Allied

David "Allied" Hance was an American SMITE player. On 3 May 2017, Allied passed away after a long battle against cancer.

Biography
Allied was born in New York City and raised in upstate New York when he was young. He lived in New York City for the final months of his life, although he lived in Suwanee, Georgia for the majority of his professional SMITE career. He started playing video games at age 8 when his stepfather bought him a Nintendo 64 and his first video game, Donkey Kong 64. He played Starcraft II as well as most Smash Bros. games competitively. At a Smash Bros. tournament, he met dmbrandon in an adjacent room, and lost a match to him. This was the beginning of a long friendship between the two. When he quit Starcraft II, dmbrandon convinced him to start playing SMITE.

Allied was on numerous different teams during his career, including teams like Root Gaming, SNIPE Gaming, COGnitive Gaming and compLexity. Allied played the support role prior to his first appearance on SNIPE Gaming, which is when he chose to switch to hunter. As a veteran of competitive SMITE, Allied took part in a vast number of different tournaments including PAX East, PAX Prime, the SMITE Launch Tournament and more. Despite his long career, he rarely won events, and his teams were perpetually stuck in what came to be known as the "third-place curse".

During Season 2, compLexity qualified for the SMITE Pro League in convincing fashion. However just days later, the team decided to drop their current sponsor and start a new team which would be called Melior Morior, from the Latin phrase "Melior morior bellator, quam ago profugus.". This phrase translated to "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.", an accurate description for the merciless destruction they wrought on other teams. Melior Morior began training on the Public Test Server for Season 2 as soon as it was available, leading to an utterly dominant existence contested only by Team SoloMid, which occasionally defeated the newly powerful Melior Morior. The team would then rename to AFK Gaming after being sponsored by the AFKgg Gamer Lounge in San Jose, California with no roster changes. Online performances for AFK Gaming in the Summer Split were even more dominant as before, taking first place, but then failing at the Summer Finals in third.

During the Fall Split, AFK Gaming was projected by fans to again be the dominant team, as Team SoloMid had controversial roster changes that were almost unilaterally seen as downgrades. This projection held true, as by Week 7, AFK had an 18-2 win-loss record, exceeded only by Epsilon eSports in Europe. The team would then be picked up by eSports giant Team EnVyUs. In a twist of fate, after this sponsorship, Team EnVyUs lost all but 2 of their games, ending the Season with a 20-8 win-loss record. While they had already been guaranteed a spot at Super Regionals and almost guaranteed the first seed spot, their mediocre performance was deeply disappointing to fans and the team alike. Their first seed did not serve them well, as they were defeated by dark horse Enemy in their only set of the tournament. This poor performance could be attributed to several things, including Incon's seemingly random switch to the midlane (with a matching mediocre performance), the presence of Bluestone Pendant in the game poking out teammate CycloneSpin's main strategy of picking high damage assassins over his weaker godpool of warriors, Weak3n's lack of camping the solo lane as he had done throughout the year, and Allied and KikiSoCheeky's inability to fully win the lane. With three teammates forced into mediocre roles and two stuck in limbo, Team EnVyUs did not qualify for the World Championship.

However, all was not lost for Team EnVyUs. Weak3n suggested the team move to Xbox to still have a chance of going to Worlds. After dropping Incon, who did not want to play Xbox SMITE, they moved Allied to midlane, CycloneSpin to hunter and brought in the newly teamless 0mega for the solo lane, under the reasoning that CycloneSpin's carry style would be more suited to a true carry, Allied's desire to play midlane, and KikiSoCheeky's more supportive playstyle. Competing throughout the open bracket, Team EnVyUs's game knowledge was completely unmatched and beyond the scope of any team there. Without losing a single game, Team EnVyUs won the Xbox Invitational with ease.

Allied retired before Season 3 on 15 February 2016 under the belief that he was holding his team back, particularly due to his confusion surrounding the midlane role and his extremely limited godpool of and, two weak gods at the time. He was then picked up by Hi-Rez to work as a caster. Notably, nearly all of the games he casted were incredibly long, some exceeding sixty minutes. Sadly, after the first 2 weeks, Allied announced that he was diagnosed with gastro-esophageal cancer. Since his diagnosis, he never casted again, declaring that he would not return to casting even if his cancer was purged, although he noted he had an interest in being a guest caster for certain events. He returned to streaming for EnVyUs while he was retired. He moved back to New York City for adequate treatment after a massive fundraising event called "#AlliedStrong" was held for him featuring large icons of the SMITE community, including Wolfy2032, SpiffSinister, and much of the Hi-Rez staff.

During Season 4 however, Allied came out of retirement to join Luminosity Gaming as a substitute player. On 7 February 2017, Allied announced he was free of cancer, although he would likely require chemotherapy in the future as well due to the nature of cancer. Cancer returned shortly afterwards in a terminal form, and on 2 May 2017, he was hospitalised again. His condition quickly worsened, and he passed away the following day.

Trivia

 * His family was extremely poor when he was young.
 * He lived in Texas, Georgia and New York.
 * He named himself after the Allied Powers after learning about World War II in high school.
 * He was active in the Smash Bros. community before Smite.
 * His favorite game was Golden Sun.
 * He worked in security after high school.
 * He loved traveling, manga and anime.
 * He was diagnosed with gastro-esophageal cancer on 22 April 2016, confirmed as Stage 4 cancer affecting the GE junction (where the esophagus meets the stomach), liver and pancreas. The cancer expanded and infected his stomach, gallbladder and lungs throughout the course of 2016, and through chemotherapy and the removal of his gallbladder, he was fully cleared of cancer on 7 February 2017, although he noted his reliance on chemotherapy would likely last "forever" due to the nature of cancer. He was diagnosed again with spleen cancer on 16 March 2017. On 29 April 2017, Allied announced that he was terminal, with the cancer having spread to his lungs and was considering signing a Do Not Resuscitate form. By the early morning hours of 2 May 2017, he was on heavy pain medication, and would likely be kept incoherent until his death, with Wolfy2032 announcing he had approximately 1 day to live. It was also revealed he had signed the form on his girlfriend Chelle's twitter. Allied exceeded the 24 hour death estimation, although he passed away on 3 May 2017 at approximately 17:00 GMT.
 * He played the support role pre-launch, the hunter role after launch, and mid only for Xbox.
 * He had one penta kill in competitive SMITE, on 26 April 2015, he scored a penta kill against Team SoloMid as.

Vlogs

 * Allied's Retirement Vlog