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: First experience of AFKers and first loss!

Help me! Help me! It is always on my mind the more and more I get into it! Now to the subject of the title. So if you read my last post regarding LOL, you would know that I am playing CO-OP vs AI Beginner till I reach level 10 then going to Intermediate till level 15 from then it will be PVP to level 30 then Ranked from there on out. Now with everything I do when it comes to getting better by learning, I take every scenario as if it is the real thing. So before I get people saying to me I am spending too much time in AI battles, I am looking at these as ways that I can approve. And I have heard the horror stories of people playing in PVP games or Ranked games and there teammates either sitting at platform or just disconnecting. I never thought I would experience both of these things in a Bot match. Oh how wrong was I! I have been streaming every game that I can (if it doesn't mess up like it did last night for 1 game). And here is the recording address http://www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003/b/545522459. Please if you want to look at it and see what happened feel free to do it. Plus if you have any advice, also let me know. I have started writing down what happens in the game and I just went back and looked at a Kayle match and a Ryze Match of mine and took notes of what I did wrong. The most common thing which I knew as soon as I did it in the match what I did wrong. Is when chasing down a champion that I can take out with one more hit, DO NOT HIT ATTACK CLICK MOVE!!! 5 times in 2 games, I hit that button (which I have as A) and my champion turned around from from the champion and attacked a minion instead. 5 Fricking Times!! There was more than half of a page each side of notes so I have lots to work on. As in this game, we had 1 guy that kept disconnecting and another 2 that just did nothing at all until half way in. I had to run sacrifice on our base once they got into to it. Why would people do that in a Bot game? It makes no sense to me to go through the process of picking a champion and waiting for it to load just to not play. My 7 winning streak broken cause of nothing that I could do myself. I am not going to give up and surrender just do what I can. So needless to say from that game I took away don't give up. I have absolutely embraced this game and hope to make it to Challenger Tier. And for the first time I had 3 players honor me and 2 added to my friend list. So I am growing. Yes I know that I should probably be in PVP right away but this is how I am doing it. If you want please follow me on twitch.tv @ www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003.

My 24 and half hour 24 Hours of LeMans Journey Grind!/Dempsey Racing/Allan Simonsen Honored by win!

As I said in my blog http://40yroldgamingtriathlete.blogspot.com/2014/06/iracing-using-f1-williams-to-recover-sr.html , I have been watching the 24 Heures du Mans for the past 15 years or more. I would get up and swap out VCR tapes in the middle of the night so I would have the whole race recorded. But this year I would do something that I have never done before, stay up 24 hours and watch the whole race on Fox Sport 1 and 2!!!

Their coverage of the race started at 8:30 am on Saturday and ended at 9:30 am on Sunday. They had a break in coverage between 5:00 pm and 6:30 pm. So in between this time I switched over to RadioLeMans.com to listen to their coverage. So I got up at 8:15 am on Saturday to begin my Racing Grind. I completely forgot about the 30 minute pre-show before the flag waved at 9. SO THAT WAS 30 MINUTES THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN SLEEPING LOL. Fernando Alonso Ferrari F1 driver was the Tricolor waver, which in layman terms mean he waved the green flag. I was sitting up on the couch so excited for the next 24 hours of nothing but racing on TV. Now I can go on and give a some what detailed description of what happened every hour but instead I will just give my thoughts and impressions from the race.

The Toyota Driver of the #8 should not have been going that fast in the rain. I was a stupid mistake that took out the third Audi and come definitely have been avoided with a clear head. It is such a long race to be thinking that you could have gained that much in those conditions.

It was so good seeing Dempsey Racing sitting on pole of the GTE AM class at the start. Patrick Dempsey, Joe Foster and Patrick Long make up such a good team. Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster have been partners for a long time. Adding Patrick Long to the team for the second year is a no brainer. Do to an unfortunate penalty for spinning the tires the team dropped down to 6th and fought hard and steady to finish 5th this year. I look forward to seeing them there again next year. I think the strategy they had this year combine that with some good luck and we could be seeing the Winners of 2015 LeMans GTE AM class. Speaking of that class, it was very nice to see Allan Simonsen's team from last year win this year and honor he in doing so. In case you don't know Allan died last year on only the third lap of the 2013 LeMans driving for Aston Martin Racing. Aston Martin went on to withdraw after his death. So it was great seeing them on the top spot of the podium this year.

Having Porsche race in the LMP1 class this year brings more competition to Toyota and LeMans dominating Audi. The car looks great, unfortunately had some very bad luck at the end with Mark Webber's team car and lost the drivetrain. Can't wait till next year when Nissan joins back and racing in 2015.

So back to me and my Grind. At about 2 am I decided to get online and try and get some more of my SR back on iRacing. I was so jonesing to race after watching so much quality racing on TV. So I booted up the computer. Threw on my Piloti Lmp PRO 17 racing shoes, my Alpinestar Tech 1-ZX gloves and my Turtle Beach X12 headsets and I was ready to go. This is where I learned that I can not listen to the race on RadioLeMans.com and race a F1 car at Silverstone cause everytime I would hear the noise of the race in the background, I would think it was my car. Plus it made me realize how much I use sound to drive on iRacing. But it was still fun to get those laps in finally get back over 2.00 in SR. So after doing the math I realize that I would have to do 10 more time trials to get to 4.99. This is a learning experience and punishment at the same time. So next season season me and Jon have decided that, if we lose SR in a race that we will jump on the time trial to recover what we lost instead of thinking we would race our SR back up like we did this season. It is going to be long and tedious but a good learning experience. We are also contemplating using the Star Mazda practice to work on car control to get ready for the DW12 road series. I was very happy I watched the whole race and I also recorded it on my DVR. As soon as the cars crossed the finish line, I was asleep 5 minutes later. I am hope that next year I will be able to make a trip back to France and watch the race in person. If not I think I have found my 24 hour of LeMans tradition now, and that is Grinding out for 24 hours of Racing Bliss.

So thank you again for reading this post. I am still on the fence if I am going to do 1 or 2 more about this weekend. Definitely 1 more but possibly 2. Until a couple hours later for the next one LOL.