According to Steams official stats, today concurrent users peaked at 22,378,747. Again this new record is in line with the Coronavirus lockdown due to which many people are to self-quarantine themselves and work from home.
Since Steam houses the most popular games in the market, it is no doubt the first choice of many as they turn towards gaming. Also, many publishers and developers are offering their games for free amid the Coronavirus lockdown and encouraging users to stay home and game.
Coronavirus is still at large with more than 2.90 Lakh cases and almost 12,000 deaths. A worldwide emergency has been called upon by WHO and since then more countries are undergoing lockdown and asking their people to work from home. Due to this more people are expected to log-in into gaming to pass time and entertain themselves.
Today was supposed to mark the beginning of day 3 of PMPL SA 2020 League Stage and fans had tuned into the Livestream right from 5.30 pm waiting for the action to begin. Complete disarray occurred when an announcement was made via the stream informing that weekend matches had been postponed.
There are rumours surrounding Government action in Delhi regarding the outbreak of Coronavirus. This can be a probable cause for the postponement since the broadcast is being relayed out of Nodwin Gaming’s office in Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi announced that the government is considering the possibilities of a lockdown in the country’s capital, only if required.
The matches have now been moved to Monday and Tuesday. No word is out yet regarding the day’s schedule and participating groups as we can expect to see some changes there as well.
A massive controversy erupted when Brandon Cole “Sixless” Patterson, a North American PUBG Mobile pro playing for Cloud9 lashed out at the Indian Community alongside Team Soul and Mortal. The matter caught the attention of every Indian personality from the mobile scene and people went to great limits to make Sixless realize his mistakes. Cloud 9 issued a statement where they had removed the player from the organization after his inappropriate behavior.
Brandon took it to Instagram and via a series of stories, he issued an apology regarding the matter. Brandon started off by directly addressing the matter and by accepting that what he said for the country as well as Team Soul was wrong. He owned up and explained that anger got out the best of him. He even accepted that the exhibited behavior was not professional and he went on to apologize to all the teams that became a part of this scenario.
Brandon explained the real cause behind his outburst. He said that he became tired of all the hate and toxicity he himself was facing on a daily basis. After taking a small break from social media following the incident, he started feeling a lot better and happier.
He then went on to announce that he will be taking a break from social media as well as competitive gaming
What Sixless did was definitely wrong, but realizing our own mistakes, apologizing for them and then striving to move past them is a commendable action. It is not easy for a player of his caliber and fame to take it to social media and address an ongoing issue amidst receiving so much hate for it.
Everyone makes mistakes, but learning from them and moving past them is what matters the most.
Amid the fear of Coronavirus spread many real-life events were called off to ensure the safety of visitors as well as professionals. With events getting canceled left and right, Sports leagues and broadcasters are left scrambling to fill in the void created in their schedules with different activities to keep the audience interested.
In a similar fashion, broadcaster Fox Sports together with National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is launching the first-ever eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series with many Professional NASCAR drivers taking part in virtual races across the NASCAR Heat 4 and iRacing platforms.
eNASCAR’s first race is going to take place this weekend on March 22, at 13:30 Eastern time on FoxSports1. The eNASCAR will launch with 3 leagues namely: eNASCAR Heat Pro League, eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, and eNASCAR IGNITE Series.
All these races will also feature top NASCAR professionals like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bobby Labonte, Kyle Busch, and Denny Hamlin among other racers from various NASCAR series. All the races will also be broadcasted in a similar NASCAR fashion with top commentators like Fox broadcasters Jeff Gordon, commenting on the whole 90-minute race program.
All the races will take place using driving and racing simulator, iRacing. Both Fox and NASCAR have ensured that all the CDC‘s guidance will be followed to ensure no drivers or production staff are put at risk during the series.
Hello everyone, welcome to my beginner’s guide for Teamfight Tactics (TFT)! In this guide, we’ll be going through the important information that you need to know being a new TFT player, so let’s get started!
TFT got released globally on 18th March 2020, it’s now available on the Google Playstore and you can play the game through a Riot account in one of the following servers: NA, EU, EU WEST, OCEANIA, LATIN AMERICA, etc.
What is team fight tactics?
TFT is an 8-player Free-For-All game mode (similar to Auto-Chess), where the last surviving player wins the game. Each player has their board where they strategize before going in a battle against other players with their teams of champions that they formed throughout the game. Your champions will automatically fight against minions and enemy champion teams in random order.
Combat Rounds
Each combat round, enemies will spawn on the opposite side of your board or your team will go to an enemy’s board. You can decide the position of your champions and where they will be present at the start of combat, but once the round begins; your units will be out of your control until the end of that particular round. Each round you survive will grant you gold, experience (sometimes item drops).
After each round, you’ll see a graph of the damage done by your champions from the last round. This is a great resource that helps you determine which of your champions are offering the most value to the team, and which ones must be repositioned, replaced or upgraded to improve their utility. The current stage of the game can be tracked using the bar given at the top, it also tells you about when the next Carousel or Boss round is.
How do you win in Teamfight Tactics?
The primary goal of TFT is to be the last player standing out of the 8 players. The entire game goes by accumulating resources such as items & gold and making crucial decisions to build a team of champions with different abilities, strengths & weaknesses.
Create your team with units that synergize, then they will be empowered with several buffs. Your team of champions will fight against the teams of the other players at random during the rounds. On a loss, your team will take health damage. When a player’s team runs out of health, they are out. Getting to top 3 counts as a win, so aim for that, although it can be very hard to achieve in the beginning.
CAROUSEL
Every 5 rounds, all players will teleport to the centre of the map where a small selection of champions will spawn, each carrying 1 item. Each player will get released from their restrictive circle to take their preferred champion by walking towards it. The turn order is based on the total life of a player, with the bottom players acting first and the top players getting to pick at the very last.
Some champions will, of course, be more highly contested/prioritized because of the item they are possessing & their overall value. Player with a lower life will get an early pick & can grab a crucial champion. You can read more about the carousel in this guide.
Every player starts with 100 health. You take damage if you lose a round based on the quality & number of enemy champions alive & with the amount of health at the end of each round. Losing a round by a close margin will only cost you a small amount of health, but if you get crushed and a lot of strong enemies are still alive after the brawl, you will take a lot of health damage. You can always see your health & of other players as well on the right side of the screen.
Abilities & Mana
All the champions have a basic auto-attack as well as a special ability they can use once they reach maximum mana (see the blue bar on the champion for that). Champions get mana each time they attack an enemy champion. Some items can help increase mana gain or allow a particular champion to start with extra mana. Some abilities will get casted and then reset that champion’s mana to 0.
HOW TO PLAY!
Round 1: Placing your champions/units
After you have picked your first piece and item from the carousel, you’re ready for your first battle! The first three rounds are against bot-controlled minions that are very easy to slay, they sometimes drop gold/item.
Rounds 2 and 3: The Shop
After your first round (PVE), the game really begins to open up in terms of constructing your team composition & making decisions. Form your composition with the right champions & item builds for them.
Building Unit Synergy
Creating a team around synergy is a core aspect of auto chess games like Teamfight Tactics. Usually, there are two types of synergies, origin & class and every champion has at least one of them (while some can have more than one).
Round 4 and Onwards (PVP): Last Player Standing
After all the three
minion rounds are over, Round 4 will begin and you’ll have player v/s player
fights. There are three PVP fights before a carousel round, followed by another
PVP fight, and then a monster event in the very end.
This pattern will continue
so on until the end of the match when one player is standing while other
players are at 0 health (however top 3 counts as a win).
During these PVP rounds,
you’ll face random opponents and your team of champions will fight against
their team of champions. You can always check who you’re facing from the top of
the screen.
The losing side will
take damage totally depending on how badly the winning side wins and how many
champions are alive from the winning side.
If you have a neck-to-neck battle which ends in a 1v1 between the final two champions, the losing side will just take a small amount of health damage. If the winning side wins by a big margin and has many surviving units, the losing side will then take a large amount of health damage.
Item Shop
The goal of the game is to buy champions and upgrade them by purchasing copies of the same champion to transform them and make them stronger. Champions can be upgraded twice by combining three units of the same champion together. For example, 3 Ashe will form a 2 star Ashe while 3 – 2 star Ashe will form a 3 star Ashe.
The champions available to buy in the shop gets updated after each round, you can also spend your gold to reroll your shop to get a new set of champions to buy from.
Win / Lose Streaks, and Gold Interest
In TFT, you get passive gold
for free each round. The first few rounds, you’ll get increasing gold
every round starting from 2 gold up to 5 gold per round. You get 2G for round
2, 3G for round 3, 4G for round 4, and 5G for round 5 and so on (G=Gold).
You also get bonus gold based on your win/loss streaks and interest. If you are losing or winning consecutively, you will get extra gold – in this pattern:
3 game streak = 1 extra gold/round
5 game streak = 2 extra gold/round
7 game streak = 3 extra gold/round
Basics of Champion Positioning
Managing
your champions, economy, buying units, and assembling your team are really
important but everything can go in vain if you don’t position your champions in
the right way.
Make sure that your champions are at the right optimal places as much as possible as that will help you get the most value out of them and increase their chances of winning the battle.
Item Combination & Allotment
In this guide, we’ve mentioned several times that you can get champion items by killing the monsters from the monster rounds or the carousel spin, so now is the time to tell you so as how to use them. In this segment, we will finally discuss how to make the best use of the items & why you should prioritize certain items over others – here are the main important points you need to know:
• A maximum of three items can be held by a champion. • Once a champion has been allotted an item, it cannot be taken back unless you sell that champion. • There are basically two types of items, basic and combined. Allotting a champion two basic items will automatically transform into a combined item.
Items granting basic stats like attack speed, health and so on. Having the right items on the right champions will greatly increase your chances of winning.
Device Requirements
On Android, TFT requires devices with a minimum of 2GB+ of RAM, Android version 7 or newer, Open GL Version 3+, and a 64-bit OS. On IOS, the game supports iPhone 6S or newer.
Carousel round is basically TFT’s share draft round where you see little creatures running around dragging champs and items around while everybody else spins in a circle. It may sound confusing but don’t worry, we are here to help you figure out what you should be picking and make the most out of your carousel rounds.
The Starting Carousel Round
In the beginning, everyone starts with nothing. There are some important things you should be aiming for: Go for 2 cost units unless you can get a “Recurve Bow” out of a single cost unit. Another reason to select a single cost unit could be whether the remaining 2 cost units have bad items on them (Negatron Cloak & Chain Vests). In that case, go for any 2 cost unit with a decent item.
This is how you should prioritize items in the very first carousel round:
Recurve Bow
Spatula
Tear of the Goddess
Needlessly Large Rod
B.F. Sword
Giant’s Belt
Negatron Cloak
Chain Vest
These are the items you should make and their impact in early/later stages of the game:
Statikk Shiv: Best for Vayne, Tristana, Nidalee and Lucian. An early game item which
is better than Rage Blade although a bit weak late game.
Rageblade: Good on Nidalee, Tritana and even Vayne.
Bloodthirster: Amazing item to build when you already have a carry like Nidalee
or Vayne with an attack speed item.
Spear of Shojin: Can be used early on Ahri or any spell based carry. Late game,
it’s good for assassins, caster builds and even for Ashe.
Rapid Firecannon: A must-have on a 3-star Nidalee
Rabadon’s Deathcap: Only make it if you already have a Spear of Shojin on a champion like Ahri.
Later Carousel Rounds
Your objectives should alter in the later shared draft rounds as you start to finalize your composition. There can be a relief to be first and not have to worry about choosing so much, but that’s the point of this guide: to help you take the best choices & make the right decisions. Let’s break them down:
Carousel Round 2:
During this draft, you are probably still looking for the right items to
complete your first set of basic components. This is essential for making the
combination of items you need in order to make your composition strong.
Carousel Round 3:
This is where it gets interesting. Key 4 cost champions like Brand, Draven
and Aurelion Sol enter the shop. Sometimes a legendary champion will show up,
and in very rare cases a completed item will come with a champion.
You will have to use everything but you need to make the right decision:
High value completed item and do you have a chance to get it?
Building towards a strong team composition
Still, need a Recurve Bow?
Just make sure that you don’t buy a wrong item on a champion that is your main carry and going to dish out the maximum damage. This will definitely reduce the number of slots available to you by 1.
Carousel Round 4 and Onward:
By this time you would have already made a decent run into the match
& have a good idea of what you want to do ahead. Prioritize what you need,
but if you don’t see anything you want, denying your opponent with resources is
always a good play.
For example, taking away a player’s Kayle if they are building a noble can be a much better choice than making yourself stronger since you will be facing that player sooner or later anyway.
Final Words
Hopefully, this will save you from getting overwhelmed the next time a shared draft pops up. We really hope that this guide helps you get an edge over the competition 🙂
All 5 matches of Day 2, Week 1 of PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia have come to an end. The first 3 matches were played between groups A, C, D, E and in the remaining 2 matches, Group A took an exit and Group B entered the game. Below are the map picks and respective winners:
Match
Map
Winning Squad
1
Miramar
Godlike
2
Vikendi
UMumbaxRxN
3
Erangel
Celtz
4
Miramar
SynerGE
5
Vikendi
Powerhouse
Top Players
Overall Standings
pos 1-10pos 11-20
Stories of the day
TSM Entity crashes out of game 1 at 12th rank following a technical glitch
UMumba becomes the first team to bag 2 chicken dinners
Team Soul’s Mortal had more viewers on his stream at 35k as compared to the official stream at 20k
The stream’s chat got filled with hate comments after Team Soul’s early exits in 2 consecutive matches. “Sixless” got mentioned quite a few times
Game 3’s stream got lagged mid-game although production was quick with the recovery
UMumba chased down on TSM Entity and closed the gap with every passing match to finally overtake them and take the rank 1 spot
The top 10 teams are all Indian squads and the struggle of South Asian teams is clearly visible. Team Xtreme looks like the most promising SA squad who bagged 47 points in just 2 matches
The points difference between the first and last squad now stands at 125 points after merely 10 matches. It is the highest gap ever seen in any PUBG Mobile event
Orange Rock got their game together after a disappointing day 1 and now sit at the number 5 spot
UMumba brags the highest placement points with a consistent top 7 finish in almost every match
Day 3 of PUBG Mobile Pro League begins tomorrow at 5.30 pm as the battle for the top 5 spots alongside a massive chunk of the $200,000 prize pool continues. 10 more matches remain for this week and it will be exciting to see day 3 with the battle heating up for the top spots on the table.
Owen “smooya” Butterfield joined the North-American lineup of Chaos Esports Club in January earlier this year. 20-year-old Englishman is being benched by the lineup since he had to return to United Kingdom. The Chaos EC lineup is competing in the on-going Flashpoint 1 league and won their opening match against MIBR. However, prior to their second encounter against Gen.G, Owen had to playback to his homeland amid visa issue.
Announcement soon regarding my situation with being back in the UK for the near future
Until his P1 visa issue is solved, the star AWPer will sit on the bench while the organization searches for a temporary fifth player. Owen further revealed that Team Envy player Kaleb “moose” Jayne is also facing a similar complication. The player further assured fans about his return to the active lineup quite soon. Entire TwitLonger statement:
“Currently with all the COVID-19 stuff happening I’ve had to return to the UK since I have no more days left on my ESTA. I have already been approved for my P1 but the problem came when my interview got canceled since the embassy in the UK is closed. So I can’t stay in America and have to wait for a new interview date.”
“Until this whole situation is fixed, I will be moved to the bench for Chaos EC. They will find a replacement soon to help them finish the rest of Flashpoint 1 and any other events they have coming up.”
“I should be back very soon, it sucks because we just got a roster I was happy with but its just a small set back!”
“I’ll be back soon boys, hold tight.”
Chaos Esports Club’s Counter-Strike lineup for Flashpoint 1 and upcoming events is:
9th March 2020 saw Italy go under complete Lockdown as the Coronavirus victim count kept on increasing. Since then, strick shutdown laws have been laid across the country to prevent further casualties.
According to a report by leggo, the national carabinieri stopped a man roaming outside and upon further questioning, he explained that he believed staying outside to catch Pokemons in Pokemon Go was a solid reason on its own. The 31-year-old answered: ” I have to hunt the Pokemon “. The entire situation was explained due to further investigation by the Military, their report stated the 31-year-old was out with his daughter, to accompany the girl and loiter around the streets looking for Pokemon. The carabinieri had no choice but to report it. The man has been charged by the police alongside 40000 others for breaking similar Lockdown laws.
The government in Italy has been strictly enforcing the quarantine laws that are restricting people to their homes and allowing outside presence only incase of getting food, medicines, going to work, or performing essential services.
After a dream run at IEM Katowice 2019, ENCE did lay their dominance in the first half of 2019. Having won the BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019 along with two consecutive runner ups at DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019 and IEM Chicago 2019, Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen and company did prove themselves to be worthy and eventually one of the toughest sides to compete against. But they couldn’t live up longer with this success as in August 2019, the team parted its ways with their In-Game Leader Aleksib as they eyed ex-Mousesports player Miikka “sunNy” Kemppi to replace him with. Since then the Team has failed to put up a great showing except for a runner up place at the CS:GO Asia Championships in 2019.
If we all look up at the Team’s composure at the moment, they seem to have suffered a plummet where the team has lost 13 out of their last 15 outings which also do feature losses to Tier 2 teams such as Godsent and Heroic. A part of the community strongly believes that if ENCE hadn’t made that roster swap which saw Aleksib join OG, they would have still been lethal enough to overcome such teams from low tier rankings. According to HLTV’s numbers, ENCE’s win rate has only been 28.6 percent over the past three months followed by just 11 best of one/best of three series, where they have lost 19 matches and drew twice.
We might soon see a roster change that has already been suggested by the fans and the community. But the real question that lies over here is, who would it be? With Aleksi “allu” Jalli leading the team, the duo of sunNy, and Jere “sergej” Jalo might not be feeling worried as they are the only ones who have been serving as a backbone of the team, we might be seeing either Sami “xseveN” Laasanen or Jani “Aerial” Jussila being shown the exit door. If this potential revamp is already being culminated at the horizon, ENCE would face some real-time head-scratching moments to find a perfect replacement for one of its players along with allu who would need to refine his tactical ideas for leading the team to it’s long lost glory.
You can catch up with the team as it would be in action against Astralis in the ESL Pro League Season 11 today at 2:30 AM IST.
