AbilityPower.net

It’s been about a month since the last time I made a blog post about a competitive event and you can read about my last experience at IPL 3 here.  This post will be very similar to that post a month ago but instead I will be writing about my experience at MLG Providence.  I will talk about the weeks leading up to the qualifier, the qualifier, the time before the event, the days of the event itself, and some of the aftermath.  There have been a few things that I have been having to deal with since getting home from MLG like streaming, planning for the future, and talking to my dad about continuing this career but I’ll save that for another time since this post is for people that want to read what MLG was like in my perspective.

Preparing for the MLG Providence Qualifier

It took some time for everyone to get together online after our tournament at IPL 3 in Atlantic City since Dan and Dyrus went to the TSM gaming house and the IEM New York event immediately after we had finished playing.  IEM New York was the weekend after IPL 3 and it took time for Dyrus to get his own computer and it took time for Dan to come home so that we could start practicing again.   We didn’t really get much practice in as a team for about a week after IEM New York and I caught ear of a rumor that people thought I was leaving EPIK to join another team while the IEM New York event was still going on.  This stressed me out quite a bit because I also heard that Dan had been talking to another player to see if he was interested in playing support for the team since he was worried about me leaving.  In the end it was just a big miscommunication and nothing bad happened but it still worried me a lot because I had no intention of leaving since I really believe in how good our team is and can be in the future.

After Dan got back and Dyrus got his computer we started to prepare for the upcoming MLG Providence qualifier.  The teams that were invited to the qualifier (CLG, EPIK, TSM, Crs, Dignitas, Goose, v8, and coL) were notified about a week before it was announced so we were already gearing up to prepare for the event before most people knew there would be a LoL event at MLG Providence.  I don’t remember how many times we scrimmed but it was a decent amount since we needed to get Salce practicing with us again.  I think the week before it was announced we scrimmed most of the days of the week but we had to schedule around Salce since he is still in highschool and has to stop before about 11pm.  This really hurt the times we could practice since we usually scrimmed from 10pm to about 1am for IPL with Crumbzz on our team.

The week leading into the qualifier I think we played about two scrims until we played TSM three scrims in a row the night before the qualifier since we both wanted to qualify and we knew we were not in danger of facing each other in the bracket.  We also grinded the solo queue ladder really hard and we all hit the top 25 page together where we would occasionally have 3 of us in the top 10 at one time.  The scrims against TSM were really one sided though… everyone on our team made some big mistakes but I think it really helped us in the end because we saw these mistakes happen and the competition we were facing in our part of the bracket for the qualifier were not as good as TSM.

MLG Providence Qualifier

After the scrims with TSM the night before where we got stomped, I made a goal for myself that I would not have a single death the entire qualifier since I had died so many times against TSM.  I don’t remember much of the picks and bans of the qualifier since it was so long ago.  I remember that Dan played a lot of Graves and Kog’maw, Dyrus was consistently in the jungle, and Westrice was mainly playing top lane.  I also remember feeling that we had a good chance of qualifying for MLG Providence because our bracket wasn’t as difficult as what Dignitas and Curse had to go through since they had strong teams in their bracket and only one of them could make it.

The first round we played was against some team that I can’t remember.  It was a pretty fast 2-0 win.  Our second round was against vVv-gaming and they were all decently rated so we didn’t take them lightly.  It was another pretty fast 2-0 win… Our last round for the qualifier was against Goose and we knew that if we made mistakes, they were a team that could capitalize and punish us for it but it was another 2-0 for us without any hiccups and I ended up meeting my goal of not dying for the qualifier.

Ban Soraka

After the win against Goose we were qualified for the tournament along with CLG, Dignitas, and TSM.  I was predicting for each of these teams to make it through, although Crs could have snuck in if they had beaten Dignitas in their bracket.

Preparing for MLG Providence

After the MLG Providence qualifier we literally had about one scrim of practice (where we were winning the whole game and then one mistake cost us the game).  Westrice had planned for us to do Go4lol on Sunday before we would leave for MLG Providence and a few nights before I had talked to Dan about signing us up for the IEM Kiev qualifier on Saturday.  When I talked to Dan about IEM Kiev he said we could try qualifying and then see what we could do for money to get to Ukraine to play it if we did qualify.  In the end, Salce couldn’t make it to the IEM Kiev qualifier Saturday and Dan had something to go to on Sunday.  Hopefully we can qualify in the next qualifier this weekend.

We still played Go4lol on Sunday without Dan.  We used Westrice on top lane, Dyrus in the jungle, and Bobbyhankhill as AD instead of Dan.  Playing Go4lol that Sunday was an interesting experience since most of the top teams didn’t sign up for the tournament (I think I only recognized Goose).  I’m guessing the other top teams didn’t want to sign up after playing the IEM Kiev qualifier the day before.  Overall we got ready around 10am and ended our tournament around 6pm by losing to the team that has LOD and ZionSpartan who are both decently skilled players.  I think everyone on the team has agreed to not try Go4lol for awhile after that happened… (I think someone will ask why so here is my answer: it took more than 6 hours to get to a team that was a good challenge so we would rather find our own scrims for good practice – maybe the joke here is that we don’t scrim enough either way).

We also found out that CLG wouldn’t be going to MLG Providence because they cheated and tried to use Lapaka on a Lilac’s account.  We were pretty happy that CLG wouldn’t be going since this would help our chances at winning but I also realize that CLG not going would hurt some of the viewer counts for MLG.  I’m not sure if other teams or the community realizes it yet but everyone in competitive LoL is in the same boat.  When competitive LoL looks good, we all look good and we also potentially become more successful because of it.  The other side note to CLG being disqualified is that we had no idea who RFLX was or what the seeding, brackets, and tournament would look and be like.

Traveling to MLG Providence

On the same day that I got my flights scheduled to go to MLG Providence, Travis tried to get my flight changed so that I could be on the same flight as him because he is a little baby about flying.  This didn’t work out because my flight was already scheduled but we had the same connector flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Providence so he was happy.  Either way, the first flight from LAX to Charlotte went by fine since I slept the whole way there.  I think I might have woken up because I was hungry and bought some snack thing of cheese and fruit they had on US Airways or whatever that flight company is called and went back to sleep.  After I got off at Charlotte I had to wait around for 3 hours for my next flight to Providence.

About an hour before the flight to Providence, Travis showed up with sc2 pro player Drewbie from Complexity Gaming and I got to meet him.  A few minutes later L0cust showed up at our terminal and we hung out with him too.  Right before it was time to board the plane, IMAQTPIE showed up too so we were all on the same plane together.  This flight was about two hours and I slept through it again.  Once we landed, we all got a cab together and dropped off Drewbie at the Hilton before we went to our hotel at the Biltmore.  When we got out of the cab we saw IMNestea and his teammate smoking cigarettes outside and then we saw SlayerSBoxer come out of the hotel to talk to them.  When we entered the hotel we also saw MarineKing and Losira hanging out in the lobby as well as Tasteless and Artosis walking by.  It is a pretty surreal feeling seeing all these sc2 players walk by in real life when you are used to watching them online.

After getting into the hotel lobby we waited in line at the front desk to check into our rooms.  We saw Dan and Salce come in with food since they had gotten there before us and we also saw Westrice and Rhazelle there too (for those who wants to know, Rhazelle came to MLG Providence as a surprise for Westrice).  I guess we were some of the last people to get into Providence.  Anyways, it took about an hour to get checked in because the elevators locked from a fire alarm going off and people kept coming up to the desk to ask questions.  Once we got our keys, I dropped my stuff in my room and went down stairs to meet up with Jatt, L0cust, IMAQTPIE, and Travis to go find something to eat.  We end up asking the front desk where to find food nearby at 1am and we are directed to Haven Brothers to grab some burgers and head back to Jatt’s room so we could sit, eat, and talk about LoL stuffs.  We end up talking for awhile then I head back to my room around 3am or 4am to sleep.

MLG Providence Day 1

I think I woke up around 8am or 9am and no one was awake in my room so I played the Legend of Zelda for 3DS (I borrowed it from my girlfriend for the plane ride but didn’t really use it there) for awhile until Travis sent me a text to see if I was awake yet.  I said I was up and we planned to find some breakfast somewhere nearby before we went to the convention. I packed my backpack with my keyboard, mouse, headset, and mousepad and I think we left the hotel around 11am and went to a diner a block or two down.  They weren’t doing breakfast anymore so we both got some grilled cheese sandwiches and headed over to the convention after we finished.  We got there before they let anyone into the convention floor but you could still check in and get your wristband that would let you get in from the main hall.  When I got there, team EG (Evil Geniuses) were all getting their competitor wristbands and I thought the coincidence of bumping into them was funny that I knew them but they probably had no idea who I was even though we share the same abbreviation for team names.

Travis ended up having to call one of the producers to figure out how he was going to get into the convention floor because MLG staff aren’t supposed to have wristbands.  After a few minutes wait, the producer Travis was working with got us into the convention (even though I wasn’t supposed to be in there).  He gave us a tour of the grounds and then took us behind the giant curtains where everything went on behind the scenes.  I’m not sure how many people got to see what is behind those curtains but it is really impressive.  There were around 5 casting desk stations all side by side (I originally imagined the caster desk stations to be on the outside or behind the seats of the audience but they are literally in the back of the convention hall floor behind a giant curtain so the casters are not facing any audience).  In front of the casting desks were all the computers that the MLG staff used to produce the show (as well as other equipment they used for sound/streaming/etc).  After we left the backstage curtain we went to the League of Legends player section in the small dark corner of the hall next to the Call of Duty stage.

When we got to the League of Legends corner we met the Rioters who were helping the event.  There is a misconception that Riot runs all of the events (like IPL, IEM, and MLG) but really they are only there to help set up the computers and install the tournament client to make sure the game installs and runs properly.  If something does go wrong (like if a monitor goes off) it is usually the MLG staff who takes care of the computer problem (which in my case did happen).  Most of the decision making things are made by the tournament host (like MLG) and I think Riot is pretty hands off unless they come to them for advice.  After a little bit of time, Travis went off with the producer while I just hung out with the Rioters while the computers installed the tournament client.

Around 1pm or 2pm the pro players were finally let into the convention to start preparing for the event or set up for League of Legends (I’m lucky I snuck in with Travis a few hours early).  I think it took until around 4pm for everyone to show up and set up their computers.  I remember Scarra was having keyboard issues and we also had to install ventrilo on all the computers since the MLG staff decided that they were not going to use their Astro gear to hook our headsets up together.  During this time we were informed that Dignitas would play us and that TSM would play RFLX in the first round.  This was a surprise to all of us (since we all thought it was going to be Dignitas/TSM and EPIK/RFLX) and we asked Riot if this was true.  They called out MLG Lee (one of the top guys at MLG) to figure things out but they ended up keeping the things how they were (even though I literally have no idea how we were matched up in that way – I’m also not bitter about it since it was a double elimination tournament).

After we heard that we were not facing TSM in the first round we planned to scrim TSM.  Our first scrim was a really big stomp and everyone had difficult delay to deal with.  After our scrim finished, the MLG staff started working on fixing the internet connection.  Some of the players went to eat and I hung out at the computers for awhile.  I don’t remember who else stayed with me there but there was a few people who were at the MLG event just to watch League of Legends and they were standing behind us when we were playing our scrim.  I thought it was really cool that they came out to watch us play even though we weren’t even playing that day.  Travis was talking to a lot of the fans while we were playing our scrim.  I also remember that I did an interview with someone and they posted it on youtube here.  Salce, Dyrus, and Chaox were playing starcraft 2 during this down time and I think Travis pulled Jatt, Scarra, Dyrus and I to do official MLG interviews in a back room but those haven’t been put online (I’m not sure they will either).

A little bit later, the MLG staff figured out the internet issue (we had about 3mb download and 2mb upload speed) and reset something so that the speeds got boosted up to 90mb down and like 30mb upload speed.  After the internet was finally secure we went back to scrimming TSM.  We played two really long losing games and called it a day around 8 or 9pm.  I think Travis had already eaten around 6 but he wanted to grab a beer so I met up with him and we ended up going to dinner with the Dignitas guys, Pooksie, and some Rioters at some build your own burger place.  IMAQTPIE joked about how we should trade kills in lane to make each other look good for MLG (he kills me, then I kill him, then he kills me, and I kill him again, etc) but I flip it on him and say first I win then he wins and then I win…  After the burger place we headed over to a bar to get two pitchers and hang out and talk some more with Scarra, Travis, Rambo, l0cust, and a few Rioters.  I think this is where Travis starts to get a man crush on Average Gatsby (Daniel Mathews).  In the end, the conversation and beer were alright and we headed back around 1am to get ready for our matches at 10am.

MLG Providence Day 2

We all woke up around 7am to get ready for the first day of League of Legends.  The Rioters and MLG staff thought we would be there to warm up at 9:30am but the event schedule said we could get there by 8am so they let us in early.  I don’t remember who I went over to the convention with but I’m pretty sure I went with some TSM guys and some people on my team.  The walk from the hotel at the Biltmore to the convention was about a five to ten minute walk but each morning felt really cold after staying down in California for a month.  Once we got there we were supposed to scrim right away but we found out that they had put us at different computer stations and it took a little while to set up our computers again.

The games were supposed to start at 10am this day and we barely started our scrim around 9:20am.  We ended up playing around 30 minutes and quit out of a losing game so that we could get ready for our match with Dignitas.  MLG ran the tournament really well.  They had staff and producers everywhere directing what the players were supposed to be doing and when to join custom game lobbies.  Anyways, the games against Dignitas went really well for our team.  I think we were all a little worried about playing them since they have been successful in the past 2 months with WCG, IPL 3, and Rampage but both of our games were pretty smooth.

I got to play Sona the first game and Soraka the second game and I think I played well.  Again I put the goal of not dying on myself but it didn’t exactly happen.  In the first game I remember I was hitting most of my ultimates well as Sona but in the very last team fight to get baron above the purple side red buff, I accidently used my ultimate on nothing because I was trying to place a ward but hit R instead of 4… I think this caused Dignitas to try to go all in on us (I was worried my team would blame me if we lost that fight because it would be my fault) but we still won without my ultimate because we were so far ahead at that point. There were also a few team fighting problems in game two which made Salce really mad but we won both games in the end.

Winner’s Semifinal vs Dignitas

My monitor also went out once in the first game and once in the second game.  In the first black out, I immediately stood up and told someone  to pause the game (we didn’t know much about the pause rules but I turned around so that the admins could see that my monitor was owned).  After a minute my monitor screen back up and we resumed playing.  The second time my monitor went out was in the second game.  The power light for the monitor was on but the screen was black so we switched out monitors and it worked.  I’m lucky that each time the monitor went out we were no where near a team fight.  If this was three events ago we would have lost to Dignitas two straight games because the game would have continued as 4v5.

It felt pretty good to beat Dignitas since we had lost to them at IPL 3 and it also felt good because of the pressure I put on myself at each tournament.  I guess as a weird side note, at every event or qualifier that I participate in, I always dread the idea of losing in the first round.  This probably goes back to when I played tennis in high school for my school and there was always the end of season district tournament where winning at least one round of the tournament mattered.  Each round that a player makes it through adds points to a team total and my school always placed first or second in our district so this feeling of having to win in the early rounds of a tournament has kind of stuck with me.

After our matches against Dignitas I talked with one of the tech guys for MLG if we wanted to keep using my computer or switch it out.  We decided to switch out computers just in case the problem was the graphics card of the computer and not the monitor.  So the guy switched out computers really fast and I hurried to fix my mouse sensitivity, mastery pages, and other in-game stuff.  It was pretty rushed and I didn’t get a chance to go to the bathroom because I was waiting around for the switch to happen so that I could set up my things for the games against TSM.

Anyways, the games against TSM were pretty difficult.  We had scrimmed them 7 times and lost all of those scrims so I think our team wasn’t in that great of a mindset.  Personally, I was pretty happy with how well our scrims went against TSM the day before because they were all so close (except the very first laggy game) and we had the potential to win if we didn’t make a bad mistake.  I also think that the scrims against TSM helped us more than they helped TSM because if we played them without scrimming we probably would have lost 2-0.  At the end of the day, we came out on top 2-1 by playing/picking a little bit better than TSM and I felt I did a pretty decent job again.

In the first game with Soraka my main goal was to stay as close as I could to anyone squishy on my team that I thought Leblanc was trying to burst.  This way I could use a heal on whoever is targeted and try my best to silence Leblanc as she tries to jump in.  The Baron fight where Leblanc tries to jump in and I silence her was a pretty obvious move on Leblancs part because I think I set 2 wards on that side of Baron.  She really wanted to steal Baron as a last ditch effort for her team.  Even though I used my silence on her, she managed to jump back over the wall because of how delay works but died anyways.  The Janna game was just bad picking overall and I couldn’t pressure much as Janna.  The Taric game was really fun because I got boots of mobility and walked everywhere at a nice speed.

Winner’s Final vs TSM

After the matches ended we hung out on the computers for awhile to check Reddit and the General Discussion to see what people were saying.  I think everyone was happy with what people were saying about our team.  Westrice wasn’t happy that the people watching the stream didn’t get to see his quadrakill since my monitor died and the pause function messed up the speed of the game but overall I think we were all proud of ourselves for that day.  Once we were done with browsing the internet we went to go find food.  It was only 4pm and it felt like we had been at the event until at least 6pm.

I don’t remember where we went or who I went with (literally don’t remember this part of the day) but once we got back to the hotel I took a really long nap.  I was supposed to go back to the convention and watch sc2 with Travis but he ended up having dinner with Matt Marcou at Busters or something at the local mall.  Once I typed “mall”, I remembered we went to go eat at Panera Bread at the mall with Rhazelle, Rhazelle’s sister, Westrice, Dyrus, and Ben? (a fan? you came into my IRC so correct me if I’m wrong).  Salce and Dan came with us to the mall but they went to go buy socks (I think Dan forgot to bring extra pairs of socks…) and ended up eating at the food court.  We also met “Pie Girl” who bakes pies for pro teams before we left to the mall.  We gave our pie to Dyrus and he ate it while we walked to the mall to find Panera.

Once I woke up from my nap, we were hungry again because it was around 11pm and we had eaten around 5pm earlier (11pm would have been 8pm west coast time too).  The closest place nearby was Haven Brothers (where I ate Friday night with Jatt, L0cust, IMAQTPIE, and Travis) and I took them there because they hadn’t gone there yet.  We grabbed some food and came back to the room to talk and watch TV.  I think I stayed up until about 2am playing the Legend of Zelda and finally fell asleep.

Also as a side note, there were really really long lines to go use the bathroom at MLG Providence, there really weren’t enough stalls for how many people wanted to use the bathroom (especially the Men’s bathroom).  The lines were usually out of the door and it was difficult to take a bathroom break inbetween games because MLG was rushing the players to continue play since the stream couldn’t fill much dead air.  I remember there was a time when we had to begin picks and bans while Westrice was coming back from the bathroom and there was another time when me and Dyrus were the only ones at the computers when they wanted to start picks and bans.

MLG Providence Day 3

I woke up around 10am since we didn’t have to play our final match until about 6pm but I planned on getting to the event around 1pm to watch some sc2 and then watch the Dignitas vs TSM match at 3pm.  After playing a little more Zelda and getting ready I headed over to the convention around 1pm.  I didn’t grab breakfast this morning since I wasn’t feeling that hungry and set up at my computer.  While TSM was setting up and warming up for their match against Dignitas I took the time to talk with some of the fans who came to MLG to watch League of Legends.  I remember Travis telling me how disappointing it was for the pro players to sit at their computers after they were done playing rather than talk to the fans on day 2 of MLG so I tried my best to remember to go interact.

I’m not sure who talked to who first but I remember talking to Fuzzbug who brought cookies for the pro players and I remember signing a few things and taking a picture with a guy.  I thought it was fun to talk with the fans but I was also pretty shy to approach them.  I also think a lot of the fans were shy to approach us.  In reality, if you ever shout out to one of us we will probably respond (if we aren’t playing a game).  Really, we are all cool guys and we would love to interact with fans if you come out to events.  We are all just really shy and don’t know how to approach people effectively I guess.

Anyways, I ate a pretzel before TSM vs Dignitas went on and then I got really sleepy during the very first game so I took a 10 minute nap at my computer then came back to watch the rest of it.  TSM beat Dignitas 2-0 and I wasn’t very surprised at that.  I was hoping that Dignitas would win since we had a 2-0 advantage over them and TSM has been a scary team to play against since they’ve been in their gaming house.  Travis asked me to do an interview on stage after the games were up and I did it.  In hindsight, I remember Phreak asking me about TheOddOne’s jungle Maokai and I also mentioned that he was TSM’s biggest threat… IT WAS A HINT.  PHREAK KNEW THE MAOKAI WAS A PROBLEM BEFORE IT HAPPEN AND TRIED TO HELP US!  So about 30 minutes after the games were done we got ready in the game lobby to play against TSM.  Dan and Salce played some solo queue games earlier to warm up but Westrice, Dyrus, and I didn’t play any games.  Westrice, and I jumped into a custom game to last hit and click around a little before but Dyrus was pretty cold.

I don’t really want to talk about the games in the final… We were in a good position to win the first game early on (first blood on bottom lane, pressure from Rammus jungle, and Singed farming top free) but there was a bad decision to gank bottom that turned the game around on us (I didn’t have flash up to help the Rammus gank then it got turned around on us).  Then the next two games… pretty painful to remember… I also don’t want to put the blame on anyone on the team.  If we were prepared enough we could have played better (especially during the picking phase of the game).  I feel it comes to something that basic for us losing so badly and I feel that we can improve so much if we change these habits (becoming individually better can only take you so far in a team game and we all know that).  I also feel that the idea to ban Soraka is something TSM used to their benefit and we weren’t really expecting (Dignitas did it to us at IPL 3 so maybe we should practice our scrims by banning Soraka ourselves and trying things out).  Either way, congrats to TSM since they really deserved it and I’m happy that they found success after having their gaming house (although disappointed we couldn’t come in first once again).

Grand Final vs TSM

After the final we all kind of sat around for a while.  I tried my best to cheer everyone up with pats on the shoulder but I don’t know.  The feeling of losing is pretty overwhelming.  The day before we would joke that we at least hit our minimum potential of second place but it still really sucks to lose.  We waited for the TSM guys to get back from their interview and they came back with a giant check and a trophy.  We all headed to our rooms to drop off our gear and we went out to dinner together.  Regi said he would pay for dinner (like he did at IPL) but it ended up going on the tab of a sponsor who was looking into a new LoL team.  After that dinner we headed over to the Twitch.tv after party and that was alright (although not really my place to be).  I ended up going back to the hotel a little bit early to walk Rhazelle and her sister back to the hotel (Westrice had asked me to walk them back since he left even earlier to get some rest before his flight back home).

About an hour after getting back to the hotel, Travis texts me and tells me to come hang out in Average Gatsby’s room and we talked there for awhile with Scarra, L0cust, Rinoa, and Voyboy about recent LoL events and hopes for the future.  I left the room around 4am to get ready to leave to the airport.

Traveling Back Home

After I got back to my room I took a quick shower and packed all of my things in my suitcase.  My flight was at 6:15am with Salce and Westrice but Voyboy also had a flight at 6:15am but to Chicago instead of Atlanta and he wanted to catch a cab with us.  Anyways its about 4:45am or 5:00am by the time we get to the lobby and we get a cab right away because the hotel has them waiting outside already (lucky us :] I remember at IPL we had to take a taxi to the train station to the airport… but the airport in Providence was only a 15minute drive away).  After we get to the airport and grab our tickets and go through the screening area we head over to Starbucks because Westrice wants a coffee or something and we hang out and talk a little bit.  Around 5:50am we leave for our gates and say bye to Voyboy (I miss you T_T side story: The person who sat next to Voyboy on his flight had a seizure in his sleep and once Voyboy realized this he got help and his plane had to make an emergency landing – you are a hero in real life and my heart Voyboy).

Then we get on our plane and our plane leaves the docking area but after a few minutes the plane goes back into the docking area to pick up some jerk in first class who we were going to leave behind.  This delays our flight about 25 minutes and if our plane was on time I would have 40 minutes to make it to my connector flight back home.  This doesn’t happen because of the jerk on first class and I end up missing my flight back home after getting to Atlanta.  The flight attendants also realized how delayed our flight was and was asking that passengers who had an immediate connector flight to get off the plane first.  I saw a lot of people get up and I think a majority of the people on that flight had a connector flight since they were all coming out of Providence… Knowing that I had no way of getting to my gate (since the flight leaves at 9:40am and we got off the airplane at 9:40am) I headed over to the Delta Airlines help desk and I’m greeted by a nice lady who helps me find new flights.

She asked me about all these options I could take (from this place to this place or that place to that place and at this time and this time) and which one would be better for me but in the end I am just really confused because I just woke up to find out I had missed my connector flight so I just say, “I’ll trust your judgment more than my own since I think you’ve been doing this longer than me,” and she laughed and said she’d take care of it.  And this really worked out well for me in the end since she gave me a first class ticket for my connector to go back home :D although my overall travel time was increased by 7 hours.

So my new flight was at 10:40am to Salt Lake and I would have to wait about four hours until my connector flight back home.  I’ve been to the Salt Lake airport before when I went on my college spring break tennis trip so it was a little nostalgic to see the terminal and shops I was in a few years ago with my old college team.  Once it was time for me to get on my final connector flight back home I fell asleep again like I normally do now (I used to stay up on a majority of the flights).  I finally got back home around 8pm and played some ranked games until I fell asleep again.

I Miss Everyone

I’m really happy I got to go to MLG Providence to play League of Legends since it was a really cool experience.  I thought IPL 3 was fun but this time the event felt a lot more personal with all the fans and how much the teams interacted with each other.  Since this was my second event, meeting people was more of a reunion and things were more enjoyable this way.  I didn’t really interact much with the RFLX guys but they seems really nice.  I got to interact with the TSM guys a lot more than I did at IPL and I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the Dignitas guys.  If you haven’t heard it before, all the pro players are really cool guys and you shouldn’t be afraid to try to approach them.  We don’t bite, and I’m pretty sure we would love to talk to you if you ever come out to these events if we aren’t busy.

I’m thankful to everyone who came out to MLG Providence to watch League of Legends too, you guys are really great fans (although I think there were a lot more rabid TSM fans than EPIK fans… I could hear the TSM fans yelling behind the TSM guys while we were playing our match).  I’m also thankful for everyone who watched the MLG stream, your viewing contribution helps your game and competitive community grow and none of this is possible if you guys don’t care and aren’t watching.  I’m also happy at how professional things are starting to become for the LoL community with Travis and State of the League.  I’m really happy MLG got to fly him out because I thought he did a great job at getting things ready for interviews and I hope the future looks brighter for him since he contributes so much to our community (and Dom the writer for www.stateoftheleague.com since he does a great job bringing us so much content).

I’m not sure how to end this post but I hope my team does well in the upcoming IEM Kiev qualifier this weekend.  This is our last chance to get into the final qualifier so we have to place top 4 (and there is even more pressure on me since there will not be any tournaments for a few months if I don’t make it since I’m not going to Korea for WCG and if we don’t make this IEM event we won’t be able to go to the final IEM event).  I know the biggest names that are trying out for this qualifier are Curse, Dignitas, and probably RFLX if they are attempting to try this out too.

I will also be trying to stream almost everyday (I took Thanksgiving off to take a break from LoL and write this monster of a post).  Right now my goal is to have at least 300 constant viewers and I know there are many people that are trying their best to help me do this (thank you all from IRC – you are helping me so much and I hope new fans join in on the chat to help me improve my stream and ask me questions so I can interact more with the community).  I really hope I can give the community a high quality support streamer.  I also want to mention that you should feel free to ask me questions (here or on reddit) because I am always happy to answer questions.  It is the least I could do to give back to the community and be a professional player for our competitive scene since my success is dependent on fans like you.  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed what I had to say about MLG Providence and I hope you continue to support me and the EPIK team as we continue this adventure in professional gaming together. GL HF GG~

[01:11] <Palmer> We took a straw poll
[01:11] <Palmer> You’re pretty much the shit
[01:11] <NhatN> thx
[01:11] <Palmer> np
[01:11] <Palmer> We were talking about a “dream team”
[01:11] <Palmer> You were everyone’s choice for support
[01:11] <NhatN> :3
[01:12] <Palmer> Now, don’t let that go to your head!
[01:12] <Palmer> Egos = bad
[01:12] <Palmer> :)
[01:12] <Palmer> Unless you’re a piece of shit like me, then an ego is all you got.
[01:12] <NhatN> lol
[01:13] <Palmer> I seriously don’t understand how you guys climbed out of the 1300 ELO bracket
[01:13] <NhatN> luck
[01:13] <Palmer> I played 11 games today. 9 games had at least 1 DC
[01:13] <NhatN> you are
[01:13] <NhatN> going into my blog
[01:13] <Palmer> sweet
[01:13] <Palmer> Can you refer to me as Princess Prissypants?
[01:14] <NhatN> nope
[01:14] <NhatN> u are palmer
[01:14] <Palmer> :(
[01:14] <NhatN> the dragon born
[01:14] <Palmer> YES!

Been losing quite a bit since the new patch has come out.  Luckily we will be playing on the old patch for MLG since I haven’t got used to the new masteries and summoner spells yet.  I’m going to be leaving for MLG Providence in the morning so I won’t be around to stream or post here.  I hope things go well since doing well means so much to me.  Thanks for supporting me and I’ll try to make another blog like I did for IPL 3. GL HF GG~

My recording of the game cut out around 30 minutes but Cruzerthebruzer happened to record all of it.  Check out one of my best Sona games in a long time from his perspective :D

http://www.own3d.tv/video/277545/

I found a post on Reddit asking the opinion of high rated support players and I thought I could give a decent reply.  You can find the post here but I will also put my comment here as well if you are too lazy to click that other link.

Before I answer any of these questions I want to say that any champion can be used in the support role (“traditional” AP carries like Annie can build AD items and become a ranged AD carry) and in the same way, some champions are designed to fit the support role better than others (and some champions just fit the style of a player who plays support more than other champions). There are clearly some champions designed to be used to support (like Sona or Taric – although you can choose to solo/jungle them) but other champions have viability in supporting as well (like Nunu or GP) when you play/skill/build them appropriately. So now to answer some questions:

Does Riot need to release more support champions? They don’t “need” to release more support designed champions but I think the game would be more fun/complex/meta to have more options with champions designed around supporting. At a competitive level with a small pool of champions, teams could ban out 3 traditional support champions (I see them as Alistar, Sona, Janna, Taric, and Soraka) and pick the other two (using one for solo – like Janna or Soraka) and using the other as a sustain support to force the other team into using a non-sustain support (which in my own theory of supporting gives your lane an advantage when you have sustain vs nonsustain supporting champions).

Should they release anymore “true supports”? Same as above (would make the game more interesting).

Are sub-supports like Leona and Lux really viable? If you play it correctly with the right team composition.

Or are the Golden 5 of Soroka, Sona, Janna, Taric, Alistar kind of just on a tier of their own? They fit my play style really well (more than non-sustained aggressive supports who give some form of cc/aura buff/dmg/utility) but this doesn’t mean that they are on a tier of their own. As I have said before, having the right team comp and play style can be very effective for winning a game. Maybe these supports you named (and that I enjoy playing) fit more team comps than the supports that are less played. Part of why these 5 champions are picked so often is because they can forgive your team for making a mistake and punish the other team more when they don’t have them (which makes it look even more unbalanced).

What do you think of the forced-meta change (nerfs on Gold per 10′s, CV nerf) of supports as they are being pushed towards more aggressive play style? Personally I don’t like forced changes on how I play support (since I’m doing pretty well at it already) but I think if they do change things that players just have to adjust (and they will adjust if they want to continue being successful). The second part to this question “being pushed towards more aggressive play style” I would need more context on what Riot or the board means by “aggressive play style”. In terms of the CV change (if they increase the cooldown time) and flash nerf (reduced range) it seems like the lane phase should be more “passive” since you should be more scared of a gank when you cannot track the jungle and at the same time the jungle should be more “aggressive” since the enemy team has less chance of knowing what lane is being ganked.

In the current situation (right now), I feel like lanes are more aggressive when they know there is no risk of a gank and more passive when they know or fear a gank is coming (which is how you should play – it is just plain smart to play passive against a possible gank and aggressive when there is no risk). This makes me think that if players adjust accordingly, the aggression and passive play will just shift to accommodate the situation and the only thing that changes is the play style (which should mean there is still an equal amount of passive/aggressive play as before).

Here is my first recording of a Battle Soraka game :D I was forced to try to carry my team :[ I also made a new page on the side to make a collection of the VODS I record through own3d.tv since they might get lost if I don’t keep them organized somewhere.

http://www.own3d.tv/video/273919/