AbilityPower.net

I gave my first lesson ever with someone who requested a lesson this morning and I think it went pretty well (despite the 200-240 ping I was playing on).  He contacted me a week or two ago through the NA LoL client and asked if I was accepting lessons and I told him he could find out more on this blog and to send me an e-mail at NhatNLoL@gmail.com if he had any questions.  He sent me a message that same day saying that he was from the EUW, used a time standard that I hadn’t heard of before (GMT +2 or CEST), and asked me what timezone I was in and how the lesson would go about.

I didn’t have too much of an idea of what I was going to do for the lesson but I had a general idea.  I said I wanted to jump into normal games right away and see how much he knew and how well he played as support.  I would take on the AD carry role and he would take on the support role (with whatever champion he wanted to play) but I also cautioned him that the normal games we were going to play weren’t so much about winning but more about me understanding how he plays and adding my advice and answering his questions while we went through the motions.  I also told him about the pricing of the lessons ($50 for 2 hours, $30 for 1 hour, and $15 for a game) and gave him the more specific details of situations where I don’t charge extra if one of our games goes over the 1 hour time limit.  And that was about all I told him, how I thought the lesson would go, that he would be able to get the most out of his money, and that he didn’t have to feel obligated to accept my lesson now that he had sent me an email.  Then I waited for a few days thinking that what I said didn’t interest him…

Four days later he sent me another e-mail asking if he could get a lesson for one hour on Saturday at 20:00 CEST (11:00am PST) and I was pretty happy that he wanted a lesson.  He thought he would only be getting two games with that one hour but I said I would be willing to give him three games since I was just happy that he wanted to take a lesson from me and we swapped Skype information so that we could have voice communication for the lesson (although we could have used Ventrilo if he preferred).  That same night I made myself a brand new EUW account since I didn’t play on the EU servers and wanted to the test ping.  I logged in, created my summoner name (Nhat Nguyen) and joined an advanced battle training game to see how it was going to go.  The first thing I noticed while loading was that my ping was around 200 and that while playing Ashe I felt like I had to autoattack like I was playing Soraka.  To me this wasn’t a big deal because I actually do play Soraka as a solo but I think other people would be raging at how difficult it is to play on high ping.  One of the most noticeable things about playing on high ping, besides the last hitting, is how difficult it is to dodge skill shots.  If you are not constantly clicking to juke for no reason, your champion will probably not move in time to dodge a skill shot.  Besides the high ping and summoner level 2 account, I bought Ashe with the small amount of IP I had gotten from the advanced training in preparation for the lesson.

This morning I got on EUW again to prepare for last hitting by entering another advanced battle training so that I wouldn’t look too horrible with high ping.  I crushed Nasus middle again as Ashe and called on Skype to start up a conversation with my lesson requester before we began our lesson.  As far as winning was concerned, I was able to hard carry the first two games but the last game was a little more difficult because I was being focused in team fights (we still won all three games).  In terms of teaching, he was actually a really knowledgeable support player and I was only really there to answer his questions and make comments on what runes he was using and what items he could build into late game.  We didn’t get to practice much enemy jungle tracking since only the first game had a jungler… but I had a lot of fun playing those three normal games with him (probably because our normal ELO was low with me on a level 2 summoner account and the laning phase was never that challenging).  After the games (and sometimes during the games) we talked about what I knew about the current LoL pro scene and he asked me a few of my thoughts and I gave a few of my insights.

The lesson went on for about 2 hours but I didn’t mind so much since this was the first lesson I was giving and it was going pretty well.  Now I just need to wait for him to send me the money for the lesson… In other news, I should be getting upgraded Time Warner / Road Runner internet for about $75 with 30mb download and 5mb upload (about $35 more than I pay back home).  Hopefully I will be able to finally stream in the near future with this new internet :] GL HF GG~

:O

[23:39] <NhatN> i got dc
[23:39] <NhatN> we were 1-1 in kill score
[23:39] <NhatN> and i come back
[23:39] <gnomesayin> :(
[23:39] <NhatN> and we are like 5-2
[23:39] <NhatN> LOL
[23:39] <gnomesayin> THEY DON’T EVEN NEED YOU
[23:39] <NhatN> lol
[23:39] <NhatN> i prevented
[23:39] <NhatN> so many ganks
[23:40] <NhatN> my cv’s always hit
[23:40] <NhatN> :]!
[23:40] <NhatN> good tracking lee sin that game
[23:40] <NhatN> pretty happy about it
[23:43] <gnomeplayin> i wish i had watched ittt
[23:43] <gnomeplayin> i didn’t even realise it started
[23:43] <gnomeplayin> you dumb bitch
[23:43] <NhatN> D:
[23:43] <NhatN> LOL
[23:43] <gnomeplayin> DIDN’T INFORM ME
[23:43] <gnomeplayin> OF THE FACTS
[23:43] <NhatN> LOL
[23:44] <gnomeplayin> rofl brb jungle rammus time

There is no Verizon FiOS in my area down here :[ We are looking into options to improve our internet speeds but I’m not sure how long that is going to take and we talked a little bit to our roommate last night too.  I’m really disappointed I can’t get a stream started yet :[ Sorry.

Crs Doublelift (11:04): dude
accept my friend request on facebook
Nhat Nguyen (11:04): NO
Crs Doublelift (11:04): so i can post nudes of myself
on yourwall
Nhat Nguyen (11:05): go away stalker
Crs Doublelift (11:05): why not
WTF
i just want
to look at all the pictures of you
and fap

Nhat Nguyen (11:07): lol
when its
late a night
and ur a sleep
ill accept
check ur pix
and defriend
GG
Crs Doublelift (11:08): WOW
smd nerd
im staying up all night
to juke you out
ill be the one
Nhat Nguyen (11:09): k
gl
Crs Doublelift (11:09): who gets the last fap
Nhat Nguyen (11:09): LOL
Crs Doublelift (11:09): NOT YOU

I made it to California fine and the flight was alright since it was direct from PDX to LAX.  There was one hiccup on the plane though… some girl that was getting cancer treatment had a seizure, threw up, and went unconscious while people were boarding the plane.  That delayed the flight about 20 minutes but I think the girl will be alright since there was a passenger on the plane who was a medic and rushed over to her.  They wheeled her out on a wheel chair and a cleaning crew had to clean her seat before we left.

While I am here in California my GF will be letting me use her computer so that I can play LoL and stream.  Yesterday I tried to put together a desk and chair that she ordered since she didn’t have one but I didn’t have the right screwdrivers or a hammer so I only got to put together the chair (no tools required).  We bought the screwdrivers and hammer last night at Target and I took about an hour to put the desk together this morning but one piece of wood for the drawer was missing an important cut so the desk won’t be having a drawer… but that doesn’t matter so much since I only need the desk as a surface to use the computer with :P I’d also like to mention that it is really satisfying to finish putting a desk together (and really frustrating trying to put it together by yourself >:|)

As for how long I will be staying in California, I am actually not sure how long I am staying.  We bought a one-way ticket since we don’t know quite know what the future is going to look like for me.  One of the things that will allow me to stay here with my GF (and away from my parents home – hopefully I won’t be a boomerang for much longer) and continue gaming professionally is if I get a little income from streaming and giving lessons.  Right now the internet that we have here is only 1mb upload and that is not good enough to provide a high quality stream.  Back home I had a 5mb upload with Comcast for about $40 but here Time Warner only gives a 1mb upload for $40 (which is what we are using right now).  Hopefully when my GF’s roommate gets back after this weekend we can switch to Verizon FiOS internet (thx for the suggestion Cal) which provides a 25mb upload for $70 and I could happily stream in super HD quality for your viewing pleasure.   Once I get this new internet, I am hoping to stream at least 10 ranked games daily while playing support champions since I know that there are not many high quality top level streamers who play support.  Also as a quick aside, here is a cool post on reddit LoL about the difference between EU and NA support players that kind of highlights what I have thought about the NA scene for a while.

And now that I am finally set up down here, I will finally be accepting lessons from those of you who have been asking.  I’m not sure what the turn out will be (I hope there are a few of you since people have been asking…) but I will be glad to accept anyone and my schedule is pretty lenient to set up the times that you might ask for (even you EU summoners).  You can contact me by email here: NhatNLoL@gmail.com to find out about getting a support lesson from me.  That’s about it for updates since I’ve last posted.  We are still looking for sponsors and we are still on the look out for upcoming tournaments and I hope I can get my streams and lessons going soon.  GL HF GG~