Five Easy ways to my Heart

Man it took way longer to get this post together than I wanted to. Freaking school and things getting in the way man. Anyways I'm going to talk about Five different ways to my heart. Now originally I had thought that I would go about this pretty much the same way I have gone about every other post here, with me going a bit more in depth about my reasoning for choosing certain things over others and not just listing a bunch of things. Today I'm going to cut back on the explanations a bit, down to like a sentence or two, but I'll also include some honorable mentions so the post won't be 1/2 a page. So let's get to it!

First off, Food! Surprise I like to eat! Just like all those other humans on the planet. Simple meals  like X with rice and a sauce are going to be the best use of time to get my attention.

Second, be funny. It's pretty cliche since everyone lists this as something they want in the a significant other, but it's because it's important! If nothing else just roll with my sarcasm and we should be just fine.

Third, try to be cool about my weird little obsession with E-sports. It's not for everyone and I know that, I love it though. If you don't automatically dismiss it I promise to not bore you to tears with 4 hour lectures on "Rotations".

I know it's not me, but I don't got time for photo shopping. 

Fourth, Since you are going to be cool with my strange hobbies, I can be cool with your strange hobbies, but first I need you to talk about them. Don't go overboard, but I can promise to never be dismissive of your hobby.

Lastly on this list I ask that you have decent taste in movies/music/TV etc. There are shows beyond One Tree Hill, music beyond Country and Pop, and movies made by companies other than Disney. Some of them are even good!

Alright we got the main portion of this done, so let's go through a few more honorable mentions, and note that most of these will be jokes so don't get offended if I say something you don't agree with.

#1 Honorable mention! Be attractive.
#2 Don't be unattractive.
#3 Read this blog, share it with your friends!
#4 $$$$$
#5 $$$$$ family
#6 Have an uncle that works for Microsoft/Blizzard/Riot/Disney/Marvel/The President
#7 If you hate the character Tauriel because she's not in the books, go home.
#8 Like birds
#9 Know the 157th digit of Pie and not the other ones
#10 Drink Coke, not Pepsi and definitely not diet Pepsi.

I'd do more but I have class to attend now. I'll be streaming some of the new Dragon Age game and giving some of my first impressions tonight, or something along those lines. That will be at http://www.twitch.tv/tripgg and I'll be going up around 9:30 hopefully and going for a couple of hours. Come by and make fun of me! Peace buds!

My Lottery Winnings

So I sort of fell off there for a bit, but I am definitely not out of it! I've still got the need to give you something to read! (bad rhymes ho!) anyways I'm going to talk about what I would do if I won the lottery. Following some janky math I figured 35 million would be a suitable number to work with for this hypothetical. Now first things first. That is an unreal amount of money right? jeez, hard to even comprehend the idea of spending it all, but I will try for your entertainment. Also as a side note, for the sake of this post we will assume that this is AFTER TAXES pay out. Ok? ok.

The first thing to do when obtaining an massive sum of money is to make sure that you stay absurdly rich for the rest of your life. This for me would involve finding some sort of financial adviser to handle the task of investing the money I have safely and with intelligence. So I turn 30 million of my total winnings over to the task of investing and the likes. I'm not a expert but I'm pretty sure that much invested properly should keep me very rich for the rest of my life rather easily. Now we have 5 million dollars left, and I'd just one more responsible thing before I start goofing around, something simple like making sure anyone in my family has their debts taken care off, which shouldn't even put that big of a dent into my money unless there is some crazy crime debt stuff going on like on TV, but like come on, what are the odds of that? For the sake of numbers we'll say I dedicated half a million to this. I Definitely don't think I'd come even close to using all that but whatever.

What are the odds of my dad being Heisenburg? Zero, it'd be my mom obviously

It seems silly to say this, but I'd also like to move this blog onto a site of its own as opposed to being hosted here on blogger, not that I don't appreciate this service, but I'd like to have it be functioning on it's own. I'd also get some quality design people to come in and make sure it's well built looks nice. It's something that I would really like to have done.

Four and a half million dollars kicking around to just go be dumb with. (#TheDream) Even that is an absurd amount of money to spend. HOW DO RICH PEOPLE DO THIS!?!?!?! oh right yachts and things like that.. nvm figured it out. This is the part I think more people want to hear about since it we all love to indulge these fantasy fulfillment at least a little bit. First thing I would do for fun with my money would be to traveling. My plan for this would be to essentially attend a huge number of E-sports events around the world and  then spend something along the lines of a week after the event to soak in the place I am at. This gives me a solid start in destinations. Now that I'm rich I'll definitely be eating pretty good every night as well, prob not eating out every day, but being able to buy good food to cook for every day is nice. (RIP Ichiban) I'd buy a totally baller custom PC that I would probably have someone with more tech expertise than me set up just to make sure nothing is messed up. A new car would also probably be in order as well, but nothing super fancy. In fact I'd probably just stick with a Corolla, but have it be new. The last really stupid thing I would like to do would be to go to a fast food place, order so much food that they'll tell me that it's going to take like 15 minutes, and then tell them that I'll be going to another fast food joint and I'll be back. I really just want to see the looks on their face, plus with that much food I should be set up to throw a pretty nice party.

This party will require a great venue though, and I'll also want it to be my own place, so I suppose a new apartment/house will be in order. Not a bachelor pad though since I quite enjoy having roommates, I would probably still charge rent on them, but it would be at quite a discounted rate. I'm not really comfortable with just letting anyone free load off of me you know? Another aspect of a new place to live would be that I would have an office. There is something about writing in one's bedroom that I find... less than ideal. It would also give me a good space to continue to goof around and do creative things whenever I feel like it. Hold up. When did it become a priority for me to have space to be creative? I was never like that as a kid. Anyways, I'd stay in Edmonton for at least another year or so, but would be ready to move to a new city as needs be.

I don't have to be really attached to any one place since I won't have any commitments to a particular place. School would definitely become more of a hobby kind of thing, like I'd go just because I want to learn more, but only like part-time and I wouldn't be super concerned with when I graduate, since I don't really need to jump into the job field that early. I'd be there for the pursuit of knowledge and not the pursuit of a piece of paper to get me hired like university seems to be like for most people. Maybe I'd attend schools like NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) to learn some of the ins and outs of specific jobs. Cooking classes for sure, things like that.

Lastly, I'd put money into E-sports. Most likely in the form of sponsoring a team since I don't have the know how to run a team, but I want to be involved. With the level of buying power I would have and since it would just be me sponsoring instead or a corporation that could potentially rival sponsors already in place I could probably work with any team/player I wanted to. It's not like there are teams that don't want more money to work with. Personally I'd like to put my money into two specific teams. Cloud9 for sure, I have a lot of respect for their League of Legends team and think the owner Jack Etienne is absurdly smart with how he's running the entire organization. Definitely think he would put that money to great use. I would also like to work with Axiom E-sports if given the chance. While they only operate in the StarCraft II scene, I think the team is amazingly well run and I would love it if they had the resources to expand their roster out. I think it's for the best that I would work with organizations rather than through sponsoring individual players mostly due to my previously stated lack of experience in handling business like this and I would much rather just entrust people, but I would have to go with organizations that are already established and trusted since I actually want the money to be put to good use rather than have it be used in one of those dumb scams that seems to frequent E-sports often. Plus how cool would it be to have something like a graphic for this blog up on a Cloud 9/Axiom Jersey? Only cool to me? Right. Don't care, it'd be awesome.

So try and wrap up this massive wall of text. Invest most of the money to stay rich forever, pay off family debts, buy new house/car, go to school for fun rather than constantly stressing, new place, blog on it's own site, lots of travel and my face on a Cloud 9 jersey or something like that. Peace buds. 

My Dream Job

I bet you all didn't see me getting another one of these things written up so quick eh? Well surprise! I did it and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Anywho before I get started on this topic. (12/30 if you are keeping count.) I would like to establish a "qualification" of sorts to the question. This said qualification is simply that money doesn't really enter the equation. When one talks about a "dream job" I feel like you should be looking for job satisfaction and not a fat cheque at the end of the day, because that ends up being the factor that deters a lot of people from pursuing these dream careers. So many of us would much rather, read/write, act, create art, music, or other similar activities, but the unsavory truth is that these jobs are rather top heavy in the sense that if you aren't the best at those things you will probably struggle to keep a roof over a family's head. So we compromise and choose careers that make us the money we need while hoping that we'll have enough time to pursue those interests in our free time. So with that in mind I decided that for this question I would assume that whatever I chose would provide enough to comfortably provide. Fair? Fair. Not like it matters whether you agree with this qualification anyways.

My dream job at this point in my life would be to work as a coach for a professional league of legends team. I figure the majority of people who read this blog are going to read that and think to themselves, "That's not even a real thing and therefore cheating." So I'll try to give a brief overview of what a coach does for a team. I'll also try to be a bit more general since this could easily be a post on its own. So basically a coach's job is to give their teams the best possible chance to succeed outside of actually playing the games for them. This can vary from a wide range of things from planning out team strategies and analyzing opponents games to find potential weaknesses to even to the role of mediator between teammates in solving internal issues within a team. These issues can be directly related to in game problems like two players not communicating properly with each other during a game to something as silly as two players not getting along outside of the game. The former can be a problem that easily bleeds into the game since the common practice at this time is to have the entire team live together under one roof. Another responsibility of a Coach is to find other teams to practice against or "scrim" with. It's actually quite similar to how coaching works in traditional sports, funny how the works out isn't it? Just on a smaller scale.

Like this, but with less yelling. 

Some of these reasons include that it would be a career in E-sports, something I'm quite passionate about. (See my previous post) It would also be challenging task to perform since there are a lot of things that need to be done and some of them, such as planning out a strategy for the team are evolving tasks that are never totally complete. A job like this also encourages my competitive side since I'd hopefully be working with a team that wants to be the best right? Now some might ask, "Why not just be a player though? Wouldn't getting paid to play the game be more fun?" In short, no you silly goose. Longer answer is that I think being a coach would be better for a few reasons and yes I'll explain it to you thanks for asking. Sometimes you play one particular game for a long time and then become so bored with it that you just stop completely, this is known as "burnout" and I'm quite prone to it, you know what you can't do if you play one game for a living? Stop playing it randomly. So that doesn't fit me. Players in the professional scene are also constantly up for ridicule on sites such as Twitter and Reddit, and I don't really want to be just eating hate from random strangers all day everyday. Coaches receive that hate as well, but not nearly as bad as the players do.  Lastly while a player must be well versed in the strategies of League of Legends they don't have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in it since they have to spend a large portion of time practicing being good at the game. Since you know, the best strategy doesn't mean anything if you can't execute it and the strategy of League of Legends is what I appreciate most about the game.

So there you have it, my dream job. Why aren't I actively pursuing this? See the first paragraph. It's a massive risk and only the absolute best even manage to get paid positions and even then it's not some massive bag of money to be had. So I'll stick with what I'm doing because I do love it and it will at least land me a steady paycheck... hopefully. Peace out buddies.

You made it to the end! Here is a Corgi with a bow tie for your troubles. 

Misconceptions About Me

Before I get on to answering this question, (Yes I am going to just ignore the fact I haven't updated this in months, deal.) I'd just like to quickly mention what a massive mind game writing this actually is. Trying to not only see yourself in the eyes of others, but to then also try to see what people have wrong about you is a very surreal experience to say the least. Now on to the question!

So I think that a lot of people get the impression that I am an apathetic person. I can totally understand why people would get this impression of me since I know there are many times that I will vocally express my lack of care for a particular idea or thing. Even as some people would call it, "inappropriate" to blatantly express such disinterest in a topic but eh, what do I care? Now some people have the particular circumstance of seeing or hearing me express this disinterest of things in a rapid succession and have arrived at the conclusion that I simply don't care about anything at all! While I can understand why a person might have come to this conclusion, since it isn't the biggest jump to make I can assure you that this is far from true!

Than what is true one might ask? Simply that while there are many things that I really don't care about there are some that I truly and honestly do care about, and believe me I care quite deeply about these things. My family and friends stick out as people I care quite a bit about, but that much should be obvious though? I also have a deep appreciation for music, movies, games, E-sports, comedy, and funnily enough, freedom. These are just a handful of things that I care about, but are probably some of the things I care the most about. So the next time you are thinking about me (come on you do it all the time!) and your mind turns to apathy try to steer away from that line of thought. If you think I'm lying right now just be sure to try and cause some sort of outburst of emotion from me by saying really silly things like, "Attack of the Clones is actually a pretty good movie." or "Wouldn't it just be better if the government was in control of the internet?" I'm sure I'll have some sort of emotionally charged statement to give about that. Peace out buds.

Seriously, this movie is such garbage and don't you dare try to defend it. 

A Quick Look at the Fast-Push Strategy in League. Part one: Compositions.

Fast-pushing is a strategy that has become extremely prevalent in competitive League of Legends. The strategy revolves around taking enemy towers down early and fast in order to establish dominance over the map and snowball the game into a fast victory. It often relies around team compositions with strong early/mid games but suffer heavily into the late game. This puts an effective "Timer" on the team to create the overwhelming advantage before the opposing team accrues enough gold to buy the core items for their compositions which often rely more on the later portions of the game. Recently in the North American LCS there was a game that very well described how a fast push should work, and also what a team needs to do in order to stall the game out long enough for overcome the early disadvantage and win the game. I'll be going over the Curse vs Counter Logic Gaming match from Week three of the NA LCS to examine some of the in's and outs of Fast-Pushing, both pros and cons. Today it'll be just the drafting portion of the game.

So what I would say is the general rule of drafting fast pushing teams is that you want attack damage/speed, strong wave clear and mobility. You also want to try and bait the other team into picking champions with weak wave clear, as strong wave clear is the main method of stopping a fast pushing opponent. With that in mind let's see what drafting decisions Curse and CLG make in champ select. Starting with bans, where not a whole lot unfolds in regards to the fast push strat. CLG ban away a few champs that have strong potential to pick off individual champions, but that doesn't really matter that much to Curse because they aren't going for a team comp that focuses on picking people off like that, rather forcing them to back away from turrets through out numbering people at the turret with smart and fast rotations. Curse also doesn't ban away any really strong wave clearing champions, more of two all around strong picks with the Annie and Elise bans.

Moving into the picking portion of the draft we begin with Curse picking up Ziggs. Ziggs works really well with fast push strategy because it's very easy to push enemy minion waves out and shove yours up against the oppositions tower allowing you to either put damage on the turret or to roam to another lane and help shove turrets there. Shoving a lane like this also keeps at least one person pinned to the turret allowing for your rotation to become more effective. CLG respond to the Ziggs pick with a Renekton and Shyvanna. Now both of these champions have decent wave clear with Shyvanna's actually being quite strong, however picking them both of these forces the Shyvanna to play in the jungle, making her far less effective in stopping the fast push because when you are playing Shyvanna in the jungle, your strength comes from counter jungling, and not so much from moving into lanes and assisting/ganking. Curse then takes Dr. Mundo and Jinx. Dr. Mundo can hold a turret very well and Jinx might be the best turret pushing champion in the entire game with her natural attack speed steroid from her Q and strong wave clear from her Q as well. These two picks now are also very smart as they don't reveal that Curse is looking for a fast push strategy. The first three picks from Curse are totally normal picks that could also be used in a pick comp or a team fighting comp due to Mundo and Jinx both having forms of CC and strong late game scaling. Not knowing it's a fast push comp CLG take Vayne and Yasuo next. Both of these champions are really bad at defending the fast push as vayne has no real inherit wave clear and Yasuo needs a static shiv at least before he can clear waves easily. Knowing that CLG has now picked a team compositon that will struggle against the fast push Curse immediately lock in the Nunu and Janna picks. Nunu and Janna both have good synergy with  Jinx adding another attack speed steroid and an attack damage steroid with Janna's shield, not to mention the knock-up form Janna can also persuade people to abandon turrets form fear of the dive initiate she brings, Janna's ultimate also can counter-act the hard engage a Shyvanna ult brings to a team fight. So two very smart picks for this composition. CLG knowing what they are up against now have no real choice but to simply stick to the comp they are already bulding and lock in the Lulu for the last pick.

So in summary, Curse picked strong pushing champions that are also usable in other compositions to bait CLG into picking champions that are weak against the fast push. Once Curse knew CLG couldn't build a strong composition to counter their strategy they revealed their strat with their last picks. CLG at this point has no other choice but to stick to their guns and hope to out play Curse in game.

Later this week (Prob Tues/Wed) I'll be looking into the first twenty minutes of this game to see how Curse now execute this fast push strategy.

Obligitory Chauster picture. 

Image source from ibuypower.com

The Casual Fan's NA LCS Power Rank!

With the North American League Championship Series booting back into high gear this weekend, I'd thought I would share some of my thoughts on how the North American teams stand up to each other with their European imports. So without further delay, we'll proceed form eight too one!

#8 - Dignitas. Let's get something straight, I am a Dig fan, I love these guys and I sincerely think that Qtpie is one of the best AD's in North America, but at this moment there isn't really a lot else going on for them. Scarra is kind of just another mid right now, Kiwikid is still new to support, Crumbz has some moments of brilliance and Cruzer just looked totally outclassed against Wickd at the Battle of the Atlantic event. I hope to see this team improve and I think they can, but right now they are in deep trouble.

#7 - Curse. Curse probably isn't actually as bad as I'm saying they are, but thats mostly because I haven't jumped on the Quas hype train. Dominate and VoyBoy seem to be meshing well together in play so they've got that over Dig at least. Cop and Zekent will almost guaranteed be one of the most average bottom lanes in North America, and with the upcoming changes in patch 4.1 almost forcing the 2v2 every game Curse's bottom lane will have to lean on their solo lanes even more if they are to start winning games.

#6 - CLG. I don't get it. I just don't. CLG has everything in the right place to be top 2 team material. They have one of the best strategic minds in League with MonteCristo coaching them, one of the two most mechanically gifted players in North America with Doublelift and Link who are both very capable of carrying games. I'm particularly fond of Doublelifts preference to playing Jinx, a champion I think can carry games infinitely better than other top picks such as Cait, Lucian or Sivir. On the other end of the bot lane, Aphromoo seems to have become very comfortable with supporting and is enjoying it, and Nien continues to evolve into a high quality top lane player. Finally, they have the super strong European jungler now in Dexter. They should have everything going for them, but things just don't seem to work out. I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest if CLG challenged for Top 2 in NA, but until something magical happens that makes this team work they'll continue to wallow in mediocrity.

#5 - Coast. Coast looked really good playing against the other challenger teams during their relegation period, but those are only the challenger teams. Coast suffers from the same problem that Curse does in my mind in that they are good players, just not great. Nothing about them really stands out, but their bot lane doesn't make me cringe with how passive they are at least so I'll rate them a fair bit higher than Curse. Someone's gotta be the middle of the pack team I suppose.

#4 - XDG. I honestly didn't know whether to put XDG or EG here, ultimately the recently renewed commitment to swapping Xmithie to AD and Zuna to jungle forced my hand though. Xmithie is a great jungler, and I really don't think he's going to fully adapt to the bottom lane until very late into the split or even the summer split. Zuna's positioning as AD was well... pretty awful, he just seems to want to go in deep all the time, so I guess Jungle will suit him better, but really this move overall is a mistake I feel. Despite this bad move within the team, I still think XDG will be a strong team that will give people a good run for their money. If they can stop throwing games I think they can beat anyone really.

#3 - EG. All hail the European rejects! Seriously though, this team has a really solid line-up. Snoopeh seems to be back on the rise getting his mechanics back together. I do thin Yellopete is way to passive, but the bot lane makes up for it with Krepo being willing to go balls deep at a moments notice and on top of that the team seems synced up with Krepo well, diving right with him. Innox seems to be a solid top laner, but I do hope to see a bit more from him over these next few months. Lastly there is Pobelter. He's super strong, I'm not going to lie, but EG cannot afford to fall into the trap they did with Froggen. They cannot rely too much on their mid, they must realize that other people on the team are totally capable of carrying the game as well. regardless, this team looks to be solid throughout the year. How ironic it would be if they made it to worlds from NA and Alliance failed to make it...

#2 - Cloud 9. The biggest debate I had with myself over these placements was the top 2. It seems pretty clear but who are the two best teams in NA right now. (I'll give you a hint, its the ones that WON Battle of the Atlantic matches.) The real question is which of these two is better than the other though? Ultimately I had to put the boys in light blue in second, but really I can see either of these two being number 1 easily. Cloud 9 absolutely dominated the last split of  the LCS with strong team fighting oriented compositions and decisive decision making. Having one of the best Junglers in the entire world acting as the spearhead certainly helps as well. Coming into this split Cloud 9 have to prove that they can still be the best consistently. I again criticize the bottom lane for being passively oriented, however Cloud 9 plays that as a strength by having Sneaky and Lemonation play utility oriented bottom lane that allows for the solo lanes to shine. I don't think its optimal, but it works pretty darn well.

#1 - TSM. Team Solo Mid has only made one change, but boy was it big. Team Owner Reginald stepped down from the starting roster to coach the team. Replacing him is star European mid laner Bjergsen. This not only makes what I thought was TSM's weakest point one of its strongest, but it also removes the massive power dynamic issues that plagued the team during Season 3. In game I feel that TSM is now actually in a position to communicate in a healthy manner. Combine that with TheOddOne's recent surge in performance and we have a scary scary TSM. Just how strong is TSM now? Strong enough that I think Dyrus is the weakest player on the team now. Yes Dyrus, the North American All-star that consistenly performs and often would be large factor in TSM's season 3 wins is now the weakest person on the team. They're like SKT K lite now, thats honestly not even a real dig at TSM. They are scary and I expect great things from them this season.

So there you have it! Some random fan's opinion on how the LCS teams are going to do in NA this split. Hopfully I get at least a couple of them right.

The busiest week of StarCraft II! Part 3!

So I didn't realize that Dreamhack started very early this morning. So all of the group stage games have been played out, so I guess we'll just talk about the results and how the bracket stages will be played out from there.

Group A: NaNiwa managed to take 2nd place in the group over Hyun, which I did not expect, otherwise pretty much exactly how I thought it would go down. RIP on Lucifron Hype.

Group B: The two notable things that happened here was Polt's very lackluster performance and JYP performing very very well. JYP hasn't had a noticeable result in a long time and has been very quiet. I didn't think he could stand up to the powerhouses of this group, but he came to play. Polt didn't. For whatever reason Polt only seems capable of playing his best in WCS America and MLG. Events in Europe or Korea seem to give him a lot of trouble. That is a weird mental block to have for a native Korean.

Group C: This group went pretty much as I expected it to. Taeja is an absolute beast. I thought sOs would give him more trouble, like that he would beat him, but I can't be surprised at this result either. INoVation's stellar TvT is probably the biggest surprise of the group.
.
Group D: This group literally played out exactly like I thought it would. Jaedong is an unstoppable monster outside of finals and Hero acquires magical powers at DreamHack Winter so their stellar performances are 100% expected. Would've been nice to see Welmu there, he could've maybe shaken things up a bit, or at least actually made Goswser actually work to advance.

Moving right along to the bracket stage games, I'll only highlight the ones I'm interested in. Starting with the Team Liquid team kill of Taeja and Hero. Why do these tournaments insist on pitting these two against each other constantly? just a shame. I expect Taeja to win here and then have Hero make a huge run in the Loser's bracket. Next Jaedong and INoVation. It should be a total clash of the titans sort of thing, but I really think Jaedong has this won, INoVation's TvZ just isn't as dominant as it once was.

Taking a trip down to the Loser's bracket we have Polt and Hyun. One of these two is going straight out of the tournament. Wow. That is just how stacked this tourney is. Clash of the WCS America  titans, if Polt can somehow convince himself that he's actually playing in the NASL Santa Monica studio and not Stockholm I think he'll win convincingly. Lastly we have TLO and JYP. I want both of these guys to make deep runs in this tournament, but one must end their journey now. Based on how the group stage games went... Well both of them sucked lost a all their PvZ games, but JYP was against Life so I'll give him the edge. Sorry TLO, maybe NaNiwa will lose fast as well so you won't feel bad.

If you aren't watching DreamHack this weekend, something is wrong with you, or your an IdrA fanboy. So something is wrong with you. hehehehehe. Seriously though, watch DreamHack, cause it's the best tournament of the year. GOGO Jaekongdong.

Let's face it, these are your eventual finalists, no one else here matters. 

The busiest weekend in StarCraft! Part two!

As I mentioned yesterday, this weekend features three separate major StarCraft II tournaments. Yesterday I talked a bit about the old relic of a tourney in WCG, and today we'll go a bit more in depth with IEM Singapore which will in fact be in Singapore! The highlight reel will be the best chance for someone NOT from Korea to win a major tournament out of the three, and then there will be ToD and IdrA casting. I guess there's also the story line of whether or not Grubby can repeat the deep run he had here last year. 

So let's talk Scarlett. Her performance at the Red Bull Battle Grounds in New York last week probably cemented her as the one of if not the strongest foreigner in the scene. Her Zerg versus Terran is without a doubt world class level, and her ZvP and ZvZ aren't that far behind. What makes her so strong right now though? The focus of the Mutalisk in each of these match up, at least that's what I think. Mutalisks play a key role in each Zerg match-up and Scarlett is one of the best users of this unit. With the slightly less potent line up of terrifying Korean stars, 15 of them in total and only 5 I think can actually beat her, (Bomber, EffOrt, DRG, Hydra, and San) This is the best oppurtunity for Scarlett to claim her first tournament victory of the year, and the best chance for a foreigner to actually take a tournament this year. 

In all seriousness though, as far as the games go, the only thing that has me excited at all is that Bomber and Scarlett are in the same group, so they will more than likely play each other. The last two times these two have met each other we've gotten absolutely fantastic series with each one of them going to the final game.
Scarlett bested Bomber in a Bo3 at the Red Bull Battle Grounds last weekend, and a few months ago Bomber took a narrow 3-2 victory at the quarterfinals of the WCS Season 2 global finals where he would go on to take the tournament. Beyond that, there really isn't a whole lot that I'm intrested in seeing from the players. IdrA and ToD hopefully will cast at least one series together and if they do it'll be hilarious. Protoss player who thinks Zerg is broken, and a Zerg who thinks Protoss is also broken, what could go wrong?

I suppose it wouldn't be fair to talk about this tournament without at least mentioning Grubby, who last year nearly claimed his first StarCraft II major in Singapore. However, the Grubby that was here in 2012 was the Grubby that was constantly improving, coming closer and closer to being the best, and seeming destined to eventually become the best foreigner in scene. Then 2013 happened and Grubby seemed to falter. He didn't all of the sudden become bad, but the constant improvement in both skills and results seemed to fade. What was left was a strong, but certainly not overwhelming European Protoss. Don't get me wrong, I want Grubby to do well here, he's one of the nicest, hard-working and more professional people in the scene. It just doesn't seem realistic to say that he will make a deep run. I still think he will eventually become very good, I'm unsure if he'll reach the same heights that he did during his run in WarCraft III though. Whatever he does it will be entertaining though. 

He'll also still have that sick jacket. 

If you are thinking of watching a StarCraft II tournament this weekend I would definately recomend you check out IEM Singapore at twitch.tv/esltv_sc2.   ESL always puts on a good show, and I'm sure there will be some great games played. Tune in! I promise it'll be worth it. 

Source of picture BenQ gaming. 

The biggest weekend of Starcraft in 2013! (Part 1 of 3)

I've legitimately thought a lot today about writing a post where I do something beyond just talking about E-sports and in particular talk about things happening in my own life. I know it'd be a crazy stretch to do that, especially on my own personal blog, but hear me out! The thought crossed my mind. Thats all it really did though, no talk about me today, on to video games!

Some of you know this weekend as American thanksgiving. While that is certainly true, this year its actually the busiest weekend for StarCraft II. We have 3 separate major tournaments running with the World Cyber Games trying to remain relevant, the Intel Extreme Master's stop in Singapore where Acer.Scarlett will attempt to win her first premier title, and finally we have one of my personal favorites, the Annual awarding Liduid Hero with a check festival Dreamhack Winter. I'll be giving my own brief thoughts on who I think each of these tournaments are going to play out. We'll start with WCG and then talk about real tournaments tomorrow and Thursday. #ShotsFired

First up the World Cyber Games in Kunshan, China. This is going to be a weird tournament, because we have 4 groups of 7-8 players that are all going to play each person in their group in a Bo3 with only the top two of each group advancing. That means over two days, nearly 100 Bo3 series are going to be played. Thats at least 200 games! That is an ungodly number of games, I feel so sorry for both the casters and the players here, it's going to be grueling to say the least. Especially if you lose the first few and are essentially eliminated half way through the day. There are going to be pointless games being played and that just shows that the tournament format is bad. Never the less, out of each group I feel there are 2 favourites to come out of each of them. Group A will have PartinG and Sen completely out classing the rest of their group. Group B might be the closest, but I feel that France's Dayshi and China's Jim will be advancing, (That doesn't mean I won't be cheering for my fellow Canadian Desrow!) Group C will be dominated by Sora with MacSed following behind, with maybe the American Xenocider making an upset. Group D will be Korea's Soulkey wrecking everyone and the German protoss HasuObs picking up the pieces of the wreckage to advance in 2nd.

Into the playoff stage it will become like every other tournament in that the Koreans will likely dominate. I think PartinG looks to be the most likely to take the whole tournament, Soulkey could also take it, don't be shocked if its those two in the finals.

If I can throw some real talk down about now, WCG is a relic and not really that rel event of a tournament anymore. The only part that seems to matter is the Korean Qualifiers, since none of the foreigners (Non-Koreans) that would have had a even play this anymore. It's just like a charity to for the 3 Koreans that make it to the global finals. If your thinking of watching your first StarCraft Tournament this weekend, don't have it be WCG, not while there are two other very high quality tournaments going on at the same time.

RIP on WCG. Plz. 

Source of picture World Cyper Games. Plz don't sue me.

Some Review of WCS 2013, and my Thoughts on WCS 2014 Plans

In case you did not know, Blizzard released their plans for their World Championship Series (WCS) for two thousand and fourteen. Fans, players and hecklers alike were in anticipation of this news, particularly if any nationality or residency requirements would be introduced to help prevent the mess that was the WCS America region where they top eight throughout three separate seasons had only one person native to North America, (a Canadian) tying it with Australia and Norway for the year. 

Blizzards first step to fixing this problem is allocate the number of spots available for challenger league qualifiers (The tournament that funnels into premier, the highest league.) shall be limited to certain numbers based on nationality. fifty percent of qualifier spots are guaranteed to those who call North America their home, (whether by birth or legal residency) while only two will be available to their main competition, South Koreans, and even those sports are actually wildcards open to anyone. If you are wondering, while 1 Canadian made the top eight over three seasons, eighteen Koreans made their way to the top eight, possessing 75% of the top spots, and always claiming the title and runner up spots. This will probably prevent many Koreans from making their way up to premier league spots, while giving many more North Americans opportunity to attempt to make the jump. 

However, these changes do not affect the seven Korean players already seeded into Premier via their previous seasons performance, nor does it affect the Twelve Koreans who will be looking to make the jump to premier in the challenger league best of five matches that will take place early next year. It is highly likely unless several Koreans are matched against their countrymen that we will still be seeing as many as 16 Koreans in premier league, and with the new format, it will be difficult to remove them. WCS America looks to remain GSL* lite for the time being. 

You will notice I have not mentioned how this change will affect Europe`s own WCS competition. This is because Europe does not have the problem of being totally overrun by Korea. While it is true that the top 4 spots are still very Korean, there has been at least one European in the top 4 each season. There was even a French player who made the finals in season one! (RIP in peace Stephano) 

What has kept Europe safe from the invasion though? Are Europeans just better players and therefore more capable of repelling the coming invaders? while I do think Europe is ahead of North America overall, that's not really what kept them safe. The almighty wall that is Europe to Korea lag has kept them much safer than their own level of play. Harsh lag has made it very difficult for Korean players to surge forth in the 2013 year, and its simply not cost effective for the Korean teams to send their players over to Europe just to attempt to qualify for a tournament now is it? Most of the Koreans that made deep runs in WCS Europe were part of European teams where it made sense to bring them to Europe to play. Only IM.MVP (who won a season) and MVP.duckdeok (also won a season) were members of Korean based teams and also made deep runs into WCS Europe. 

To close my thoughts somewhat randomly. I think Europe looks to be in a good spot for WCS. North America might need some more time before they are able to showcase North American talent. At least there's some hope so the NA players will continue to try. Also did not mention the changes to the Korean region. Going to be good to have GSL back, looking forward to staying up way to late many nights to watch it again. Peace out!

Hopefully this guy and win a tourney soon. Couple of 1st places would solidify him as the best in the world. 

So Picks and Bans did Win the Game. Mostly.

               For those of you that did not partake in the spectacle of the League of Legends world finals than you missed out on well… A bit of a stomp to be frank.  SK Telecom T1 ran right through China’s Royal Club in a convincing 3-0 fashion. While I had previously predicted a 3-1 victory by SKT I was quite surprised with the total sweep. One of the funny things about SKT is that they almost always lose the first 1-2 games in a best of X series. For whatever reason something happened on Friday night though, that allowed them to overcome that and crush on through. I will contribute a huge part of SKT victory to their Picks/Bans phase of the game, or maybe to Royal’s mistakes in the same phase.  There was a \ key error and a smart decision in champ select that I want to talk about myself.

               The first of these was ignoring Jax completely by Royal Club. I wouldn't criticize if they let it through in game one and then banned it out because of what a problem it caused.  If they had let it through twice and tried to counter it in game 2 I wouldn’t be upset. However, they let it through in all three games and Impact made himself known on the Grand master of Arms. (Jax) Malphite in game one would've had to get way in front of the Jax in order to stop the split pushing threat it created, although I applaud them for trying at least. The rumble pick in game two was only marginally better. Royal Club known with a Rumble in lane that Jax wouldn't immediately become a monster,  but like the rest of the picks in game 2 it resigned itself  to losing lane overall. Game 3 fell somewhat into the same boat as the first, a curious choice to lane a Kennan against the Jax, but smart rotations from SKT saw that game end by 20 minutes, which is about as fast as you can win a game of League.

               The smart decision from SKT was the consistent bans on Renekton and Annie. Not only are both these champions comfort picks for Royal Club, but both of them also fit into Royal Club’s fighting and dive oriented style of play. Removing the nigh invincible tank Renekton forced royal away from having a consistent tank that could really initiate a dive under the tower, while keeping Annie away from shot caller Tabe forced him to pick Sona in every single game, which allowed SKT to anticipate the pick and counter it in lane, thus making it very difficult for Sona to be effective.

               So yes, the finals were a stomp, guess what? It happens sometimes. Some teams just show up much more prepared and hungrier for a championship than others. It happens. Stop complaining to Riot about it, it’s not like they wanted a stomp either. Close series bring in more viewers, fact. Congrats to SK Telecom Team One regardless. 

Look at them in their nerdy glory!

Why Picks and Bans Could Decide Season 3.

Tonight, possibly the largest event in E-sports history will talk place. Scratch that, this will be the largest event in E-sports. At Nine P.M. Mountain time, at the Staples centers in Los Angeles SK Telecom Team One of Korea will face off with Royal Club of China for the League of Legends Season Three championship and the Summoner’s cup. The clash will be for the ages, as vastly different styles of play clash against one another and I am absolutely hyped up about this.

Oddly enough, the part of tonight that I am most excited about will probably be the Picks and Bans phase of the game. Since this is my favourite part of the game I’m going to go pretty in depth about how this phase of the game goes. Ready for a pretty in depth look at what is only a 5 minutes portion of the game?! Yeah you are! Let’s go! I’ll be using some terminology you might now be familiar with so I’ll explain them at the end.

First off we look at what sides each team are on. There is the Blue side and the red side. Blue side bans and picks first. So Blue selects a champion (character) to ban away from play. Then red side team bans a champion and this goes on two more times and we have three cham

pions banned on each side. Then the blue side again takes the 1st of five picks. After that the red side takes their 1st and 2nd pick, blue then takes 2nd and 3rd picks, red 3rd and 4th pick, blue 4th and 5th pick and finally red takes the last and 5th pick for their team. After this the picks/bans portion of the game ends and the actual game begins.

So why on earth does this interest me so much? Because games are won and lost at this phase. Im serious, sometimes teams outpick their opponents and the game pretty much ends right there. Not really, but anyone with a brain thats seen league played before can see what's coming. This could be especially true in tonight's matches because both teams are so good that if they do outpick their opponents they will not screw it up. This is why I believe that this phase of the game will be so crucial tonight. So without further ado lets go into what I think will be important bans and picks tonight!

I’ll go through this position by position. (There are 5, top, jungle, mid, ad carry and support.) First top lane picks and bans. From SKT T1 I expect to see Renekton banned away, Royal Club’s top laner GoDlike has shown excellent proficiency with the champion and it fits Renek fits in so well with a dive/fighting focused team. He can jump headfirst into big fights or towers and often come out the other end alive because of how tanky he is. With picks I think SKT T1 will be looking for either Shen to give a solid tank/split pusher with a global or Jax to become a split pushing monster. Royal Club will probably be required to ban out Jax in nearly every single game unless they want to make a move with GoDlike playing it himself.

The jungle is going to probably be the most boring part of picks/bans tonight. Both Lucky and Bengi of Royal Club and SKT T1 respectively have shown a huge preference to play differant junglers and neither one of them has been game breaking enough to require a ban. So Expect to see Bengi play Lee Sin and Lucky on Elise unless something weird happens.

Mid lane is one of the most interesting because of what a huge emphasis has been put on this slot throughout the tournament. In the beginning of the world championships everyone was talking about Assassin Champions in the mid lane. That being Champions that were very adept at picking out a single target of a team and eliminating them quite quickly. Many games occurred when every single popular assassin was banned out entirely because of how dangerous it was to allow it onto the opposing team. Fizz, Ahri and Zed, and even Kassadin if you were playing the European Fnatic squad were heavily banned out. I expect this trend to continue. Three of the six bans will probably be spent on teams making sure those champs are not played. Both teams have created strategies that fix this problem though. Faker of SKT T1 has found two solutions actually. The first being a rapid expansion of his champion pool to include unconventional assassins like Lissandra and Riven, and the second being to focus on more utility like mid champions such as Gragas and Orianna. Wh1t3zZ of Royal Club more on utility champions solution more with all three of their wins against Fnatic coming from him playing the Utility champs like Orianna and Kayle. I expect Orianna to be a very high priority pick from both teams tonight and would even go to say that it will be likely to see the red side team banning the champ away every time. That will mean that most likely 4/6 bans will be devoted to mid laners. Huge impact on the game.

The bottom lane with AD carries and Support I’ll talk about together since they go to the same lane. This will be a very interesting lane to see played out, but I don't think many interesting things will happen with picks/bans here. There simply aren't enough bans to go around with so many going to the mid lane. I think a contested pick will be Caitlyn just due to how safe she is, with all that range and solid scaling into late game I won't be surprised if either Piglet or Uzzi pick her. However, I also wouldn't be surprised to see Uzzi and Tabe of Royal Club to go with the Twitch and Annie lane if neither of them is banned out. Piglet will play Ezreal, Cait or Vayne. I don’t think Corki is going to that important of a pick, but I could be wrong. Uzzi will be looking for Twitch, Vayne or Cait. Tabe will play Annie if available or Sona if not, Poohmando likewise will play Zyra if available and probably thresh if not.

So there you have it, my thoughts and what champions are going to be played, banned and be critical in whoever is going to win tonight. Good luck and have fun to both teams! PS I’m on the Korean hype train and think SKT T1 will win in a 3-1 score line.

Dive - When a player pushes forward into a enemies tower to initiate a fight, its dangerous because enemy towers do a lot of damage to your character and quickly.

Split pushing - When one member of a team goes into a lane and attempts to force the other team to react to it. Usually done by either a champion with a global or one that is a very strong duelist forcing the enemy team to send more than 1 person to stop it and that puts that team in a bad posistion.

Assassin - A champion that specializes in picking a specific target out and eliminating them very quickly. Didn’t really need an explanation did it?

Champion Pool - Every player has a list of Champions that they feel comfortable playing in a competitive setting. That is their pool.

AD carry - a character designed to inflict very large amounts of physical damage but is very weak on the defensive. Think glass cannon.

Yes, I'm aware that SKT T1's bot lane is named Pooh and Piglet. I am aware. Its adorable.

Lots of Small Rants and Birthdays

               Well it’s been a bit of time since I really sat down to write something, mostly because I haven’t; felt like I really had anything worth saying on the blog, but a good friend of mine in Chrissy Williams asked about it today and since it is her bloody birthday after all I guess I can muster enough motivation to put at least one post together.

               So what to talk about? This is kind of the problem eh? I usually want to write about just one thing but I suppose writing on several things isn’t that bad right?

               So let’s start here. This is the going to be the computer I build later this summer. It`s almost entirely based on this build. I excited to build it. There were a couple of parts I thought about changing up, but ultimately this would be the best bang for my buck. I like my laptop and all, but let’s get serious; you need a desktop to get the performance I want without paying like $2500 or so. This build is about $1000 and should be able to play any game I want and record/stream it with at least passable quality.  So yeah, building a computer like this is like way way way worth it because I’ll save hundreds of dollars that would have had to be spent on a pre-made computer. The only real downside to this is that when it’s done, everyone that I’m related to will think I’m some sort of expert that can fix any of their computer problems for them. Which might be true, but only because I know how to use this site.

               Quick note on my thoughts about Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail. Yeezus not that good. Magna Carta quite an enjoyable listen. It seems to me that Kayne feels like he still needs to prove himself, which he totally doesn’t. Jay-Z though just makes stuff he likes and it sounds like that. Thus fun to listen to. Magna Carta is not a very deep album in all honesty, buts I like listening to it. Don’t take these criticisms to seriously though, cause you know. I’m not really qualified in any way. (Pseudo-intellectualism at its finest!)

               As a final note let’s just briefly mention that the United States government recently recognized players of the League of Legends Championship Series as professional athletes with the same visa privileges as players of the NFL, NBA, NHL and other organizations. This is huge. It means that E-sports is really here to stay. Huge numbers at the Evolution championships this weekend are also another great sign for the community. All in all, I’m super excited for this fall so I can watch The International Three (Dota 2) Season 3 Worlds (League of Legends) and WCS finals at Blizzcon (SC2) Gonna be a huge time for E-sports this fall. One can only hope to see my boys Dignitas make it to Worlds for League. If your intrested in reading more about the whole League players getting recognized as pro athletes you can read the article here. 

So Good!

               

Let the Heckling Begin!

            So I haven’t written here in like forever, but I’m not even going to go into that, because I’m here now to start getting a schedule together. That’s all this post is going to be about, me putting together a few goals before I head back off to post-secondary education.  

            Firstly I want to become consistent with this blog, to help with that I’m going to give this blog a clear definition. I will talk about things that are interesting to me. That means that there are going to be E-sports posts, there will be ones where I rant about stupid things people do, I will talk about my personal thoughts on a variety of subjects. I will occasionally rant about what a dork I am. I will talk about cute girls; I will talk about a good restaurant I might go to. I will post pictures that are related to all these topics.  There will be many Calvin and Hobbes references. I am definitely going to talk about music in games and movies, as well as games and movies. I will probably say things that people will subsequently call me out on. It’ll be a good time. I will criticize almost everything.

           - I’m going to read 3 full books by the end of the summer. Any suggestions?

          -  I’m going to reach Diamond rank on Starcraft 2, and complete a play through of Pikmin and The Legend of Zelda: Wink Waker and Ocarina of Time.

           - I’m going to learn to cook 4 new dishes.      

         -   I am going to find a steady exercise schedule and be consistent with it.

          -  I will go on at least 2 dates.  

          -  I will discover one new band that no one else knows about (Hipster cred inc!)

            We’ll cut if off there for the sake of being realistic. I think Starcraft, exercise, and dates will be the hard ones on this list. Ok blogging consistently will be the toughest, but that’s a given.  Still, dates will be difficult just because of what a recluse I am and breaking out of that shell. Exercise because well because I’m pretty freaking lazy. Starcraft because it’s a really difficult game to get good at, and I’m prone to getting really really frustrated at myself when I play it. I think if I accomplish the other two difficult tasks though I should just become a happier person which will make it easier to tolerate the rage inducing nightmare that is the battle.net ladder.  

            Why blog this though? Because the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life knows when you are beyond your own capabilities. Not that I can’t do these things. Just that I know that I won’t on my own. So I humbly ask whoever reads this, to please pester and bother me about accomplishing these things. Pick the ones you want me to do and hassle me. I think that’s manageable. Another excuse to get on my case? Gladly. That’s what I imagine most of you are thinking about this. That’s all for now, happy pestering!

            Don't think I forgot about that 30 topic thing though, nice and quick. Something little that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The ending to Rudy. Goodness me I love that movie and I hate how it can just play with my emotions like that, but it can. If you haven't seen it, let me know. I have a copy and will gladly loan it to you. Heck I could even watch it with you if you want to see me nearly break into tears. 

So good.....

I Wanna Work in E-sports but I'm Still Just a Lurker

               I think everyone kinda has this job they really want but don’t really know how it’s even possible to get it. Some of them get really motivated and find out and then do it. Some find out and don’t. Some though never really even let it become anything more than a fleeting dream. I haven’t decided which of those three I am yet. Partly because I haven’t really ever settled on what I think would be that dream job. All I really know is that it’s in online media. Online shows, sites, article that sort of thing. I really think working in the E-sports scene would be just an absolute blast.

 Getting into E-sports is a complicated idea in itself though. Mostly because there really isn’t a set way to get into it. One of the more commonly accepted ways is the simple procedure of constantly producing content. Really that’s the best way. If you really try to boost the community the community will accept you and help you out. Artosis is the best example of this in my opinion. This guy hopped on a plane to Korea with no idea what was going to happen, but he constantly produced content and built himself up as a respectable person in the community, eventually his work was rewarded and he is now arguably the most respected and well known casters in the entirety of the Starcraft II community, stable job as the Code S (Premier League of sorts) caster with his best friend Tasteless. Total nerd baller.

Where E-sports is at now, I believe a good solid way to get into the industry would be to do two things. First get off to school and learn a skill that is relevant to E-sports, secondly continue to be active in the community and produce content. It’s critical that you strive to make sure that the content you make is the best you possibly can. This includes taking criticisms and building off of them. Not that I really know much, I mean I’m not all that active in the E-sports community myself. You know what? I’m gonna change that. This is one of my absolute favourite things in the entire universe and I don’t help build it up. That has to change. Time to get active! (In E-sports) WHOOOOOO!!!!!

Ten Bucks to whoever finds the French guy. (HInt, it should be obvious)