She didn’t need to be here, technically– given the time they lived in, even a little tournament like this one was both streamed and recorded for anyone to watch online, without needing to drag themselves out to see what was going on.

But then again, this was her local, so she’d pay the entry fee to make sure that they kept doing it. It would be entirely too much of a problem if they suddenly decided to merge with a nearby competition, lowering her chances of putting together a winning team even further.

At least, given that it was the morning, it wouldn’t be the games she had to pay the most attention to, yet.

In a smaller area like this one, the skill disparity was wide enough between the top and bottom of the eight teams here that the game going on right now would likely be a stomp so bad she wouldn’t even get useful information out of it.

An assumption that a quick check of the players’ ranks had served to strengthen.

Not that she wouldn’t have the stream on silent on her lap, as well as watch it back at an increased speed later. It just wasn’t going to be her primary focus, instead paying attention to the third versus the sixth seed.

After their game, this room would be the fifth versus the fourth, though, and that was more likely to give her good information on them.

Nathaniel was technically here too, ostensibly for the same reason she was, but he’d disappeared basically as soon as they’d gotten here. He’d probably come back with information on some specific players he’d managed to talk to or watch.

Still useful, but of a very different kind than she was managing. And for him, probably enough to win a game off of. Her ability and team-observation and his synergy and individual action analysis tended to lead them to the same places anyways, they just got there from different places.

It did tend to cause a difference in style, though; she was better at preventing a loss or securing a victory where Nathan was much better at turning the tides or preventing specific, larger issues.

Once the players had loaded in and the four screens that were watching inside the game, from computer-controlled vantage points, she was fairly quick to pick out an expectation of how this game would go.

Except for North and their Diver, the teams were basically mirror images of each other. Selicae’s Carry used fire and CalTwelve’s used lightning, as well, which could make a significant change. Fire was the more powerful of the two for general purposes, but it also required leading and indirect aiming that lightning did not.

It was more common, of course, but she mostly assumed that that was just the higher numbers making themselves known to people for whom ease of use was a much larger concern.

The other differences were more interesting, though. While the sets scrolled by in the loading screens, she’d first been drawn to Selicae’s diver. Instead of running a dodge tank in the jungle, she was instead running a shield-tank set. With an extremely low cooldown penultimate with lingering effects and a lot of indirect ability scaling, the set felt to her less like a tank and more like a carry in tank form.

It wouldn’t start off all that strong, but over time would become a menace, if only because it was unkillable.

It would be interesting to see how it ranked up against someone running the dodge tank standard, especially given the conservative build CalTwelve’s diver was on. She’d traded the usual Challenge for Mirage and Wind Strike for Directing Feint, specifically– trading personal damage and direct control for the indirect threat of boosting party members and the even-more-effective Daredevil from Mirage’s help in dodging attacks.

It was unusually dependent on allies for a diver, but it wasn’t going to be entirely non-threatening either.

Less obviously, her eye was also drawn to Selicae’s north laner.

Sucking Earth, Mist Wave, Condense, Mudrider, and Suffuse.

Even with its ults, she couldn’t quite tell what it was about it that had drawn her eye. There was nothing particularly special about it– a ramping damage area controller that when built as a bruiser would basically become the north lane absolute central standard, though maybe even more than someone would usually want.

That thought is what she caught on. Maybe it wasn’t that it was particularly outside of what was considered good, maybe it was just…

She stifled a giggle when she finally caught it.

It was the kind of thing that someone built if their undying hatred for the world and particularly north laners is what led them to play north lane.

When she finished her analysis on the ability sets and looked up, she could see that her predictions for the north laner had been correct.

He hadn’t even bothered to disguise his contempt for playing the lane in a normal way, carelessly throwing his mist waves through his own minions and dealing them a miniscule bit of damage just to get them into the enemy lines, before condensing them to water, suffusing that water into the ground, and letting his passive gnaw on the shields, slowing them in the process.

Almost the extent of his interaction with the girl on the other side was to occasionally throw mist waves at her when the ground beneath her minions was already soaked.

It didn’t matter if there was something between them, if it was barely doing any damage, or if there was no reasonable way she’d get hit– if he was free, he cast Mist Waves at her.

It was a little strange, then, that both Selicae’s Diver and Ranger had started north side. They’d, for some reason, committed to both of them making an attempt at south or mid lane, when north was obviously set up for either of them to be significantly more effective for them to gank for and the Diver’s setup was obviously geared to not be able to make good south lane time until later on.

It used that credit to pay for some of its power, but it also made the decisions she was seeing particularly strange.

Whatever; it wasn’t her call how other teams were going to play.

Plus, her attention was drawn in two different directions at once. Selicae’s Ranger was making an attempt on south, while CalTwelve’s Diver was taking a crack at North.

She suppressed a smirk. That north laner was good, even if he hated the role he was in– he’d kept his opponent so busy that she hadn’t had the opportunity to either figure out or explain why the other girl wouldn’t actually be able to help much.

The Ranger was just going to do basically nothing, but North was going to be a mess.

She pulled up the tablet she was using for notes, clicking the timer so she knew what they were referring to. This part was bound to be interesting, if nothing else.