LoR Interviews — The APAC Competitive Scene

A Conversation with HOTA JadeDragonSS

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Mar 29, 2022

Some conversations, and especially some interviews, you actively strive to make them happen. Our chat last week with GamingGrandmom was one such interview – she struck us as awesome as soon as we read her profile, and contacted her immediately.

Other encounters have a more serendipitous aura to them.

I remember that JadeDragonSS – who is Public Relations Lead for Home of the Aces (HOTA), one of the largest community tournament organizers in the APAC shard – caught my attention back in February, when he posted his heartfelt overview of the dire state of the competitive scene in LoR's Asia-Pacific shard.

As fate (and online interactions) tend to have it, we bumped into each other when we were conducting Grandmom's interview and, from a link to our Discord that bA1ance posted on Twitter…

Diego Rivera @bA1anceLoR

@gracrys @GamingGrandmom I was inspired a couple weeks back and wrote some Haiku. It’s caught on a bit. I’m going to see if we don’t crash anything here…you can join us here:

discord.ggJoin the Runeterra Interviews Words And Numbers Discord Server!Check out the Runeterra Interviews Words And Numbers community on Discord - hang out with 25 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

… JadeDragonSS (who, as he'll mention in the interview, is fond of jumping into most LoR-related Discords he finds!) stumbled upon ours and, after watching the unfolding of our ongoing conversation with Grandmom, eagerly accepted to chat with us too.

Two other HOTA members – Aeolius and BamJoo – contributed with additional facts and details (thanks! =)).

JadeDragonSS, who is twenty-two, lives in Singapore – this conversation was held in English, which is JD's main language.

Warm-Up Questions

Howdy, JadeDragon! Thanks for agreeing to chat with us.

Glad to be here!

All of us at RIWAN are from either the Americas or EMEA shards, so we're delighted to learn about how things look in APAC. Let's start with you, though! What can you tell us about yourself, and how did your LoR journey begin?

LoR is the first card game that I got involved with. I used to play League of Legends – I enjoyed the support role a lot, with Morgana as my main. I played her because of her ability to take over the game.

I have been playing LoR for close to 2 years now. I have made Masters a couple of times, and my best score at Seasonals is 6-3.

I am definitely looking to make a Top 32 in Seasonals, but I don't have any long-term plans to grind for Worlds – I'd say my main personal goal for LoR is to make the competitive scene the best it can be!

What are your favorite decks?

For a tournament lineup, right now, probably Scouts, Sivir Akshan, and Tristana Faeries Demacia – although, with the upcoming balance patch, not sure if any of those will continue to be relevant.

Lee Sin Zoe is also a deck I would like to build a lineup around, if possible. Funny story: I actually lost so many times to a top Lee player when I was playing aggro, that I eventually reached out to him to learn the matchup…

… and I fell in love with Lee Sin decks, haha!

But my all-time favorite decks are Pirate Aggro, Spider Aggro, and Gangplank Twisted Fate.

So, yes – I'm an Aggro fan that loves Lee Sin! =)

Any wishlist for the balance patch? [Note: This interview was finished on Monday 28, a day before the patch notes expected for March, Tuesday 29]

I would love to see Fiora back at three Health, and reverting the Stalking Shadows' and Riptide Rex's nerfs.

And I would love it if Riot hits Manifest and Gnar with a big hammer.

Honestly, I wish they removed Manifest altogether. Not knowing what to play around is just annoying, especially at ranks when your LP matters.

It sucks when you lose a game due to one randomly generated card, even though you might have played perfectly up until that point.

Any interest in Path of Champions, the PvE mode?

I actually have only played a little – it doesn't seem to appeal to me.

The APAC Community Tournament Scene

How did you get involved with the competitive scene?

I started out as a volunteer Mod for Duels of Runeterra, a team that ran community tournaments in the SEA shard, and that sparked my initial interest in organizing tournaments.

NOTE: Originally, LoR had four shards/servers (Americas, EMEA, Asia, and Southeast Asia) – on January 20, 2022 the Asia & SEA shards were merged into a single one, labeled APAC.

Duels of Runeterra was shut down around August 2020; if I remember correctly, the shutdown had to do with the lack of a solid competitive scene in SEA. Some time later I reached out to Moonboy – he is a Twitch streamer, caster, and tournament organizer, and he's also from Singapore, like me – and pitched the idea of an events team for LoR.

At the same time, we started a competitive team called Team Space – a team full of starry-eyed LoR lovers with hopes to grow the SEA LoR scene.

Moonboy sounds like a fairly cool guy, from what we've heard…

For sure! Moonboy is the reason why I even started to be involved in the SEA scene.

So, we ran Team Space for a couple of months before eventually closing it by the end of last year – we officially closed it on December 8, 2021 – because the SEA competitive scene was still really rough back then, and many of us didn't really see a future in it.

So much so, in fact, that I took a break from LoR.

And how did staying away from LoR feel?

It felt weird… the game was still on my mind, and I was always thinking of ways to contribute to the scene.

I was away for about three months – I came back recently, after the Asia and SEA shards merger was announced, to see if there was any way I could help our competitive community grow.

As I returned, I joined Home of the Aces (HOTA) as their PR Lead.

Can you tell us a bit more about your current team's history?

HOTA started out in the Philippines community, and it's a sister team to the current Blacklist Pro LoR Team. I live in Singapore, as you know, but I have to say I love the energy and passion that players from the Philippines have.

If I remember correctly, HOTA started as a scrimming group, called Tyrants; then Blacklist – an eSports Organization – recruited the majority of the Tyrants, the rest formed several teams; among those that still exist you have Agronauts and HOTA, which was founded by ZeroAces.

Back at that time, a company called Rumble Royale used to organize a showdown between LoR streamers and famous streamers, with sponsorship from Riot, and they also organized both casual and entry-fee tournaments. They used to do the showdown every expansion, but stopped after Shurima – we never knew why.

The community in general, and HOTA in particular, stepped in, and HOTA became one of the main community tournament organizers over here in APAC.

ZeroAces and I knew each other back from my time organizing tournaments, so when I came back to LoR I reached out to join his team. As I've said, I'm HOTA's PR Lead now – I basically connect the different communities in the APAC shard to the HOTA Tournaments.

What would you say are your role's biggest hurdles?

Probably the language barrier. Not all communities in APAC speak English, which makes it difficult to communicate and connect.

Many groups are also spread out on different social media platforms, or aren't even on one, making it much harder to reach out and get in touch with them.

Our region doesn't get much support from Riot, sadly, so most of the tourneys are run by community members and with little budget. But the community is awesome and very willing to help each other in terms of casters, TOs, producers, graphics, etc.

That’s really cool – things are probably still rough, but with Riot leaving things open to the community, were you inspired to step in?

Yes, that was definitely one of the factors that motivated me to step back in.

Our most recent success is that, as Runeterra Academy expanded over to APAC, we were given the opportunity to possibly work with them in building our shard's competitive scene.

Would you say that there is enough of a playerbase to continuously support Runeterra Academy on APAC?

At the moment I'm not exactly sure. We are still figuring out if it's possible.

Riot's Roadmap

What do you think of there possibly being a Best-of-Three ladder, as hinted/teased by Riot's RubinZoo? A lot of players are concerned that matches would take too long, and some are concerned that splitting the queues is something the LoR player base isn’t ready for.

A Best-of-Three ladder would be great for those grinding for tourneys, especially in Masters.

But having a separate Bo3 ladder, on the other hand… I really don't know, unless it's only for Masters players. In League of Legends they have something called a Champions Queue, which would be something interesting to do in our game – in LoL, the top players are invited to a private discord and private server to compete against each other for prizes.

And what do you think about Riot’s recent Roadmap announcement?

I would say that I am a little disappointed – I definitely had high expectations for LoR's direction.

I think the scene as a whole has the potential to be something amazing, but I feel Riot is somehow just not able to figure it out.

What sort of things do you think they’re getting wrong?

I guess removing cross-shard play is one thing I feel Riot is messing up.

NOTE: At launch, and during 2020, LoR allowed players to challenge friends across shards, which in turn allowed players to participate in community tournaments for all shards – that feature was disabled on patch 2.9.0.

It has taken a huge toll on the overall competitive scene. I genuinely cried when I found they were about to do this. The sad reality is that, before the shards merger, one piece of advice I gave to SEA players was to grind an Americas account, since it's the shard with the biggest competitive community.

Also, I guess the way Riot communicates with their player base could be improved. I mean, compared to other game companies they definitely deserve credit, but it does feel that sometimes we take three steps forward, then hop two steps back – leaving us scratching our heads with lots of questions, which isn't a positive thing at times.

So, I'd say Riot is better than many, but there's definitely space for improvement, and I wish they would open more lines of communication.

Specifically, I think it is on Riot to let us know what their plans are, so that the competitive community can make informed decisions on what to do. We have reached a point when many of us have committed quite a bit of time and resources into the scene, and it's only fair for us to get answers.

The community has done a lot to build this competitive scene, and take it to where it is today… It's rough to watch it all go to waste.

Was merging the shards a seamless process, as far as you can tell?

Yep. On that end, there weren't any issues. And there have definitely been lots of benefits for our region after the merger.

Now that the regions have been combined, do you think that the scene will begin to develop more rapidly with the increase of competitive population?

Yes, for sure! With the merger, our scene will definitely grow a lot.

Friends Along the Way

Who are your closest friends in the LoR community?

I would say I'm close to many in the SEA community, especially the OG players: ADELtrocity, Moonboy, Ethan/TheScaV, Noodle, TanyaWannabe, Bruhh, just to name a few… I have grown close to a couple of them, and I even see them as life-long friends.

I guess I've had a good experience with LoR and the community in general, so whenever I see anything LoR-related, I tend to click it and ask questions later – that's basically how I ended up in this Discord.

I once found myself in a LoR Discord in a foreign language I didn't understand... No idea how I ended up there! XD

I enjoy interacting with different players, and finding ways to help them enjoy the game and pursue their goals, especially in the competitive scene. I love the community, and of course I enjoy seeing my friends win too!

What do you think about Tasty Faefolk as a meal option?

I don't think I can ever see myself eating a Faefolk – they are so adorable! 🥰🥺🥰

Hardest skills to master?

I think knowing when to pass and hand reading are two of the hardest skills to master in LoR.

What advice would you give to an aspiring LoR player who wants to be competitive (or perhaps just reach Masters) on how to improve at the game?

Make lots of mistakes, and ask lots of questions.

What would you most like to say to the LoR player base?

Thank you for being awesome

You guys remind me why I want to be so involved in this game! 😄