Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story - Part 3

Vol.15 Ch.5: The Shadow Walker Dilemma

It was time for the second bout between the Leopards and Stratus. The players from both sides entered the stage and took their seats.

The Leopards were packing the same strong lineup from before, whereas Straus made one small adjustment to their team composition. The referee made sure to run that change by the Leopards before the game.

"My, have they already replaced Vanishing?" Cato blinked. "That was fast."

"I'm not surprised," Sonya said. "She was clearly underperforming last game, we all saw it in the replay."

"Yes, I agree. In fact, I've used that fact against her multiple times that game."

During the break, Cato and Sonya briefly went over the previous game's replay. The main goal was to reevaluate every member of Stratus, to find any discrepancies between the theoretical analysis of the players' skills and their actual performance on the stage.

As they ran the comparison, VanishingFlower's weak performance stood out like a sore thumb.

"It's unfortunate." Cato shook his head. "I was planning to abuse the fact she's underperforming, but oh well."

"It looks like our opponents are self-aware, at least," Sonya said. "Then again, they replaced Vanishing with Memer, which is a rather questionable decision. I was hoping they wouldn't bring out this... this creature against us."

"Haha. A little harsh, aren't we?" Cato smiled. "It's not like Memer is a bad player."

"Yeah!" Ronald joined in. "It's the guy who uses low-tier classes in the jungle, right? Bruh is sick! I mean, I know we gonna stomp him real hard and all, but mad respect for the dedication. Bruh is a real legend!"

"There's nothing praiseworthy about that nonsense," Sonya declared. "Well, I suppose this game will be even easier than the previous."

"Perhaps," Cato said. "You have to admit one thing, though. Memer definitely makes the drafting phase more interesting. I, for one, have absolutely no idea what we should even ban against him."

"Me neither, but I doubt it even matters." Sonya shrugged. "Judging by his past records, he's most likely going to pick a terrible class anyway."

"Yeah, unless what we saw in the previous scrim was a sham," William pointed out. "Maybe this time he'll go meta."

"Possible but I doubt it," Sonya said. "One look at his nickname is enough to tell what kind of player he is."

"Fair enough."

"We'll just have to wait and see," Cato summarized. "Personally, I just don't like it when I don't know which Jungler classes to ban, but it is what it is."

"It's not like you have too much freedom with bans anyway," Sonya said. "We're going second again, so your first three bans are pretty much pre-determined."

"Haha, that's true..." Cato smiled wryly.

He was obligated to also ban Trickshooter and Gunslinger to seal Gunz's strongest weapons. And, since the team was going second, the burden of banning Shadow Walker fell on the Leopards' shoulders once again. Or, did it?

If we knew for sure that Memer only plays memes, then we could skip banning Shadow. After all, there's no way a memer would pick a top-tier meta class, right?

Alas, as William pointed out, there wasn't enough data to assert that LegendaryMemer only played memes. The guy participated in only two games in the previous scrimmage, which wasn't enough to determine what kind of player he really was.

Was he truly a mad lad who dared to bring memes to the competitive scene? Or, was it just a hobby? Perhaps he only used memes against teams that he didn't deem threatening enough.