Double elimination was not the format Miranda would have chosen for a 100 team tournament, but then again it was the school's decision not hers. One week after the tournament announcement and teams were finalized, the first round was slated to begin. Their team was confident of victory and in Miranda's opinion deservedly so. They'd spent the entire week working not on their mechanics, but on the philosophy she was drilling into them.
Everyone loaded into the lobby. Their team was named Nobody Cares, a joke based on the team's attitude about winning that Archie and Jacob pushed to Kelly's displeasure and Rina and Miranda's ambivalence. Nobody Cares banned three assassin classes. The opposing team, WolfGang, banned the three "OP" classes. That still left the field of pickable classes wide open.
Rina snapped up Electromancer. The long range mage had a highly flexible playstyle and four of them could play it. Everyone except Rina, the one who picked it.
WolfGang responded with one of the unbanned assassins, the Rogue, and their support, the Shepherd.
Everyone on Nobody Cares cracked a smile. They all knew what that meant even before Miranda asked the question.
"Rina, what do you want to wreck that Rogue?"
"Gimme Cavalier."
"Got it. Cavalier and Mute."
When Cavalier and Ninja were locked in, question marks were going off in the heads of the opposing team.
"I thought you said they were going to pick Paladin."
"They should have picked Paladin. Are they being dumb or something? Rogue is going to wreck their Electromancer."
"They also picked both their solo lanes. Cavalier top?"
"I've seen it before. Just pick a tank into it and their finished."
"So we'll go Paladin then?
"Yeah, deny them the pick. It can go top or support."
"We already have Shepherd."
"Oh yeah. Whatever, it'll be good into Cavalier."
After that each team had three of their five classes picked. Now each team would get to ban two more classes before picking their last two.
This time both teams banned out high mobility junglers. WolfGang had to pick first for this phase, but they would also have last overall pick. All according to plan. They instalocked Werewolf and waited to see what their opponents would pick.
Ninja. Telekineticist.
Everyone on WolfGang's faces went blank. Two squishy supports and no tanks? They had to be throwing the game on purpose right? WolfGang last picked Sharpshooter. The game plan was simple, win the lanes and then crush the opponents in teamfights repeatedly.
The game was a completely one sided stomp. For Nobody Cares.
Jacob took Mute top against Paladin. As a ranged champion with a lot disruptive crowd control abilities, he had a huge advantage against Paladin whose biggest selling point was being a night unkillable tank with a game defining ultimate. The Paladin ultimate skill Divine Intervention briefly prevented all teammates from taking damage. Unfortunately for him the Divine Intervention was nullified by the Mute ultimate skill Complete Silence which removed all effects enemy avatars such as shields, buff, and debuffs. Unable to affect the game with his ultimate or kill Jacob, the Paladin became just a punching bag.
In mid lane Rina lived up to expectations. Her cavalier destroyed the Rogue. Especially with some early help from Miranda's jungle Ninja, she soon became so strong that she could fight against the enemy jungle/mid duo and get out alive.
Bot lane was the straw that broke the camel's back. Instead of playing a traditional marksman carry, Kelly's Electromancer and Miranda's Ninja had a grand time annihilating whoever Archie Force of Willled. Both Sharpshooter and Shepherd were squishy classes and quickly found themselves being comboed to death by Kelly's burst damage and Archie's crowd control.
Admittedly Jacob was pretty useless outside of using his ultimate to cancel the Paladin's. But that didn't really matter when Rina could rampage freely through the enemy team with Miranda's backup while Kelly picked off targets at leisure protected by Archie. Teamfight after teamfight went over to Nobody Cares, a snowball that couldn't be stopped until the enemy Core lay shattered and the game was over.
"Did you seriously go tank Ninja?"
Jacob was looking at the end of game screen. All of the builds looked normal. Except for one. Miranda's Ninja.
Ninja was played in one of two ways. The full on assassin build went full damage and took bonuses that improved damage done with basic attacks. Go in, kill the enemy, then escape. Then do it again when enough abilities were off cooldown. The more bruiser style build took damage, cooldown reduction, and bonuses that improved ability damage and cooldown reduction. The aim was to give up burst damage from the assassin over build in order to deal more damage over time by being able to go in and fight more often.
But Miranda's build was neither. It had the traditional jungle clearing items which was pretty standard. Other than that it took things that granted defenses, health, and cooldown reduction. No damage items. Jacob couldn't figure it out.
"Yup," replied Miranda. She nodded sagely. "My ruse played out perfectly."
"What ruse?"
"Every time I engaged they blew lots of their crowd control and most damaging abilities on me."
"But you didn't die because of your tank build."
"Exactly."
"But isn't your job to kill people?"
"Sort of? Ninja has pretty high base damages. I still do damage, just not nearly as much as I normally would. Mostly my job was to draw aggro and disrupt them with microstuns from my Shuriken toss."
"Oh I see. It probably wouldn't have worked very well if we weren't ahead in gold though."
"Huh." Kelly frowned in thought. "That playstyle is more optimal with a tank though isn't it?"
"Tanks are less mobile. More importantly they thought I was key damage threat and that caused them to waste so many resources on trying to stop and kill me. If I was playing a tank or fighter they would have saved those resources instead of wasting them."
Archie looked up with a sudden thought. "It doesn't have to be Ninja does it? You just needed to pick some sort of assassin with good mobility and a crowd control ability."
"Yup." Miranda gave him a thumbs up. "I just really like Ninja."