Winter Season roars back into action this week with the start of the 2nd VGL qualifiers. The arrival of Ozo and some tweaks to the balancing could make for a very different pro scene as we trudge ever closer to the live finals in March. And now for your curated bite-sized brain snacks.

VGL 2nd Qualifier

The first two rounds of the second qualifier have concluded in both NA and EU. There was a bit of an upset in NA as the formidable fifth seed, Team Apex, fell to twelfth seed, Z Fighters, in the round of 64. In EU, second seed, G2, and eleventh seed, Vertigo Onyx, may be rematched later this week due to issues with the spectator client.

Tesseract Qualifier Tournament

On February 11th, the first round of a new SEA tournament began with 64 teams. NA and EU players may not be familiar with the team names, but get over to Tesseract eSports because come February 28th, the champion will entered in the next VIPL season in Korea. There is some fantastic competition in SEA, including a few Ozo picks! These games are regularly streamed on Twitch for your viewing pleasure.

Miner Hot Fix

We mentioned last week all the hot fix changes SEMC applied to address some small problems, and one huge one *cough* Ardan *cough*, so 1.14 feels good for all. On February 6th, another hot fix was issued to clear up the rest of the issues and lower the damage on the Minion Miners and Gold Miner so they aren’t quite as brutal. There was plenty of chatter of gold miner not being taken at all due to the risk and I’ve personally seen an increase of Miner payouts since this change.

Broken Myth Draft Simulator

If you’re reading this news, you might already be aware of some of the new features BrokenMyth has been building, but it’s worth mentioning Keldegar programmed an incredible Draft Simulator for your practice pleasure. The AI is currently in beta, but the system still regularly picks viable teams and further improvements will make sure it goes full Skynet and achieves total domination.

Skin Teaser





On Friday’s dev stream, our favorite company released this teaser for an upcoming skin. No details yet as to what it can be, but if you have eyes and rudimentary skills in deduction you can probably put together an adequate guess. I’ll give you a moment.

…

……

That’s right, tier 3 Petal.

SAW AMA

In a welcome surprise, lane bully and instalock aficionado SAW participated in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the Vainglory subreddit. The questions from the community were wide in scope and some actually quite thoughtful. It’s obvious SAW gave careful consideration to each answer.

_____________________________________________________________

That about does it. It’s rather light as we look toward 1.15 in a few more weeks. Please give feedback on the draft simulator and the new hero builds for 1.14 updated by MrTouchnGo. BrokenMyth has got a lot more in store for you (tease), but ta-ta for now all you Skye banners and Twitch chat spammers.