AbilityPower.net

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I’ve been preoccupied by streaming eight to twelve hours a day and it doesn’t give me much time to write an insightful blog like I used to do.  My current schedule is wake up around 10am or 11am, eat something, start streaming, play ten to fifteen games, stop streaming, spend time with girlfriend, maybe continue streaming, go to sleep, and repeat.  I try to fit in more eating in that schedule but I try to stream a constant session so that my viewership increases… I also need to do some intermittent exercises to stay healthy (since sitting on a computer all day isn’t that great).  Here is a quick update of some of the things I have been up to since the last time I posted:

• I did the first video of Ult in 10s with ButButButILY on youtube and you can watch it here.  He asked me to do a video with him on youtube a few weeks before MLG Providence but I was kind of busy preparing for that event so I told him we could do it afterwards.  We started the video on December 27th at 10am and it took us about an hour to finish and he put it out on the 28th.  I really didn’t have too much of an idea of what he wanted to do until we talked on the day of recording but it turned out really well for being one take.  He has other videos with other professional LoL players that you guys can check out if you are interested.  I don’t think I will be getting to the youtube questions since I’m a bit lazy right now.
• Epik Gamer placed 2nd at the CLG Last Call tournament (woohoo 2nd again…).  Dan Dinh made plans before the tournament was announced so we used v8 Aphromoo as a sub.  I think the tournament went really well until we played in the final… but overall we did well against the three Korean teams in the tournament (OP, EDG, and MiG).  Too bad we weren’t invited to the Korean invitational tournament :[ (good luck CLG).  I’m also not sure when I get paid for that…
• I commentated a small Reddit tournament for EUW hosted by Shinoa93.  Even though there were only around seven teams because some teams didn’t show up and we had to play with the brackets a little, the viewer turnout was great (around 1k-2k at a time) and my voice didn’t die out too hard like when I commentated WCG.  I would also like to mention that casting from the round of 8 (top 8) into the final as bo3s took about eight hours to complete.  I initially agreed to cast the tournament because I thought it would only take a maximum of four hours… I’m not sure how guys like Phreak and Rivington can cast this long for three days, especially when some of the games are not very action packed.
• There is an invitational showmatch vote going on right now to send allstar players from the west and east in NA to compete against each other in Texas.  Right now CLG and TSM are not included in the voting but I’m pretty sure Dignitas and Curse are not going to be going to this showmatch either due to their participation in IEM (which is why CLG and TSM are not going to this invitational either).  You can vote for me and your other favorite players here.
• I will try to start replying to e-mails asking for lessons this weekend.

Again I would like to thank everyone who has been watching my stream, coming into IRC to chat or ask questions, and posting on the forums/reddit for really being great viewers/fans/friends. GL HF GG~

This is long overdue but I am going to answer some of the questions that I have gotten through e-mail.  If you have any questions you can send them to nhatnlol@gmail.com and I’ll get to them when I have time and put them in a post like this.  I will also be answering the questions being asked through youtube comments in a few days from the video I did with butbutbutily which you can view here.

“who coordinates/leads the team in EG and what should the team leader be able to do?”

• No one really coordinates/leads EG in particular.  I think everyone wants Dan to make things happen but nothing too important gets done, so its mainly Dyrus, Westrice, and I making most of the moves.  As far as what a team leader should do, I think a good leader should take care of most of the management stuff (organizing scrims, website, sponsors, and tournament sign ups) although members can help out by contributing to organization as well.

“what role do you play in the team coordination and who coordinates/leads the bot lane in early game”

• I contribute by calling things out (MIAs, wards, and plans of action) but most of our team fight decisions are situational when we bump into the enemy team at dragon or baron.  For bottom lane, it is generally the AD carry making the calls because I can adapt to the person playing AD better than the person playing AD can adapt to me since they don’t play bottom lane as much as me.  This could be fixed if we duo’d more or had a dedicated AD player.

“I just wanted to ask what some of your favorite ADs to lane with are, but in conjunction with what supports”

• My favorite AD/support combination is Kog’maw/Soraka because Kog’maw consumes a lot of mana but his damage output is high because of it.  With Soraka you can spam a lot with Kog’maw and there aren’t many AD champions that can compete with the damage trade/sustain.  I’m pretty indifferent about the other AD/support combinations since this is my favorite.

“i am looking for some maybe quick general advice for support – runes/summoner spells”

• Quick advice for support is to try your best to not to die.  The longer you live the more time you have to cast your spells and recast them when they are done cooling down.  This also helps prevent you from feeding since you are trying your best to not die in the first place.  For a standard set of runes, you can go armor red, armor yellow, magic resist blue, and gold quints.  This gives you lots of defensive stats to take damage in lane and the gold quints allow you to buy items a little bit faster.  If you are running out of mana you might want to consider getting mana regen per level runes on yellow or blue.  For summoners, any mix of heal/flash/cv/exhaust is good if you play correctly.  There really is no set in stone standard for supporting (in runes/masteries/summoners) because LoL is very situational and you have to adapt with what you are given or choose.

“What I want to know is how you build Taric. runes, masteries, and skill order”

• Runes are armor red, hp per level yellow, mana regen per level blue, and movement speed quints.  Masteries are 0/15/15 with both defensive and utility trees aiming for the movement speed improvements.  Skill order is E, Q, W, W, W, R, W, Q, W, Q, R…

“How would you say the meta is developing? I’ve seen some stupid bot lanes that seem to work usually Bruiser and aggressive support.”

• I think the bottom lane picks are definitely getting a lot more aggressive.  I think this is mainly due to the mastery changes, summoner spell changes, and nerfs to health potions and sustain in general.  With the new masteries/summoners I’ve started to take more offensive summoners and also started to put more points into the defensive tree since people are trying to bully their way through bottom lane to get an advantage.  Having a strong bottom lane gives you more control over dragon and it also helps set the tone of the game when you can win your lane.  More people are starting to take bottom lane more seriously too and they are finding success in aggressive champions.

“How would a new team get further in the competitive scene? We have just started Go4LoLs and playing in small time tournaments.”

• My best advice is to get high rating on ladder, get famous through streaming and videos, and get far or win tournaments.  This is a little easier said than done.

“If you could be any animal what would it be?”

• I would like to be either an eagle or dolphin.  Having the ability to fly or swim as I please is pretty cool.

Here is an update on the things I have been doing for the past week:

• WCG 2011 is going on in Korea this week and I might be commentating the round of 8 matches that are uncommentated on my own stream (I commentated two group stage matches but I did not record them… oops).
• I was on State of the League this week and you can check out the episode here.
• Before the show I did an AMA with questions from Reddit and you can watch that interview here.
• I am now streaming for SoloMid.net and you can check out my stream here. (thx Reginaid)
• I got my viewers to create a support post for their favorite players and teams at WCG on Reddit which you should post on here. (I am sure they will read it if you post.  I know that most of the pro players enjoy reading nice comments about themselves and it motivates them to play better for people that cheer behind them.)

As always, thanks for supporting/watching/chatting with me :]!

I got some questions from a fan by e-mail and I felt like answering them here instead of e-mailing him back:

“is there any person who actually was something like your “mentor”? anyone who teached you the understanding of the game/the support role or from who you’d say that he was kind of your idol?”

• For LoL I didn’t have a mentor since I played alone for a long time (not many of my friends played and if they did play they didn’t play as much as me).  The way I started to learn how to play at a higher level was to watch the higher level players that streamed (like the guys from CLG and TSM) and try to mimic or understand what they were doing while also hoping they would drop small gems of useful information through commentary.  I also did not have an idol for the game since there aren’t many support players for me to look up to (although you can read about how Dan influenced my thinking unintentionally here).

“why do you play support?”

• I started playing support because I only played LoL on the weekends while in college.  I also took a two or three month break from playing at the start of my senior year and my mechanical skills went down the drain (couldn’t last hit as AD or AP) and I looked for a way to win ranked solo queue without having the mechanics.  Support sounded like something that could be done with relatively poor mechanical skill and I ended up winning quite a bit without stressing too much about how poorly I last hit or if I did not chain a combination of skills correctly to get a kill.  After I got to about 1600-1700 rating in solo queue I felt like it was too late to turn back and learn a new role and just stuck with playing support since I was winning so much anyways.  I could have probably branched out and learned all the roles in hindsight (I still played some AD/AP/Jungle since I couldn’t play support every game) but I like the way things have turned out.

“what makes the support role attractive for you?”

• The most attractive part about playing the support role is how clutch you can be in saving your team (heals/shields/stuns/slows/ultimates) and how much control over the game you have when you properly ward and CV the enemy team.  Some people think playing support is boring but the bottom lane is a lot more intricate than most people expect because you have to constantly interact with three other players at all times.  Winning is also attractive and I tend to win by playing support.

MLG Providence