Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story

Vol.8 Ch.10: Alone Against a Dark Knight

Nia won the Qualifier match but it was too early to celebrate. She still had six more matches ahead of her and she has already lost the first three, so she had to work extra hard to not end up in Bronze. To make sure that doesn't happen, Yuel stayed by Nia's side to give her advice.

"Go to the advanced settings," Yuel said. "Here, you can choose what you want to mute."

"Oh," Nia nodded. The basic "Mute All" option muted everything: chat, pings, and even the voiced macros. As much as Nia wanted to have a peace of mind during matches, she had to agree this was overkill.

"You can keep the chat muted, that's probably what you wanted in the first place. But, turn the rest on. It's not much of a team game if you can't coordinate anything with your teammates."

"Mhm," Nia nodded and followed the orders.

Turning the pings on was definitely important. However, as for the voiced macros, she wasn't so sure. There were a bunch of smartasses who used the macros to flame, like spamming a sarcastic "Thank you!" or a "Your rock!" into "Cancel that!". Those were so annoying.

However, those were much rarer than chat flaming and it was usually at least somewhat funny. So, Nia turned it on anyway.

With that, she was ready to face her next qualifier match.

Please don't match me with people who steal roles. Nia has already typed "Jungler" in the chat in preparation. As soon as the match lobby loaded, she jammed it in! Nobody was able to beat the speed of her stealthy tech!

However, being fast didn't help her. Ranked drafting had a specific order and Nia wasn't anywhere near the top of the list. The second player on the list called Jungler after her but he had the privilege to pick it first, so he ignored Nia's call and went for Ninja. What a bully.

Since the system shoved Nia to the bottom of the list again, so she had only two roles to pick from: Top and Support.

Nobody wants to play Support, huh. Yuel smiled wryly. He had the urge to gather all the people who rejected the Support role and personally lecture them about the depth and complexity of the role.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a role that fits everybody. It required playing with a vastly different mindset than other roles and the Support player had to have sufficient game knowledge and experience to make the role be of any help. So, as much as Yuel would have liked to see more people give it a try, he had to concede that Nia was better off playing Top.

"I can Vampire," Nia selected the class but hasn't locked-in yet.

"Vampire? For Top?" Yuel knotted his brows. "Well, it is considered a bruiser and it got sustain, but it's not that tanky. You sure?"

"Mhm," Nia nodded multiple times. She was dead set on playing Vampire for some reason. It was primarily a Jungler class so maybe Nia had some experience with it.

"Sure, why not," Yuel shrugged.

Vampire Top was borderline meme territory but this pick had a few merits. For one, Vampire's basics were ranged attacks so it had range advantage over most Top Laners. However, in exchange, it had a lower attack and endurance. So, this was almost like bringing a Carry class to Top. It could either go extremely well or turn into a disaster right away.

The enemy team left their Top pick for last, a thing that would normally be frowned upon in competitive matches. But, this was Ranked and teams were formed out of random players, so meta drafting could be dammed.

"Ah," Nia twitched once the enemy picked their Top Laner. Oh noes. Nonono. Bad. Bad. Bad!

It was a Dark Knight. Out of all things, it had to be that bully. Nia was done for.