Hot Takes: Esports Edition

It’s april fool’s so nothing I say is going to be taken seriously so why not go over some thoughts I have about various Esports because it’s not like anyone cares especially today.

Cinderhulk Jarvan is actually like the stupidest build in the world. The entire point of picking Jarvan is using his strong early game ganks to create and subsequently snowball a lead into enough map control to capture Baron and push towards a victory. Nothing kills your effort to snowball a game like building 0 damage and trying to smack your wet noodle of a champion around. For the love of all that is good, play into Jarvan’s strengths and build Warrior.

I really liked the GOATS meta of competitive Overwatch. I know some people don’t like seeing the same 6 heroes over and over again, but GOATS required a lot of critical thinking from the people that played it in order to properly manage your ult economy and be aware of exactly what your opponents were capable of. It rewarded the smartest of players rather than those who were just skilled mechanically. As an added plus it curved the excessive use of Mercy in competitive and that’s just lovely.

Sidenote, Mercy’s resurrection mechanic is just bad competitive design. It allows teams to make enormous mistakes and have a hero come by and erase the fact that you screwed everything up. I think it’s not too bad now that it has such a long cooldown and Mercy ult doesn’t give another free rez but I’d still prefer it just gone from any competitive version of the game. Thematically it’s pretty dope though.

On the other hand I’m generally OK with resurrection mechanics in League of Legends, except Zilean. Zilean ult needs like twice the cooldown it has, at least from level 16 onwards.

Hungrybox might just be one of the greatest smash players to ever pick up a controller, but Puff is still the most horrendously boring to watch character in the game. I’d rather watch 100 wobbles than a single puff versus a campy fox match. I respect Hungrybox’s skill a lot, but good lord make it stop.

Fortnite could’ve been the biggest esport ever but Epic squandered it with game changes that knee-capped the competitive players in order to keep very casual players from feeling like they sucked too much.

This isn’t really that much of a hot take at this point, but league of legends champions hit their power spikes way way too early. I remember the good ole days where there were actual late game champions that didn’t become strong until they got 4 items or so and you needed to actually work with your team to enable them. Now everyone is crazy strong after 2 items and some champs just become useless later so no one even bothers to pick them. I get Riot’s desire to keep game times a little shorter, but this desire has made a lot of their champions useless and left to collect dust on a figurative shelf

A North American team will never win the League of Legends world championship. Ever. Also since I’m using Faker in the picture I should have a hot take about him. Faker is the weak link of the current SKT T1 line-up, and while part of that is due to how the team plays he’s still not doing his best and it’s showing.

Later!

Tilters

Everyone has these little things that just annoy them to no end. There really isn’t a good reason to get that upset about them, but we do. Our pet peeves just really dig into us and push our buttons. Here are some of the things that put me on tilt.

Women:

Nah I’m just playing, we all know its white people that actually get me on tilt. Specifically French Canadians.

Scatter Arrow:

This is the stupidest thing in all of Overwatch, and this is a game filled to the brim with things that are stupid. For those unaware, Scatter Arrow is a special skill the character Hanzo uses in the game. Basically, he takes a regular arrow and shoots it, but when it hits something it doesn’t stop like a normal arrow. Instead, it splinters into a 100 million trillion little arrows that fly off in every direction and those splinters ricochet off the walls a few more times. 99% of Overwatch players don’t understand how to properly use this ability, but that doesn’t stop them from hitting me square in the head with it every time with some BS that bounced off three walls before finding me. It wouldn’t even be that bad if I didn’t have to see the kill cam only to realize they were aiming in the total opposite direction. I’m counting down the days until that ridiculous skill is removed from the game. Kaplan pls.

The traffic circle near my apartment:

It’s a big stereotype that Utah drivers are bad, but it really is true, and you only have to watch what happens at this traffic stop day in and day out to know just how bad it is. It’s a one-lane circle with yield signs marking all the entry points not that those matter though since every person who’s ever gone through it just barrels in like its their God-given right to do so. I swear some idiot is going to T-bone me in that circle one of these days and when it happens just know that I called it.

“EDM and Rap aren’t Music!”:

Believe it or not I still occasionally hear some form of this sentence from time to time. I get that you don’t like those genres, but come on, it’s obviously music. Maybe you think it’s such a terrible form of music that it lowers the art form as a whole just by existing,  and if you would say that I’d at least respect you for understanding at the most basic level what music is, but no one says that. When you say it isn’t music, you just sound like a 90-year-old senior who couldn’t find middle C on the piano if your life depended on it. (Not that I could either, but I’m not the one saying absurd things so I’m not on trial here.) Just stop.

The itch near my eye:

It’s like right where my glasses rest against my nose and it’s so annoying.

“Is esports real sports?”:

This is one I only see online, but it has to be the most pointless debate ever. The answer is 100%, “who cares?”. esports is here, it’s competitive, and it’s growing in popularity. 10 organizations paid 20 million a piece to be in The Overwatch League, its real, trust me. If you still need talking heads on ESPN to tell you your hobby has value then you’ve got bigger problems.

The guy in my ward to thinks Jeopardy is stupid:

What is you’re stupid?

Bananas:

Could they like not go bad the day after I buy them? I make sure to buy them with a good bit of green on them to avoid this, but that doesn’t seem to change much. They’re still covered in brown spots by the next morning.

Aight I’m done. Also, this totally wasn’t the project I mentioned when I said I wasn’t going to blog last Friday. That’s a whole other thing that I still haven’t figured out at all. Later.