EPTAfter the NSL 2 screw up, I took couple days or so to gather myself, started practicing again and tried to get myself noticed and known in the Korean scene to find potential good players or good team to join.
I started to meet bit more people, tried to talk to some to see what my options would be, while playings pubs with Heen and some of his other friends from time to time.
That allowed me to meet and spot some players that I could potentially make a team with, and also asked him for advice and help to find a team and/or players.
Eventually, I met that guy named Rem1kz through Heen, someone who played a lot, seemed kinda decent but was inconsistent. To be honest I was kinda reluctant making a team with him because of that inconsistency. He ended up asking me if I was interested in playing in the next NSL with him and his team, after talking to him it really didn't seem like the best idea because they already had a mid player, and Rem1kz himself was most comfortable playing mid or carry, which was exactly what I play.
I told him that I would think about it but I was really not feeling it, mostly because I didn't want to play just for the sake of playing, I wanted to do well, and putting together players which roles don't really fit together isn't really the best idea.
At the end of the day, I didn't find any better alternative so I ended up accepting a couple days before the signup deadline for the NSL 3, and last minute we added The Park, who played in the NSL 2, as our 5th. The team then consisted of Rem1kz, Daepo, The Park and JesusStick.
Getting ready for the NSL 3 qualifiers
As soon as the team was done we started practicing to figure things out, especially who plays what, since Rem1kz and I basically played the same roles and Daepo, our mid player, only wanted to play there. Also, I had some concerns about having Daepo mid since I’ve played him before in some pubs and he seemed pretty weak to me, so I was reluctant having him there, but we had little time and not many options. We finally conclued that I would be the carry for the team while Rem1kz went offlane.
We had a couple weeks or so to prepare for the qualifiers and I wanted us to practice as much as possible since Rem1kz really needed to get more experience as an offlaner, and for us to figure out what style works best for us. However it wasn’t always easy to get as much practice as I wanted us to since JesusStick was in the army.
My first impression was kinda mixed, Rem1kz was having lot of trouble handling the offlane against decent opposition and Daepo wasn’t getting enough farm, but I had a pleasant surprise in our supports The Park and JesusStick who were doing a pretty decent job and showed promise. I decided to not bother if people don’t perform as well as I would like and should just accept the situation and do my best to compensate for what would be lacking in the team.
We were mostly practicing using the Team matchmaking on SEA since most Korean teams were pretty bad and weren’t good practice, until Blitz asked me for scrims some day. They were much better team than us so we would lose most if not all of our games against them, but this is what I wanted, I wanted us to get used to play against much stronger team than what we were likely to encounter at the qualifiers, the teams there would then look extremely weak and would get rolled over. I was surprised they kept asking us for scrims even though we weren’t on the same level, but I guess they didn’t have many teams to practice with at that time, so they ended up being our main practice partners, which helped a lot. Eventually we started giving them more trouble and were having much closer games, while destroying the Korean teams we would scrim sometimes, even taking games off Birdgang.
What looked like a questionnable move joining this team was turning out better than expected, it made me grow as a player as I had to make sure I was more consistent since an off game by me would almost certainly be lost, and even though Daepo was lacking in farm, he was compensating by making lot of things happen on the map.
We went into the qualifiers relatively confident.
NSL 3 qualifiers
That time, the qualifiers were held in Sindorim's TechnoMart, which is where every single sc2 GSL qualifiers have been held since the first open season.. and I've played in almost all of them, so once again I was back there, but for a game I had much more experience this time.
We checked-in with my team before I went to get some snickers and soda for everyone since we didn't have time to get lunch before the start and playing on an empty stomach isn't good (this would end up becoming some kind of ritual before matches in the future).
The format was 3 groups of 3 teams, round robin. 1st place is qualified, and 2nd place of each group gets place in one last group to decide which is the last team to qualify (4 total get through). The format wasn't really clear to us that day, so when we saw ourselves in Zephyr group, the team was really worried about wether we could make it through or not. I still showed confidence so that my team wouldn't underperform, and I actually really thought we had a chance to win anyway if we played well.
Zephyr went for something they already used against us in practice and that worked very well, with a Mirana/Lich offlane. I saw it coming from the point they firstpicked Mirana but I stayed quiet and let Park draft so that I don’t mess with his plan. Now I don’t remember exactly what the whole draft was but I think I told them to let them get Lifestealer, in which case we could agressive tri against him with a Weaver, who shits on Lifestealer pretty badly especially if you lane it against him. They were kinda reluctant doing it, probably not wanting to take risks so I just dropped it, thinking to myself that I would take this game as an experiment to see whether or not I should completely leave it to Park in the future or insist more when I have a plan I think would work.
The game panned out the way I was kinda expecting, it was hard and we lost without putting a good fight which made me kinda upset. But again I wouldn’t do something stupid like let my teammates know my frustration so I just went to get drink and came back fresh, then I talked to them about that game etc.
We were kinda worried since we weren’t sure if we still had a chance to qualify (format was confusing), so in the next games I decide to affirm myself more firmly and make sure that if I get a strong feeling about what to do, we do it.
It turned out pretty well, we went on to defeat pretty easily the other team in our group with Rem1kz’ Doom carrying it, and were now in the 2nd group stage to determine the last team to qualify.
The last 3 teams remaining were, if I recall correctly, EoT, Endless Dawn and us. We were to play Endless Dawn first (which I’ve seen play the finals of some online tournament Whiplash was casting), whom we beat pretty convincingly before playing our last game against EoT.
I didn’t know anything about how good they were, all I knew was that they played in almost all previous korean tournaments and were sponsored, so I was expecting a harder game... But I turned out to be much easier than expected off the back of our more comfortable and succesful DK centric lineup, putting a ton of pressure on them to punish their early and greedy jungle Doom pick. We were in for the NSL 3 playoffs.
Qualifying this time felt much better since it was with my team, and we played some pretty solid dota so I was very satisfied, and very happy that I eventually got a shot at competing in the NSL here.
I knew winning it would be very hard, but I was hoping we would have time to practice more to improve and get ready for our matches.. Which wasn't gonna happen since we only had a few days to get ready for our Ro8 match against the team who barely lost the NSL 2 finals against MVP+DeMoN, aka 5inQ.
