afraid of you. But now it’ll just be lower damage and I think the MR buff to all champions reduces the burst on AP champs. Shyvana will struggle a lot from this, and as a bruiser she provides zero cc so I think she’s not so good.
Overall, I think perhaps the meta will shift a lot because of match-ups on the lanes, and the jungler will have to adapt to those match-ups. It’s usually how the game goes, it’s not the other way round, laners don’t play around junglers. For example, Viktor now might survive the laning phase better because before it was really easy to gank him any time, now with the resistances buff it’s harder to kill him. And champs like Viktor tend o scale well, so the jungle pool may change as well. We’ll have to see what happens.
Question from X7 founder Hyrav in Twitch chat: ‘Are there any players you’re looking forward to playing in the NLC? Are you familiar with teams and players in the NLC?’
I’m not very familiar with NLC teams, I’m familiar with some players but I don’t necessarily know all the roster changes that happened to the teams so I can’t comment on that too much.
I’d maybe like to beat Kasing if he’s still there (laughs). I think he’s quite a good player!
I look forward to seeing you both on the rift! Speaking of UK players, you have top-laner Shikari on your team. What’s it been like playing with him, has he spoken much about the UK scene?
We didn’t talk much about the scenes or UK scene. Shikari is a player that I really enjoying playing with, he’s active, he wants to help the team a lot and he communicates how he can do better and his ideas. It really shows he’s interested in improving and I appreciate players like that.
You’re playing NLC Summer 2022 from Saint Petersburg in Russa, is that correct? What’s it like playing from home?
Yes. For ten years now, I don’t think I’ve played a single split from home… apart from half a split where I helped Gambit qualify for LCL. Apart from that I played in bootcamps. At the end of 2011 I played without a bootcamp so that’s 11 years ago!
I know bootcamps are quite efficient is no one is suffering from being around teammates all the time, but I’ve never had a situation where everyone is playing from home, so it’s a new experience and I’m looking forward to it as a good thing. I will also get to see my city this summer for once in these last 12 years!
Bifrost did well in the Spring 2022 EU Masters. What are your goals with Bifrost?
My goal is to improve as much as I can as an individual and help the team as well, with the experience I have and maybe with the ideas that will arise in the future. The game is going to be so different. I think League was stale in the past year after the summer changes, nothing new was emerging and everything was kind of the same.
Now it’ll be different and maybe my experience will help to understand things faster than others. Or maybe not, we’ll see! I’m looking forward to working with the team and to improve as much as we can, and go as far as possible.
What are your thoughts on the European Regional Leagues?
I think ERL leagues have improved insanely in the last five years or so. All the work Riot has put into the ERLs has paid off, and we see this by the amount of attention the Spanish, French and other leagues are getting, and it’s only growing.
It’s interesting to see right now, because I remember a long time ago, European second division leagues were not so good. I only heard about the LCS back then, right now the LEC, I only cared about those games between the top four or six teams, but there are much more teams you can learn something from.
In France there are three or four good teams you can learn from, and in other ERLs there are teams capable of producing something very good as well. I think the top EU Masters teams could compete against LEC, I think they would beat the bottom four teams and maybe compete with the middle pack.
I think ERLs have good infrastructure in growing new players, making them learn a lot… every team has coaching staff and good players that can teach each other, I think LoL knowledge in our region grows a lot because of that.
I enjoy playing in an ERL team because we get kind of get better scrims than we did in Russia – and much better opponents!
“I think in esports, if the game survives as long as League of Legends, the determining factor of a pro player and how long he can play is based on his discipline to keep practicing, and if he’s interested in the game, the older player will in some cases be better than the younger one.”
What’s it like playing for this long and seeing new players come through who maybe didn’t know you from the early days of League?
It’s fascinating to see how the game grows and some people that recognise you in solo queue, they say they’ve watched you since season 2 and then they’re like 16 years old and you wonder: ‘Oh my God, how young were you when you watched me in season 2, man? And now you’re playing Challenger in the same games I’m in and show better results in the leagues?’
It’s really good to see the young generation improve in the game you love so much, maybe they’re the future of this game.
I’ve had many interactions from people saying I inspired them and I don’t know how to react to comments like that, I’m a little bit shy in this regard!
Were you close to playing in a different region?
I had a couple of other offers that tempted me, maybe monetarily, and some of them were from other regions and different parts of the world. I don’t mind moving around the world, I really enjoyed my time in Brazil in the last year and I enjoy seeing new cultures I haven’t seen before, and new people, even though it drains my energy to be around people all the time, even though it enjoys me.
But I think it wasn’t a close call for me this year, even though some other offers were monetarily better. I think it was the most important thing for me to be in a roster that would succeed and everyone would try hard.
Would you play at an Insomnia Gaming Festival?
Perhaps! One of the most memorable experiences from my past was when I played at DreamHack in Sweden. I enjoyed having LAN parties with my friends, it was a very fun experience. And if I have friends travelling with me there, for sure I would attend!
Question from Caedrel sent to Dom ahead of the interview: ‘How has the ecosystem changed? How does the game differ from your early days to now?’
I think the ecosystem improved a lot. If we compare our European region with Brazil, they have a lot of good players but they don’t have the ecosystem we have here. They have their teams and academies, but not the infrastructure and all the teams we have in the ERLs. Players can group together and practice and learn macro stuff, how to interact with each other and learn about League of Legends.
League of Legends is a very hard game, and this knowledge helps to improve in solo queue. In Brazil, you can feel some players play well in solo queue, but their playstyle only suits solo queue, at least some players in Europe, because of the infrastructure, are playing proper League of Legends. Or you see sparks of intelligence in players’ minds, when they go for objectives instead of chasing kills. The infrastructure in Europe helps to develop talent and improve the game, I enjoy having it here.
What’s your most memorable moment in your career?
I think it’s when I had to leave Moscow Five due to unfortunate circumstances with the owners, and we basically joined Gambit and had to show good results in this era. We joined IEM Katowice after the break for the New Year. In the New Year, Russian people tend to chill a lot and after, tend not to play so well. We weren’t in the best shape, we went 1-3 in the group stage, but we managed to get out of groups for finishing the game faster than other 1-3 teams.
We managed to beat the best Korean teams in the quarter and semi-finals, so that’s a memorable moment. And I got gifted this T-shirt that says ‘this is my jungle, get the fuck off’!
You’ve won a few IEMs over the years. Is there something about it as to why you do particularly well in it?
I think the IEM structure works well for me as a player. I like to innovate stuff and when I come up with something new, it’s fun you come up with something and only you use it.
At IEM you don’t play in leagues where you show what you have and share your knowledge on the game, so you can hide. In a league you have to play many games and it’s hard to hide something. I enjoy the other format much more, but I understand it might not be as hype for others to watch. If you don’t have a secret account or playing scrims and trying something that seems to work, your opponents will learn this and share with others. So it’s hard to innovate, and it depends on the meta shifts.
You were unbeaten in the most recent LCL with Team Spirit, with four wins before it was cancelled due to the Ukraine war, also meaning no chance to qualify for MSI. That whole situation must have been difficult to handle.
It indeed sucked on so many levels, to be honest.
Apart from people suffering because of the action of the authorities, which I guess happens throughout history but it still bothers me when this happens in the world.
The other part that bothers me is when you don’t know what’s going to be next. We were sitting on the bootcamp, the LCL got postponed and we got told we don’t know if it will continue or not, but we still wanted to practice as much as we can and show what we can on the bigger stage. I really like big competitions so we stayed there for three more weeks practicing and for some reason it was much harder than usual practice, when there’s a chance your team practice will show for nothing.
It’s like the split I had with Unicorns of Love, where after two weeks I was forced to leave the LCS due to visa issues, so I’m kind of used to it, but still, it hurts.
I’m trying to [make the best of a difficult situation]. It’s sad as we wanted to work hard for Team Spirit but all those plans went to nowhere. It’s kind of depressing to think how much effort went into that split and nothing came out of it. But you have to move forward and I enjoy being here in Europe.
Faker said: ‘Since the game doesn’t change as much anymore, I think players can maintain their performance for longer periods’. Do you agree? What are your thoughts on this idea some still hold that players are expected to retire in their mid/late 20s?
I think in esports, if the game survives as long as League of Legends, the determining factor of a pro player and how long he can play is based on his discipline to keep practicing, and if he’s interested in the game, the older player will in some cases be better than the younger one.
Younger players are usually better mechanically as they put effort into practice in perfecting their mechanics, which is important in roles like ADC, mid and top.
Jungle and support roles require more thinking and I think older players may be better in this regard. League is a deep game and you learn a lot of patterns, you can’t always learn them in a couple of years.
It also depends on the team. Some can get away with a smart defensive top-laner that will mastermind everyone on the map, if the openings are good enough to break him. Mid-lane as well, you could have a smart mid-laner like Faker, he’s still better [than many] because of his knowledge, which help teammates learn and play in the game.
“I think the damage reduction changes are actually very good for the game, they’re overall prolonging the fights and making everyone tankier. But, I think Riot needs to do something about this level 3 to 6 window, where they need to buff jungler damage so that jungler pressure is the same as it used to be before, but after level 6 I really enjoy the HP buff and resistance buff as well.”
Who is the shot caller at Bifrost?
I think everyone shot calls what they see. I have this pattern where I always say what we need to do on the map as a team, but I wouldn’t really call it shot calling.
Shot calling for me is also micro managing and predicting what the enemy team is doing, and based on that, making a call. But the basic plan for the game, I can create and I tend to work on it more. But everyone helps in the communication.
Question from Initialise: ‘Speaking of patterns, considering how the game changes, how easy or possible is it to utilise your experience in the jungle?
I think the experience I had before helps me a lot in the jungle. If I’m given more time, I can go through all the patterns that I didn’t know before that I know now.
In some games I played, I feel like if I played this game a couple of years ago without knowing the patterns the enemy jungler or support can do, I’d get fucked! But now I can predict they’re doing it and I’m fine, I can even outplay them. So experience stacks and helps.
But experience you had before that changed now is destructive. For example, you’ve played a champion you knew how to play perfectly, but the champ gets changed a lot. It’s much harder to learn this champ in a different way compared to a new player learning it from scratch, because you need to unlearn something you knew before. So that’s a bad part.
From Hyrav: ‘What are your hobbies?’
I play other games but tend to find games that don’t satisfy me as much. So I go outside, I cycle, sightsee and I like to be outside in good weather. I only hate hot weather so here is almost always perfect for me.
From Hyrav: ‘Can you see yourself moving into a coaching role after your playing career?’
Absolutely, I see myself becoming a coach someday. I viewed some opportunities for this split and previous splits, but nothing satisfied me well in this regard, but I’m open to this possibility – the thing I like most in League is improving as a unit.
I can live without playing and the mechanical aspects, so I can see myself becoming a coach any time.
What do you think of the new jungler, Bel’Veth?
I only watched the video of her kit but didn’t read the spells. She didn’t look too hard, I feel like Riot has moved away from a book description of the spell, when you need to read for ten years to see how it works, now they make simpler champions.
Bel’Veth… I don’t think she’ll be too hard. I expected something a bit more in terms of the looking part, she should be like the void itself and scary, but it looks like a Pokémon or something!
Question from Spyran: ‘Would you like to see Riot change something in the game?
That’s a really hard question, because many times I view games from how I would make it for the experience of the player. For me it’s really easy to understand what to make better, but in League I’ve put in so much time, it’s hard for me to see what I’d make better, other than some small numbers changes in certain champions.
The Riot developer team for League of Legends is probably the best developer team in the world, and that’s why their game lives for so long and is so popular, and still feels fresh and interesting. So it’d really take a lot of time for me to think what I would add to the game which is already good, in terms of improving in the right direction.
Fun question to end on: Do you know your name and likeness is in the ‘Esports Legend’ management game on the Switch? What do you think of this?
I wasn’t aware of that. I played Teamfight Manager which had Bjergsen and other players in it, I enjoyed it but I always hoping to see my name pop up but it never did! So it’s good to hear my name is on the list somewhere. I don’t mind devs using my name without my consent, as long as it’s not malicious.
Thanks very much for your time and good luck in the NLC.
Thanks for watching, guys, I really hope you will stick around and watch the NLC. This region is quite good and the games must be fun.
Follow Diamondprox, Bifrost and the NLC on Twitter here. Summer 2022 matches start on June 30th 2022.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
