hey guys since i just finished my last competitive game with Coast I thought the timing was right to settle down and type out some thoughts on my experience so far. I don't really like facebook and im not sure where else I would do this as I do not want to make a reddit post or anything like that so ill just do this thang here. I'll just start from the beginning, when i first joined GGU. It was such a surreal experience for me granted I had been a spectator of LCS/Pro League since before season 1 and now I was finally going to be apart of it. Before GGU I had been playing for the dignitas b team and before that FXO. When Bloodwater left GGU and they contacted me to fill in as a sub a lot of people thought it was because they needed a high elo support that was also in the socal area, so I was a very convenient choice. Not a lot of people know though that I had actually tried out for GGU before they made it to the LCS as I was good friends with Dontmashme and they needed a replacement for Pixel. They offered me the spot but at the time I declined because I felt I was closer with my current team FXO and had a good shot of making the LCS. Unfortunately we lost to MRN and things fell apart quickly but I ended up finding my way to dig b. So fast forward again to my arrival on GGU, I get to the studio and im told that this essentially was my tryout. I mean at this point I was still in awe at just seeing people like Hotshot / Saint / Reginald / Chaox just chilling around and now I was there too. I was extremely nervous but I was determined to play as confident as I did in solo queue and not show a weak performance on my debut, especially vs Crs who was then at the top of the standings and arguably the strongest team in that meta. I have no idea why but somehow I ended up playing elise support and ended up getting a delayed quadra kill. Words could not describe how i felt in that moment, and even though we ended up losing that game I was truly just happy to be there playing. Surely enough atmosphere on the team felt good and we ended up going on our cinderella run for first place at the end of the first split only to lose to TSM in a pretty close B05. I still remember the confetti that exploded on TSM's side spilling over to ours while we sat there in defeat :(. Overall though we were feeling super confident because we were going into the next split coming in second place and Shiphtur finally got his visa issues fixed. At the time people thought Jintae was better because of the recent results but it just wasnt true. many times we would have jintae 2v1 bot on something like karthus and ori because in certain match ups (like Reginald) he would get overwhelmed 1v1. We all knew that Shiphtur was an incredible midlaner that was still under the radar, and could essentially lane with confidence vs anyone. Speaking of him then vs now though he wasnt nearly as confident going into the summer split, especially with all the talk of Jintae being better and that we should have kept him instead of Shiphtur. To me it seemed like that really got to him, but not in a bad way. It seemed he used it as motivation to prove everyone wrong and perform beyond what was expected of him. When we moved into the gaming house he was by far the most dedicated, played more solo queue than any of us, woke up early, and generally stayed consistent. On the other hand moving into the gaming house had some unforeseen consequences as we literally were just 5 kids moving into a house together with Elementz for a coach. Elementz wanted to coach with a more traditional sporty style where we treated ourselves like a real sports team. We woke up at the same time, ate together, worked out together, and then scrimmed / went over replays together. I honestly liked what we had as having a structured schedule schedule / more involved coach was a really good thing, especially given how immature/naive we all were. It was something not a lot of teams in NA had at the time as NA was still realizing how important infrastructure is. (still realizing but you can see the difference now). Unfortunately as the season progressed and results weren't being produced, philosophies started to clash and some animosity started to form between members. Nintendude and Elementz buttedheads frequently, not only in game strategy but outside the game as well. Im going to be straight up honest and I feel the reason for this was because some people were not ready to transition how they lived at home to a new dedicated regiment. Anyways overall atmosphere was shit, particularly between Dontmashme and the rest of us. I'm not going to go into specifics but we came to a point where we essentially had to choose to bench Dontmashme, or risk losing Shiphtur to another team. Not to mention Zion had also been looking for other options as well. And at the time the choice was clear our relationship with dmm was pretty damaged and although he was actually one of our strongest players we needed to part ways. We managed to move on and pick up Wiz who had a really good attitude and work ethic and seemed to gel well with us. Things were feeling good again, we were dominating the challenger scene as well as winning the majority of our scrims. We had finally started going even with C9/TSM in scrims instead of getting stomped and were beating the rest. Unfortunately though none of us gave much deeper thought to overall team strategy and we were essentially still a win lane win game team. And after relegations and going into the new spring split, the meta was shifting to a more mid/jungle focused game. Junglers controlled the flow of the early game and used mid-lane pressure to make plays / get opposing jungle control. Nintendude was his strongest in a meta where he was able to make plays with zion and get him to snowball out of control as that was the lane our jungler had the most synergy with. I mean they've played together for years so its not surprising. But as the meta shifted it became a game where the mid and jungler needed to assume control, with support from the support! I tried my best to fill that role, and I honestly thought I was improving significantly from when I played in the summer split. Nintendude started losing confidence and scrims started to turn into nightmares. He would make one mistake and then Shiphtur would just go silent for the rest of the day. This happened multiple times in our weeks of scrims. This ontop of the community pressure really sent the dude into a downward spiral. I do not think he is a bad player, he is incredibly intelligent and makes some really amazing plays as he was known for. (smite steals, flash predictions all that jazz). But with him losing his mojo and not really feeling comfortable in the meta, as well as being cut off from communication with his midlaner really made it impossible for us to improve or bounce-back. We liked to think things would get better, but we just went through the motions and scrimmed. We won the games where we crushed lane and lost the ones in any other scenario. With all the reddit comments about Shiphtur the 1v9 god, and Nintenfeedx I really think it got to shiphtur and it kind of made him alienate himself from the rest of the team. So in the last week before relegation we essentially scrimmed 4v5 and just hoped for the best. We were confident that individually we just outclassed Complexity and it would work out but I guess it wasnt obvious at the time that league was a team game. You would have thought we should have known that from the beginning huh? Anyways we came to face our inevitable relegation and in that final game vs. Complexity I smiled as the defeat screen appeared. Regardless of all the drama, the inflated ego's, the dream of wanting to be the best, I still could look past the computer to see the crowd and that magic feeling was still there. I was still happy to just be there playing and meeting all of the wonderful people that I did along the way. My only regret was that I didn't try harder to salvage what we had. But even then, one door closes another opens and in Shiphtur's and Zion's case they found an amazing opportunity on Dignitas and I'm so happy that they are able to show everyone just what they are capable of. As for me, I would have loved to continue playing competitively but Coast wanted a new roster and I wasn't sure if I wanted to play in the amateur league for the entire summer / winter and even then it wouldn't be guaranteed I'd get to play in the LCS again. So I played with them for the first round of the coke league because of the 3/5ths roster rule but now they are free to make the roster changes. Currently I'm trying to get an broadcast observer position at riot, but I'm honestly not sure what I would do if I got an offer to join an LCS team. Playing in the LCS was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had and I would love to give it another year, but I don't have time to wait around! I also just realized I didnt really mention much about Alex Penn, but there really isnt much to say. Our problems were far beyond anything Alex could have done to fix. But yeah... now I've moved home and I would like to start streaming but my internet is pretty crap here so I'm going to have to do something about that before the stream is up and running again. Does this even count as a tweet? Longest tweet ever. Anyways, tldr regardless of what happened I was just happy to be playing in the LCS among friends and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I'll still be around, love you all.

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