A Real Challenge

The next two rounds were even easier. The enemy teams had apparently only made it that far through luck of being matched against even worse teams. Nobody Cares could have probably drafted whatever they wanted and still won the round.

Finally it was the round of 7 (six matches + 1 bye).

Most of the other teams had already been eliminated so there were no freebies left. Every team that remained had a modicum of skill. As they sat down to their last match of the week, Miranda wondered vaguely if she should break out her Gambler. She shook her head. Some things were better left hidden until needed.

This weekend would be the highlight of the school tournament. On Saturday were the semifinals and the finals were on Sunday. Every one of these matches would be held in the auditorium with the public invited to spectate.

"Almost there guys." Kelly stared off into space over her monitor seemingly lost in thought.

Jacob scooted his keyboard into the perfect position. "I never thought it would be this easy to get this far," he admitted. "You think we have a shot at winning the whole thing?"

"Maybe?" Archie replied. "We haven't played any of the really good teams yet."

"I'm so excited!" Rina flipped her long dyed black over her shoulder and took the jewelry off her arms. "Of course we totally have shot."

Everyone turned towards Miranda asking for her opinion with their gazes. For her part Miranda just shrugged dramatically. "We should get into the lobby."

After their first match where top/jungle/mid/bot/supp were Jacob/Miranda/Rina/Kelly/Archie, the rest of their matches followed the more standard Rina/Miranda/Kelly/Jacob/Archie.

"Telekineticist?"

This was the first match where it wasn't Nobody Cares picking the Telekineticist, but their opponent. It was the first class picked. The gears in Miranda's head ground. It was rather rare to find a good Telekineticist. Outside of Levitate, all of the Telekineticist's skills were skillshots requiring good aim or good planning to hit them. A good Telekineticist need good aim to hit the enemy, positioning to keep being killed, and timing to get the most out of their abilities. Lacking any one of these things was an exploitable weakness.

"Can I do the draft?"

Everyone looked at Kelly in surprise. She was one of the most talkative, especially when it came to planning, but the burden of decision making was always left to Miranda and sometimes Archie. This was the first time she mentioned wanting to take a more decisive role.

"Any objections?"

Nobody objected and the mantle of decision making for the draft was passed to Kelly.

"Cavalier and Paladin."

"We're picking our top lane and a support?"

"Not necessarily."

The enemy responded after a couple seconds with Electromancer and Gatling. Of all the ranged marksman classes Gatling had the absolute least disruption with no escape or crowd control abilities. On the other hand it was one of if not the most outright destructive classes in the entire game.

Since it was her turn, Kelly immediately picked Slicer. The Slicer class had very short range high damage abilities and dashes with very long cooldowns. But those cooldowns would reset if you managed to damage an opponent with an ability. It was considered the most skill expressive class in CAR. A high amount of skill was needed to even play the class to a moderate degree but in the hands of the most skilled players it was practically a god.

Now everybody except Kelly was thoroughly confused. It seemed like both Cavalier and Slicer were meant for Rina but she obviously would play only one or the other this game.

"Um, Kelly?"

"Sharpshooter and Elementalist."

"So who's on what exactly?"

"Rina has Slicer. Miranda's on Cavalier. I have Elementalist. Sharpshooter's for Jacob and Archie's got Paladin.

"Explain please?" Everyone looked at Kelly's drafting choices in confusion.

"What's wrong with it?" Kelly pouted. "It was originally supposed to be Rina on Slicer since it plays to her strengths, Cavalier for me as an anti-meta pick, and Paladin as support. But then instead of it being Electromancer mid they made it support and picked Timestalker which destroys Cavalier. So I changed to Elementalist which is safer against Timestalker. All of these choices are meta too, except Cavalier but Miranda can play anything anyways."

"What's wrong is we are going to get destroyed in lane," replied Archie.

"What do you mean?"

It was going poorly even before they gave over first blood. As Slicer, Rina was having a hard time fighting the opposing Golem. The Golem class had a shield that regenerated when out of combat, two different abilities that granted a shield, and a very high physical defense. The only way for Rina to even have a chance was to get resets off of minions to continue her combos. Trying to get resets off the opposing Avatar was futile since the shields would prevent her damage and getting resets. The top lane was just her sitting under her own turret trying to kill the enemy minions without the Pillar getting the killing blow and taking too much damage from the opponent.

Although Elementalist was relatively safe against Timestalker, Kelly had no kill threat. Neither mid laner had a way to forcefully kill the opponent and so the two of them just ended up trading waves of minions.

In bot lane, the Gatling and Telekineticist were destroying Archie and Jacob. Jacob never had the best mechanics or the fastest decision making. As a result he was just being pulled by the Telekineticist over and over again and getting killed while Archie could do nothing really to help or stop it.

"Man this is too easy!" crowed the Telekineticist. "That's the fifth time."

"Oh, I am so fed! This feels great." The Gatling grinned as he ground the Sharpshooter into mincemeat. "Are they noobs?"

"They probably only made it this far because they got bad opponents," added the Golem. "Who in their right mind blind picks Slicer? Come gank her, it's a free kill."

"On my way."