Westrice Story
Riot·7/11/2014, 8:07:29 PM·3 votes·4,648 views
Jonathan "Westrice" Nguyen was there at the beginning. He played with Team SoloMid before the team acquired its legendary lineup and dominated the 2012 and 2013 North American scene. He was teammates on Epik Gamer with Dan Dinh, Salce, Dyrus, and Doublelift. Westrice didn't just play League of Legends, he played in a league of legends.
But while success found a great many of Westrice's teammates and contemporaries, his own career has been marred by setbacks and disappointments. A tour with Curse ended with him being benched in favor of Voyboy, and an attempt to reform Epik Gamer fizzled after just a couple months. Even as League of Legends and its pro scene were reaching new competitive and heights and larger-than-ever audiences, it seemed to be leaving Westrice behind.
How times have changed. In 2014, Westrice is back to competing at the highest level of pro League of Legends, after a lot of his contemporaries have since retired or moved on. He's the veteran heart of compLexity, providing the team with his skills on the Rift and his experience and wisdom behind the scenes. He's not the player he used to be. The game has changed. Westrice has changed.
To hear him tell it, it's all for the better.
"Back then I thought Doublelift and Dyrus were just mediocre players," he admits. "Dyrus was pretty good, I thought. I didn't feel the same way about Doublelift. But after he joined CLG, he became like a god. I don't know what happened. He became one of the best ADC's in the world. I respect him for it. And Dyrus got even better than before."
Yet it's possible that Westrice himself had some growing-up to do. He admits that back in 2011 and 2012, as League of Legends audiences swelled and pro players suddenly found themselves under constant scrutiny from the community, he was unprepared for the attention. He didn't handle it well, but it taught him some valuable lessons that have gotten him through hard times.
"I have handled criticism badly before...If you have a really bad day, you just see all these hate comments and people tweeting at you," he explains. "But now I'm getting better at it. Now when someone [on our team] is like, 'Hey, this person is trash talking [us].' I'm like, 'Don't even worry about it. That person doesn't even know what happened in our game.'"
Westrice helped create a new roster for Determined Gaming, which formed the core of the current compLexity roster. It was a fortuitous name, because it required a lot of determination to get into LCS.
"We failed to qualify two times," he says. "And then on the third time we had Brokenshard, and that was my last-ditch effort to qualify. If we didn't make it, I probably wouldn't play anymore."
Westrice says that after Determined's second loss in a promotion series, he got a call from his mother, who had started to follow professional League of Legends and learn the strategy of the game.
"My mom was pretty sad, and she said, 'Hey Jon, if you want to come back home, you can. But you do what you want to do. Do what makes you happy.'" Westrice pauses, then adds, "But playing games is what makes me happy. So I just kept trying."
His determination was finally rewarded after compLexity picked up the Determined Gaming roster, and renamed the team compLexity Black. They defeated Team Coast for a spot in the LCS, and were named the organization's flagship team. At long last, Westrice was back to competing with best players in North America.
"[Lee Sin is] one of the closest champions to the old assassin meta. That's why you sometimes see me feed with him horribly," Westrice adds with a laugh. "Because I just have a trigger finger sometimes. I have Lee Syndrome. That's why I don't really want to play him anymore. He brings back bad habits. When you play Lee Sin, you have to have no restraint. Especially if you're building him full damage.
"You think, 'Maybe I can one-shot this guy and look really cool,'" he continues. "Whereas jungle Lee Sin, they build tanky, so there's not as much pressure on you. Even if you go in, you probably won't die. But Damage Lee Sin is not like that. You have to know what your limits are."
That kind of flashy, aggressive play isn't really Westrice anymore. It might be going too far to say he plays without ego, but he does want to know that he's helping lift his team up, not bringing it down. If that means playing tankier champions, so be it. Whatever lets him stay in the game.
He points to compLexity's latest game against Dignitas to illustrate what he likes about the current top lane meta.
"The day before we played, I knew if I picked Kayle, Zion[Spartan] would pick Irelia. So I knew it was going to be a hard game for me, and I told Kez I'd need his help. But in the end, it was on me to die a lot to ZionSpartan. Two or three times."
It looked for all the world like Zion was just mopping the floor with Westrice. In terms of KDA, Westrice's game against Dignitas was pretty average. But sometimes stats can be misleading, particularly for top laners, whose contributions can be harder to quantify. While Westrice was taking a beating, he was helping his team gain control of the map.
"Even though I was 1-4 at one point, I knew I was still a huge asset to the team, because I was able to clear waves a lot faster than Irelia could," he explains. "So every time Irelia tried to split push, I went to the other lane, pushed that lane. And every time Irelia went to that lane, I just went to the bottom lane and pushed that. And she couldn't keep up with Kayle. So I stayed relevant for the entire game."
While the current meta may suit Westrice, it's hardly been an easy split for compLexity. In seventh place at 6-11, they stand a good chance of facing another relegation series. But Westrice isn't too bothered by the prospect. Their expectations were humble coming into this season, and Westrice's entire career has been a marathon, not a sprint.
"We want to make playoffs. We want to be 6th and up," he says. "We wouldn't be surprised if we had to face a relegation series. But we don't want to be 8th at all. That's the worst case scenario. Seven isn't so bad. Six isn't bad either. But we don't want to be 8th."
He's also quick to point out that compLexity is a new team that stepped into the strongest NA LCS to date. They are, after all, only five games behind first place.
"I think this split is one of the hardest split that's ever been. Every team is amazingly good. LMQ, CLG, TSM, they're all really good. I feel like the season before this, it was a lot easier to take wins off of teams. But now it's even harder. Because everyone is so good," he says. "I don't think Cloud9 got worse, I think other teams just got better. Cloud9 did the same thing for two splits straight, and dominated everyone. But this split, the NA teams just got better."
Westrice's own experience with misfortune and frustration helped him and his team stay on an even keel during their rocky start.
He's learned to keep social media at arm's length and encourages his team to stay away from it as well. Where he used to worry over what people were saying about him, he's accepted that the conversation is often dominated by people who assume the worst about every play, casting team decisions and simple misfortune as player incompetence. Few people really know what goes on inside a professional League of Legends match.
An example: "Sometimes you'll ask someone to zone while everyone does Baron, and while he's zoning everyone jumps on him and kills him instantly. And then the Twitch chat will go crazy. 'Noob noob noob, bench bench bench!' But no, it was the team's call. Not his call. It's just like a team mistake, rather than a single person's mistake," Westrice explains. "When [a play is] objective-oriented, usually when the team calls it, the community doesn't know that. That's when they start raising their pitchforks."
There aren't many top laners that make Westrice think he's about to get shown up. He knows ZionSpartan is fully capable of taking a game away from him, but it's a fairly close fight. Fittingly enough, it's his old teammate Dyrus that keeps Westrice up at night.
"Versus Dyrus, I just can't…he always counterpicks me...He's just my kryptonite," Westrice says with a laugh.
It's a measure of how much times--and Westrice--have changed. Westrice used to be a harsher judge of his peers, and perhaps less open to learning from them. Now, he's working hard to understand top lane Gragas, all because of a game where Dyrus used the champion against him. The assassin is gone, replaced by a pragmatic professional who knows that some days, there's nothing you can do but keep grinding away.
"Back [on Epik], I honestly felt like I was better than Dyrus. I was playing ADC at the time. But I look up to Dyrus now. He's disciplined, he's consistent, he's just a really good player in general. At this point, I'm just trying to keep up with players like Dyrus. Hopefully one day I'll get to his level," Westrice admits.
"I'm still working on myself."
PRESENT AT THE CREATION
When he started playing professionally, Westrice considered himself one of the very best in the game. In fact, he remembers that teammates Dyrus and Doublelift didn't make too strong an impression on him at first.
"Back then I thought Doublelift and Dyrus were just mediocre players," he admits. "Dyrus was pretty good, I thought. I didn't feel the same way about Doublelift. But after he joined CLG, he became like a god. I don't know what happened. He became one of the best ADC's in the world. I respect him for it. And Dyrus got even better than before."
Yet it's possible that Westrice himself had some growing-up to do. He admits that back in 2011 and 2012, as League of Legends audiences swelled and pro players suddenly found themselves under constant scrutiny from the community, he was unprepared for the attention. He didn't handle it well, but it taught him some valuable lessons that have gotten him through hard times.
"I have handled criticism badly before...If you have a really bad day, you just see all these hate comments and people tweeting at you," he explains. "But now I'm getting better at it. Now when someone [on our team] is like, 'Hey, this person is trash talking [us].' I'm like, 'Don't even worry about it. That person doesn't even know what happened in our game.'"
Westrice helped create a new roster for Determined Gaming, which formed the core of the current compLexity roster. It was a fortuitous name, because it required a lot of determination to get into LCS.
"We failed to qualify two times," he says. "And then on the third time we had Brokenshard, and that was my last-ditch effort to qualify. If we didn't make it, I probably wouldn't play anymore."
Westrice says that after Determined's second loss in a promotion series, he got a call from his mother, who had started to follow professional League of Legends and learn the strategy of the game.
"My mom was pretty sad, and she said, 'Hey Jon, if you want to come back home, you can. But you do what you want to do. Do what makes you happy.'" Westrice pauses, then adds, "But playing games is what makes me happy. So I just kept trying."
His determination was finally rewarded after compLexity picked up the Determined Gaming roster, and renamed the team compLexity Black. They defeated Team Coast for a spot in the LCS, and were named the organization's flagship team. At long last, Westrice was back to competing with best players in North America.
REFORMED ASSASSIN
Westrice made his return playing a very different game from the one he started with. He'd made a name for himself as one of the deadliest assassins in the game. He was practically synonymous with Akali, and always played right on the edge. But the assassin business isn't what it used to be, and Westrice probably wouldn't go back even if he could. "Whenever I played Akali, and I got behind, there was no point in the game where I could come back," he explains. "I couldn't kill anyone, and I would die so fast. So back then, I played a really risky play style." The shift in the game also mirrors the shift in Westrice's temperament. Talking to him today, he's coolly professional about every League-related topic. He has his opinions and his preferences, but they all come second to his desire for victory. That's why he tries to resist the temptation to return to his old assassin ways, even when a champion like Lee Sin dangles the opportunity in front of him.
"[Lee Sin is] one of the closest champions to the old assassin meta. That's why you sometimes see me feed with him horribly," Westrice adds with a laugh. "Because I just have a trigger finger sometimes. I have Lee Syndrome. That's why I don't really want to play him anymore. He brings back bad habits. When you play Lee Sin, you have to have no restraint. Especially if you're building him full damage.
"You think, 'Maybe I can one-shot this guy and look really cool,'" he continues. "Whereas jungle Lee Sin, they build tanky, so there's not as much pressure on you. Even if you go in, you probably won't die. But Damage Lee Sin is not like that. You have to know what your limits are."
That kind of flashy, aggressive play isn't really Westrice anymore. It might be going too far to say he plays without ego, but he does want to know that he's helping lift his team up, not bringing it down. If that means playing tankier champions, so be it. Whatever lets him stay in the game.
He points to compLexity's latest game against Dignitas to illustrate what he likes about the current top lane meta.
"The day before we played, I knew if I picked Kayle, Zion[Spartan] would pick Irelia. So I knew it was going to be a hard game for me, and I told Kez I'd need his help. But in the end, it was on me to die a lot to ZionSpartan. Two or three times."
It looked for all the world like Zion was just mopping the floor with Westrice. In terms of KDA, Westrice's game against Dignitas was pretty average. But sometimes stats can be misleading, particularly for top laners, whose contributions can be harder to quantify. While Westrice was taking a beating, he was helping his team gain control of the map.
"Even though I was 1-4 at one point, I knew I was still a huge asset to the team, because I was able to clear waves a lot faster than Irelia could," he explains. "So every time Irelia tried to split push, I went to the other lane, pushed that lane. And every time Irelia went to that lane, I just went to the bottom lane and pushed that. And she couldn't keep up with Kayle. So I stayed relevant for the entire game."
GOOD SOLDIER
That's what Westrice wants. Impact on the game, to be hauling on the oars with his team, helping them close in on a victory. "Top laners need to know what their role is," he says. "If you're a tank, you're relevant no matter what because you'll still be a meat shield for your team...Whenever people camp me, it's not as effective because I stay relevant. Meanwhile, Kez is helping bot lane and mid lane, and i'm getting focused top. So it's been going a lot better for me in this meta."
While the current meta may suit Westrice, it's hardly been an easy split for compLexity. In seventh place at 6-11, they stand a good chance of facing another relegation series. But Westrice isn't too bothered by the prospect. Their expectations were humble coming into this season, and Westrice's entire career has been a marathon, not a sprint.
"We want to make playoffs. We want to be 6th and up," he says. "We wouldn't be surprised if we had to face a relegation series. But we don't want to be 8th at all. That's the worst case scenario. Seven isn't so bad. Six isn't bad either. But we don't want to be 8th."
He's also quick to point out that compLexity is a new team that stepped into the strongest NA LCS to date. They are, after all, only five games behind first place.
"I think this split is one of the hardest split that's ever been. Every team is amazingly good. LMQ, CLG, TSM, they're all really good. I feel like the season before this, it was a lot easier to take wins off of teams. But now it's even harder. Because everyone is so good," he says. "I don't think Cloud9 got worse, I think other teams just got better. Cloud9 did the same thing for two splits straight, and dominated everyone. But this split, the NA teams just got better."
Westrice's own experience with misfortune and frustration helped him and his team stay on an even keel during their rocky start.
He's learned to keep social media at arm's length and encourages his team to stay away from it as well. Where he used to worry over what people were saying about him, he's accepted that the conversation is often dominated by people who assume the worst about every play, casting team decisions and simple misfortune as player incompetence. Few people really know what goes on inside a professional League of Legends match.
An example: "Sometimes you'll ask someone to zone while everyone does Baron, and while he's zoning everyone jumps on him and kills him instantly. And then the Twitch chat will go crazy. 'Noob noob noob, bench bench bench!' But no, it was the team's call. Not his call. It's just like a team mistake, rather than a single person's mistake," Westrice explains. "When [a play is] objective-oriented, usually when the team calls it, the community doesn't know that. That's when they start raising their pitchforks."
LONELY AT THE TOP
That kind of perspective is especially important for his position, he says. "Whenever you make a mistake, it's very easy to see it. But when you make a mistake in bottom, people don't really care because you can always come back from it. But top lane is a very snowbally lane. It's like, if you died 1v1, it's going to look very obvious. It'll be very hard to come back from that, unless you get a gank or something. But if you just play well and do your job and don't die 1v1, you just... fade into the background."
There aren't many top laners that make Westrice think he's about to get shown up. He knows ZionSpartan is fully capable of taking a game away from him, but it's a fairly close fight. Fittingly enough, it's his old teammate Dyrus that keeps Westrice up at night.
"Versus Dyrus, I just can't…he always counterpicks me...He's just my kryptonite," Westrice says with a laugh.
It's a measure of how much times--and Westrice--have changed. Westrice used to be a harsher judge of his peers, and perhaps less open to learning from them. Now, he's working hard to understand top lane Gragas, all because of a game where Dyrus used the champion against him. The assassin is gone, replaced by a pragmatic professional who knows that some days, there's nothing you can do but keep grinding away.
"Back [on Epik], I honestly felt like I was better than Dyrus. I was playing ADC at the time. But I look up to Dyrus now. He's disciplined, he's consistent, he's just a really good player in general. At this point, I'm just trying to keep up with players like Dyrus. Hopefully one day I'll get to his level," Westrice admits.
"I'm still working on myself."
The tear is stacked
