Greetings Warlander!
Part of the latest wave of top-tier humans (he's really an APE) to play Warlander, JVal is much more than just a skilled veteran player. In-grained in the community as a live stream staple and shot-calling leader of the APE Clan, it's hard to believe that JVal hasn't always been here, guiding us in the game and providing a positive, yet extremely honest place to discuss Warlander.
But enough from us, let's let JVal do the talking, it's a fantastic read. ːsteamhappyː
JValTV Community Spotlight
Who are you?
My handle’s JValTV. I’m from all over the United States and a bit of Canada. I’m a sweaty tryhard that gets hard carried by the sweat team called “APES”. A Warlander only team focused on teamwork and sweaty high-level WL play. Our recruitment post is on the official WL discord.
How did you come up with your name?
My handles have slowly evolved over the years. I can tell when players met me by what they call me. JValTV started here in Warlander. Had to shorten the full handle to be within the visible character limitations. Johnny comes from my BF4 and Arma III days. While Valentine’s my RL nickname. Why Valentine? Because I was terrible at talking to women. Gamer level bad. My teens and twenties, my attempts to be respectful just came across as awkward. I’d get all anxious, wouldn’t be able to speak, it was a class act disaster.
How did you find Warlander?
Streamers attract streamers. I was researching new games and came across Maliqu. He was rocking his chainmail setup, making icelance look amazing. If you haven’t seen Maliqu play catch him at https://www.twitch.tv/maliqu. I wouldn’t have found this amazing community without him.
What kind of content do you make?
I stream for fun and use the footage from streaming to practice video creation. My goal is to be a full-time streamer and to produce X number of videos a week. Lot of time, lot of effort, but the moments when someone pulls a great play (especially against a sweatlord like me) or they learn a “git gud” fact from a video. It feels great. You get a tiny share of a cool experience.
Where do you make it?
Twitch
I stream at https://www.twitch.tv/jvaltv. My stream schedule is listed there. Come hang out, feel free to que snipe me (que at the same time I do). I love playing with the community, it keeps the APES and I honest.
Youtube
My Youtubes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwx3zCdNUlyimuStDsNgwkA. I do mostly longform content. I may branch into youtube/multi-platform streaming in the future, but for now, it’s a great place to catch Warlander tutorials and sweaty gameplay footage. Those sweat games really show the potential Warlander has. Matches that get your gamer sweat going, that you sign off and think about afterwards and best of all, having that shared experience with your gamer buddies.
When did you start making content?
I started researching content creation and creating the framework roughly a year ago. I committed and started trial and erroring about 7 to 8 months ago. I started playing Warlander on PC launch day. Have been dedicated to the game ever since.
What's your process?
For streaming it’s straight forward. Most notable investments being a mic arm and green screen. Mic arm allows you to express yourself a bit more through body language without suffering on audio quality. Green screen is a great investment for cutting out your background and saving that screen space for gameplay.
For videos, it’s mostly freeware and crutching on youtube tutorials. You can learn just about anything on YT for free. And though taking 3 hours to learn how to create word bubbles in davinci can be an emotional experience... it’s rewarding afterwards to have those tools in your toolkit.
Who inspires you?
I was in the Infantry for seven years. I wouldn’t be a ¼ of the person I am today without the influence from my first squad leader, SGT R. SGT R gave me the tools and behaviors to survive many difficult events and, in the process, learn a lot about myself and life in general. He taught me it’s better to spend every dime you get as a leader investing back into your own team than living on some leadership powertrip. To build the people up around you more than you break them down. That if a leader’s done his job correctly, he’s the most useless person on the crew. A glorified janitor. That the team’s success matters more than you. I owe a lot to that man.
What inspired you to make content?
I did hard and serious work for a long time. Dealing with life and death situations, managing capital in the millions of dollars and all the other laurels of a dangerous vicarial job. From the “thank yous” to the funerals. At some point, I decided I’d prefer a simpler life. I get to play video games and be a team member with fellow players across the entire diversity spectrum. Where nothing else matters about who you are then how well you can work together and take some color’d pixels to the W screen. That is a level of comradery and inclusion hard to find eslewhere without an otherwise steep admission.
What is the future of your channel and content?
Starting with season 1, I’ve posted a new stream schedule to better accommodate both the EU and NA viwers. I wish I could crack the language barrier and be more inclusive towards the Asian community. So many great players, great gameplay, and great personalities from that region. Many of which have English translators on their streams, so check them out! While on Youtube, I’m working towards more newbie tutorials and a weekly “best of X season” series.
What is your special talent?
I’m lucky.
What is something that no one knows about you?
I took a year after service and went nomadic. Lived out of my vehicle. Added extra storage and solar, got rid of lot of my extra house junk and just traveled. Saved up a little nest egg during COVID working some extreme overtime and then spent a few months destination and beach hopping while knocking out some online learning. It was honestly an amazing experience and I often miss it. Wild how much time and energy gets spent to pay for a box that you end up only sleeping in.
What are your goals?
To be a full-time content creator. To be a good person. To provide a product that brings people joy. To sleep soundly at night. To laugh and make others laugh. To make others feel more proud, more confident and to be a fly on the wall for their success. To support as many people as I can who are trying to achieve the same.
What is your favorite thing you’ve made?
My favorite product earns my channel absolutely nothing. There is no external gain from it. In fact, it’s a net loss for me due to the time expense. But I love my channels twitch clips. When the community has an outplay on the APES and myself and posts us getting clowned on. When you see that solo player rise-up and become a champion of the match and those views spike up. That’s super cool.
What has been your most memorable moment in Warlander?
Elysian, another great WL team, que-sniped my stream one night and that was my first Warlander experience of sweaty team play. There was meta and counter meta, strategic and tactical outplays. And we’d win or lose, palms sweaty and laugh about how much fun it was. That was the moment I knew that I loved this game. That I’d risk my time and effort on its potential because there’s cool stuff under the hood here. Yeah, it needs polish, balancing and creature comforts but the frame of this game, especially for F2P, is wildly good.
What is your favorite Class?
Because I play in a sweaty team environment, we don’t look at class ideology the same. Decks are separated into 5 types. Main Heal, DPS, Utility, Pusher and Hybrid. There’s also a less talked about 6th Deck called “Rank”. Each deck design serves a certain role within the matches/teamplay and may include various classes. My favorite deck is probably Main Heal. I dream about playing Utility Deck. But, I mostly play Main Pusher.
What does your current deck setup consist of?
I play a “pusher” for the APES. My job is to take ground, contest points and take hits for the rest of the squad. My deck currently has 4 Warriors and 1 Portal Cleric. The detail of the setup depends on the patch version. In general, I use a knock/barrier zero-star warrior, since it’s good all game. Health stacked warriors at various titles, so give my healers more value from their heals and a portal/wall/climb cleric to keep the enemy team honest.
What advice would you give a new player?
Being new in an established pvp game is difficult. Class, map, and general game mechanic knowledge is extremely powerful stuff. My recommendation is to watch the various WL streamers and ask questions in their chat. Pick their brains. Watch WL videos from active Warlandians. They have a lot of knowledge to share.
Join the Official discord @https://discord.gg/playwarlander. The voice system on that server is amazing, the chats are a great place to get questions answered and find players to group with. Make friends, seriously, little extra teamwork makes the dream work.
Check out the Warlander wiki for any detail-level info you’re looking for. Content creators can’t make videos about this stuff because it outdates too quickly. So, the wiki is great for hyper-specific information. https://warlander.fandom.com/wiki/Warlander_Wiki. Big shoutout to Hemoura, Gwendoline and crew for their hard work as wiki editors.
What advice would you give to a new Warlander Content Creator?
The streamer to viewership saturation in WL is very favorable for new streamers trying to build their initial audience. The community is incredibly friendly, which gives you a chance to practice your craft and see if content creation is something you enjoy. Because end of the day, it’s still work. Figure out your brand. Find your niche, WL have tons of unfilled content creation niches and just focus on making better content than you made yesterday. And if you do that, the other WL streamers will make the effort to support you. We take care of our own.
What do you enjoy most about Warlander and what do you look forward to the most in the future?
The Community, hands down. We don’t always agree, especially about balancing or how to lobby for our preferred changes. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of players that love this game. And it’s that love of play that is our great mutual commonality. Good patch, bad patch, bug or tyranny of a meta. I’m always looking forward to that next GG.
Thanks for reading!
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