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

Over the past few years the competitive Esports scene in Sri Lanka has grown immensely in both talent and numbers. Online events such as the Gamer.LK Clans Warfare League and league have always brought in droves of players. Their purpose was twofold: on the one hand it was only a practice ground for the more mechanically skilled teams but on the other, an opportunity for newer teams and players to test out their skills without the harsh commitments a LAN tournament includes. Over time as the disparity of skill became more evident and obvious, the newer and “tier 2” teams of each competitive title were dissuaded to compete against the higher ranked teams. A noticeable trend was teams giving walkovers to the top ranked teams. This trend only stagnated growth and created a larger division between skilled teams and relatively lower skilled teams. The end all solution to this is the new format introduced by Gamer.lk in this years GCWL and GCLL: the Pro and Challenger Leagues.

The Pro League

This is where the TOP 6 teams based off the National  ranking system of the Sri Lanka Esports Association are invited to play.This allows for a better platform for top ranking teams to gain recognition for their efforts and quality of games. Further it will reduce games where there is a large disparity of skill in the early stages of the tournaments. At the same time it will incentivize teams to make their performances at each ranked tournament count.
It’s common knowledge that being invited to a tournament reduces the pressure on having to play qualifiers.

The Challenger League 

This is an open tournament to all teams and players. At the end of the league the top two teams will qualify to play in the Pro League.
Reducing the chances of meeting high skill teams in early stages will prevent teams from giving walkovers without valid reasons and also allow for better development for newer teams. 

The National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL) has endorsed the Inter-School Esports Championship being hosted by Gamer.LK and the Sri Lanka Esports Association. This is the second show of support by the NOCSL for Esports in Sri Lanka, with the first being Sri Lanka’s participation in the 18th Asian Games, where Esports was included as a demonstration sport. In a letter to the Sri Lanka Esports Association, Secretary General of the NOCSL Maxwell De Silva acknowledged the growth of Esports in Sri Lanka and the activities conducted to promote the sport. It went on to align the NOCSLs support to the 2022 Asian Games campaign where Esports is set to be a medal event.

The 4th annual Inter-School Esports Championship will be held in the same format as this years Inter-University Esports. The qualifiers will take place on the 21st and 22nd of September where the top 2 schools will proceed to the grand finals to be held on the 12th of October. This years Inter-School Esports Championship is powered by Sri Lanka Telecom, and supported by Laptop partner DELL along with media partners MTV/MBC.

This years Inter-School Esports hopes to surpass last years numbers of over 1,000 registered participants from over 100 schools across Sri Lanka.

In a shocking move team BlackWatch, previously the top Overwatch team in Noob Alliance, has moved to Phoenix GaminG. Blackwatch has consistently been a thorn in the side of Phoenix GaminG’s top overwatch team: Syndicate. The two constantly lock heads at most tournaments. Their most recent encounter being at the finals of GetNailed 2019 where Syndicate were victorious.

The addition of Blackwatch to their Overwatch wing means that Phoenix will now run a monopoly in Overwatch having already established their presence in Dota2, Special Forces 2, League of Legends and a plethora of single player games. This is another notch in their belt towards the Best Clan award.

This comes immediately after Noob Alliance lost their wing leader Demigod to Phoenix as well. The questions that needs to be asked are:
If this was planned by Phoenix or if it was just pure luck that led to two massive acquisitions? Was it all pure coincidence? Will this bleeding continue for nA? And what prompted Blackwatch’s move?
We got in touch with the relevant parties and these were their responses:

PnX:

Blackwatch was one of the main competitors for our team Syndicate in the past few years and we won against them in the last tournament – GetNailed to claim the No. 1 spot in the country again. Like we always do, one of our players Preba Peexxell Shan was already playing as a standin for nA.BW for a very long time since he couldn’t find a team he synergize with. We never intended to go for an established team like BW and we were focused on developing the newer teams in our wing. However when we were told that BW was not satisfied with nA and they are considering to make their move, our management thought: “why don’t we recruit them?”. Our Overwatch wing was more than happy to have them on our side and we believe it would make our wing even more stronger with more skilled and diverse resources which can push everyone in the wing to work harder to reach that top spot. 1/6 of BW was already red and nothing could stop the remaining 5/6 turning red. We spoke to them and they were thrilled with our management style and our cultures and they were willing to face the new challenges and compete with the top teams again under PnX banner.

nA:

It is with a heavy heart we say goodbye to many of our Overwatch players in our wing. After about a year of growth and success, we have now parted ways with our old Overwatch wing due to internal problems that have arisen due to mismanagement. We deeply apologize to all our players affected due to this issue but rest assured we will look to redeem ourselves in the future. The new Overwatch wing is now in the process of rebuilding and will take off the ground in the months to come, alongside our new admin and coaching staff we will look to strengthen our wing and return it to its previous glory and more. For the players that are no longer with us, we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors and hope they perform to their best as always.

Blackwatch/321Dive:

After almost 2 years playing for nA, we felt like we needed a change in scenery. But it wasn’t just that, some issues that could have been prevented by the admins intervention, but was not, went as far as to affect my team. I’m not sure how much they tried, but it didn’t get resolved. We felt like the nA administration was a bit lackluster in their duty towards the wings and teams. Those issues led to some disagreements within the team as well.Our choice of PNX is based on the recommendation of ppeekkxxell and the status of the clan in Sri Lanka. Plus I think the reward system of PNX is an excellent method to motivate players to keep playing and strive to be the best. If other clans adopt this method, at least to some degree, it would help get a lot of new players into gaming, which will help the development of E-Sports in Sri Lanka.