League of Legends: My Leap into the PVP Deep End and never looking back!

My original plan was to play on CO-OP vs AI till I reached level 20 then to jump into PVP so that I would only be 10 levels away from level 30 for Ranked. However the lure of PVP got me after I hit level 12. I realized that at level 12 I got all the summoner spells that were available so why not now. Plus after watching almost every single LCS NA and EU Summer Splits and talking with my friend GeneralFoamy08, that I realized the bots in CO-OP don't play like real people. Now a lot of you would already know this or think "no kidding".  But I am writing this for people like me who don't know or are just beginning to enjoy this most addictive game that is League of Legends.

So in watching the LCS for the past month or so, you start to see how the game is played by the best in the world. Go into lane, farm farm farm, harass the other champion in your lane, jungler sets up a gank then back to farming, buy and build, then teamfight, oh did I mention farm, then win or lose ROTFLMAO. Now when you play in CO-OP vs AI this is what happens, go into lane, other champion places himself between your minions and their minions, the try and kill you every time they get a chance, you trade shots at each other, you try to farm, no ganks from the bots, then you either snowball or get snowballed. So I knew from watching and talking that I had built my play-style to match what was going on in the LCS, that gave me the confidence to go ahead and make the plunge into PVP.

I can admit that I was nervous about going into PVP for the first time. I realize that I would be playing with people that I have never or will never meet in person. With the sheer number of people playing on League of Legends, I would probably never play with them ever again. But you still don't want to be the one to cause a loss, to get yelled at or raged on. Some people play just to have fun, while others play to get better and be as competitive as possible. I am the later but I want it to be fun. I replay every match that I play in to find out where I can be better and improve my game play. I watch a ton of videos that people have put up on YouTube in order to learn any little trick or tip that will improve my play. I read build guides from Mobafire, LOLpro and others as an example. I think about new champions that I can play later on as I level up. I can say that it lets me use my mind and think about a ton of strategies that I can come up with. 

Like the title says once you go into PVP, you won't ever want to go back and play CO-OP unless if you don't get your First Win of the Day bonus ROTFLMAO. I played my first couple of games and instantly knew that all the work that I have put in (which I know is not even a tenth of what other people have put in) has helped. My last hit skill was good not great yet, but was above average. I had to fine tune my build order and ability level up order which would take time. I got to experience my first team surrender that I voted against. I experienced my first champion in my lane feeding me and I experienced at least twice a horrible match up for me in lane. I saw what would happen if I was left unchecked and I snowballed. I saw what happens when the other team snowballs. I would always look at the champions on the other side that I went up against or that had snowballed and see what spells they had and why they did what they did. 

This game is such a great way for you to be able to think on the fly, to use strategy and build hand and eye coordination. I will say that I can't wait to people up a team of 5 that we can just play together and build our own strategy and tactics. Like with any of the eSport games right now, I feel like you can take a group of people and put them on a team (regardless of age) and they would be able to compete on an upper level with the right training and tactics. The whole idea that these type of athletes have a special type of skill or some genetic ability to me is not true. I am look to see if I can prove that with in the next year or so. They will have to be dedicated to wanting to excel at improving their game-play and compete at the highest level. 

Follow along with me as I set out to get to level 30 then move into ranked play. What would the LOL world come to if they saw a 40 yr old playing on the main stage at LCS???

League of Legends: it a heck of a drug!/LOLesports.com

I think this should just be the start of every post I do about League. Cause that is the only way I can describe the hold this games get over you if you are a competitive person and always strive to be in the top tier of everything you do. I have had some really good runs with both Ryze and Kayle. Now I have been concentrating more on Ryze just cause you see more Kayle bans than you do Ryze. However you are starting to see Ryze bans on the LOL pro level but hat is more for a certain player on the opposite team that plays Ryze and plays him well ie VoyBoy, Balls, and Pobelter. Also again after hours and hours of YouTube videos and watching competition play on LOLesports.com, I have been able to increase my play drastically. Now again as I have said many times before, Yes it is still CO-op vs AI. But it is up to you to play the game the way you want to do better. Most people play AI to either get their First Win of the Day bonus or to just go HAM and feel better about their play. I however have been playing it with the way that I plan on playing in PvP. Yes I know the bots don't ward and they will not play the way a human will, however they will react to your movement faster than any human and also it really is for me to tune movements. Plus and this has helped my hugely has been that since I stream my matches on Twitch.tv, I go back and look at how I did whether it was a win or lost and see mistakes that I made and take notes. One of the biggest mistake that I did was to click Attack click move instead of right click chasing a enemy champion toward their tower. As soon as I get past the minions then press Attack Click Move, I would spin around and attack the closest minion instead of continuing to run after the champion that always needed just one more hit to kill it. Plus I found many other things that I needed to work on, so before logging in and starting to game, I go over the 2 sided piece of paper where I wrote down everything that I needed to improve on so that it is in my head. Another thing that I saw a lot of the pros do is, hang around in the lane building up gold instead of running back every time you got enough to buy what you needed to start a recipe for an item. What I use to do is, if I was building lets say Guardian Angel, as soon as I got enough money to buy just 1 piece of the recipe I would run back without any regard to what was going on in my lane. Now I stay in till I push up to their first tower or kill the bot in lane or I die, then get what I need and more. Now this works best for early game, but mid to late game I will go back earlier time cause what you build later in the match the items that make up what you are trying to build has more of an impact on your strength in the match. There are a ton of other things that I did wrong that I am currently working on and I think I will post a blog as what I have learned so far and what I have done to help me with advancing my skill (but I am no way ready or the best at all)

So because of my hectic stressful last week getting ready for the Miami Homestead 150 race with Lionheart Indycar series and getting ready for the ATC 40k Tournament, I didn't get hardly any play in. However the last game I played I went 6/0/9 on bot. I had read or saw a video about how with this game being so muscle memory and tactical, that you should really try not to go more than a full day between playing. So I was a little worried that it had been days since I got on last, when I got on last night. In a video that I watch regarding CDR (cooldown reduction), I found out that you can only have a CDR of 40% and I wondered how much I was using. So we I go to the Rift with just my Masteries, I am at 5% CDR. So I added to my item set last night to bring in more CDR and added The Spirit of the Ancient Golem and Ionian Boots of Lucidity. So game 1, I get an invite from a friend of mine to get in a game. And the weirdest thing happens, I can see the Platform but no one else, no gold..nothing. So I tried everything I could think of till I finally had to exit game then reconnect. And it worked, however everyone was at least level 8, while I was level 1. So this was going to be fun. But I slowly and cautiously I fought my way up to level 13 before we got the Nexus. One thing that I had to work on what my Last Hit timing, and let me tell you by joining the game finally so many levels down compared to everyone else, you make sure you get every last hit you can so you can level up quickly. I think I finished 2/3/9 the first game and the 3 deaths came from just being at a 7 level deficit starting out. Then the second match I did to me real well. That is the match I went 8/0/6 mid against Annie. I stayed in lane, farmed like crazy, poked and harassed, waited to get multiple items instead of running all the time, constantly moved instead of just attacking standing in one place. I also did another item build order which included Spirit Visage and Spirit of the Ancient Golem as the new adds to my list. Now I know it is bots, but I was the first to level 18 had 13.5k gold (which is the highest I have ever gotten) finished with 179 minion kills and I was taking damage and the HP was barely if at all moving. So even if it was bots, I know that my play is getting better just by I increased all of these stats. 179 minions and the 13.5k Gold means my late hit has improved. The more Gold means building better items quicker which means dealing our damage and taking damage. After watching Scarra play Ryze, I paid very close attention to his ability order which I tried to copy. I just need to focus on knowing by feel when the cooldown is over.

PLEASE CHECK OUT AND FOLLOW MY TWITCH.TV/BCUTLER2003. Just stop in see what is going on. I will be setting up more about it here in the future including overlays,voice and graphics.

Thank you again for taking the time out of your day and reading this.

League of Legends: You Addictive SOB!!!

So I suggest that on the League of Legends website there should be a disclaimer;"This game is addictive and it will consume your every waking hour!" ROTFL! When you take a game that  incorporates a steep learning curve with a game that can be played a million different ways and you want to be very good at it, it consumes every minute of the day. At least for me it does. This is a game that is so much fun but also so easy to make mistakes. I would ask anyone playing the game if they feel like they have learned everything that can be learned. To me, I feel like there is no way to learn everything there is to learn because the items that can be built and the spells that can be used and the combination of these plus the number of different champions, throw in with that playing solo with a group of people the game joined you with or getting to a point where you start playing with friends and then team tactics come into play. You can tell how complex the game is just by the long run on sentence I just typed ROTFL. When I started playing I had no idea how to play the champion that I picked Ryze. I would go down a lane, run into the minions, skip over them and try and kill the other champion from the other team. Oh wait the other champion is running away chase after them, killed by turret. Okay the turrets will kill you quickly, so back in the lane, chase down the champion, oh he is running at the turret, stop and kill some of the minions just for fun. Oh wait I just leveled up by killing the minions. Okay so I will just kill the minions. Wait a minute how come my teammate is leveling up and getting gold by hitting the same minions I am attacking. Etc., Etc., Etc., ROTHFL. So I could write a novel as to all the things I learned in just my first game or so I thought. So as my typical way of learning games rather it be how I improved my COD: Ghost, Black Ops 2 or Titanfall game, I go to good old reliable YouTube. So have you ever typed in League of Legends on Youtube?? 1,400,000 videos that have League of Legends in the tag words. So where to begin? I found LOLesports.com on Twitter. So like I did with Ghost and watching the pros on MLG or Twitch (in the case of Evil Geniuses), I watch almost every game that was going on in the EU League Championship Series and the NA League Championship Series (LCS for short). As first it was like the commentators were speaking a different language and when all of the champions got into a huge fight I had no idea who was were and what was going on. But I saw how they started out the game at least. I saw what the minions were actually there for. I saw how they "farmed" then made a "poke attack" or "ganked" the other team. So I was starting to get an idea of how the dynamics of the game is played. I started to understand what the Dragon was for and the Baron was for. Then I found www.mobafire.com and subscribed to the websites. Found a Ryze build and a Kayle build. These were the two champions that I decided to use. The funny thing was I had Ryze for the whole first week I started playing. And the whole time he had an exclamation mark on his icon which I had no idea what that was for. So last night I wanted to play Ryze instead of Kayle (which has a mark on his icon now), but he was gone!! So the first game I played with someone that picked him so I thought that was it. Then the next game he was still gone. I had no idea that I had to buy him and that the mark meant he was free ROTFL. So I got him and built him up using a guide from www.mobafire.com. I also have a Kayle build up that I got from that website as well. Now the question is which item to build first. That is what I am dealing with right now. So I am using a notebook to keep track with my KDA, what my item build order is, what mistakes I do or what I do that works. And it is so fricking addictive. I am now thinking about what items to build and in what order. I don't know the exact recipes of the items that I decide to use so my item set is huge ROTHFL. I like the builds I have right now. I am either going even with a huge assist or I am going positive so I feel like I am progressing in the game. From reading I am staying in the CO-OP vs AI beginner till about level 10 then doing CO-OP vs AI till level 15 on Intermediate. I want to have all of the Summoner spells available to me before I go into PVP then on to ranked games after hitting level 30 of course. I am so competitive that I hope I will be finding people to play with on a regular basis to form a team and rank up. You can check out my Twitch feed at www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003 to see my climb up the levels into PVP and then Ranked.

See you on the LOL Addictive Anonymous ROTFL Rift!!

League of Legends: The most fun frustrating game ever/Learn the League

I don't even know where to start or even what to say. I have never wanted to be more invested and never have wanted to research so I can learn as much as I can before for a game till now. I also have never wanted to throw, shoot, destroy or burn my computer as much as I wanted to last night playing LOL for only the 3rd Co-op vs AI game in my life.

The starts out by giving you the oppurtunity to learn in the Basic Tutorial then the Battle Tutorial. In the Basic Tutorial, it teaches how to move and how to attack.....sort of. Left click attacks and right click moves to where the cursor is. Pretty simple right? BUT THAT IS ONLY THE SMALLEST PART OF ATTACK AND MOVEMENT!! Once you get into CO-op vs AI, left click doesn't really work well. Attack is really right click on someone but also move is right click on the ground. So if you miss clicking on the target, you will move to that spot. Also if you click on an Ability then click on the target, you will follow that target unless you click somewhere after you fire your Ability. Which means if you don't pay attention you will be behind all the minions and right in the middle of the enemy champions getting your butt handed to you. What they don't teach you is the different move functions that you can really do. Move toward your target firing everytime you are in range and stopping to fire when you do. You can stop and hold your champion while moving. Or you can click one movement toward or away from your target and shoot and run away at the same time with only one click or move forward and attack with one click instead of clicking away from what is chasing you then clicking on the target chasing you then clicking away. Even typing that out takes more time and doesn't make clear sense than just clicking one movement that allows you to walk and fire at the same time.

I made sure to do what I thought would be the best thing to learn and also not to hinder my human teammates when playing in CO-op. I did the Basic Tutorial, the Battle Tutorial then started the CO-op. NO!! I feel like now that I have read that there is all these other movement and attack controls that you have to stay in Battle Tutorial to try them out. Also I went from using Ryze to using Kayla. It takes time to learn a new champion. I did okay in my opinion with Ryze, but when I used Kayla in my 3rd game I got slaughtered! The learning curve on this is so high it make one want to flip over there computer desk.....which I almost did lol.

After a Google Search, I came across the website http://learntheleague.com. I read a some of the website and some of the comments about the e-book Learn the League 13th edition. So being someone that needs to have whatever I can find to help I purchased it and started reading it last night. I am going to read it all the way through first then go back and apply one thing at a time to help my gaming. So if you are starting out playing LOL or are an advance player, this e-book is very helpful to me. So thanks to Patrick O'Callahan (@ciderhelm) for taking the time out and making and updating this guide for lost players like me.

Check out my Twitch Channel www.Twitch.tv/bcutler2003 if you want a good laugh right now watching someone getting dominated in LOL....ie ME ROTFL.  Again thank you for reading this and look for many more to come.

Gaming day/iRacing/COD/Optic Gaming

So day off from the TRI training gives me time to get some iRacing practice and some Call of Duty Ghost practice in. Yes I am a kid at heart, a nerd or geek or whatever your term for it is but I am proud of who I am. Be yourself don't let other people tell you what you should be cause of your age, job or anything.

IRacing practice this week is in Skip Barber is Mazda Laguna Seca and in the Indy Fixed Series is at Richmond.  Me and my Flying Squirrel Racing Teammate Jon Carrigan have decided to drop the Radical series cause for some reason this season has gone completely non USA time friendly. Which sucks for us. Jon worked hard during the week between Season 1 and Season 2 to come up with the schedule that they are running during season 2. So we did over 30 minutes of practice at Laguna Seca in the Skippy. I just uploaded the video to my YouTube channel ( www.youtube.com/bcutler71352003 ) so check it out. Just started to upload videos to YouTube so I am just learning lol. We are running easily in the top 10 of our division as far as fastest time is concerned. After Skippy practice we jumped over to the Indy Fixed Series Oval at Richmond. We did over 120 laps and we were right where we left off just tenths of a second off the fast times. I haven't run that series in almost a year and I can say I seriously miss it. Now when I upload the video to YouTube, you will see that it is the 2005 Dallara Car and not the 2013 DW12 car. Well they came out with the DW12 for the Indy 500 race last weekend. Unfortunately the site crashed and they had to cancel the iRacing Indy 500 but they will be changing the series next season from the 2005 Dallara to the DW12 so we are definitely looking for that.  If you love racing but can not afford the 10s of thousands of dollars required to real race, please look into iRacing. Great laser scanned not GPS plotted tracks.  Cars from the manufacturer or from the racing teams so all the details, you could want. A computer,  monitor,  preferably a steering wheel/pedal setup and a headset to speak and hear the noise of your engine, tires and competitors.  Speaking of headsets, I have a X12 from Turtle Beach. These are great beginners headsets. Very inexpensive, comfortable and clear sound.  They are stereo headsets and not surround sound. I wonder if going to a set of Turtle Beach SEVEN or the DSS stereo processor would make a difference. Would I be able to go faster if I could tell if the back right tire was slipping instead of just the right tires are slipping?  I think that would be a good review.

Jump on to Call of Duty Ghost practice next. Now I decided to play COD Ghost and Black Ops 2, cause my kids love to play these games. So it gives me just another thing to be able to do with my kids. Now you know me (or you are learning to get to know me lol ) I want to be very good at any game that I decide to play. So I went on YouTube and looked up videos to watch to get better or at least above bad lol. I found 2 that were very good. One was Drift0r and the other was Nadeshot. Well I also had to choose a team to support since I knew my kids supported a team but didn't know which one they supported.  So after watch Nadeshot on YouTube, I decided to pull for his team Optic Gaming. Come to find out it was the exact same team as my kids. So subscribed to Nadeshot channel, joined MLG, downloaded MLG app on phone, follow whole team on social media; H3CZ, Proofy, Scumpii and of course Nadeshot. Now to watch hours or videos, see they compete in Game Battles and Tournaments on MLG. And will of course watch then at the first Main non eSport event 2014 X-Games Austin. Now I know what people are saying a 40 yr old trying to learn videos games better to a competitive level watching kids that he could be their fathers, and you know what I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. This is how I am. Now if I could just get better lol I have been practicing as much as I can and been creating new swear words lol It would be nice to get pointers from Nadeshot and the team. By watching them I have learned about Scuf Controllers and Elgato video capture cards. A www.scufgaming.com controller is a normal Xbox controller that they have modified with adjustable trigger stops and paddles on the back of the controller to push instead of taking your thumbs off of the sticks to push the X, Y, B, A buttons.  Now I wonder would a SCUF controller make a difference for me someone just learning the eSport competitive level of play like me? That would be a good review as well. So I am now looking at getting an Elgato capture card which I will do a review on that as well. Listen if watching gaming is right up your alley, go follow the guys at Optic Gaming. Hector Rodriguez is the team owner and has really taken eSport teams to a whole nothing level.

Well that is it for me tonight. More iRacing and COD Ghost practice tomorrow, hopefully the pool if weather is good, then of course the gym. I really miss TRI training on my days off. Praying my foot will be better by this coming Monday. Hope you guys who are reading this like it. Please comment or subscribe if you do. Till tomorrow