Nice interview, from both perspectives! I think that Tosh should interview himself for the next one.
y-y'know...
lol
I take it Luther's mine, then?
Quoted:
When did this happen?
Vapora Dark wrote:
y-y'know...
I take it Luther's mine, then?
********'s a pretty good fertilizer
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Salutations! And welcome to another new and exciting MOBAFire's monthly Community Spotlight. In this month's episode, we'll be taking a closer look at MOBAfire's Vapora Dark, a master of League of Legends and the model Talon player. Vapora, a seasoned veteran of both LoL and MOBAFire alike, has been around the halls of justice and this site since 2011.
So with all this knowledge and mastery of the game, we've elected to take a closer look towards the thought process and mind of MOBAFire'smaster Talon player. I stood outside his door late into the night with only my bath robe on and brew of tea in hand, and surprisingly he took me into his house hold, arms wide open in an embrace that'd make Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's embrace on the Titanic look like something straight out of the Little Rascals. So without any more delays, I sat him down on his couch, stared deeply into his eyes, then our interview commenced.
I just wanted to be really good at the game. I'm a really competitive person and being the best player that I knew was a really cool prospect to work towards to, even though I didn't think it could happen. Right now I don't personally know any players who are higher ranked than me, so for now it seems like my 4 year long quest is finally coming to fruition.
What exactly do you feel like you did to seperate yourself from the rest of the crowd, training wise? Was there a specific thing you researched and would do to practice to perfect your craft? What is the thought process and work ethic behind your training to cause you to rise to the rankings you did?
I think a lot of players are just too short-sighted and get frustrated at the fact that they're not climbing "now", when playing ranked is meant to slowly increase your rank over time, and increase your skills over that time too. I got frustrated too sometimes, but I never really gave up or "ragequit" ranked or anything, because for me it was still the most fun game mode to play whenever I wasn't playing with 3-4 friends. And the practice I got from ranked was worth a lot more than the practice I'd get from normals when I'd play with friends.
Whereas when I play Talon in normals, it feels like I lane, kill my lane opponent over and over. Roam, murder people, then keep roaming, roaming, roaming. Everyone's split, separated, doing their own thing, having fun, and I can get 20 kills in 25 minutes in the average game because no one wants to just group and do whatever they have to do to win, like buy pinks and CC Talon to shut him down in teamfights.
Normals can help you improve your mechanics, and they should definitely be just as good as ranked in that aspect, but when it comes to the more strategical side of League, if you play 80% normals and 20% ranked, you probably won't be as good at the theory of how to win ranked games becuase you're just used to the normals atmosphere where everyone's focusing on having fun (by winning, but winning while having fun).
As for Elo hell, I don't think it's a thing. Every rank feels impossible to climb at times. When I play at plat 1 I constantly get games where I lose and think "holy ****, could my team have been any more in competent there". This happens at every tier, it even happens to me at Master, but it generally happens more often the closer you are to your true Elo. When you're much better than the average person fo your Elo, then you'll just hard carry games and won't notice your teams being a problem for the most part.
Now, I want to shift gears a bit to focus on your pride and joy (as it is known to the members of MOBAFire) to your trophy champion: Talon.
In ranked, at least in the games I play, Talon is very rarely picked, and yet, in your hands, he is single-handedly one of the deadliest champions in this game (My mind recalls a humorous screen shot you had in your signature asking someone you obliterated for how quickly they died). You've probably been interviewed about your Talon the most, though it never seems like we can stop asking questions about it, given just how flawlessly you use the champion. What inspired you to pick up Talon and what is it about this champion that makes you enjoy playing as him the most?
I like the sense of control I get from playing him. With his insanely strong burst that takes such a short time to cast, whoever I choose to die, dies. Even after removing his silence, that part of Talon hasn't changed. It's really hard to counterplay a Talon who gets in range of you as an ADC, and boy do I love no counterplay (when I'm not the ADC). It feels like if I'm ahead, then I'm just in complete control of the game. The enemy mid laner can't survive against me if he doesn't keep a very big distance, and if I roam I'm likely to pick up a kill or two wherever I go.
And considering that I've probably played him at least 2,000 times since I started playing in 2011, it just feels good that I'm almost always the best player in each game when I'm playing Talon.
For the most part though, as far as Talon counters go, right now is a pretty good time to play Talon. The only FotM Talon counter on mid lane is Lissandra, and she's usually banned. I always ban her, anyway. As for having a hard time dealing with her, as far as Talon hard counters go, she's probably the softest hard counter. In the hands of a bad player it's still very winnable for Talon.
As far as other, not so popular counters, Kayle is pretty nightmare'ish considering the hardest thing about playing her is self casting R. (Which isn't hard at all)
Mordekaiser is also stupid to lane against because you can't poke him down, you can't burst him down, and you can't out-duel him. It's easy if your jungler camps him, as he has no escapes, but in a 1v1 perspective, Talon is really useless against him.
I usually have trouble against all of Talon's counters in lane, but I cope by either somehow cheesing a kill out of them, or surviving and getting a good gank off on another lane. They're workable, but I'd still much rather ban out whichever counters are popular if I'm first pick than risk having to lane against them.
At the start, I probably did genuinely prefer mid laners to AD carries, but as I got mechanically better at the game and started applying orb-walking/stutterstepping to my play, it got more fun to play ranged champions with high attack speed. Which led me to constantly try out things like AD Tristana mid, Jayce, top lane Vayne, etc., then finally Ezreal mid (before it was popular). Shortly after my Ezreal mid craze, I was upset for a while because of stuff that had happened, and I decided to properly learn ADC in the proper role to keep my mind off things. I got my friend who doesn't play anymore to lend me his silver 5 account, and I just spammed ADC from silver 5 to plat 5 in about a week. After that I left his account and moved onto my own plat 5 smurf "can i go mid plz" (which I later renamed to Uzi Junior), and kept maining ADC on that account, and got to plat 1, although it was around diamond 4 MMR.
At some point during all this I just realized that ADC's were so much more fun for me to play, because I just love ADC mechanics, as opposed to stuff like Zed who's mechanics mainly involve clicking the right spells in the right order. And so I've just mained ADC ever since, although I consider myself a Talon main over an ADC main.
So this question was asked by several of our members in the Veteran's water cooler, located in the back alley near the building that houses the MOBAfire servers (oddly enough by the place where GrandmasterD and I do our very suspicious transactions with very shady people regarding male modeling): What have been your impressions of the veterans you see actively on MOBAfire?
FalseoGod: Stahp hitting on me, I like girls. D:
Janitsu: Most of his posts on MOBAFire have been hella annoying and spammy. Recently he's gotten better, but the poor guy will never live down the reputation he's built for himself.
Joxuu: He seems funny.
Luther3000: Pretty cool guy, I talk to him every now and again and enjoy our conversations. He needs to learn to accept that I'm the best ADC on MOBAFire though. :^)
Meiyjhe: I used to not like him much, he used to use ":D" every 5 seconds in every one of his posts which made them very annoying to read. He's gotten better since then, and I'd say I'm closer to liking him than I am to disliking him now, though we don't interact much.
MissMaw: I've "known" MissMaw for over 3 years, in the sense that we joined MOBAFire at more or less the same time and we've both been very active since then, but we never really interacted much for the most part. In fact, from the few interactions I do remember, I got the impression she didn't like me much. But because of reasons, we added each other on Skype in January last year but we never ended up talking on it until she randomly messaged me in May, and we've been pretty much best friends ever since, and still talked almost every day.
Nighthawk: I don't even remember how we became friends considering he's NA and I'm EUW, but somehow we are. He's a cool guy to talk to.
OTGBionicArm: I feel like OTG spent most of his time on MOBAFire suffering an identity crisis. First he was a Viktor main, then he was a Jayce main, and whatever else he mained, I don't remember. It was like he wanted to be a 1 trick pony but couldn't find any champion he wanted to be a 1 trick pony with. I think he's settled for playing several champs now. Aside from that, from what I see on MOBAFire he seems like a nice person.
Toshabi: People can say whatever they want about him, but I think his posts are pretty amusing most of the time. Come at me.
Vapora Dark: Epik guy, really good ADC player, best on MOBAFire.
Wayne3100: What the hell is up with those numbers, am I right hahaha... Ahem. I don't know too much about Wayne, but he seems to be a really nice guy both on MOBAFire and in person. It's been enjoyable having him around in Skype calls whenever I was playing with him, he can be pretty funny.
Psiguard: I don't get to interact with him much as he's on NA, but during his recent visits to the EUW server, it's been nice talking to him and it's a shame that he'll probably get bored of coming to EUW, as all NA players do.
• 3 random facts about yourself not related to League?
• I dare you to make a video asking girls out using your Master tier e-peen. (This question was asked by 90% of MOBAfirians)
• Have you found new loves besides that overdramatic and slightly silly girl here on mobafiur?
Vapora Dark: missmaw, i am master, will u go out on a date with me
MissMaw: well if ur master, then sure!