Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story - Part 3

Vol.15 Ch.4: The "Unexpected" Jungler Meme...

"Hehe" Luke snickered confidently. "I bet you'll never guess which class it is!"

"Dark Knight?"

"Wha-!?" Luke jumped. "H-How the heck did ya figure!? Are you a mind reader, bro!?"

"It wasn't too hard to deduce," Yuel explained. "You've started playing lots of Dark Knight recently and you've been putting on an unexpectedly... well, 'not terrible' performance, I suppose."

"Right? Right!? Dang, I was planning to keep it as a surprise, but looks like the cat is already out of the bag, haha."

"You weren't very discrete about it, honestly. In the past two weeks, your usage of Dark Knight skyrocketed compared to all your other classes."

"Wait, how do you even know that?" Luke asked. "Do you regularly collect these statistics or something?"

"Yes, every now and then."

"Dang, and to think that I tried extra hard to keep it under wrappers by switching classes all the time...!"

"I'm not sure why would you even want to keep it a secret, but it was easy enough to spot the Dark Knight because you usually change classes very regularly. The distribution of your other class picks was rather uniform over the last two weeks, save for Dark Knight."

"Dang, curse you and your 200 IQ analysis skillz!" Luke waved an angry fist. "But anyway, whatcha think? A brilliant idea, right? Right!?"

"I think you meant to say a terrible idea."

"Whaaaat? C'mon, man. I totally rocked that Jungle DK, didn't I? We steamrolled so many games thanks to it!"

"Yes, we did win over half the games," Yuel admitted. "But, the sample size is too small to say anything conclusive."

"But, you remember how we totally DESTROYED the guys we did beat, right? Jungle DK is that OP, I'm telling ya, man."

"It's somewhat effective against weaker teams which we catch off-guard, but that's about all it can do."

"So, you agree there's a chance we can win with it." Luke grinned.

"Yes, a chance, and only against the weaker teams that'll allow themselves to be caught off-guard. Even in Ranked, the better teams shut down your Dark Knight very early."

"Welp, I guess something like that might've happened, maybe..." Luke looked away.

"Now," Yuel continued. "If you take into account that the Leopards are probably stronger than all these strong Ranked opponents combined, then you get the idea."

"Man, such pessimism." Luke shook his head. "C'mon, you saw these guys, right? They're hardcore turtles. There's no way they gonna shut down my DK. Just no way, man. They'll be sitting there like ducks, waiting for me to run over them. I'm telling you, man."

"Hmm." Yuel knotted his brows. As much as I'd like to object, he does make some sense. Cato's Leopards is a hyper-defensive team to a fault. So, they might unexpectedly struggle against a hyper-aggressive Jungler. But...

In the end, it was still a meme. Just like in Top Lane, a Jungler Dark Knight was overwhelmingly powerful if it could get going during the early-game, but it'd become borderline useless if the enemy stop it early.

And sadly, the Leopards were no amateurs. They definitely knew how to shut down Dark Knight's strong early-game.

Though, that knowledge can also be used against them. Yuel thought. That actually worked out for us a couple of times in Ranked.