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 Broo 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 choose what you want to mute."

  "Oh," Nia he basic "Mute All" option muted everything: chat, pings, and even the voiced macros. As much as Nia wao have a peaind during matches, she had to agree this was overkill.

  "You keep the chat muted, that's probably what you wanted in the first pce. But, turn the rest on. It's not much of a team game if you '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 bunartasses who used the macros to fme, like spamming a sarcastic "Thank you!" or a "Your rock!" into "cel that!". Those were so annoying.

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

  With that, she was ready to face her 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 tebsp;

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

  Sihe 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 py 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 plexity of the role.

  Unfortunately, it wasn't a role that fits everybody. It required pying with a vastly different mihan other roles and the Support pyer had to have suffit game knowledge and experieo 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 cede that Nia was better off pying Top.

  "I Vampire," Nia selected the css but hasn't locked-i.

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

  "Mhm," Nia nodded multiple times. She was dead set on pying Vampire for some reason. It rimarily a Jungler css so maybe Nia had some experieh it.

  "Sure, why not," Yuel shrugged.

  Vampire Top was borderlierritory but this pick had a few merits. For one, Vampire's basics were ratacks so it had range advantage over most Top Laners. However, in exge, it had a lower attad endurance. So, this was almost like bringing a Carry css to Top. It could either go extremely well or turn into a disaster right away.

  The eeam left their Top pick for st, a thing that would normally be frowned upon in petitive matches. But, this was Ranked and teams were formed out of random pyers, so meta drafting could be dammed.

  "Ah," Nia twitched ohe 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.

  "This is a great ce for you to feel for yourself what it means to deal with a Dark Knight in Top," Yuel snickered. "What did you use to say about ganking Top? That the Top Laner should ‘py better’ and not get overwhelmed by the Dark Knight?"

  "Geh..."

  "So, this is your ce. Show us how it's done. Deal with that Dark Knight yourself. It's easy, right?"

  "Gufu..." Nia curled into a ball. "Bully."

  "Well, it's not all bad," Yuel said. "Vampire ge, so at least you maintain distance whole farming. That's a huge deal against a Dark Knight.

  "Oh, so I tered-picked him. I also tered picked that Pyro st game. Maybe I'm genius at ter-pig? Gotta be it."

  "Sure, sure," Yuel rolled his eyes. Yeah, ter-picked the Dark Knight before the oppo even picked it. Truly, such a godlike level of ter pig.

  With that said, ter-pig Dark Knight ahead of time during the Qualifier and at low ranks made sense in general. It ur "noob stomper" css because he usually required the eeam to cooperate in order to take him down. And, with how well-aeams of random people were... yeah.

  "Hm, Tipmancer doesn't have anything for this matchup," Nia twisted her lips. Retly, the more she was using Tipmahe more it felt like a sham. Like, the advice was legit and all but there wasn’t nearly enough of it. It felt like Yuel stored way more useful game than this entire app.

  "I'd go aggressive," Yuel said. "Something like Giant Warhammer."

  "Hm?" Nia tilted her head. "Shouldn't I buy defeo survive his attacks?"

  "You try that but it probably won't go well. Your clearing speed is mediocre but your oppo's is off the charts, so you need as much power as you get to race him. Of course, you won't be able to beat him even with Warhammer but at least his minions won't get to push much."

  "So, it's like 'offense is best defense'?"

  "Yes, you put it that y safe from afar but be aggressive with clearing minions."

  "Sounds all kinds of weird but I think I get it," Nia nodded.

  As expected, the matchup was rough. The Dark Knight wiped out her entire minion wave with a single Dark Bst. Nia had to retreat to her Turret before she even got to sneak in a si on the enemy minions.

  She resorted t at the ining wave from her tower area. The little bats she sent flying packed a punch thanks to Giant Warhammer. heless, it didn’t stop the enemy from invadiurret. And, along with the minions, the Dark Knight also fearlessly jumped into her territory and hacked away at the Turret.

  I syers in low ranks got no fear. Yuel smiled wryly.

  Perhaps, that Dark Knight took into at it was risky for Nia to shoot him. Vampire wasn’t too tanky despite being cssified as a “bruiser”, so Nia couldn’t absorb too much minion fire, especially not during the early game. But no, this pyer probably didn’t think about any of that.

  That guy probably assumed the oppo will have to respect him because he was a Dark Knight. It ical arrogahat came with being a Dark Knight pyer. Ba the day, Gregory used to py it a lot and always acted like he was the stro pyer in the world.

  Boy did he rage when he pyed against a petehat shut him down. Yuel chuckled. Unfortunately for Nia, her random team wasn't the petent type. She got zero aid from her peers against the Dark Knight.

  HELP!HELP!HELP!

  GANK!GANK!GANK!

  No matter how much she spammed the macros, the Jungler didn't show any signs of g. That antisocial Ninja only cared about his own farming a Nia to die.

  "Maybe he muted everything," Yuel wondered.

  "What kind of Jungler mutes pings and macros?" Nia gnced aside.

  "I knht? Crazy people." Yuel chuckled. "So, looks you're on your own against this Dark Knight. Feeling like ces are in your favor?"

  "Not really...” Nia twisted her lips.

  "Right, because they really aren't. You his guy to mess up big time to get anything going here. Otherwise, you'll be like a mb to sughter. So, you see why it's so important for somebody to nd a hand in Top against a Dark Knight?"

  "Guh. This css is broken. 't he pi ho one?" Nia pouted.

  "It's a noob stomper css, same as Rogue. You're not pying the game for real unless you know how to deal with these csses."

  "Then, guess our Ninja isn't pying the game for real," Nia gnced aside.

  "Look who's talking," Yuel gave her a look. "Anyway, if the Jungler doesn't gank then you’re in trouble. Our Mid isn't doing too hot over there so he doesn't have the luxury to help you either."

  "So, GG?"

  "Hey, don't write yourself off like that yet. Just because it's a tough positio mean you don’t have any ces of ing on top. You might be able to ha yourself somehow."

  "Like how? I wait for him to run low on HP and then attack?"

  "Yes, that's a valid approach," Yuel nodded. "I take it you have a lot of experience dueling Dark Knights?"

  "More than I care for," Nia shuddered. Back when she was just a naive greenhorn who jumped into Duel unprepared, Dark Knight pyers were everywhere. It was the most broken thing ever. Just thinking ba it gave her the yikers.

  "sidering you reached Ptinum, I suppose you learned know to deal with Dark Knight?"

  "Yeah, it's easy," Nia nodded. "I just ban it."

  "That's... not quite what I was hoping to hear," Yuel frowned. So, Nia's solution to Dark Knight was never fighting him. Huh.

  Ranked Duel allowed each pyer to ban three csses, so it made seo ban problematic csses. In fact, Dark Knight's bloated ban ratio at low levels made many pyers use it as justification to pin about the css being OP, even though Dark Knight wasn’t nearly as dominant on the highest level of py.

  In Duel, Dark Knight was undeniably strong. However, it suffered greatly from the fact the game started at Lv.5, which was halfway toward mid-game. Uhe Dark Knight mao establish an overwhelming advantage in the first couple of minutes, he was doomed.

  As, at low levels, pyers didn't know how to defuse a Dark Knight and it ran all over them. Therefore, it became a popur ban. People rather avoid a Dark Knight than learchup. It was a valid, but the less skillful, approach to ranking up.

  Unfortunately, Nia chose to do exactly that. In other words, she didn't really have much experience dealing with a Dark Knight on her own. Yuel will have to hold her hand here.

  "At least you know the general idea," Yuel said. "Your best shot is to patiently wait for the Dark Knight to run out of HP or to overextend. I take it you lear from Tipmancer?"

  "Mhm," Nia nodded. "This strat kinda works but not really."

  "Yeah, I know what you mean. This matchup be frustrating sometimes. In this mode, it's even harder because you start at Lv.1."

  "So, what do?"

  "Just do it. Defend and wait. Let's see what kind of Dark Knight we got on our hands and find an opportunity to strike him down."

  "Ok." That's my favorite pastime. Nia o herself. Turtling and waiting for the oppoo make a mistake was her prime strategy in Duel. At some point, people lowered their guard and itted a grave overextension, whiia immediately punished with a kill.

  But, that was a lot way easier to pull off with an assassin css. Vampire was assassin-ish when built with power items, but it was still a world apart from a proper assassin with burst damage. So, even if this Dark Knight overextends, will Nia be able to properly punish him a a kill...?

  DarkestCymore