The League of Legends Championship Series was completely different 9 years ago.

First of all, it technically wasn’t even called the LCS. The “NA” initials were tacked onto the name to distinguish the league from its European counterpart. The NA LCS had eight teams, just like it does today (although that’s a recent development), but those teams earned their place in the league based on performance — it was never guaranteed like in the modern franchising model. This was a time when players at the top of the ranked ladder could join up with four equally-cracked gamers and make a push for the big leagues. No franchising, no million dollar paychecks. Just the love of the game and a dream so remarkably enticing that hundreds of teenagers would be willing to put everything on the line in its pursuit. 

Brandon “Saintvicious” DiMarco was one of those hundreds that broke through. He is part of a class of former LCS pros who remember how different things were, and how they have stayed the same. Today, Saintvicious celebrates nine years with Team Liquid, but his professional career predates his tenure by more than three. In that time he established himself as an irreplaceable part of LCS history, competed on multiple teams (some good, some bad), coached a few others, retired from League of Legends altogether, started streaming, switched games to Dota Auto Chess, switched games again to Teamfight Tactics, got a cat, and built new relationships. Now, Saint streams and creates content around whatever he wants (mostly TFT), and that freedom is exactly what he’s looking for at this stage in his life.

Looking back on his difficult journey to get to this point, Saint clearly recognizes his personal growth. He put his all into competing in the LCS, he took risks, made sacrifices, and even made his fair share of mistakes, but he’s certain he wouldn’t change a thing if given the chance.

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The Wild West of League 

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The seeds of Saintvicious’ esports career were planted on his 12th birthday, after receiving gifts from his parents.

“My dad got me a cable modem,” Saint recalled. “I was like ‘this gift sucks,’ but then my mom bought me StarCraft, which had just come out and she ruined my life by getting me this game [laughs]. So I became addicted to games, and I was playing online…and then it’s history from there.”

Before then, Saintvicious would probably rather have been outside playing football with friends. But that birthday gift sparked a passion within him that would lead him to get as good as he possibly could in his new arena. So good that he was competing in pre-LCS League of Legends tournaments on a variety of rosters while still finishing out college. One of those teams being Counter-Logic Gaming.

After a brief stint playing top lane for Team SoloMid at the start of 2011, Saintvicious spent the early days of his career jungling for CLG while balancing his college degree. Contrary to the org’s modern reputation, diehard fans may recall this as a time where CLG was the team to beat, in part because it was home to some of the best players in the region. On CLG, Saint played with many of North America’s OG big names like Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, Steve “Chauster” Chau, Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani, and Michael “Bigfatlp” Tang, and Cody “Elementz” Sigfusson. At the time, NA was a top region in League and CLG a top international team, with Saintvicious and company holding their own in Korea’s Champions 2012 Spring split and winning some smaller international events.

Near the end of his senior year, around mid-2012 Saintvicious dropped out of school in order to go all in on esports.  

“I’d just gotten benched from CLG,” said Saintvicious. “[Team Liquid co-CEO] Steve [Arhancet] called me up and he said they’re making this new Curse team, they’re getting this big house, and there’ll be, like, a reality TV kind of thing… I got to fly out to California for a week or two, and I was still in college at the time. So I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna drop out of college to do this stuff.’ He kind of talked me into it and the rest is history.”

It’s not often you hear of pros dropping out when they’re so close to finishing their degree. In Saint’s case, he’d spent time in the Navy as well, and had a heavy interest in exercise science; he was studying to become an orthopedic surgeon.

“That’s like, 12 years of school,” said Saint. “I was still early in the part of that. Now I just play games like an idiot [laughs]…I was honestly just addicted to games, so I just wanted to see how far I could take it. I felt like I was really good compared to everyone else at the time.”

So, how far did he get? In 2012 and early 2013, before the LCS began, Saintvicious and Team Curse (which eventually became Team Liquid) flexed on teams at a variety of domestic tournaments. They even earned a few first place finishes across events like the SoloMid Series and the Season 5 National ESL Pro Series. 

Saint was quick to become a household name within the LCS, and the broader global League community, as a top-level jungler. His reputation was mixed: Seen as both one of NA’s best strategists, shot callers, and leaders but also as a sometimes over-harsh and over-direct toxic voice with a streak of missing key smites. Some of that reputation came in the days before the LCS entirely — a time where NA League of Legends was part sport, part reality TV and many of CLG’s team arguments were recorded and went straight to YouTube. That public pressure and attention did not make teams any more peaceful and few team leaders went through the era with clean reputations. Still, Saintvicious does not like who he was back then, caught up in the high speed and high stakes world of League esports.

“I’m gonna be super honest,” said Saint. “I don’t really like the person I was when I played League. I was a toxic person. I mean, obviously, as you get older, I feel like you chill out a lot more… I think when I was playing League, everything was going fast, and it’s like you’re up in this whirlwind.”

^{An example of the wildly public internal comms of early League. To this day, we still don’t know exactly what was dropped.} 

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Regardless of reputation, Saintvicious’s time on Curse was relatively successful. He helped lead Team Curse to a 2nd place regular season finish and 4th place overall finish in the team’s inaugural split in 2013 Spring. After that, results began to stagnate and Saint eventually moved to Curse Academy. That roster was sold to Team Gravity in late 2014 after winning the NA LCS 2015 Spring Expansion tournament. 

And the following 2015 Spring Split was Saint’s last competing as a player. The early era of NA League was a tough one, full of internal battles and lacking coaching structures. Saintvicious had struggled through it long enough.

“I don’t think the whole practice structure and that kind of stuff was very good,” said Saintvicious. “I was just, like, really burnt out. When I do something, I’m a grinder and I go really hard at it. To be good at League you have to invest an infinite amount of time in it. So I think I just couldn’t keep up with the amount of practice I needed. We never really had coaches, so it was very hard to have an outside source to get you better. Before, it was like an internal battle kind of thing. It’s up to you to do good, and nobody else is going to help you.”

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Transitions

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Coming from a military background, the lack of standardized and structured training affected Saintvicious a lot, especially because he could see the ripple effects. It was a major factor in his decision to eventually step down as a pro. 

“It made me very frustrated to see people have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and then not putting everything they had into it,” said Saintvicious. “I guess I feel like it made me look more at other people instead of myself…that frustration would blind me from what I’m doing.”

When a bunch of virtually unsupervised young adults who live together in a large house are left to grind a game for hours on end, you can imagine what extended liberties they might take with their free time. Late night partying and drinking, among other things, were not uncommon activities at these gaming houses. The perspective gained from that experience served as a useful tool when Saintvicious eventually transitioned to coaching. 

“The day I announced my retirement, I got a call from the people who own Team Coast,” said Saintvicious. “They said ‘I think that you’d be a really good coach.’... I feel like if there’s one thing I have, it’s a really good work ethic. Even if you’re not giving them the peak knowledge or whatever the heck, if you can just give them a good regimen, like a system to actually improve and say ‘Okay, I’m going to wake up, do this, this and this, and I’m gonna study these things,’ you give them direction and what they need to do they’ll prove themselves. I did that all myself and I didn’t have any outside sources. I just wanted to make sure other people could have that. Like I said, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity so don’t fuck it up, right?”

To dedicate one’s life to playing a videogame at the highest level requires a great level of sacrifice of course, but to truly make the most of that privilege a certain self-awareness is required. Every day spent practicing, competing, and enjoying the status and social benefits that come with that lifestyle is another day invested by your peers in pursuing a degree, building a family, or maybe even starting a business. These are responsibilities that the average professional gamer defers to a future version of themselves in order to pursue unimaginable levels of greatness. There’s a weight that comes with that, and everybody carries it differently. 

“To be good, you have to be obsessive,” said Saint. “In League, you can press a button, you can play with some pretty reasonable people, and you have infinite practice, there’s nothing holding you back. That’s what you’re up against– if you’re not investing every waking moment you have into this game, you’re not going to keep up because somebody else is going to be doing that. Having to do that for as many years as I did, it kind of gives me a lot of perspective. You can lose relationships or family, the person you’re with, all that kind of stuff…”

^{Saint was particularly effective in getting teams to the LCS. He coached both Coast and Apex into qualifying for the LCS, as well as getting Curse Academy in as a jungler.}

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Saint did a bit of coaching during his time on Curse,and learned quickly after going fulltime that he enjoyed it more than playing. He found the aspect of mentorship to be fulfilling, and valued seeing his players improve and grow in and out of the game.

“I have a lot of good moments from coaching players,” said Saintvicious. “You see somebody do one thing, and then, like, a month later, they’ve corrected it… we had one thing where we lost some big tournament series, then somebody threw a piano on the floor or something. I had to have a heart-to-heart with the person to kind of diffuse their anger problem because I had anger problems, too, when I was playing.”

After coaching a few different teams from 2015 onward, Saintvicious eventually stepped away from competitive LoL for good when he resigned from his coaching role on Flyquest in 2018. The resignation came after he had dismissed the role that mental health conditions can play in a person’s life during a livestream. He apologized for the remarks but it was too little, too late, particularly given the reputation he’d built in the past. Years in a number of hyper-competitive, high intensity worlds had worn on Saintvicious and the irony was that he was struggling in his own right. The firestorm and following resignation might have been a blessing in disguise, though.

“I don’t think I was mentally in a good place then,” said Saintvicious. “I had a lunch meeting with Steve… he was like, ‘I think you’re really good at explaining your thought process and educating and there’s this new TFT game coming out… I think it can be really big for you.” 

He began streaming and learning Dota Auto Chess on his own time, which allowed him room to slow down and reinspect who he was and who he wanted to be. 

“Now that I’m just streaming and doing my own thing, it feels like things are going slower and I can actually take a step back and look at things and assess things properly. I’m just, like, a lot more in tune with myself and what’s going on and that kind of thing.”

^{Saintvicious applies his coaching skills to TFT.}

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Steve extended this opportunity to rejoin Team Liquid and encouraged Saintvicious to explore making educational content around TFT, which quickly usurped Auto Chess as the premier auto-battling game. For Saint, it was a no brainer opportunity to continue doing what he loved, and without that push, he might have left esports and gaming for good.

“I don’t think I would have done the whole TFT thing or kept streaming if it wasn’t for Steve having that meeting with me and sitting down with me and saying he believed in what I was doing,” said Saintvicious. “I appreciate him for that. I mean, that’s kind of how I got here.”

Soon after TFT’s release in 2019, Saintvicious quickly established himself as a go-to source for knowledge about the game and how the meta was shaping out across different patches.While he doesn’t necessarily play to compete at the highest level and win tournaments anymore, he still enjoys playing and teaching the game while entering tournaments when he can. 

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Reflections

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Looking back, returning to TL as a streamer was an easy decision for Saintvicious, despite his love for competitive gaming. He’s always been someone who refuses to stagnate, always looking for what he can do next. That was something that Steve understood well, and that was what drew Saintvicious to TL as an organization in the first place.

“It’s mainly just Steve,” said Saint. “I’ve literally known him since he made Team Liquid. I was living in a house with, like, a bajillion guys with him from the beginning. I’ve known him since he’s been in the scene, so you’re gonna want to work with people you know…We’ve had our ups and downs. He’s not perfect. He knows I’m not perfect either. I feel like we know each others’ weaknesses. You know how it is when you’re in a relationship with somebody, right? You accept each others’ faults. He’s a [much] different person than when we first met, and I’m a different person. Somebody having that patience and understanding for other people is very big you know what I mean? He gives people the avenue to grow.” 

This growth is something that Saintvicious has witnessed within himself over the course of a nearly 13-year-long career in esports. He recalls the days of long practice hours, massive wins, devastating losses, clashes with teammates, sacrifices, and risks as key learning moments in his life. 

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[Related Reading: What makes TFT so friendly and how Saintvicious found a new community.]

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These days, Saint is grateful for the time he’s able to spend hanging out with friends, playing board games, and catching live music in Los Angeles. He’s grateful for the delicious Korean food made in-house at TL’s Alienware Training Facility by Chef Heidi. He’s also grateful for the good and bad experiences he had as a pro that have helped him reach his personal goals. 

“I don’t like the idea of saying you can go back and change something,” he said. “Things happen for a reason, and you won’t be the person you are today if things didn’t happen in the past.”

For now, Saint is content streaming TFT, and whatever else he wants to, under the Team Liquid banner while staying on the lookout for unexpected visits from his cat across his keyboard. 

When asked what advice he had for current and aspiring LCS pros, Saint answered without hesitation. 

“I think advice for anything in life is to just slow down, take a breath, and look at what’s going on, because it’s very easy to get stuck in some cycle or lost in the sauce,” said Saintvicious. “Whether you’re a pro at some game or in a job. Things can start going very fast.. I think it’s important to slow down and assess what the hell’s going on instead of just getting wrapped up in the moment. Stop and smell the flowers.”