What is my past?



"So how'd this all come together?"

What is my job?

How the crucible played out:



[CAREFUL, SPOILERS IN THE SECTIONS BELOW]

Hey guys, many of you know me as CoacHDi, Dillon, David, or simply HeroesHearth Esport's (HHE's) coach. Today I bring you The Chronicle of Crucible.Please note I wrote the first half of this while celebrating our crucible win, and the rest the next day. If you aren't a big fan of memeage skip to the "What is my job?" section.Side stories and jokes are noted by asterisks!A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there lived a young boi who got an alpha invite to this new Blizzard game - Heroes of the Storm. At the time, I had experienced both the wonders of Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft*, which were far from my first foray into gaming**. You could say I was a good 40% of the way to becoming a full blown Blizzard fanboy and that alpha invite inevitably lead to the final 60%.Before long I found myself hopelessly in love and did the real bronze to grandmaster climb (the kind where you get better). HoTS is the only MOBA I've ever played and playing thousands upon thousands of games (not even counting 3000 from alpha) I developed some solid game knowledgeOne day, about two years ago - nearing the end of summer 2015, one of my friends decided to get into HoTS. So I took him under my wing and my pet bird had something to say about thatBut anyways that's how it all started. While coaching my friend I discovered my passion for teaching HoTS. This inspired me to found my startup - Nihlism Gaming. Through Nihilism I met Workhorse (founder of Heroes Hearth). In addition to working with individuals and honing my skills, I would occasionally drop in on several amateur teams and hit em with the facts on how they could improve. They worked on communication, and coordination - among other things. I also had a stint of trying to play at a professional level myself - but it never really took off ***.Well the story is pretty simple. Before we name changed to HHE the same roster played under the name Hold it Down (and also 'Held it Down' for a couple weeks due to some weird roster swap rules). A prospective sponsor (name hidden for privacy, not Heroes Hearth) was searching for a coach; I applied and did a tryout. According to the org, I was the best by miles and the players liked me too. So pretty much all that rambling experience I just told you about didn't play a factor in even getting my foot in the door. I just happened to be literally the best (at being humble). Well when that sponsor fell through I clung (is that a real word?) to the team like a panda giving a hug because I knew that with some hard work and perseverance I could make my career a reality with this team. That being said, we needed a new sponsor for the team to stabilize and become viable. Over the previous two years I became extremely close friends with Workhorse. Due to my long love for the ocean** and schooling***** we had a relationship where we would float ideas by each other and most of the time they both stunk and sunk. Despite, or maybe thanks to, my idea for a Robo-Wagon that would follow me around and carry stuff, being terrible - our friendship grew. And this would eventually lead me to Workhorse that my new team was looking for a sponsor. And, that's how HeroesHearth Esports got wind in its sails.Now Workhorse likes telling this story the professional way. But in reality what HHE (the org) boils down to is a few dudes and a dream. Both Workhorse and Brasky had for a long time wanted to get into esports but would only do so with a team they believed in, as humans, and as players. Furthermore it is common in business to do trail runs to prove that a concept works. Showing up with a team of former pros who had some time back in the amateur scene, was a near-ideal situation for all parties involved.I often get the question "David what is your job?" (inspired by lovelyhearthstone). First and foremost, I draft for my team. As far as I know I'm the only professional coach in North America that does this. A poor draft can make a match unwinnable and a strong draft can put the odds sharply in one teams favor. This takes a lot of stress off of my teammates as a bad draft which leads to a loss is my responsibility. With me drafting every player on the team can focus on improving their own play, without worrying about an eternally evolving and extremely complicated meta or drafting strategy. Furthermore this means that our drafts can be more precise because its my job to make them that way, instead of just winging it. I also do much of our teams theory-crafting regarding both strategy and tactics.While drafting is what stands out the most, my most important function is to quantify the team's instincts. For example my job would be to take a statement such as "wow double support is strong!" and figure out why. Most of the time I do this with a combination of math and theory ******.Finally I do some conventional coaching stuff too. The common conceptualization of a coach is that they tell you when you do things wrong. However I do this in a bit of a different way - I offer feedback on specific ideas and concepts and then try and track them. While initial feedback is important, positive feedback is more important. So, when Arthelon puts his hour of practice in, I make sure to recognize it.In summary I believe that being an effective coach is about helping your team develop, inspiring them to be great, and bringing tools to the table. But most importantly, continuously reflecting on my own work to improve my own skill.I joined HHE (Hold it Down) about two months before the Crucible. When I joined, we had a schedule of about 12 hours of scrims a week (Less than 2 hours a day on average). Previously I had no experience working with HGC or even top amateur teams. Hell, I didn't even know the names of all the HGC teams because I simply did not follow HGC before it became my new life. There was an extremely steep learning curve for me as I tried to play catch up with both HGC and amateur metas which are very different.About three weeks before Crucible I started feeling a lot of pressure as the 12 hours of practice time didn't feel sufficient for me learning how to draft or adapting to the meta quick enough. Therefore I pushed my team to more than double their practice time before Crucible. Ideally, I wanted about 25 hours of scrims and 5 hours of theory/coach time per week. Renal was especially effective in finding us all of the scrim blocks to fill this new hard-core schedule. Sadly, I only got a few hours of coach blocks. The week before playoffs was especially helpful. In many ways it was a true trial by fire, as we had a scrim schedule packed full of HGC teams to test our strength on.But on the Friday (9/29) disaster struck. The administrators informed us, only three days before the first matches, that due to a bug Falstad would not be allowed in playoffs. This infuriated me and I declared war on the system, rapidly appealing the decision. The patch we were supposed to be playing on had destroyed many heroes due to bugs (Diablo's level 13 charge didn't work, Falstad trait never went off, Rehgar was a mess, map objectives didn't scale their damage correctly, targeting of enemies of out vision was wonky, and constructed turrets didn't get focused by towers - among MANY other issues). This felt similar to a death sentence because many of the strategies we had prepared used heroes that were now broken or unplayable. My colleagues' (from other teams, not teammates) responses were terrible and included "We're just supposed to deal with it" and "At least its not the day of the event LUL".When it seemed that I had hit a concrete 'NO' from the Blizzard powers that be - I tried a different approach. Instead of appealing the Falstad ban, I showed that the patch was flawed inherently, and that after weeks of practice we shouldn't be blindsided by a flawed patch. This was war, it even reached the point of me tweeting at Blizzard's CEO to try and bring attention to our issue.Finally, at 3 am Sunday Morning, the administrators informed everyone that we would be playing on the tournament realm (previous patch) and we were relieved. After a rough Friday night, I went to bed at around 5 AM Sunday morning (Saturday night) and got a solid night's sleep for the first time in what felt like months.While its hard to gauge if I had any impact on if the decision to play on the tournament realm. I feel like my persistence paid off and going forward I think this is an important to address. Amateur teams need a professional and consistent set of expectations in order to develop as team and put their best foot forward. Playing on stable patches is essential, heroes should not be disallowed the day of ever. While I went to war with the system and won, I had only one regret - Mike never tweeted back (Blizz's CEO).On Day 1 of the NA open playoffs we absolutely dominated, just like we had for the previous 7 HGC open cups. We expected the meta to be a specific sliver of the pro meta we saw in our scrims and were very practiced against. This landed us in the winners finals for Day 2, just one match shy of qualifying for the crucible. We started envisioning ourselves powering through the playoffs (just like the previous 7 HGC open tournaments) and it brought up a few great questions. Why is there no winners advantage in the grand finals? After playing 8 tournaments to determine the top 8 teams, why do we play a tournament that does the same thing but with more variance? In fact, some of my players were formally on a team named LFM, that was screwed by this exact system after showing dominant play for weeks. These questions are important and should be discussed, civilly. I believe that the open league could improve in many ways and I intend to help start the discussion on these topics (as I'm doing right now!).On Day 2 we played Imported Support in the winners finals despite beating them for the last 7 tournaments in a row, we lost. After winning so many tournaments in a row and practicing tirelessly this was nearly inconceivable to us and we all handled it in different ways. For some, it was accompanied by flashbacks of their old team LFM, and for me it meant I stayed up until 5am again so I could win the next day.Playing in playoffs was a lot different that what we've ever done before. Sure, we've been in Bloodlust and HGC Open but playing with your career on the line is an entirely different level of stress. That night I learned more about myself, how to handle the stress, and about how I could be more impactful for my team during tournaments. The very first thing I realized is that I would need to mute the casters while I watched the game, and possibly chat too. While I really enjoy the casters and commentary (Shoutout to Solidjake and Jhow), it is their duty to bring excitement to the match and they are too good at it! Turns out, this factor makes it hard to maintain objectivity. Another trick I learned is that Arcane8 uploads VODs live, so that I could examine and study specific items (such as draft, or strategy) while the boys played on my other screen. That night I also studied Imported Support's draft and playstyle inside and out so we could make the epic comeback on day 3.Having beaten Donkeys R Us in the losers finals we earned an opportunity for redemption against Imported Support again in the grand finals. Having a much stronger understanding of their draft (which I like to call a unicorn draft) we were able to preform much better than the previous day. Sadly, on Cursed Hollow one of their players disconnected for an extended period of time and they were forced to forfeit a game. In addition to the system now working in our favor (since there was no winner's advantage in the finals) this raised another question. Shouldn't Playoffs and The Crucible be a LAN event? Crucible is one of the most emotionally charged events, for both fans and players and on this rationale it would make sense for it to be a LAN. Due to the disconnect the Grand Finals ended up being a best of 3 (real score 2-1, 3-1 with penalty). However, we are confident that due to our scrambled tweaks to our preparation and our previously sustained strength throughout HGC Open, that had it been a full series we would have came out on top.The immediate pressure of getting into Crucible was relieved after we got into the Grand Finals, and we felt weird coming out of the grand finals. Yes we did win, but due to the penalty it wasn't the grand victory we wanted. All that was left was to beat our opponent of choice (Even In Death) in the crucible on Sunday. Unlike the EU open division playoffs, which were conducted a week before. We had only one scrim block between playoffs and the crucible and we used that to practice a few strategies and probe a few others. The days between playoffs and Crucible felt tense and akin to the calm before the storm. We did all we could and there wasn't much more we could think of. We knew what was at stake.. Six full months of Open Division would come down to one Best of Seven set that would determine the future of everyone involved. All the practice and work would be meaningless if we didn’t perform on the stage. Mostly, the players worked on keeping their individual skills sharp.In the first game against EID we had absolutely no idea what they would play as we hadn't scrimmed them for probably at least a month. Furthermore it was evident that they did not play their HGC games seriously, in order to further hide information and strategies from us, in order to limit our ability to analyze their team. We assumed their only limitation was hero pools, and it was hard to discern any information from that because of their role swaps. Losing game one wasn't an enormous deal for us because we suddenly had a lot of useful information on what they were going to play and how they were going to play it.Game two was a roller coaster of emotions for me. Tomb of the Spider Queen has historically been a very strong map for us. As we finished draft we realized that we had left a potential weakness to sustain damage in our composition between Uther and Tassadar, and EID swiftly punished it by taking Lunara. Luckily this made their composition a bit strange too, as they committed to weaker wave clear and less kill potential off of their Malfurion's roots. Our composition had a Nazeebo in it, and getting Nazeebo stacked with Vile Infection at 20 is a game-ending win condition. We got the first turn-in and I was ecstatic! Normally on ToSQ one turn in means you get level 10 and a second turn in. This would help greatly to stalling out the game for Nazeebo and our chances of winning skyrocketed. But the feelings of elation were short lived we lost 25 gems which takes about a minute and a half of minions to collect under optimal circumstances. This denied our second turn-in with 10. Our enemies would then get the spider queen to aid them and we somehow managed to persist through without taking too much damage. Just as we reached 20 the ticking time bomb that is Nazeebo powered us through to win game 2.Game 3 was our masterpiece. If there is one replay that we will watch of the series that encapsulates our potential as a team it will probably be Dragon Shire (Game 3 v EID). Our execution of the amazing draft was fantastic and it is our goal to play consistently to that standard, every game. Game 3 represented our results in scrims much more closely than many other mistake-ridden games we played in both playoffs and Crucible.I don't want to talk about game 4. All I have to say Homi you are a god at ETC and if you decide at any point to retire I'm nearly 100% sure you could be in a band Cursed Hollow came down to excellent execution by my team. In draft we got into an awkward position where we needed a low-resource front-liner who could match the global (hopefully with another global) and had an interrupt for mosh pit. Turns out there was only one hero who could really do all of that, and the enemy had Dehaka. It was a tough choice picking up Arthas knowing we would have no interrupts especially after losing the previous game to a 5 man Mosh-Pit in game 4. In a worst case scenario we banked on using Uther's D-shield or cleanse on Tyrael in the Mosh-Pit and the Sanctification to get us out. Guess who is CC'd now Homi!! Or as an absolute last resort - self-Dshield into a Uther stun to stop it. However, with Arthas always coming off the flank it turned out that while Mosh-Pit put the fear in our team it ended up being rather ineffective.After winning game 5, which set the score at 3-2 in our favor we had a lot of confidence that we could close out the series. Warhead Junction and Battlefield of Eternity (BOE) remained. Warhead is uncomfortable for many teams so we thought that there was at least a 50/50 that we would win on Warhead. If that was the case then the series was over. Also a game 7 Warhead sounded unappealing, especially when we wanted BOE from first pick. Because we had a specific draft in mind for BOE we felt more confident that we would win from first pick. Warhead was picked as our map for game 6 because it provided us with the best odds if we went into a game 7*******.The game was far from over when I heard a familiar noise - a ping from Teamspeak. The games are streamed to Twitch on a slight delay, so joining the chat room I had no idea if we had won of if I needed to prepare for the worst. As I learned that we won a wave of euphoria passed through my body - I had sacrificed getting a real job with my college degree for months to do this. That night I opened 100 loot boxes on stream, drunk super manly strawberry daiquiris, and started writing this post. It needed some serious editing (thanks fligsaduky!) before it was actually ready.So that is pretty much how it went guys! We did it! See you in HGC next season. By the way... if anyone from Blizzard is reading this I would love to attend Blizzcon, but I need a ticket!*Apparently World of Warcraft's biggest attraction was the auction house, I spent my days buying and selling a lot of essential items for high level players. It got to a point where the cool kids in high school were playing WoW and they needed gold. After buying my sandstone drake I had nothing else to spend my cash on so I just gave it to them so that I could keep playing. Hell, I even wrote my college admission letter on this topic (and it worked!)*****.** Embarrassing story: The first game I really got into was puzzle pirates. This was a puzzle game and you could make social groups (crews) and flags (groups of crews). In addition to learning how to play texas hold em' like an absolute pro (we talking statistics, math, etc). I would go on to create both the number one crew and flag on my ocean (server) which at the time was called sage ocean (now emerald?). Despite becoming a king and ruling the ocean ocean - I have one regret: I wasn't able to conquer a single island*** Teams included TBA**** (this was a pretty big deal back in the day) and NHG (Nihilism Gaming's now disbanded team)**** TBA was approached by a guy named felon and was considering a sponsorship under him. He would later go on to create this mess (the King of Blades disaster)(https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/4b9tn6/the_owner_of_our_team_is_threatening_criminal/) We really dodged a bullet on this one! TBA would later mutually disband due to an overload of stress (part of which came from this guy's manor of interaction with us) and wanting to focus on real life stuffz.***** I have a BS in Economics-Finance with a minor in Global Studies from Bentley University****** Ask my teammates about the fight for Stukov! Or ask Khroen about Ring of Frost optimization******* Shameless self promotion trick: Follow my stream and social media stuffs!