LoL: Going Pro

When you get into one game a bit more, like in my case TF2 and League of Legends, you start thinking about whether or not going ‘pro’ would be a good decision. But, I’ll tell you one thing, good luck. Focusing on League of Legends (since TF2’s professional life has nothing to do with hats, and is therefore completely un-interesting) you’ve got the ‘Season’ circuit, which is currently on its second run. Riot endorses this circuit by showing up with a gigantic $5 million prize pool, and the total world tournament being worth $2 million, why not just throw your (hypothetical) hat into the ring, you know you’ll get pub stomped, but you may get like $50 bucks in your regionals. Here’s the overall steps

1.       Hit level 30. This is non-negotiable, sorry. You need to be level 30 before you can even consider being in the semi-pro market, and most of the real pros are already in teams.

2.       Make your team. Get a bunch (or acquire) a bunch of friends, up to 8, to be part of your team.

3.       Play ranked. You need 16 champions to be able to play in ranked (remember that this also counts FTP champions, so if you’re going along at your own merry speed on Ranked, and suddenly find that your top 3 champions have been banned, and all you have left is to play a Jungle Garen you may want to think of getting a few more champions to acquaint yourself with before joining ranked matches)

4.       Get a ranking, also known as your ELO. Your ELO goes from anywhere from 1200 up to 2400+ (which is where all the top players are) the higher the ELO you have,  the better of you know how ranked works

5.       Compete at prized events, most of which are worth around $100 or so for the grand champion. At these competitions, you earn circuit points, depending on your placing.

6.       Depending on your circuit points, you can see how well you would do on the Pro series. You gotta be a high rank, (like these guys) to make it

7. World championship-- Do it bro, for all of us pub players. God speed

Its pretty simple. Just play ranked and get that ELO. Mine is 1200 or so, so I'm not gonna be in any big games anytime soon, but who knows? You can probably do better than me.

--Santa