League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) developed and published by Riot Games. The game was inspired by the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne mod, Defense of the Ancients. Thus sparking the whole debate of which MOBA is better. Comparatively League has a smaller player base than Dota 2 locally. However since its introduction in 2013 the league community only keeps growing.

In this week’s rendition of Staying on Top we met with PnX | Lanka Lions.

Current Roster

• Top – Bhanuka “XiaoRaven” Ratnayake
• Jungle – Shalitha “Acelord” Chandraratne
• Mid – Rizlan “PhantomCharger” Affridhy
• ADC – Achintha “Nightmare” Konara
• Support – Ashik “ASHSL” Saleeth

Q : What led to the formation of ‘Lanka Lions’?

A: The Lanka Lions name was there for a long time, but the majority of the roster came together last year, when Ashik approached me and Achintha to make a team for the Asian Games Qualifier. The three of us stuck together since then. The addition of Rizlan and Bhanuka was made this year as we saw a lot of potential in both players. I would like to give a shout out to two key players who were in the team, Akthar (Blue Akthar) Hafeez and Hilal (Dew SL) Jismy both these players contributed heavily towards the success of this team although they are not in the roster currently.

Q: A common theme among Sri Lankan teams is that personal schedules conflict with allocating time for practicing. How do you guys deal with this?

A:We take advantage of our solo skills and the ability to read each other when making plays. This makes up for our lack of practice since most of our members have busy schedules that prevent them from committing to constant practice.

Q: What do you guys think sets you apart from the rest?

A:Our biggest strengths is our solo skills and our ability to execute the right decision making and mechanical plays individually. Plus the experience; we have been playing our main roles for a long period of time. Although we could definitely use more practice time and a few LAN sessions to be able to communicate better to help us perform optimally as a team