🎞️ The Black King Bar's battle cry which inspired 'lakad matatag'.

In Filipino gaming lingo, the phrase "lakad matatag" is a Filipino parody of a battle cry that originated in Defense of the Ancients (DotA) Allstars. In 2018, "lakad matatag, normalin normalin", which was uttered by MineskiTV casters, became an international meme in the Dota 2 community during The International 2018 season.

In 2022, "lakad matatag" became the battle cry of the SIBOL, the Philippine's national esports team.

DotA-Allstars is a map modification for Blizzard Entertainment's RTS game WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. Many mechanics of DotA are based on existing effects of the base game, and one of those is the active ability of the DotA item "Black King Bar" (BKB). The BKB gives temporary magic immunity to the unit. Offensively, the BKB is often activated when initiating team fights, as magic-immune units generally cannot be disabled. Normal attacks are not affected as they deal physical damage rather than magical.

The BKB's ability is based on the ultimate skill of WarCraft III's dwarven hero "Mountain King". Upon BKB activation, the game plays a sound file of a dwarf screaming "for Khaz Modan!".

Since the vast majority of Filipino DotA players have never played the WarCraft III campaigns, nor have any knowledge of WarCraft lore in general, the phrase is mostly seen as random gibberish rather than a reference to the fictional dwarven kingdom of Khaz Modan. This has led to alternative Filipino parodic phrases that rhyme or sound similar to the original phrase.

One of the prevailing ones is "lakad matatag", a phrase inspired by the Filipino military drill command "lakad patakda" (mark time march). During that time, many of the DotA players participated in Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)^{[note 1]} and were familiar with marching drill commands.

Since DotA was mostly played in internet cafés in the Philippines, some players practice screaming "lakad matatag" as a humorous war cry whenever they activate their BKBs.

The moment when the phrase was uttered. The golden shimmers indicate BKB effects.

The phrases "lakad matatag" followed by "normalin, normalin" were uttered by MineskiTV's dual casters of Marlon "Lon" Marcelo (for the former) and the late Aldrin Paulo "Dunoo" Pangan (latter) during a cast of the ESL One Katowice 2018 event for Dota 2, during game 3 of a match between Fnatic and Secret. Throughout the match, the duo's casting repeatedly references various gaming and non-gaming Filipino memes and phrases.

During the final team fight, Fnatic's Canadian player Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao activated his BKB and charged towards the enemy team. This forced Secret to fall back, and two of its members activated their own BKBs defensively. The sight of multiple BKB activations prompted Lon to utter the phrase "lakad matatag". Dunoo followed it up with "normalin, normalin" to describe the only action either team could take to deal damage, which is to use normal attacks.

"Lakad matatag" literally translates to "strong" or "stable walk". However, based on context usage (using a BKB to initiate a team fight), as well as its military drill origin, a more appropriate translation is "steadfast march forward".

"Normalin" is an informal Filipino verbification of the English word "normal". In the context of Dunoo's casting, it means "to use normal attacks".

1. ROTC is a military education and training for students. Mandatory ROTC in the Philippines was phased out in 2002. DotA became popular in 2005-2006.