Hey miwa! I have been playing games for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I played lots of RTS games such as WarCraft 2 and 3, Age of Empires 2, and StarCraft but the first game I got really competitive with was StarCraft II. I never really had too many friends who played the same games as I did, so I was kind of your standard closet nerd. After school and various sport practices, I would come home and play StarCraft II a ton and eventually pushed into the threshold of Grandmaster. I eventually got burnt out of it and moved on to playing League of Legends around the end of Season 2, and by the end of Season 3 I was top of Diamond 1, pushing to Challenger. Eventually, I got really busy with my studies and took a bit of a break before I started playing Heroes of the Storm in April 2014.

It's actually kind of a funny story of how I got into Heroes of the Storm. One day after class, I came home and my dad was pretty excited and told me that Blizzard had sent him an email inviting us to the Warlords of Draenor Beta, when in reality it was the Heroes of the Storm Alpha that we had got into. I have been excited for Heroes for a while at that point and you can imagine my surprise when I got into one of the first waves of Alpha. I started playing the game casually, playing mostly Stitches in solo queue when I ran into people I recognized from the SC2 pro scene. After having played with these pros from other games we became friends and most notably LzGaMeR, Shaggy, and I decided to start a team. We searched for two other solid players for a while and eventually the roster was completed with Keylax and IdrA. Team SnowFlake became a thing at this point. We knew there was going to be a Heroes of the Storm related event at the upcoming Blizzcon, so early on in the summer we began training for long hours in preparation for it. However, as we were in final talks with a major sponsor that would allow us to go to Blizzcon, I was removed from the team because the organization was not comfortable signing a 17 years old player. I was devastated when I was first replaced from Snowflake, but I had other friends in the scene and for some time, I was contemplating becoming a substitute player for Symbiote Gaming. I eventually decided to join my good friends Syracuse, Cauthon, and ZPs and joined team Glorious! which would be my team for a long time to come. Eventually after many happy experiences, and a couple stressful ones I decided to leave Glorious! to join Symbiote gaming. Being on Symbiote, we had various offers from sponsors but we decided to eventually go with Tempo Storm because we thought that we would grow alongside them extremely well. We did well for a while, but once everyone moved into the team house, we got into a sort of funk/slump and eventually relationships between myself and one of my teammates got so uncomfortable that things needed to change. Two weeks before the WCA invitational, I was replaced off the team, making me a free agent and allowed me to pursue other things. I eventually decided to join COGnitive gaming after having played with the people on the team for about a week and deciding that I would be a good fit, and so far I like the way things have been going.

To be completely honest, I was devastated. When I initially left Glorious! gaming to join Symbiote, I hurt/destroyed a few relationships that I had cherished, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to become the best. Up until the point of WCA Finals I was super excited to play at a LAN because I feel like the hyper-intense competitive environment would be one of the greatest things I will experience in my lifetime. When that reality was suddenly taken from me and became a dream once again I didn't know what to do. I had to take some personal time before I even thought about the game again. Watching Tempo Storm play in the offline finals was actually pretty hard for me to do even though my interactions with everyone made it seem like I was just fine but in the end the whole experience has only motivated me to become a better player and has made me want to prove that I deserve to be on the top.

A couple of days after I got kicked, I was approached by Scylol and Shot from COGnitive on Skype asking me if I was interested in playing with the team. Initially, I turned them down because I didn't want to rush into anything and I wanted to explore all of my options. During that time, I played with few teams just seeing what felt right and after about a week, I decided that COGnitive was the right team for me. COGnitive gives me a lot of freedom in game which suits my playstyle in my opinion.

When I first joined COGnitive I didn't really have many doubts because we had been doing well in scrims for the first few days, and after having only played with each other for 4 days going into the June Open we played one of the closest best of 3's I have ever been a part of. We played vs C9M in the round of 16 and almost upset them but eventually lost the series 1-2. I think I was a big factor in the rapid improvement of COGnitive for a few reasons, First off I feel like the team itself has a very positive and productive atmosphere in which we have the opportunity to learn a lot, second I feel like having as much experience as I do helped everyone become more comfortable in high pressure situations, and finally I feel like as a player my playstyle goes well with the team dynamic.

Even though I haven't always played melee assassin, I have always loved the Melee assassin role and felt that it was the best role for me, because it gives me the freedom as a player to do a lot of stupid things and make them look genius. I think what makes me the best melee assassin in NA really stems from the fact that when it comes to the heroes in this role, I have had to come up with my own way of playing these heroes which allows me to be unpredictable. Whereas in the other roles that I have learned over time, I have always had role models that I can look up to and emulate, for example C9's k1pro for the longest time was indisputably the best Jaina in NA and as I began learning that hero I watched the way he played that hero and just sort of emulated his playstyle, I have never had to do that with melee assassins because I have always felt extremely effective just doing what I feel to be right.

In this specific matchup versus Cloud9 Maelstrom, we had just qualified for regionals and were still a little overexcited. Irresponsibly, we let the fact that we qualified affect our gameplay, but the thought process behind the draft was primarily to put Fan on a hero which he wasn't super comfortable on, while enabling our team to play to our strengths. After all was said and done though this draft, alongside many drafts we did, it ended up being relatively unorthodox. We pre-planned for every matchup that we were going to play, but in the end, while we did make a few composition errors, I feel like it was mostly gameplay that caused us to lose many of the games that we had lost.

We did indeed plan this strategy out beforehand, and while this strategy, once shown, is weaker than it is otherwise, we knew that Goon Squad, having choice of map, would take us to Blackheart's Bay. Because of this fact, we just figured doing something unorthodox in game 1 of a best of three would be just fine. Not many teams favor Blackheart's Bay, so using the strategy early in the bracket rather than later would allow us to actually pull off the strategy.

Growing up I did well academically, and I had a few opportunities to pursue a degree, but I just feel like going through life in that fashion wasn't for me. I like to think that i'm lucky to be where I am, and am grateful to all the people who have allowed it to be but I know that I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn’t for my competitive drive. If I want to be successful in esports, I will have to continue working hard and really push myself to see where this can take me. My parents are both now supportive of me but it wasn't always that way. When I was younger, I really only could play games at my dad's house, but my mom became more accepting and supportive once I proved that this is something that I eventually could make into a career. I am really grateful to have the parents that I have though; they have always respected the decisions that I've made, and have given me more freedom than I probably should have had growing up and for that, I want to thank them <3.

I called my dad the day after we qualified, and he seemed to be pretty excited! As of right now, If it's possible I'm sure he'll want to come out to the NA Regionals event and watch us play live, but if he can't, i'm sure he'll watch the games from home and be just as happy. My mom, on the other hand, I called two days after the qualification just to sort of check in and she was actually really happy that I qualified. She doesn't know too much about the game, but I'm sure she'll watch and support us as well.

As a player I really hope that the developers for Heroes of the Storm keep giving it their all and keep coming up with amazing, clever ideas. In the end, whether or not their creativity continues to thrive or they begin to get complacent, I feel like that will have the most impact on the competitive scene than anything else.

I would love for there to be an in game observer client for competitive matches, similar to the observer interface for Dota 2 and Counter Strike.

I'd like to thank all of the fans who have supported me for the past year and a half, and my manager dylux who makes sure I don't sleep in every morning. You can find me on Twitter over @COG_Glaurung.