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This article is about the diversity (or lack thereof, depending on your opinion) of the champion selection in the LCS Worlds 2013. I'll be comparing some data with 2012 World's as well.
I am relatively new to the game, the first time I ever saw a game played was the 2012 World Championship between TPA and Azubu Frost. I had no idea what was going on, but I was there because of the CSL. Some of my fellow admins were trying to explain what was happening but I didn't understand much. It wasn't until February that I really started playing the game actively. I have watched some of the World Championships this year and one thing that struck me was that I would see the same champions played over and over and over and over again. I would rate myself a casual fan of the game, and I thought to myself that seeing the same pool of champions played continuously was pretty boring. This isn't meant to be a negative post mind you, but I want to address the issue of diversity in champions and take a look at why so few champions are being played, what this says about the game, and think of some solutions.
Again, I'll be using data from 2013 LCS World's, taken from Leaguepedia as well as my own personal compilation of statistics I made from the 2012 World's.
Examining 2013 World's
According to Leaguepedia, a total of 66 games were played at World's this year [an important side note, especially as I've seen a lot of complaints about the format and games on Reddit: this is more than double the amount of games (31) played at 2012 World's] and 69 total champions. That's 60% of the 115 total champions. However, if we exclude some of the 'troll' picks that happened in some of the later group stage games when teams had already been eliminated from contention, we whittle the pool down to roughly 55, or about 48% of total champions. Note that this is slightly subjective; I'll include the list of champions I thought were 'troll picks' at the end of the article. For all intents and purposes though, we can conclude that about 50% of the champions available were played.
Whether you think this is a good or bad thing depends largely on your perspective, whether you view the glass half full or half empty. Taking a slightly deeper look however reveals something that I consider to be problematic.
Looking deeper
Looking at the percentage a champion was picked or banned shows us that while 55 champions were played at World's this year, a much much smaller number were seen repeatedly. only 23 champions were picked or banned at least 25% of the time, with Zed topping the list with a 100% pick/ban rate. The other 33 champions were picked about 10% of the time or less.
In total there were 660 picks at World's, the 23 champions comprised almost 75% of all picks, meaning 3/4 of the time we saw the same champions getting played, or not if you like Zed, he was literally banned 55 times. The conclusion I draw from this is that in the current state of the game, there are roughly 20-25 champions that are "viable" in competitive play, viable enough that is, for them to be played on the biggest stage. While it may be fun to see Anivia top or Yorick or Poppy, they're simply not good enough to be played with millions of dollars on the line.
To me, this represents a problem. If the game continues this way, the spectating experience will become stale. Adding new champions to the game won't matter if competitive play stagnates around the same 20-25 champions.
Before looking at why I think this is the case, let me briefly compare numbers to 2012.
Examining 2012 World's
The first note is that this year there are 115 available champions. Last year there were just 104 champions from which to choose (I didn't include Kha'Zix who was released just a week before the championship, so I'm assuming he was unavailable for competitive play at the time). In 2012, there were 54 total champions played at World's, or about 52% of the total champions. Because of the nature of the tournament, with just a round robin group stage and simple bracket, I postulate that there weren't any 'troll' picks similar to this year, because fewer games inherently means each one is valued more highly, decreasing the likelihood of a team intentionally using strange champions for the sake of fun.
The overall percentage is roughly the same, 52% last year vs 50% this year. Last year's sample size is smaller however, so just take that into consideration. The Zed of last year was definitely Ezreal, who was picked in 77% of all games (I didn't calculate bans but I'm sure he's close to the 100% rate of Zed). This year we saw 23 champions with at least a 25% pick/ban rate, last year there were only 13.
At first when I was looking at the champions from 2012 it seemed that the champion pool was larger, we see roughly the same trend. About half the champions are played, and a still smaller selection of champions (about 20) are "competitively viable," which I define as being played at least 20-25% of the time at World's.
If you're interested in checking out the data, look below: + Show Spoiler +
Let's look at champions: 2013
Based on the data from 2013 World's, we can make pretty poignant observations about the way the game is played today. While most people may think these points are common knowledge, I find it interesting to examine. After comparing the type of champions played this year and last year, I'll briefly think about what this means for next year's LCS as well as the game as a whole. Personally, I don't think it's good that 75% of the champions made aren't viable competitively!
In the mid lane.... assassins
Zed, Fizz, Kassadin, Ahri were played almost every game in mid. 56 of 69 actually. All these champions have similar characteristics: they can dash in, deal an incredible amount of burst damage, and dash out of a fight. They're relatively squishy, but each has enough mobility to combat it, with Fizz's E (making him briefly untargetable) possibly being the strongest.
The reason I believe these assassin types have dominated the game this year is because this year's crop of players are far superior mechanically. This highlights a general trend of a growing game, and can be similarly found in the development of Brood War. As players got stronger mechanically, they began to take more bases and multi-task more effectively. This is the League of Legends equivalent, the mid trend exemplifies the evolving nature of the game that rewards players who are able to execute many different moves quickly.
In the jungle.... the mighty jungle
Elise, Jarvan, Vi, Zac, Lee Sin were picked a total of 97 times. Again, all these junglers share the same basic characteristic that is also the same as the mid assassins previously mentioned. Each of the junglers has a "dash in," or gap closer. Zac has his jump, Elise has her E, Jarvan his spear, and Lee Sin does his dive thing. This quality is especially important to have for a jungle, as it makes ganking more powerful. The second characteristic they share is a sort of knock up/stun.
All of these junglers dart into a battle (or as a gank), stun their opponent, do damage, and dart back into the jungle. This is also why I believe the assassin mid laners are so popular this year, because mid lane has the easiest access to the rest of the map and allows an effective mid laner the ability to gank other lanes. One can do this much more effectively with a gap closer like Zed's W than on Malzahar or Karthus for example.
Thinking about a marksmen (or ADC)
Corki, Caitlyn, Ezreal, Vayne were picked a total of 91 times. The characteristic that these adc's have that are also shared by both the junglers and mid laners are their gap closers. Caitlyn and Corki can essentially rocket themselves, and Ezreal and Vayne have flashes. The notable exception here is Varus, who was picked 17 times despite not having any gap closer or escape. I believe this is because of his powerful ult, which is a single/multi target stun.
Without being repetitive, I believe this highlights a very clear pattern in how the game is currently being played.
Are top lanes the same? Yep
Shen, Aatrox, Renekton, Jax (I'm aware that Aatrox can be played in both jungle and top lane). Add in Kennen top as well. Again all of these characters have gap closers. Shen is especially deadly at this level of play because of his global ult. This allows him to always be a part of the team even when he is physically in another location. His strength lies in the versatility this brings, as well as his ability to shield an ally with his ult.
In addition, Aatrox, Renekton, and Jax are all very powerful duelists. If they are left to free farm in their lane or get fed early, they become almost impossible to shut down. Top in my opinion, seems to be a snowball lane; with champions that command attention lest they snowball and become unkillable. These champions in particular, perhaps even more so than the mid assassins because the top champions are also tanks and can initiate fights.
The lonely supports. If you can't grab or stun, gtfo
Zyra, Sona, or Thresh... or Leona. Basically the support's role is to stun enemies, or grab ahold of them. The role of support however, hasn't changed since last year. I believe this is the primary reason the community has been so vocal about the role of support over the past few months.
While every other role has had a noticeable shift in 'what's viable,' the support role has been the same for the past two years. This, to me, says stagnancy is bad. This is also why I believe the current state of the game is potentially problematic. Before going into that, I briefly want to examine the champions played in 2012.
Let's look at champions: 2012
In the mid lane...
Karthus, Oriana, and Anivia were particularly dominant in the mid lane last year. We also saw champions such as Morgana and Cassiopia get playing time. The very clear trend was: burst damage, and slows/stuns. The mid lane was not mobile, but packed a punch. Their utility came in the fact that they were AP carry's: they would stand back in a fight, deal a ton of burst damage, and have AoE stuns or slows that were highly effective both in team fights and in lane.
Variety in the jungle... I like it
Last year, Nunu was definitely king of the jungle. Maokai was also highly popular in the jungle. Despite the fact that Nunu and Maokai were really popular, we saw a lot more jungle variety last year: Skarner, Shyvana, Udyr, Malphite, Xin Zhao, Evelyn, Amumu, Nocturne all got playing time. There weren't as many "go to" junglers. It should be noted that neither Zac, Elise, or Vi existed last year!
Either Riot, or the players themselves, hadn't quite figured out the jungle role in 2012. In this sense, we can look at this year as the defining of the jungle playstyle.
ADCs Ezreal
Ezreal, Corki, and Kog Maw represented the holy trinity of ADC's. Graves also got a lot of playing time last year. I've already discussed Ezreal and Corki; but Kog Maw and Graves both have very different play styles. Interestingly Vayne wasn't played very much last year.
Top laners; oh it's just Shen
Shen was once again an incredibly popular pick. He's way too useful to not be picked. Jayce, Vladimir, and Irelia were also very popular picks in the top lane. Vladimir did see some play this year, but not nearly as much as last year. Also my boy Mundo was picked more than a few times, but his pick seems to be more of a specialized style choice than anything else.
Supports haven't changed, they've only gotten more efficient
The general idea of supports were the same (note: Thresh wasn't around last year). Sona was the queen and was picked over 50% of the time. Also very popular were Taric, Leona, Blitzcrank, and Zyra. For some reason, Taric fell out of favor in 2013, and Blitzcrank was replaced by Thresh. Again - the problem here is the support role and champions have essentially remained the same.
Where'd That Champ Go?
I want to interrupt this pseudo seriosu article to play a little game: where he go? If you're a fan of the NBA, you've likely seen this mini show on Inside the NBA called Who he play for. It's hilarious.
This is just a series of shoutouts and random thoughts about champions that were here yesterday and are gone today. This may be a stupid section because last year I didn't play the game and there may be some obvious answers I just don't know.
Maokai : Literally played in 50% of every game at 2012 World's and not only was he not picked or banned once this year, I don't think he appeared in all of the LCS. What happened?
Irelia : I never really understood Irelia, Riven, and Fiora. They seem like the same champion to me (kind of how Katy Perry, Pink, and Miley Cyrus all sound the same to me). They also seem to fit the mold of today's trend in that they're "dash-y" champions, except I guess they aren't beefy enough for top lane. Either way, what happened to Irelia?
Anivia and Graves : A pretty popular mid laner and pretty popular adc in 2012 that couldn't even get a single pick or ban this year.
Jayce : Jayce was an incredibly popular and powerful champion in 2012. Aside from one troll pick, he was nonexistent this year. Actually in general, "poke" compositions seem to be out of favor, which I believe is why champions like Lux, Jayce, and Nidalee aren't popular anymore. This brings up the question: why did poke compositions fall out of favor and mobility compositions become so wildly popular. I believe the answer lies in mechanics, but this is very open to debate.
The problem with stale gameplay
There has been a very clear shift in the way the game is played from 2012 to 2013. This shift is reflected in the choice of champions: players today favor highly mobile champions that can do tremendous burst damage. Supports are still supports. My primary belief is that the increasing mechanical ability of players lends itself to playing increasingly mobile champions. The problem lies in the fact that I don't believe this trend will change unless there are changes to the game design overall.
Why would a team siege a turret when 3 of the champions can dive in, score a kill, and dive back out before the turret does fatal damage? Why would anyone play a slow mid laner when they can play one who can more easily gank other lanes. Why would one play a jungler who slowly lumbers from the bush to a lane for a gank when you can dive in quicker than the opponent can react? These are very important questions because it highlights the superiority of the small group of champions currently being played.
There are dozens of amazing champions, but they are just not as useful as "the select few." So what's the problem?
Variety helps build and maintain interest. To put it more practically: there are viewers who may be turned off from watching competitive matches in which their favorite champions are never played. I love playing Viktor and in two years I haven't seen him play in a competitive match. Or let's say I love Viktor, Poppy, Talon, LeBlanc, and Galio. In two years of World's these five champions have never once been picked or banned.
This year in the finals we saw a situation in which, Jarvan and Lee Sin were swapped by the teams, SKT picked him one game, then Royal picked him the next. This is boring. It takes the fun out of the champion selection process because it kills the excitement and anticipation. "I wonder what champion they're going to use" becomes "I wonder which team will pick J4 this game." Jarvan, Sona, and Jax were played in every single finals game. Aside from the fact that the games were one sided, we saw the same one sided game happen 3 times.
What are some counter arguments and why are they wrong
- On the biggest stage you only want to play your best champion, and pro players can only reasonably master a small number of champions which leads to a small pool being used in the finals. This is true! However, part of the fun is in preparing for a match. How well a team can adapt to an unfavorable situation is much more exciting for viewers and speaks more about the true value of the team. If for example, a team was forced to improvise or play without their top champions it would create more uncertainty and lead to more exciting result. I'm NOT advocating for randomness in these matches, my possible solutions will come later.
- It's really hard to balance the game and the fact that they even have 50 different champions seeing playing time is pretty impressive! Again this is true, but I argue that Riot's goal should always be to increase the number. For the last two years it has hovered around 50% of champions. Think about it from a business perspective: Riot has an interest in having the greatest number of champions played at the World Finals as possible because that way they can attract fans who play the greatest number of champions. There are many different levels of fan, and some may only be interested in watching competitive matches in which his/her champion are played. If half the champions never see the light of day at World's, then Riot is essentially losing out on a large number of potential viewers.
TL;DR of issues
- The small variety of champions almost all have the same basic gameplay elements. This makes the games play out the same way, causing redundancy that shouldn't exist in a game that has so many different heroes and team compositions.
- The small amount of diversity creates a stale viewing experience
- Potential viewers (customers) are not able to get as much enjoyment because half the champions are not being played
How can these issues be fixed?
Increase the number of bans
The first possible solution is simple: increase the number of bans to 5-6. Increasing the number of bans will force players to expand their champion pool. Currently there are a finite number of "dash" type champions that dominate competitive play. Increasing the number of bans will create a situation where a team will have to experiment with different team compositions. Furthermore, an additional bonus to increasing the number of bans to 5 is that a team can then opt to ban an entire team composition. This adds another layer of intrigue to the pick/ban stage.
If bans are made for entire team compositions rather than individual champions (I.E. Annie is banned against Royal because their Annie support is incredibly difficult) it will not only make players expand their champion pool, but entire teams will have to come to a tournament with multiple different play styles and game plans.
Create a "competitive pool"
Each year, or each split, Riot can create an overall pool of champions available for competitive play. This way every year or split or however, the pool will be different (much like the free champion rotation) and viewers will always be treated to some variety in competitive matches. This also will force players to learn different champions based on the pool, rather than sticking with a smaller handful of champions they are most comfortable with and using them in every situation.
As long as Riot picks the pool carefully in order to keep it balanced, and the pool is standardized across regions so every region plays with the same pool, this could alleviate the issues.
Buff less mobile champions
This is a much more difficult change because it involves actual game play. Current competitive play shows that high mobile champions who have dashes/gap closers/escapes are undoubtedly stronger than champions without the mobility advantage. If less mobile champions are buffed to make them viable in different ways so that picking a mobile champion isn't always a no brainer, the problem can be alleviated.
Unfortunately, my precise knowledge about League of Legends and game design are not sufficient enough to offer more detailed advice here. I will think out loud for a moment.
Thought experiment: Viktor vs Kassadin
Kassadin is great, he's an assassin. Let's say I'm doing well in my lane and I decide to gank top. Let's assume the opposing top lane doesn't have an escape (i.e. someone like Cho Gath or Sion). I can walk up top, hide in the bush, rift walk to Sion, use my Q W E, ignite. At this point Sion is running to his tower. I rift walk again under the tower, Q W E and Sion is dead. I rift walk a 3rd time out of tower range and TP back home.
The key here is the 2nd volley. If I don't kill him with my first combo, I can safely get a 2nd combo and still escape.
Now let's think about Viktor: same situation, I'm reasonably fed and doing well in lane and want to gank top. I walk up top, hide in the bush, drop my W and hopefully stun him. I throw my ult down right after my W, then Q, then E. After the stun Sion starts running to his tower. From there, maybe I flash in for another combo but then the tower kills me.
I can get the kill in this situation, but only if I sacrifice flash and my own life. Kassadin does neither, gets the kill, and lives.
As Viktor in this case, I need to be way more fed than the opposing player and kill him with my first volley. This is more or less possible depending on the specific champion (I.E. maybe Malzahar has more kill potential than Viktor because of his suppress ult), but the point is the same. Without the gap closer, I don't have as much kill potential in a 1v1 or any situation unless it's a team fight and I'm very protected.
Thought experiment: Resolving Kassadin vs Viktor
This is a tricky situation. One possible solution is to buff all Viktor's spells. For example, make his W stun more quickly and make the stun last longer. Reduce the cooldowns so I can get 2 combos off before a champ has a chance to run out of my range. Or edit the W so that if you successfully stun the target it decreases the cooldown substantially so you have the potential of double stunning, essentially forcing them to use an escape spell or Flash to get out.
This is really tricky because buffing Viktor's spells may make him way too powerful in lane and allow him to snowball much more quickly (if you're super fed/snowballed it doesn't matter if you have escapes, gank slowly, or not... you'll get kills easily).
Or maybe make the base move speed of mage casters higher, which will make them more mobile when they get boots, or add some sort of move speed multiplier for boots rather than just a flat rate so that mages get extra speed for getting boots. This helps them escape and also allows them to gank more successfully without having them play exactly as assassins.
Where do we go from here
2012 World's set records for concurrent online viewership of a video gaming tournament. 2013 World's set records for largest single event attendance in North America; Riot rented out the Staples Center which officially put video game players on the same floor as professional athletes. These are all amazing things.
No empire however, is resistant to collapse. I'm not arguing that this problem is significant enough to destroy the game, but I do believe it represents a potentially troubling trend. Two years in a row with a 50% usage rate of champions, and this year game play is becoming even more standardized.
I've outlined three possible ideas for what Riot can do to alleviate and solve the issues (in my opinion!), and I'm sure there are others. Personally, I think League of Legends is an amazingly deep and complex game and I happen to love playing it. Even if the problems aren't solved I hope that people can at least think about them and try to find new creative ways to keep the games and most importantly... the viewing experience as new and exciting as possible.
Thanks for reading!
- Xeris
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United States47024 Posts
The main thing with addition of bans is that they need to be interwoven/multi-phase bans (which we've had on the table for discussion for a long time, but Riot seems staunchly opposed to). I honestly don't think addition of more first-phase bans goes anywhere.
The thing about first phase bans is this: they are 100% predictive, and the opponent makes no real commitment to anything before they happen. Because of this, there's inherent risk in using those for anything other than the most basic bans. You aren't banning what the other team uses. You are banning what you THINK they use. You can't know how damaging your bans are to their overall plan, because they have not shown anything or committed anything yet. As such, first phase bans will fundamentally be conservative and restricted to things like banning OP champs or signature heroes, rather than for a more complex usage against a particular team-comp. The risk in committing all 5 bans to that is too high.
Interwoven bans have the advantage of being reactive. A second banning phase after some number of picks means that the opponent is committed to something. They have something invested that your bans can be used to directly attack. There's more real and tangible benefit to your bans rather than just guess-work.
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I dont want to be a bitch, but reading Ezrael over and over makes my brain hurt, please edit the name to properly reflect how the character is named. x_x
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On October 08 2013 18:06 TheYango wrote: The main thing with addition of bans is that they need to be interwoven/multi-phase bans (which we've had on the table for discussion for a long time, but Riot seems staunchly opposed to). I honestly don't think addition of more first-phase bans goes anywhere.
The thing about first phase bans is this: they are 100% predictive, and the opponent makes no real commitment to anything before they happen. Because of this, there's inherent risk in using those for anything other than the most basic bans. You aren't banning what the other team uses. You are banning what you THINK they use. You can't know how damaging your bans are to their overall plan, because they have not shown anything or committed anything yet. As such, first phase bans will fundamentally be conservative and restricted to things like banning OP champs or signature heroes, rather than for a more complex usage against a particular team-comp. The risk in committing all 5 bans to that is too high.
Interwoven bans have the advantage of being reactive. A second banning phase after some number of picks means that the opponent is committed to something. They have something invested that your bans can be used to directly attack. There's more real and tangible benefit to your bans rather than just guess-work.
Adding on to that that you need to have backup plans and a specific order of picking your comp. You can't show your hand early, or the other team could ban out the trump card that the comp relies on. Plus it might be able to force the extremely stale champion select into something more exciting. In a Bo5 teams ban the same champions over and over, because it is the most effective way of doing bans/picks.
Think about it, the biggest cheers in champ select are when someone fucking troll selects Teemo or some other signature champion before switching back to their safe pick a few seconds later. It would be great for the viewing experience too to haver multi-phased bans. More bans would also mean more champions in the pool of picks and bans, which we do need, even though this WC was a bit less monotone than last year.
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On October 08 2013 18:17 Usagi wrote: I dont want to be a bitch, but reading Ezrael over and over makes my brain hurt, please edit the name to properly reflect how the character is named. x_x
done lol
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Australia1825 Posts
I'm only Bronze, but I'm a fairly avid spectator. My 2 bob:
I do agree with the notion of increasing bans, but I think this only helps cover the problem of design. There is never going to be 100% competitive viability, but there certainly can be more done.
I think some champs are just flat out better. This isn't necessarily bad, but the main offenders are sooooooo far above similar champs that it's ridiculous. The classic example of recent times is Thresh. He is an abomination of design. Literally everything a Support would want. Initiates, CC galore, disengage, harass, gets stats without building items, shields, and the lantern. I can literally think of no draw backs (I'd love to hear some if I'm being naive). The only Support that seems to be able to oppose him is Sona, just because multi-target stuns are gold during a team fight. I mean if you want a competitive match and want to win, why play anything besides Thresh?
This problem persists to other roles as well. I'm currently reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fed up with seeing the like of Jarvan and Shen. I'm mean the current trend for how games are played lends itself to certain champs, but it does get tired.
Speaking for mid lane (which is the one I know most about), the mechanics point is valid. But there is fundamental difference between the champs that go there. Broadly you have 3 categories: Assassins (e.g. Zed), Utility mages (e.g. Orianna) and Burst mages (e.g. Veigar). Assassins are ruling at the moment, but you do see the occasional utility mage. You never see a burst mage. This class is simply overshadowed.
I'd say there is a few reasons for this. Firstly the mobility creep plays a factor. Champs being more mobile means burst mages, which are reliant on CC or landing skill shots to get most of their damage off, are at a disadvantage. TheSecondly, most utility mages offer enough damage anyway. Might as well run one and get the additional CC.
Example, actually mentioned by Morello, was Brand vs Ahri. Both high damage, very similar CC (skillshot stun). One is highly mobile once 6 hits. Is Brand's damage and AoE enough to make up for Ahri's mobility? Currently the answer is no. You could make the case that mobility offers more to a champ, so shouldn't Brand have superiority in another area (he has more AoE, but it isn't enough really)? These sort of examples are rife.
The solution isn't a nerf wave either. Say for instance if all the current assassins are nerfed. I have no doubt Orianna would become first pick/ban status. Then the cycle repeats.
Basically, buffs I'd say are needed. Champs need to offer something over someone else. Do want Ahri's mobility? Or Brand's raw damage? The choice is very easy at the moment. Stop giving everyone major amounts of mobility, or increase the mobility of all champs.
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i swear to god i read an almost exact ban/pick analysis in 2007-2008 about dota. How blink mobility makes the game play less diversity, how more ban is needed, there were even complains about tp and fortification which I had a fun time observing how Riot handle such for LoL.
as the state of the game right now, i think it gona take them quite a bit of time to rework most of the top tier champs concept if they even remotely heading toward that direction. We are talking about a new developer vision which others company COUGHBLIZZARDCOUGH has been failing to change since forever. But i certainly agree with most of the points you brought up Xeris-chair-stealer(oh yeah i remember ;-D)
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Multiphase bans or more bans wont happen because of SoloQ.
SoloQ is the number #1 ranked "competitive" mode for 95% of league players. Riot wants it to remain #1 and aims to keep it simplistic and accessible.
Looking at Dota2, there are more 5v5 gamemodes then LoL and captains mode is one of the least popular. This is something riot wants to avoid. You get blind pick or you get competitive draft just like the pro's and thats how they like it. (ranked OR unranked.)
Adding multiphase or more bans to draft makes things more complicated and less accessible to the masses, it becomes complex, confusing and offputting to many (which is somewhat backed-up by Dota2's captains popularity.) and this could have a direct effect on LoL's success. Everyone harps about how LoL is the casual game. it IS in the sense that the majority of casuals play it, for the reasons stated above, its simplistic and easy to understand at a basic level.
"Ban 3 good champs" "Pick 5 champs for each specific role" "Play"
That is the absolute core of ranked and unranked LoL draft. This is easy to understand and keeps the masses enjoying it. isnt it something like 80% of all ranked players are bronze? How many of them do you think truly take an interest in the depth league offers and would be able to comprehend multi-phase bans properly? By keeping 3 bans 5 picks riot allows EVERYONE to understand it and understand the game and relate effectively to the competitive scene.
What do i mean?
In a competitive LoL game: Zed, ahri, shen are banned. The masses response is "smart bans, those bitches be op."
In a competitive Dota game that shit is WAAAY deeper like others have stated. I played a little watched a little and i dont know what the fuck is going on in regards to picks / bans, always different, always strange. Not just the "OP" the "Popular" or a teams "best" - its a fucking whole other world of mindgames. It is CONFUSING.
So at the end of the day, we as serious competitive gamers suffer at the hands of our masses. The casuals.
League and riot will NEVER change to become less accessible to the masses, which is perfectly understandable but at the same time it really screws us over. SoloQ and draft are the masses main competitive outlet and way to understand competitive play, it just cant be complicated.
I honestly believe multiphase bans like Dotas are MUCH better even if i dont understand them much because of my lack of knowledge of the game. Just that much depth in team select is extremely good for the game and diversity of picks, like this OP said, but LoL is a game for the masses and we are a huge minority in regards to serious "competitive" players. "80%" of ranked players are bronze, even less play ranked and even less play draft. If they cant understand the competitive scene, riots esports marketing is absolutely pointless and popularity will fall. Popularity = money.
TL;DR - OP is right but Riot have a perfectly good reason for not introducing more pick/ban phases or more bans overall. Unfortunately
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Well then maybe in lower leagues bans can just be 5 at the start, but once you hit Gold or Platinum they become interwoven throughout the picking? I agree that simplicity should be king when getting started, but once people get to a higher league they'll want more complexity anyway...
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On October 08 2013 19:54 Tal wrote: Well then maybe in lower leagues bans can just be 5 at the start, but once you hit Gold or Platinum they become interwoven throughout the picking? I agree that simplicity should be king when getting started, but once people get to a higher league they'll want more complexity anyway...
Honestly, unless you are a competitive team playing for a spot in the LCS, you don't need interwoven bans. what is wrong with keeping how it is now for solo queue, and have interlacing bans for tournaments?
Please don't pretend that casuals are so retarded that this change would fool them into believing they are playing two completely different games.
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On October 08 2013 20:31 ItsFunToLose wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 19:54 Tal wrote: Well then maybe in lower leagues bans can just be 5 at the start, but once you hit Gold or Platinum they become interwoven throughout the picking? I agree that simplicity should be king when getting started, but once people get to a higher league they'll want more complexity anyway... Honestly, unless you are a competitive team playing for a spot in the LCS, you don't need interwoven bans. what is wrong with keeping how it is now for solo queue, and have interlacing bans for tournaments? Please don't pretend that casuals are so retarded that this change would fool them into believing they are playing two completely different games. Those exist but they're too dumb to open streams in the first place so it should be fine.
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GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
I think you are trying too hard to find a common thread throughout the ADC's.
Ezreal and Vayne have flashes.
What? Ezreal has a blink, but Vayne most definitely does not have a Flash outside her summoner spell. She does have a tumble/condemn knockback, but that is not a blink. Vayne is picked because of her % max health true damage.
Likewise, for Support, of course you're going to have CC on your support. What's the point of a utility role that doesn't have any CC? Saying that they all have stuns is like saying all the ADCs have ranged attacks and all the junglers are good at clearing the jungle. You'll never see Master Yi support, and the game shouldn't try to make him viable as a support. And try to name me a jungler that DOESN'T have a gap-closer.
I also think you cherrypicked your data a little bit. What about Orianna, the third-most contested mid at worlds, or Gragas? They certainly are not assassins.
I think some champs are just flat out better. This isn't necessarily bad, but the main offenders are sooooooo far above similar champs that it's ridiculous. The classic example of recent times is Thresh. He is an abomination of design. Literally everything a Support would want. Initiates, CC galore, disengage, harass, gets stats without building items, shields, and the lantern. I can literally think of no draw backs (I'd love to hear some if I'm being naive). The only Support that seems to be able to oppose him is Sona, just because multi-target stuns are gold during a team fight. I mean if you want a competitive match and want to win, why play anything besides Thresh?
Thresh is a very strong support but not "an abomination of design". He has no sustain for his ally. He is much worse in a late-game teamfight than the other strong supports. His base armor values were nerfed very hard, but his kit requires him to go all-in like Leona. His hook is difficult to land and has punishingly long cooldowns if you miss.
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Riot has said that they won't increase the amount of bans because they don't like what it does to the draft phase (idk riot logic). Your second suggestion won't happen because riot will never create a different environment for the pros and the players. You're third suggestion is happening with the reworks that are happening now (xerath and heimerdinger in the next patch) which are going to take over making new champs. .
Just giveing you some insider info.
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Korea (South)11232 Posts
I was rather surprised with the amount of picks. I thought it would be quite less.
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my pet idea for solving mobility creep that i'm 100% sure riot would never implement is to have slows reduce the range of mobility spells. currently there's no way to counterplay, say, an ezreal blink other than stunning him before it happens or gap closing to him and stunning him afterwards. same goes with kass blink, graves dash, etc. the only ways of interacting with these mobility spells is to either bring your own mobility spell(s) or hard cc, but preferably both and on as few characters as possible. ahri, for example, has cc and mobility in one character slot so she fits this requirement perfectly. vi works great as well, tons of cc, tons of gap closing all in one character slot. taric's fine but only provides one cc and no mobility. the idea is pretty clear, though: to play against mobility you need to bring cc and/or mobility yourself.
in each case the onus is on the blinking/dashing player to make the "play," if you want to be so generous as to call it that. or at least the play revolves around the blinker's ability to execute the blink uninhibited. to me, the way you simultaneously decrease the significance of mobility and increase the viable champion pool is by making more abilities capable of interacting with the mobility mechanic. if a 50% slow reduces ezreal's blink range by 50%, all of a sudden a whole new world of counterpicks opens up AND ezreal's mobility becomes substantially less of a flagrant advantage.
i dunno, if there were any chance of this actually happening i'd spend more time articulating why i think it's such a great idea, but it's never gonna happen.
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On October 08 2013 20:43 Dandel Ion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 20:31 ItsFunToLose wrote:On October 08 2013 19:54 Tal wrote: Well then maybe in lower leagues bans can just be 5 at the start, but once you hit Gold or Platinum they become interwoven throughout the picking? I agree that simplicity should be king when getting started, but once people get to a higher league they'll want more complexity anyway... Honestly, unless you are a competitive team playing for a spot in the LCS, you don't need interwoven bans. what is wrong with keeping how it is now for solo queue, and have interlacing bans for tournaments? Please don't pretend that casuals are so retarded that this change would fool them into believing they are playing two completely different games. Those exist but they're too dumb to open streams in the first place so it should be fine.
Its not about them thinking they're playing two completely different games. Its about people knowing that the competitive options available to them are completely different to whats played at the top level and in tournaments. It 100% puts them off, slightly or completely. Its also not about people needing extra phases/bans/whatever or not at their level of play.
Having the same as what you watch is just simply what MUST be done, if you play in a football league you play with 11 men not 9 or without a ball for the same reasons (yes yes 5-a-side basically comparable to blind-pick or 3v3). Having things simple and understandable for everyone is also a must for such a popular game played by so many people. Not everyone plays football competitively but alot play casually and all the rules are easy to understand, if you want to play a "proper" match like those you watch, you can, because its easy to understand and to play.
If its not the same people will have an issue with it, issues create rifts. This particular one would put people off from even bothering to play competitively, watch competitively or spend the monies at all. You think its stupid, so do i but it doesnt change that this is what would happen.
Anything that could slightly put off a portion of their playerbase is BAD for riot. Its that simple, differences between what people are playing and what the top teams they watch are? Thats a problem. Like i said earlier, you dont play football without a ball.
So you're between a rock and a hard place, seperate modes for top teams and soloQ (even differences between tiers like suggested) creates a rift. Having a complicated pick/ban phase creates a rift.
So do you pick one of those things or just keep it the same. The same way the majority of their playerbase (and i mean big majority here.) is happy and content spending their money on, supporting and playing.
Its a no-brainer for riot really and i do agree its sad that we wont see changes because of this but its a harsh truth. At the end of the day 30 million people play league and the majority want simplicity.
Any changes like this run huge risks of losing them potential income, risks that arent worth taking because that potential is 100% safe in its current format. The casuals are happy and the competitives wont leave because we have good support for the scene and a good game as it is.
+ Show Spoiler +Please be aware i am not advocating that league is an easy game, dota is better / more complicated or anything of the sort. Just that their pick/bans are simple to understand and comprehend for the masses, along with their game modes. Any changes to it would potentially devastating for accessibility and a number of factors, all effecting one simple thing: Their income.
LEAGUE FTW.
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On October 08 2013 22:58 GrandInquisitor wrote:I think you are trying too hard to find a common thread throughout the ADC's. What? Ezreal has a blink, but Vayne most definitely does not have a Flash outside her summoner spell. She does have a tumble/condemn knockback, but that is not a blink. Vayne is picked because of her % max health true damage. Likewise, for Support, of course you're going to have CC on your support. What's the point of a utility role that doesn't have any CC? Saying that they all have stuns is like saying all the ADCs have ranged attacks and all the junglers are good at clearing the jungle. You'll never see Master Yi support, and the game shouldn't try to make him viable as a support. And try to name me a jungler that DOESN'T have a gap-closer. I also think you cherrypicked your data a little bit. What about Orianna, the third-most contested mid at worlds, or Gragas? They certainly are not assassins. Show nested quote +I think some champs are just flat out better. This isn't necessarily bad, but the main offenders are sooooooo far above similar champs that it's ridiculous. The classic example of recent times is Thresh. He is an abomination of design. Literally everything a Support would want. Initiates, CC galore, disengage, harass, gets stats without building items, shields, and the lantern. I can literally think of no draw backs (I'd love to hear some if I'm being naive). The only Support that seems to be able to oppose him is Sona, just because multi-target stuns are gold during a team fight. I mean if you want a competitive match and want to win, why play anything besides Thresh? Thresh is a very strong support but not "an abomination of design". He has no sustain for his ally. He is much worse in a late-game teamfight than the other strong supports. His base armor values were nerfed very hard, but his kit requires him to go all-in like Leona. His hook is difficult to land and has punishingly long cooldowns if you miss.
Gragas has a mobility skill and the ability to 100-0 most champions in the game if slightly fed (and he's super easy to farm on at all stages of the game compared to Ahri/Fizz), I'd qualify him as at least a pseudo-assassin.
Thresh has the longest time of any hero (bar Blitzcrank) where he can't do anything if he misses his skills. If he tries to Q/E someone and misses, you have ~10 seconds to go all in on them with a useless support, and he still won't have his hook for longer. His all-in is weaker than Leona and his pull isn't as good as Blitzcrank's.
Personally, I think 1 extra ban on both sides along with balance changes to guys like Renekton, Zac, Ahri, Fizz, and Zed are in order. The first 2 do way too much damage/sustain for how tanky they are naturally, the last 3 have burst combos that can't be effectively dealt with by over 2/3 of the heroes in the game. I think it's hard to say the compositions as a whole are imbalanced since they revolve around catching people out of position which is as much skill on their part as it is a mistake on the other team's part. People have been getting better at playing against them, but even so I think there need to be a few tweaks here and there.
I think the bot lane is in a really good place, though, I like the dynamics right now.
As for the jungle: Maokai isn't seen because he has no good sustained damage compared to Zac and Vi, both of whom do the CC thing just as well or better. Since no one is playing dedicated AoE comps anymore, his ult isn't such a big deal.
Edit: 1 other thing: I think the general Mpen buff/MR nerf from last season might have been a bit of a mistake, or at least an over-compensation for an issue that wasn't really a huge issue. The removal of FoN and changes to the other MR items were enough. With the next season changes, one should allow damage dealers to build items enough to protect them from at least 2/3 of an assassin's combo (i.e. surviving Ahri DFG/E/ult/W but misses her Q..that doesn't always happen even with a GA or other MR item).
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Just some side notes: Nunu was played only as a support in 2012, as his jungle was considered very bad. Mundo wasn't played top, but as jungle.
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but mobility is FUN and other 'interesting' mechanics are actually ANTIFUN
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And the holy trinity was ez corki graves not ez corki kogmaw
/ocd
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a lot of the individual champion analysis is rather weak, assassins became increasingly weaker as the level of competition got higher (later rounds) Gragas and Orianna 2 champions not even listed in your mid lane analysis were the priority picks by the end of the tournament, Ahri for instance was <50% winrate in any series where each team won at least one game and I did that calculation before the finals. I also feel Zed ban rate is a testament to balance (although I am sure I am alone on this one) there really isn't anything in the game right now forcing you to ban anything else so why not just ban Zed. tl;dr Assassins excel in one sided games, worlds was not exactly the most evenly matched tournament.
Irelia/Riven/Fiora comparison is worth a mention to me. first Irelia has traditionally been played as a bruiser with the exception of Wickd's lightning build while Fiora and Riven are both damage dealers, Fiora is an auto attack damage dealer more akin to Trynd or Jax, while Riven is a caster in the vein of Talon or Zed. I'm actually really suprised we didn't see Irelia at all as she can use both trinity and visage well, I think had Jax been exploited in the earlier rounds we might have seen it as it is a decent lane for her, and she can actually duel late game Jax.
Where did Jayce go? is this a real question? I went over this before but I can go over it again, Jayce OP was mostly an abuse of an item timing that would get him into snowball mode where he would be 1-2 items ahead of everyone else on the board before the timing wore off (not unlike cutlass Zed). Before the CJ teams unveiled the manamune rush build Jayce had a ~30% pick ban rate in OGN, yet when manamune was nerfed they chose to nerf Jayce as well, which resulted in a 30% pick/ban champion receiving a 100% increase on his main spell at level 18, it's not a tricky concept to understand.
I really like the thought behind the article, and I share the sentiment but I think some of the analysis is just a bit off.
if they would change one thing interweaving bans would make the most difference if they would change two, I think something akin to tp scrolls would be the 2nd best thing for making more champions viable, that said the map is so small it could not be just a direct copy of tp scrolls as they exist in DOTA without creating just as many problems as they alleviate (but the game does need some way to force 5v5 aside from Baron and Dragon because they aren't cutting it at the moment.)
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United States23745 Posts
Jayce wasn't a troll pick, Dade just can't play anything else lol.
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I agree with the above poster who mentioned that both Gragas and Orianna were very high priority picks by the end of the tournament. Leaving this fact out of your analysis of mid lane weakens it significantly.
Generally, I agree with the basic premise. Competitive champion diversity in League needs to be improved.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 08 2013 19:10 Capped wrote: Multiphase bans or more bans wont happen because of SoloQ.
The thing is, this isn't valid because the competitive game mode does not have to be (hell, it SHOULDN'T) be the same as the solo queue game mode.
3 pre-emptive bans in solo queue makes sense because nobody drafts in solo queue. Solo queue bans act as a safety net for the case where there's accidentally a hero that's way out of line and you can use bans to catch that rather than making the game miserable to play until its patched. It doesn't have gameplay the way bans in competitive play do because 5 players that don't know each other aren't going to put a coherent team comp together on the spot. They're just going to pick what they want to play.
The ruse is up. 5s play and solo queue have diverged far enough that you have to accept that the two game modes have different needs, and you have to make the draft different for 5s play if you expect the game to remain healthy.
On October 08 2013 23:46 Capped wrote: So you're between a rock and a hard place, seperate modes for top teams and soloQ (even differences between tiers like suggested) creates a rift. Having a complicated pick/ban phase creates a rift. The rift already exists, trying to pretend it doesn't is stupid and naive.
From people on amateur teams I've talked to trying to go competitive, learning how to B/P properly is probably the biggest divide in trying to go from solo queue stars to a professional team.
Everyone the difference between solo queue and competitive play is actually relevant to already recognizes that gap. Making the ban/pick phase in competitive play doesn't widen that gap because solo queue drafting is already 0% relevant to competitive play even if ostensibly the format is the same.
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On October 09 2013 01:12 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 19:10 Capped wrote: Multiphase bans or more bans wont happen because of SoloQ.
The thing is, this isn't valid because the competitive game mode does not have to be (hell, it SHOULDN'T) be the same as the solo queue game mode. 3 pre-emptive bans in solo queue makes sense because nobody drafts in solo queue. Solo queue bans act as a safety net for the case where there's accidentally a hero that's way out of line and you can use bans to catch that rather than making the game miserable to play until its patched. It doesn't have gameplay the way bans in competitive play do because 5 players that don't know each other aren't going to put a coherent team comp together on the spot. They're just going to pick what they want to play. The ruse is up. 5s play and solo queue have diverged far enough that you have to accept that the two game modes have different needs, and you have to make the draft different for 5s play if you expect the game to remain healthy.
I completely disagree with this. I think it's extremely important that the game the fans are playing and the game the professionals are playing are the same game. There are any number of reasons why this is the case.
That said, I'm not really sure why you can't have phased bans in solo queue.
Lets say just to throw it out there that the way they phased the bans was something like:
3x ban <> 3x ban 1x pick <> 2x pick 1x ban <> 1x ban 2x pick <> 2x pick 2x pick <> 1x pick
So we're adding one more round of bans after the first 3 champions are picked. I'm not going to say that's the best way to do it but it's fairly simple and works for explaining my point.
If you want to add strategy and complexity to your drafting in this situation, you can. If the first pick is an ADC you can ban a support that works well with that ADC for example, or if the first pick is a solo laner you can ban counterpicks to that lane. That's just a simple example of the sort of things a team can do and that's awesome.
But the key thing here is you don't HAVE to do it that way. If having 4 bans at the start means you just mindlessly ban what you think the OP champions are, you're still perfectly capable of doing that with phased bans. Basically what you've done here is added to the ceiling of how strategically complex drafting is, but you haven't made the requirements any more stringent.
That's also not to say that adding more bans at the start of the game is bad. I'm a fan of phased bans and I would like to see them, but more bans at the start of the game I think would also be helpful. Perhaps not as helpful, but better than nothing.
Just to give an example of the 2013 finals, if there were 1 more ban allowed per team I imagine Royal would have been banning Jax and the entire series could have looked a lot different.
Also Xeris, you said you were going to say what champions you considered to be troll picks and then never did, far as I can see.
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They aren't playing the same game already. It's a lie people use to justify the lack of change.
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To be honest Jax (The champion in itself) was not the problem in the finals, in game 1 the malphite pick served it's purpose, he was able to out cs Jax while holding his tower at a significantly higher health in the 1v2, to the point that he was able to bully after the swap, but the TP mid that gave up ~3 waves and 3/4 of his towers hp for literally 0 gain, the decision making, made Jax a problem, Malphite with a lead vs Jax is not going to lose his team the game the way that Expession's farm made it look like at the end of the game.
It's unfortunate the Analyst desk opted to point this out as a champion issue, rather than the player/decision making issue that it was.
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United States47024 Posts
But the key thing here is you don't HAVE to do it that way. If having 4 bans at the start means you just mindlessly ban what you think the OP champions are, you're still perfectly capable of doing that with phased bans. Basically what you've done here is added to the ceiling of how strategically complex drafting is, but you haven't made the requirements any more stringent.
You've missed the point.
The difference is that with no interwoven bans, banning only OP and obvious signature heroes becomes the optimal play in most scenarios. This is because you have limited information about your opponent and thus trying to make more "strategic" bans in this case is entirely a gamble because the opponent is not committed to anything. Except in cases where the teams are SO familiar with each other's drafts that pre-emptive bans are equivalent to reactive bans (only the case in sister teams from the same region, and almost never the case at Worlds) can you make strategic bans with first phase bans and not just blanket OP/signature hero bans.
Second-phase bans make the risk of strategic bans that are low-value in general but high-value to a specific team-comp far lower because the enemy is committed to something in their first 2 picks. You can guarantee that your strategic bans accomplish something. Yes it is possible to waste those bans on just blind-banning OP heroes, but when the enemy is committed to 2 picks, it is very rarely still the optimal play to do so, compared to targeted bans at potential teamcomps that can be formulated from their first 2 picks.
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No I get that. That's why phased bans are cool.
But adding them to solo queue doesn't make solo queue any more difficult. You don't have to be strategically sound with your bans, it's not like the game is going to kick you out if you just ban whatever and don't think about it.
So the people who want to have strategy in their drafting get to have it, and the people who don't aren't required to think about it. Adding phased bans to solo queue doesn't cause any problems at all.
What it does mean is that the people who are good at drafting will probably climb the ladder faster than people who aren't, and that is 100% a good thing.
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United States47024 Posts
It won't make a difference in solo queue because everyone picks their own shit. It won't make teamcomps any more or less coherent.
All it does in solo queue is make the draft longer, and therefore more annoying when someone dodges in champ select.
On October 09 2013 01:27 Numy wrote: They aren't playing the same game already. It's a lie people use to justify the lack of change. Amusingly, we got the same shitty argument at the start of competitive WoL, when we got those absolutely god-awful default Blizzard maps in every tournament. So instead of having real competitive maps that did exist, we had a shit-tastic map pool for months that honestly probably turned more people off from the competitive game than any similarity to ladder games drew in.
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Does Solo Queue need drastic improvements?
Adding more bans at the start of the game would have the same time delays. The point is that it doesn't cause problems and remains the same format that's being used for competitive play.
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United States47024 Posts
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Another possible argument that I think could work would be to have bans at the start of the game in the solo/duo queue ladder, and phased bans for the 5v5 ladder where it would actually matter more. Same number of bans, just at different times.
But I don't think having a draft format that's only used at the LCS level and not in the actual game the fans play is a good idea, especially with Riot saying the way you get into the LCS is to go through the in-game 5v5 ladder.
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Though Yango keeps advocating interwoven bans, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with just all front bans. We still see really deep ban strategies from the highest tier of teams. Also, considering only 3 bans and 5 picks, and the recent item fuck up (triforce+SV changes), some champions became increasingly dominant, I thought champion spread was perfectly fine. I believe it was like 65 or 66 champs ban/pick'd.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 03:43 Ketara wrote: Another possible argument that I think could work would be to have bans at the start of the game in the solo/duo queue ladder, and phased bans for the 5v5 ladder where it would actually matter more. Same number of bans, just at different times.
But I don't think having a draft format that's only used at the LCS level and not in the actual game the fans play is a good idea, especially with Riot saying the way you get into the LCS is to go through the in-game 5v5 ladder. I think interwoven bans makes sense for 5v5 ladder. The point is that if you are playing as a 5-man stack, drafting does have value, whereas in solo queue people just pick what they feel like playing.
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I think the idea is that there's nothing wrong with frontloaded bans, but phased bans would just be better. I think that's pretty self evident and hard to argue against.
Either way, I think it's difficult to not agree that more bans would improve the competitive scene at this point.
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You can't expect people to be amazing with more than a small pool of champions. They practice the same 5 or so champions as much as they can and they want to get strongest with the strongest champions.
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On October 09 2013 03:57 wei2coolman wrote: Though Yango keeps advocating interwoven bans, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with just all front bans. We still see really deep ban strategies from the highest tier of teams. Also, considering only 3 bans and 5 picks, and the recent item fuck up (triforce+SV changes), some champions became increasingly dominant, I thought champion spread was perfectly fine. I believe it was like 65 or 66 champs ban/pick'd.
Front loaded bans are extremely boring because they are extremely predictable. They also offer pretty much zero strategic depth (apart from one-time niche comps).
This is the case with betting in poker. In machine poker your bet is a priori given any rerolls and so the EV table is pretty much completely fixed. It is stale and lacking in variety.
In any variation of hold'em you have interwoven bets which are based on updated conditional inferencing, allow much more adaptive and thus varied play.
Basically if your complaint is the competitive champion pool is stale, then you cannot ignore that front loaded ban system will always have a weakly inferior complexity than interwoven bans.
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I'd have to agree.
For soloq, the 6 bans are basically going to be the OP's. Honestly what I think you could do to make ban phase go faster while adding bans in solo q is just do a 2/2/1/1 for bans, and then after 2(3) picks by either side, you have another 1/1(2/2) phase for bans. Still have a total of 6 ban turns, just get more bans. You'd now need 20 different champions for ranked play, but honestly that shouldn't be a big issue.
Ranked 5v5/competitive can have the full draft mode with 1/1 ban phases where it actually matters.
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On October 09 2013 04:10 seoul_kiM wrote: You can't expect people to be amazing with more than a small pool of champions. They practice the same 5 or so champions as much as they can and they want to get strongest with the strongest champions.
If the fans wanted Faker to play Zed every game, you'd hear them cheering super loud and freaking out every time he picks Zed.
But they don't. What they cheer for is that rare Jayce pick or even the troll Teemo pick. Fans want champion diversity. Saying a professional player can only be good at 5 champions is a cop out.
In fact, even 5 champions is more than we are seeing from some of these pro players, some of the people who got out of group stages in worlds this year we only ever saw on 2-3 champions. 5 would be a huge improvement.
The only argument I've ever really seen for "more bans is bad" that I think has some merit is this idea that some players are known for specific signature champions and Riot doesn't want that player to be banned out in 100% of games, like what we used to see with say Froggens Anivia in season 2. I think there's some credibility to that concept.
However, if that is a legitimate worry, phased bans can solve that problem too. If you were to increase the ban count to 4, only have 2 at the start and then the other 2 woven in, you're actually reducing the ability of a team to ban a signature champion before it can be picked, while simultaneously increasing the total number of bans and drafting complexity.
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On October 09 2013 04:15 xes wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 03:57 wei2coolman wrote: Though Yango keeps advocating interwoven bans, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with just all front bans. We still see really deep ban strategies from the highest tier of teams. Also, considering only 3 bans and 5 picks, and the recent item fuck up (triforce+SV changes), some champions became increasingly dominant, I thought champion spread was perfectly fine. I believe it was like 65 or 66 champs ban/pick'd. Front loaded bans are extremely boring because they are extremely predictable. They also offer pretty much zero strategic depth (apart from one-time niche comps). This is the case with betting in poker. In machine poker your bet is a priori given any rerolls and so the EV table is pretty much completely fixed. It is stale and lacking in variety. In any variation of hold'em you have interwoven bets which are based on updated conditional inferencing, allow much more adaptive and thus varied play. Basically if your complaint is the competitive champion pool is stale, then you cannot ignore that front loaded ban system will always have a weakly inferior complexity than interwoven bans. They're boring in solo queue, they're boring in low-mid level pro play. However in highest tier of play, ban/pick phase with frontloaded bans can be really strategic. Obviously phased ban phase offers "more" diversity, but I don't think front loaded bans automatically leads to "boring" bans.
One issue I do have with phased ban phase, is it actually eliminates fragile team comps that can be very effective, and can be a band-aid ban due to "oh shit forgot about X or Y champ". That's not to say that's why phased bans shouldn't be a part of LoL. I still think parity between pro play and ladder is the #1 reason I prefer front loaded bans.
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United States47024 Posts
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: They're boring in solo queue, they're boring in low-mid level pro play. However in highest tier of play, ban/pick phase with frontloaded bans can be really strategic. Obviously phased ban phase offers "more" diversity, but I don't think front loaded bans automatically leads to "boring" bans. At the highest tier of play, front-loaded bans are only strategic when teams have enough information about each other to be strategically equivalent to second-phase bans. That is--a team is so familiar with another that they already know what they will pick. This level of familiarity is going to be the exception at an event like Worlds where the vast majority of games will be between teams have never played each other before. You simply cannot use pre-emptive bans strategically in that scenario because the risk is too high.
On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: One issue I do have with phased ban phase, is it actually eliminates fragile team comps that can be very effective, and can be a band-aid ban due to "oh shit forgot about X or Y champ". This is actually a flawed reason Zileas used against the idea of interwoven bans.
In practice, fragile teamcomps are more easily dismantled by counterpicks which they can defend against with second phase bans than they are by counter-bans.
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Well, it was more so. Thinking about Dig's old IPL strat with the 3 support comp, how you could just ban it out. Though the issue wasn't counterpicking the strat, it ended up banning the strat. Where the strat is fragile because of the # of champs to fill the required niches, not fragile in the strategic sense, is what I meant.
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Increasing ban complexity reduces the likelihood that bans will be targeted on signature champions.
Front loaded bans pretty much ensure that signature champions are top priority to be banned.
Edit: in fact, rereading Zileas' post, he specifies that interwoven bans indicate that games are won/lost at pick/ban more with interwoven than front loaded, where in fact because half of your pick/ban is basically completely blind (only priors without ability for posterior adjustment) a front loaded ban in fact means higher likelihood that game is won/lost at pick/ban.
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I think the key difference between what I'm thinking and Zileas's argument is that he thinks that banning to deny a specific player a specific champion is a bad thing, whereas I think in general it's a good thing.
Using xPeke Kassadin as an example lets say, I do want to see that sometimes, but if my choices were to see it every game or see him play a diverse champion pool, I'd go for the latter. Diversity in champion picks matters more to me than signature champions does.
And I think based on how much you see people cheer at live events when new champions get picked, that that's a majority opinion. I'm willing to bet that the first time Fizz got picked at Worlds the crowd went nuts, because it was a little bit unexpected, but by the 8th time they weren't going nuts anymore.
Also, I think the logic that phasing the bans increases the number of denial bans is a bit flawed. If a specific player playing a specific champion is so incredibly critical, then it is going to be first picked for them. Fnatic first picked Kassadin for xPeke every single time the enemy team allowed them to do it. By reducing the number of starting bans and adding more bans later in the draft, the chances of xPeke playing Kassadin actually goes up, so long as the team makes the decision that picking it before the second round of bans is necessary.
So while yes the second round of bans will go more likely towards denying a specific role, the chances of a specific player getting a specific, game altering, fan favorite champion actually increases.
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On October 09 2013 04:58 xes wrote: Increasing ban complexity reduces the likelihood that bans will be targeted on signature champions.
Front loaded bans pretty much ensure that signature champions are top priority to be banned.
Edit: in fact, rereading Zileas' post, he specifies that interwoven bans indicate that games are won/lost at pick/ban more with interwoven than front loaded, where in fact because half of your pick/ban is basically completely blind (only priors without ability for posterior adjustment) a front loaded ban in fact means higher likelihood that game is won/lost at pick/ban. The solution to signature champs, is just to have more signature champs. #thingsFakerdoes.
@ketara, if anything we just see a lot more mediocrly played champs, than well played signature champs. I could watch Faker play Ahri every fucking game, and I wouldn't get tired of it, it's fucking glorious. EDIT: Ideally we'll end up seeing 5v5 faker matchups, and bans/picks are no longer an issue.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 05:03 wei2coolman wrote: I could watch Regi play Zed every fucking game, and I wouldn't get tired of it, it's fucking glorious. Fixed.
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On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: One issue I do have with phased ban phase, is it actually eliminates fragile team comps that can be very effective, and can be a band-aid ban due to "oh shit forgot about X or Y champ". That's not to say that's why phased bans shouldn't be a part of LoL. I still think parity between pro play and ladder is the #1 reason I prefer front loaded bans.
you do understand how Kennen and Ryze went full gatekeeper this spring for what was allowed to be picked in side lanes? thanks to only 3 front loaded bans, you could pick from any strategy involving all ~4 viable side lane picks.
On October 09 2013 05:03 wei2coolman wrote: if anything we just see a lot more mediocrly played champs, than well played signature champs. I could watch Faker play Ahri every fucking game, and I wouldn't get tired of it, it's fucking glorious. EDIT: Ideally we'll end up seeing 5v5 faker matchups, and bans/picks are no longer an issue.
For me the real treat was watching Faker do well with Ahri, but especially to watch Nagne solve it.
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On October 09 2013 05:24 Slusher wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: One issue I do have with phased ban phase, is it actually eliminates fragile team comps that can be very effective, and can be a band-aid ban due to "oh shit forgot about X or Y champ". That's not to say that's why phased bans shouldn't be a part of LoL. I still think parity between pro play and ladder is the #1 reason I prefer front loaded bans. you do understand how Kennen and Ryze went full gatekeeper this spring for what was allowed to be picked in side lanes? thanks to only 3 front loaded bans, you could pick from any strategy involving all ~4 viable side lane picks. Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 05:03 wei2coolman wrote: if anything we just see a lot more mediocrly played champs, than well played signature champs. I could watch Faker play Ahri every fucking game, and I wouldn't get tired of it, it's fucking glorious. EDIT: Ideally we'll end up seeing 5v5 faker matchups, and bans/picks are no longer an issue. For me the real treat was watching Faker do well with Ahri, but especially to watch Nagne solve it. Same applies to the Riven pick against Zed. Like I said with the whole front loaded bans issue, those are minor issues in comparison to parity between solo queue and pro play imo.
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I'm going to need you to elaborate.
(not about Riven vs. Zed.)
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Front bans are retarded for several reasons. No one wants to see target bans for 1 player. Even if they have a large champion pool it wouldn't be fun never seeing that player on their signature heroes ever again. For example, we'd never see madlife on anything with great playmaking ability; even if Frost became a stronger team with more players to ban out, they could still allocate bans for madlife.
As much as we believe players should be able to play everything, the realistic expectation is that they're able to play 3-5 champions at the highest level. Even faker has champions that are better/worse than his other champions. I don't think we should decrease the quality of play through front bans and target banning.
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On October 09 2013 05:35 Itsmedudeman wrote: Front bans are retarded for several reasons. No one wants to see target bans for 1 player. Even if they have a large champion pool it wouldn't be fun never seeing that player on their signature heroes ever again. For example, we'd never see madlife on anything with great playmaking ability; even if Frost became a stronger team with more players to ban out, they could still allocate bans for madlife.
As much as we believe players should be able to play everything, the realistic expectation is that they're able to play 3-5 champions at the highest level. Even faker has champions that are better/worse than his other champions. Really strong teams, won't ever get banned out like that though... Even when Faker takes target bans (tbh, mids were eating bans all fucking day long in Worlds, in general, not just Faker) there is a clear advantage in eating target bans outside of "op'd" or "meta". Ex. Froggen eating Anivia bans opens up Wick'd and Yolopete (too bad both of them still suck) but you get my point?
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I guess I just strongly disagree then, for people that watch enough to actually care what the pros are banning it is not confusing.
there is one problem with the entire premise, it asks me to accept that a player who only watches enough pro LCS/Dota to know of it's existance but to be confused by the picks/bans would insist on the same format. For me it's one or the other, either the masses care if the pros play on the same format, or the format the pros play on is too much for the masses to enjoy.
the post that you are borrowing for your argument wants it both ways.
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Capped's argument makes the assumption that adding more bans / phasing bans makes the drafting system more confusing, and I think that is extremely questionable.
The drafting system is not confusing. When it's time to ban something you ban something. When it's time to pick something you pick something.
People are already banning stupid shit like Amumu, adding more stupid shit for them to ban does not increase the required complexity of the bans. While it increases the potential complexity, that is not the concern of getting the masses to like it. The minimum complexity is what is important there, and that does not change.
It's not the same as say, adding creep denies to the game, because that actually does increase the minimum amount of mechanical skill necessary to play the game. Adding more bans is not like that.
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I think the draft format must be tweaked, even if it's slightly different for soloq and ranked.
Soloq. Emphasis is on a faster ban phase. If you have to ban 2 champs per turn to maintain the current number of ban phases, that's fine. Maybe a 2/2 ban phase(add like 10s to the current allotted ban time), then 3 picks each and then 1/1/1/1. First 4 bans go towards OP's/fotm champs, and the 2nd phase allows people to ban out the missing elements on each team.
Competitive. Split the 2/2 into a 1/1/1/1, but otherwise is the same. More emphasis on targeted bans/OP's for first phase, while second phase allows teams to ban out synergistic champs.
There is definitely a problem with the current draft mode though. There is hardly any strategy to it other than ban OP's or ban signature champions.
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I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. I think that's something Riot wants to keep. So definitely that's the parity issue, that any format that changes for pro-scene needs to adapted to solo queue. As far as Ketara's sentiment goes, there is a very different thought process going to banning front end, and phased. I just don't see too much added benefits from changing to phased, at least so far as LoL is concerned. At least off of 3-bans per team. If expanded to 5 per team, I would agree, phased would be better/necessary.
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On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue.
You specifically mentioned Riven vz Zed. Faker had a hilarious winrate in SoloQ playing Riven and even Riven matchups vs Zed but could not replicate that success on the world stage.
The parity between soloQ and the competitive scene is a farce.
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On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. I think that's something Riot wants to keep. So definitely that's the parity issue, that any format that changes for pro-scene needs to adapted to solo queue. As far as Ketara's sentiment goes, there is a very different thought process going to banning front end, and phased. I just don't see too much added benefits from changing to phased, at least so far as LoL is concerned. At least off of 3-bans per team. If expanded to 5 per team, I would agree, phased would be better/necessary.
so you are saying adding phased bans will not increase the 23 "priority" champions as explained in the OP outside of the obvious +number of bans to this list?
you are welcome to that theory, it can't be proven or disproven unless phased ever goes live, but it is my belief that only increased emphasis on objective control has a chance at even coming close to having an impact on champion/strategy variety.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. I think that's something Riot wants to keep. So definitely that's the parity issue, that any format that changes for pro-scene needs to adapted to solo queue. As far as Ketara's sentiment goes, there is a very different thought process going to banning front end, and phased. I just don't see too much added benefits from changing to phased, at least so far as LoL is concerned. At least off of 3-bans per team. If expanded to 5 per team, I would agree, phased would be better/necessary. I thought that was a given.
My point is that going from 3->5 1st phase bans would have comparatively little impact compared to going from 3 first phase bans to some mix of 5 1st/2nd phase bans.
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On October 09 2013 06:17 xes wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. You specifically mentioned Riven vz Zed. Faker had a hilarious winrate in SoloQ playing Riven and even Riven matchups vs Zed but could not replicate that success on the world stage. The parity between soloQ and the competitive scene is a farce. What? riven pick was fine. If you watched the game, game 1 he got first blooded and put behind, but was still able to deal with zed to a pretty good degree (much better than almost any other mid lane champion).
That point aside, the lack of parity hurts the scene imo. Even if the game is played on a different plane.
On October 09 2013 06:17 Slusher wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. I think that's something Riot wants to keep. So definitely that's the parity issue, that any format that changes for pro-scene needs to adapted to solo queue. As far as Ketara's sentiment goes, there is a very different thought process going to banning front end, and phased. I just don't see too much added benefits from changing to phased, at least so far as LoL is concerned. At least off of 3-bans per team. If expanded to 5 per team, I would agree, phased would be better/necessary. so you are saying adding phased bans will not increase the 23 "priority" champions as explained in the OP outside of the obvious +number of bans to this list? If it was still 3 bans, phased in rather than front loaded, I don't think it would increase or change scene too dramatically, at least in the highest tier of play.
On October 09 2013 06:19 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 06:12 wei2coolman wrote: I'm okay with the lack of "complexity" tbh. One of the key things that I really liked about LoL, especially in pro scene is the ready adaption of players from solo queue. I think that's something Riot wants to keep. So definitely that's the parity issue, that any format that changes for pro-scene needs to adapted to solo queue. As far as Ketara's sentiment goes, there is a very different thought process going to banning front end, and phased. I just don't see too much added benefits from changing to phased, at least so far as LoL is concerned. At least off of 3-bans per team. If expanded to 5 per team, I would agree, phased would be better/necessary. I thought that was a given. My point is that going from 3->5 1st phase bans would have comparatively little impact compared to going from 3 first phase bans to some mix of 5 1st/2nd phase bans. mmk, seems like we're on the same page then.
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you know full well I didn't mean 3 bans, but even so, I'd take 1-1-2-2-2-2-3-3 in that argument.
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I think 3 bans is still a good # of bans imo. Will have to take a lot more champ releases til we need 4 or 5 bans per team.
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in addition to just bans, another source of "narrow picks" has to do with role variety. With regard to supports, the reason that there were few champions for each role is that the champions themselves are often "strictly better" instead of being dynamically asymmetric to other champions. Why would anybody want to pick something like Khazix or Talon when Zed is available? Similarily, Shen is a top pick because of his unique ult and playstyle while every other top laner was more or less eclipsed by Renekton as the best "supertank" toplaner and Jax in the best "Carry" toplaner.
Think about the champs that stood out because of unique things they did and how that changes the game, Riot needs to get to a point where they're willing to deviate from the generate formulas for the champs for each of the roles instead of generic typecasts where the one with the highest QWER ratios becomes picked over every other champ of the role. Give us more champs with drastic drawbacks for what unique impact they give (ala annie), more champs with abilities and themes that affect the overall game in a dynamic way (ala Shen or TF) and less champs that just do everything and have "better numbers".
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That seems to be Riots argument at least, that they can increase diversity simply with champion balance and don't need to look into adding drafting complexity to force diversity.
Looking at the stats in the OP seem to argue against that, though. In an entire year of balancing, champion diversity did not increase, and may have even gone down.
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not to mention one of the things they claimed to be protecting, "signature champions" are actually being pushed out by the lack of protective bans.
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On October 09 2013 06:34 Ketara wrote: That seems to be Riots argument at least, that they can increase diversity simply with champion balance and don't need to look into adding drafting complexity to force diversity.
Looking at the stats in the OP seem to argue against that, though. In an entire year of balancing, champion diversity did not increase, and may have even gone down. The stats in the OP actually pretty solid for diversity, despite the OP claiming otherwise. Half the champion pool seen in 55 ("serious") games, by 14 teams? Remember that players also have to practice a champion pool. Not everyone is Faker with a 10+ champion pool ready for tournament play at all times. And even then, picking unorthodox picks can easily just hand your opponents exactly what they want. Why pick an unorthodox mid when it means you're passing Ahri to the opposing team, knowing that they're comfortable on her?
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 07:45 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 06:34 Ketara wrote: That seems to be Riots argument at least, that they can increase diversity simply with champion balance and don't need to look into adding drafting complexity to force diversity.
Looking at the stats in the OP seem to argue against that, though. In an entire year of balancing, champion diversity did not increase, and may have even gone down. The stats in the OP actually pretty solid for diversity, despite the OP claiming otherwise. Half the champion pool seen in 55 ("serious") games, by 14 teams? Remember that players also have to practice a champion pool. Not everyone is Faker with a 10+ champion pool ready for tournament play at all times. And even then, picking unorthodox picks can easily just hand your opponents exactly what they want. Why pick an unorthodox mid when it means you're passing Ahri to the opposing team, knowing that they're comfortable on her? That's the thing though. Even in a theoretical "perfectly balanced version", the tendency of players and teams is toward the least possible amount of diversity, not the greatest.
The nature of practice is such that if you want to practice and learn a new champion, you have to sacrifice practice on other champions to learn it. In order to learn a new teamcomp, your team has to sacrifice practice on their existing teamcomps and possibly alter their team dynamic to suit the new one. Unless the system itself gives teams the tools to push each other out of their comfort zone, teams will try to stay within their comfort zone because it maximizes their performance.
Furthermore, metagame factors tend to push TEAMS toward similar champ pools, rather than each just playing their own niche. The strongest teams might play whats comfortable to them, but the *perception* that their playstyle is the strongest because they are winning pushes mid level teams to try and emulate the stronger teams. Furthermore, teams within a region gravitate toward similar champ pools because playing against one another demands an understanding of how one another play, which means they tend to learn one another's champions.
This is all *irrespective* of balance. These factors all still exist even in a "perfectly balanced" version of the game. In order to get more diversity, the system itself has to actively encourage it via a more complex/diversified ban/pick phase because champ balance alone does not alter any of these issues.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
describing gameplay as stale while not mentioning s2's farm karthus for 40 minutes meta seems rather heavyhanded.
about bans, phased bans look better mainly because it makes b/p more interesting. with 5 bans dota ban phase is just too long and boring for an entertainment media format. dota's diversity comes from what kupo referred to as assymetric imbalance, that is to say situational and combination dependent picks are way more viable in dota. addressing this aspect is really the crucial discussion rather than bans, because at hte end of the day, bans is content denial and you can't rely on that forever.
lol's strict ordering of hero balance makes a phased ban system less impactful than it is in dota.
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Assymetric Imabalance is any game where bot sides don't share the same peices SC2 and LoL also both follow this premise, so I'm not really sure what you are trying to imply isn't being addressed.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
not saying lol does not have assymetric balance, but it is a matter of degree. compared to lol, dota has a lot of heroes that are combo dependent, only work in specific lineups, or as counters themselves. there's a lot more strategic play with information in dota at the overall game strategy level, while lol seems to be mostly limited to lane match up counters.
not saying there are no synergies in lol. there are various jungler + top combos, shen + other globals etc. the dominant meta itself is basically a strong combination strategy, whether it is poke deathball, assassin + disengage splitpush etc. but the problem is that for a given combination strategy you have maybe 10 to 15 champs that can do the work, separating themselves only in raw ability factors, which lends itself to a strict ordering of rankings.
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More complex ban phase also means more emphasis on the ban/pick phase rather than the game itself. Games can be over at the pick screen, and this would only exacerbate the problem.
It's a trade off, but I don't really mind where the game is at right now. People like Yango will disagree with me, as I think he prefers more complex game strategies and diversity, but I think game strategy between regions was really good this year, and that incoming patches ensure we don't see the same champions over and over in the competitive scene. One tournament might have the same champion pool, but enduring that for 1 tournament isn't a big deal to me. I mean, just look at how much the champion pool has changed since all stars to around OGN summer.
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That's almost completely due to the direct result of Riot buffing and nerfing direct numbers in a symmetric game, which logically leads to gravitation towards whatever has the highest available numbers
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
riot's way of dealing with diversity is through frequent patch changes. this is okayish, because they do maintain an action heavy, fast style of play. the focus of the game should not be too heavily tilted towards picks and bans, which can happen when you have hard counters at play too much.
long time viewers though may get tired of the same pattern repeating itself, but i think league's core competitive play is at a pretty good place right now. although you have picks and bans uniformity, the actual plays matter more in deciding a game.
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On October 09 2013 07:51 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 07:45 sylverfyre wrote:On October 09 2013 06:34 Ketara wrote: That seems to be Riots argument at least, that they can increase diversity simply with champion balance and don't need to look into adding drafting complexity to force diversity.
Looking at the stats in the OP seem to argue against that, though. In an entire year of balancing, champion diversity did not increase, and may have even gone down. The stats in the OP actually pretty solid for diversity, despite the OP claiming otherwise. Half the champion pool seen in 55 ("serious") games, by 14 teams? Remember that players also have to practice a champion pool. Not everyone is Faker with a 10+ champion pool ready for tournament play at all times. And even then, picking unorthodox picks can easily just hand your opponents exactly what they want. Why pick an unorthodox mid when it means you're passing Ahri to the opposing team, knowing that they're comfortable on her? That's the thing though. Even in a theoretical "perfectly balanced version", the tendency of players and teams is toward the least possible amount of diversity, not the greatest. The nature of practice is such that if you want to practice and learn a new champion, you have to sacrifice practice on other champions to learn it. In order to learn a new teamcomp, your team has to sacrifice practice on their existing teamcomps and possibly alter their team dynamic to suit the new one. Unless the system itself gives teams the tools to push each other out of their comfort zone, teams will try to stay within their comfort zone because it maximizes their performance. Furthermore, metagame factors tend to push TEAMS toward similar champ pools, rather than each just playing their own niche. The strongest teams might play whats comfortable to them, but the *perception* that their playstyle is the strongest because they are winning pushes mid level teams to try and emulate the stronger teams. Furthermore, teams within a region gravitate toward similar champ pools because playing against one another demands an understanding of how one another play, which means they tend to learn one another's champions. This is all *irrespective* of balance. These factors all still exist even in a "perfectly balanced" version of the game. In order to get more diversity, the system itself has to actively encourage it via a more complex/diversified ban/pick phase because champ balance alone does not alter any of these issues.
I think the problem is further exacerbated by the "need" to know OP champs, because even if you get Really good at an unconventional pick, then that just gets banned and leaves 1 more OP on the board...which you have to know.
Like, if Froggen's Anivia was actually dominant still, and a must ban, that is irrelevant because then you just ban it, and he needs to be able to play all the OP champions anyways, otherwise you give up power plays for the other team.
EX: Imagine Froggen plays Anivia at a higher level than Faker plays Zed/Orianna, but to be that good at Anivia he is less good at playing one of Zed/Orianna/Ahri. Even though SKTT1 has to ban Anivia, EG has to ban an extra one of those "OP" midlaners, because otherwise Faker gets that champ. So signature champs have no real value in champion select.
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"Oh my god Faker is unstoppable, this game needs more bans so we can shut down Faker. The best player being on top because he's the best and players beating him by being better is anti-fun." --> LoL community logic.
Now I'll admit I don't know anywhere near as much about DotA as you do Yango but I've always found that heroes have much more unique effects in DotA. A 2nd round of drafting works there because you can take away key effects your opponents were relying on. In LoL however champions all fit categories rather than their own unique abilities, if you ban one away they can just move on to another similar champ.
I am a pretty firm advocate of if you removed bans entirely you would dramatically increase champion diversity. The sole purpose of bans is to catch broken shit in solo-queue before Riot patches it out.
Oh also there was plenty of diversity at worlds. 100% is neither attainable nor desirable. ~50% is perfect. I will admit I'd like to see more mages in mid lane though.
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the thing is that zed wasn't even the champion faker was known best for in Korea but it was just so op that he had to be picked and mastered
if you removed bans diversity would likely be reduced instead of the converse since every game will essentially just be the 2 best champs of each role
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Can we all just agree that Faker is a god and he would beat people if the only champ he was given was a checker piece
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United States47024 Posts
There's also a corollary benefit to multi-phase ban/pick which is that a multi-phase ban/pick that shifts advantage away from the first pick helps the 1st pick advantage issue.
IIRC this was actually one of the original reasons Icefrog implemented multi-phase bans in the first place (and later further revised the system to attempt to further even 1st pick/2nd pick imbalance).
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I agree with much that has been posted about current draft system, and I agree with the sentiment that Riot/Zileas have missed the mark with their analysis of the negative effects of an interwoven ban phase. Another ban or two after the third/fourth picks would be very interesting. I'm particularly disappointed by the Zileas' assertion that it's "impossible to know" how it would effect the draft phase. Run a pre-season tournament with an interwoven draft phase and see what happens. That the post really reads as if it's all speculation is probably the most disappointing part.
That said I think part of the reason for the "stale" feeling meta has to do with teams not being willing to chance their arms. Ahri was completely dominant for months before Nagne dismantling Faker put Orianna back to top tier status. Doublelift was continuously harping on the counters that exist for Corki, yet Graves was barely (if ever?) picked. Support picks are criticized heavily as stale, but why have only Royal picked up that Support Annie has enough strength in her kit to be considered a target ban if played well enough? In fact the whole "Chinese Meta" supports the idea that there are a large number of sleeper champions/strategies that are viable/powerful for teams willing to chance their arm. I know it was "only" against Lemondogs but the thorough dismantling OMG gave them was an extremely clever comp that completely swept aside the picks (and playstyle) they were up against. Going a bit further back VES defeating a superior team (yes MRN were a better team than VES) with a jungle Ezreal split push comp to get into NA LCS shows that there are huge benefits for teams willing to pick an unexpected comp with heavy synergy if they're willing to pull the trigger*.
I know an improved draft phase might allow savvy teams to exploit some of these sleeper strats, but my point is that there is still room for niche champs/comps, even within the current draft system. Teams just seem happy to try and outplay each other with standard play, or only run a very limited number of strategies at a competitive level. I'm not sure an improved draft phase would have much effect on that mindset.
*On a related note I was so disappointed to see VES never pick that comp again. It's not like they were having a breezy time with their standard play.
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On October 09 2013 04:50 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: They're boring in solo queue, they're boring in low-mid level pro play. However in highest tier of play, ban/pick phase with frontloaded bans can be really strategic. Obviously phased ban phase offers "more" diversity, but I don't think front loaded bans automatically leads to "boring" bans. At the highest tier of play, front-loaded bans are only strategic when teams have enough information about each other to be strategically equivalent to second-phase bans. That is--a team is so familiar with another that they already know what they will pick. This level of familiarity is going to be the exception at an event like Worlds where the vast majority of games will be between teams have never played each other before. You simply cannot use pre-emptive bans strategically in that scenario because the risk is too high.
I disagree with this statement entirely.
There are more than enough games played throughout an LCS/OGN season for any competent team to simply look at the picks/bans and relevant correlating stats to know what a team's strongest champs/compositions are. To not compile a simple spreadsheet dictating the % of games a certain champion was picked/banned for/against a team, and compile the correlating statistics to that champion is just lazy.
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In fairness, I think the issue was exacerbated at Worlds by the patch hitting so close kick off. It's easy to see what teams were playing on a previous patch, nearly impossible to work out whether it will be relevant or not.
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Solid discussion.
@Amarok: What do you think would be a reasonable timeframe to freeze the patch cycle then? Furthermore, does only Worlds matter in this regard? Would they have to stop patching prior to Regional Qualifiers as well because those directly influence the progression at the world stage?
I am also inclined to believe that lack of diversity comes around to the limited role diversities in LoL and huge influence of mobility champions, as some others have mentioned. Earlier mentioned that Riot would never make slows affect travel distance of flash/jumps, but why not? It sounds like something worth trying at least.
Something I thought of that would be fairly interesting is for bo3/5, maybe Riot could try making a format where picked heroes cannot be repicked in subsequent matches of the series. In terms of competive play, it obviously forces a larger diversity champion pool, which would be probably more entertaining to watch from a spectator standpoint. However it can't be worked into bo1 and bans would likely remain stagnant (not to mention completely game-changing bo3/5 is played). What do you guys think?
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 14:21 Nemireck wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 04:50 TheYango wrote:On October 09 2013 04:45 wei2coolman wrote: They're boring in solo queue, they're boring in low-mid level pro play. However in highest tier of play, ban/pick phase with frontloaded bans can be really strategic. Obviously phased ban phase offers "more" diversity, but I don't think front loaded bans automatically leads to "boring" bans. At the highest tier of play, front-loaded bans are only strategic when teams have enough information about each other to be strategically equivalent to second-phase bans. That is--a team is so familiar with another that they already know what they will pick. This level of familiarity is going to be the exception at an event like Worlds where the vast majority of games will be between teams have never played each other before. You simply cannot use pre-emptive bans strategically in that scenario because the risk is too high. I disagree with this statement entirely. There are more than enough games played throughout an LCS/OGN season for any competent team to simply look at the picks/bans and relevant correlating stats to know what a team's strongest champs/compositions are. To not compile a simple spreadsheet dictating the % of games a certain champion was picked/banned for/against a team, and compile the correlating statistics to that champion is just lazy. To expect a team to go to an international event and bring only what they played for an entire season of LCS/OGN/LPL/GPL and not have anything new shows an incredible amount of disrespect to that team.
Also, it's one thing to watch 50 games to see what they play, and an entirely different thing to actually understand how their draft WORKS and what the actual lynchpins of their teamcomp are and how to draft against it.
On October 09 2013 14:17 Amarok wrote: I agree with much that has been posted about current draft system, and I agree with the sentiment that Riot/Zileas have missed the mark with their analysis of the negative effects of an interwoven ban phase. Another ban or two after the third/fourth picks would be very interesting. I'm particularly disappointed by the Zileas' assertion that it's "impossible to know" how it would effect the draft phase. Run a pre-season tournament with an interwoven draft phase and see what happens. That the post really reads as if it's all speculation is probably the most disappointing part.
It's also not "impossible to know" because there's a certain other game in the same genre that faced the exact same problems several years ago (stale picks, first pick draft advantage, game overly focused on "OP" heroes in the draft) that implemented interwoven bans as an experimental solution that turned out to be wildly successful.
What Riot is trying to do is re-invent the wheel without copying the wheel.
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Australia1825 Posts
If the situation became really dire, they could keep their precious draft system and just implement a rule that says no one in tournament can play the same champ twice in a row, and can only play them once in series. Heavy handed, but it would do the job.
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I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax
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On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax
Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y
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On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability.
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On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax.
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On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though.
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On October 09 2013 15:57 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though. Dive. Free tenacity plus a point and click gap closer makes that pretty obvious. I think if Jax was nerfed, Irelia would immediately step into the same place he's in currently
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On October 09 2013 15:58 MattBarry wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:57 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though. Dive. Free tenacity plus a point and click gap closer makes that pretty obvious. I think if Jax was nerfed, Irelia would immediately step into the same place he's in currently Jax works like that in team fights, but his real strength is in split pushing. I don't think irelia is nearly as good in that regard imo.
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On October 09 2013 16:01 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:58 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:57 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though. Dive. Free tenacity plus a point and click gap closer makes that pretty obvious. I think if Jax was nerfed, Irelia would immediately step into the same place he's in currently Jax works like that in team fights, but his real strength is in split pushing. I don't think irelia is nearly as good in that regard imo. She comes close but her splitpush is very mana intensive unlike Jax.
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On October 09 2013 15:57 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though.
She is more Jack-of-all-trades-y than Jax (If I was phreak I somehow could have made a Jax-of-all-trades pun there). When she was above average she was a tier-2 duelist, a tier-2 teamfighter, a tier-2 splitpusher, and tier-2 pick-comp bruiser. Also if she didn't get set behind early she usually would get better than her lane opponent at at least 2 of those things (Jax is an exception, because Irelia vs. Jax is basically an item-balance-based matchup). She was kind of like the Gragas of toplane back in the day.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
with respect to the split push vs team fighting meta thing, i just think it's a real strategic innovation. teams in korea have gotten better at snowballing advantages and pushing the 'pace' of the game so that they gain initiative. this goes along with all the vision control strategies and other intricacies too. a team fighting lineup is like a wooly mammoth that has gotten too slow.
so trying to reverse this with hero balance changes can't go too far, as it punishes improvement in gameplay.
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On October 09 2013 16:26 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 15:57 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:56 MattBarry wrote:On October 09 2013 15:54 wei2coolman wrote:On October 09 2013 15:51 cLutZ wrote:On October 09 2013 15:49 MattBarry wrote: I feel the urge to kill you after saying Irelia is the same as Riven and Fiora. If anything she's incredibly similar to Jax Yea. She is Jax/Aatrox-y Minus the AoE cc, and viability. Irelia is still REALLY good at what she does, she's just outshined by Jax. I'm still not sure what Irelia is suppose to do though. She is more Jack-of-all-trades-y than Jax (If I was phreak I somehow could have made a Jax-of-all-trades pun there). When she was above average she was a tier-2 duelist, a tier-2 teamfighter, a tier-2 splitpusher, and tier-2 pick-comp bruiser. Also if she didn't get set behind early she usually would get better than her lane opponent at at least 2 of those things (Jax is an exception, because Irelia vs. Jax is basically an item-balance-based matchup). She was kind of like the Gragas of toplane back in the day. eh. that may or may not be true, but I think the reason we don't see Irelia is cause
1. She's just as if not more susceptible to 1v2 lanes than Jax. They're both rather farm dependent but Jax at least has counterstrike and a huge defensive steroid that allows him to be relevant. Irelia's tenacity passive is worthless if she gets blown up in seconds due to lack of farm anyways. This also leads to my second point.
2. Triforce. To be a viable solo laner, the champion needs to have a noticeable power spike with minimal farm. With the Triforce buff, Jax gets a huge power spike when Triforce is complete; you really can't underestimate the strength of new Triforce. Irelia, while she can use Triforce, has honestly never been the best Triforce wielder. She doesn't really proc Triforce as well as Jax and at her height, people tended to go for Wit's End builds more than Triforce iirc.
The Triforce patch was literally the only reason Corki and Jax saw play. Jax and Corki's dominating performance at worlds is a testament to how badly Riot anticipated the impact of the Triforce buff. Without that change I can almost guarantee you that Jax and Corki would've been untouched at Worlds.
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Uh. Jax was still played occasionally in ogn, before triforce got changed. I still think we would have seen jax. Corki probably not.
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Honestly the biggest change Riot can do to increase champion pick diversity is to up the bans and copy Dota's pick/ban phase. With a frontloaded banning phase with minimal interaction between picks and bans, teams will always pick the same champs. Not necessarily because said champs are OP, but because they're consistent and reliable. You don't see niche picks because not only is it just too easy for the other team to counter you, you run the risk of it backfiring. If you increase the number of bans, teams will be forced to use niche picks because the consistent/OP staple champs are banned out. You can also tailor your bans to your team comp/strat rather than being forced to just ban the same shit every time.
On October 09 2013 15:09 Wineandbread wrote: Solid discussion.
@Amarok: What do you think would be a reasonable timeframe to freeze the patch cycle then? Furthermore, does only Worlds matter in this regard? Would they have to stop patching prior to Regional Qualifiers as well because those directly influence the progression at the world stage?
I am also inclined to believe that lack of diversity comes around to the limited role diversities in LoL and huge influence of mobility champions, as some others have mentioned. Earlier mentioned that Riot would never make slows affect travel distance of flash/jumps, but why not? It sounds like something worth trying at least.
Something I thought of that would be fairly interesting is for bo3/5, maybe Riot could try making a format where picked heroes cannot be repicked in subsequent matches of the series. In terms of competive play, it obviously forces a larger diversity champion pool, which would be probably more entertaining to watch from a spectator standpoint. However it can't be worked into bo1 and bans would likely remain stagnant (not to mention completely game-changing bo3/5 is played). What do you guys think? People discussed this prior to Worlds, but ideally Riot should've stopped patching as soon as playoffs started. It makes 0 sense to continue patching 2 months away from Worlds. 3.10 and 3.11 completely changed the meta and was honestly pretty dumb. Zac went from 100% pick/ban to being played like what? 3~4 times? Corki/Jax went from unpickable to absolutely dominant.
I also don't think that pick diversity is affected by "limited role diversity." Yes, you'll always see an AD carry, and that role is rather shoehorned in terms of what's "viable" for that role, but more bans to actually allow teams to ban out AD carries can increase diversity in this respect. As for support, top, mid, and jungle there's quite a large pool of potentially viable champions, but the vast majority of them are overlooked because they're too niche.
I don't like the idea of artificially forcing teams to pick different champions by disallowing the same champs to be picked multiple games in a row. Part of playing a bo3/bo5 series is learning how to adapt to the other team's strategy and beating it. Forcing teams to pick different comps every time completely nullifies that aspect of bo3/bo5 sets.
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On October 09 2013 16:58 wei2coolman wrote: Uh. Jax was still played occasionally in ogn, before triforce got changed. I still think we would have seen jax. Corki probably not. In OGN Champions Summer, Jax was picked 7 times, banned twice, with a 2-5 win rate out of 80 games played. I think we can safely say that Jax was not a staple or solid pick in OGN prior to Triforce change.
Also worth noting that none of the KR teams that made it to Worlds actually played Jax in OGN Champions Summer.
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On October 09 2013 17:01 Ryuu314 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 16:58 wei2coolman wrote: Uh. Jax was still played occasionally in ogn, before triforce got changed. I still think we would have seen jax. Corki probably not. In OGN Champions Summer, Jax was picked 7 times, banned twice, with a 2-5 win rate out of 80 games played. I think we can safely say that Jax was not a staple or solid pick in OGN prior to Triforce change. 9 interactions out of 80 games isn't half bad. Chances are we'd prolly see it at least once or twice in worlds.
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On October 09 2013 17:06 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2013 17:01 Ryuu314 wrote:On October 09 2013 16:58 wei2coolman wrote: Uh. Jax was still played occasionally in ogn, before triforce got changed. I still think we would have seen jax. Corki probably not. In OGN Champions Summer, Jax was picked 7 times, banned twice, with a 2-5 win rate out of 80 games played. I think we can safely say that Jax was not a staple or solid pick in OGN prior to Triforce change. 9 interactions out of 80 games isn't half bad. Chances are we'd prolly see it at least once or twice in worlds. I edited my post. None of the KR teams that made it to Worlds actually picked Jax during OGN Champions Summer. It's doubtful they would've began to play Jax; especially since in my hypothetical, Zac would not have been nerfed as hard (Triforce patch was same patch as the final Zac nerf iirc, which was the proverbial nail in the coffin). Still, without Triforce change, yea it's possible Jax might've been pick/banned once or twice, but that's a far cry from Jax's dominant performance at Worlds.
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Jax dominated at worlds? Wasn't it just for finals that he "dominated" and mostly because Godlike didn't have an answer?
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On October 09 2013 17:12 Itsmedudeman wrote: Jax dominated at worlds? Wasn't it just for finals that he "dominated" and mostly because Godlike didn't have an answer? He was contested pick in njs vs skt.
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Royal also used it to great effect vs fnatic
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Jax was underplayed in most of group stages. But once we got into bracket, teams quickly caught on to the power of Jax and he was pretty dominant past that. When I say dominant, I don't necessarily mean super high winrate - I'm more referring to high pick/ban rate with a respectable win rate. I consider Corki pretty dominant, but Corki had a sub 50% winrate.
Jax was pick/banned 14 times, 13 of which were in bracket stage games. There were 23 games in the bracket stage. That's over half of bracket stage games that saw Jax. The C9 v. Fnatic games had 0 Jax showings, while SKT didn't touch Jax until after they played NJBS and saw how strong Jax was.
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Jax had far, far less games to show it and much of that could have been due to player matchups more than the champion matchups. Renekton is a great answer to jax and saying that "he gets banned so that makes jax OP" is kind of silly as you could also just ban jax if they used a ban for renekton...
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On October 09 2013 17:28 Itsmedudeman wrote: Jax had far, far less games to show it and much of that could have been due to player matchups more than the champion matchups. Renekton is a great answer to jax and saying that "he gets banned so that makes jax OP" is kind of silly as you could also just ban jax if they used a ban for renekton... Difference is that Renekton had been a staple pick for a long time prior to Worlds. China was picking him up regularly and he saw a decent amount of play in the other regions, as well. Renekton was always a solid 1v2 laner that can win a lot of 1v1 lanes if needed.
Jax was virtually unseen prior to Triforce change. I'm not asserting that Jax is OP. I'm just saying that Triforce change was the reason why he saw play at Worlds and the Triforce change was significant enough that Jax was a dominating factor at Worlds. Being seen in over half of the bracket stage games with a 70% winrate is nothing to scoff at.
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Yea, we definitely need to see more time to determine if Jax is OP, particularly with TF changes. However, he certainly evolved into a great pick because of they way teams tunneled on Renketon/Shen.
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Can anyone explain why interwoven bans for high profile tournaments suddenly means I am playing a different game than they are if soloqueue does not use the same format? Where does the argument against interwoven bans even come from? It's gold-medal-winning mental gymnastics. it's painfully delusional or willfully ignorant to assume that less people will watch the world finals because their fucking pick ban phase is ever so slightly different from the one I use in solo queue.
difference pick/ban phase matters for solo queue: 0% difference pick/ban phase matters for pros: x%; x>0 difference interwoven pick/ban phase matters for pros y%; y>x
You don't have to add time to solo queue P/B phase by giving them the same format. the current one works just fine. Because it doesn't matter at all. But there's literally no downside at all to giving pros more strategic options.
How many people even watch the pick/ban phase? I'm willing to bet that given the choice between two links, one to the start of pick ban phase and one to the start of the game, 3 out of 4 viewers are clicking to just watch the game start. Don't argue it's more confusing. It doesn't. fucking. matter.
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Honestly, I think the way solo q bans work now should stay that way. Maybe add a couple more bans, but banning for solo q is pretty straightforward - ban the fotm OP champs. It's faster, efficient, and easier for people to play. However, I think ranked 5's should mirror competitive play (including pick/ban) as closely as possible. The whole point of the Challenger ladder is to breed potential competitive players and teams, after all.
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Bans in solo q are pretty dumb in the first place and only act as a way for people to never learn how to deal with certain champs into they get a change.
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How about if the last picks for both teams will be picked blindly?
3 bans for both teams Then pick phase 1-2 2-1 1-1 and then both teams blind pick their last champions
Or maybe they can move the ban phase in the middle of the pick phase?
Pick Order 1-1-1-1 or 1-2-1 Then each team will ban 3 champions And then pick phase resumes 1-2-2-1
Just throwing out some wild ideas
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GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
I'd love to see a "dregs" best-of-7 showmatch, where every pick and every ban must be unique from all previous picks and bans. You'd be eliminating 16 champions per game and really testing players' diversity by the end of the match.
You could even balance things out by allowing the loser of each game to re-pick one champion that was either picked or banned in the previous game.
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On October 09 2013 18:27 ItsFunToLose wrote: Can anyone explain why interwoven bans for high profile tournaments suddenly means I am playing a different game than they are if soloqueue does not use the same format? Where does the argument against interwoven bans even come from? It's gold-medal-winning mental gymnastics. it's painfully delusional or willfully ignorant to assume that less people will watch the world finals because their fucking pick ban phase is ever so slightly different from the one I use in solo queue.
difference pick/ban phase matters for solo queue: 0% difference pick/ban phase matters for pros: x%; x>0 difference interwoven pick/ban phase matters for pros y%; y>x
You don't have to add time to solo queue P/B phase by giving them the same format. the current one works just fine. Because it doesn't matter at all. But there's literally no downside at all to giving pros more strategic options.
How many people even watch the pick/ban phase? I'm willing to bet that given the choice between two links, one to the start of pick ban phase and one to the start of the game, 3 out of 4 viewers are clicking to just watch the game start. Don't argue it's more confusing. It doesn't. fucking. matter. It does matter. Lets work this out theoretically. Assuming LoL has Dota Style bans, you'll see a lot more "op'd" sneek through the early champ select. So things do get snuck through. Because only 2 bans for each team early on, the first champ picked is going to be very strong.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 19:57 Numy wrote: Bans in solo q are pretty dumb in the first place and only act as a way for people to never learn how to deal with certain champs into they get a change. It's also a safety net for when Riot fucks up balance and there's a single champion that's egregiously out of line.
This only happens because Riot releases champs directly into the draft mode hero pool, so there's no check on the possibility of a newly released/remade hero just being utter bullshit day 1.
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I'm still surprised Jax basically eclipsed Trynd as the guaranteed pick. Just shows how much the ~1 sec of stun is valued.
I really think the best way to 'balance' j4 is to make it so the banner does not give vision. Maybe make it only grant vision if it strikes a champion. Doesn't change his strength at all but limits his control of positioning.
They should give Kass the Leblanc treatment and just baseline the ultimate. Longer CD, no increased dmg each use, Make it grant/count as two spells for the sake of his W. Maybe we would see a lack of tear every game.
I think we will see an Anivia resurgence soon, possibly Ziggs as well. Next season I'm sure they will look at mobility, and then zone control will be at a premium.
As far as supports go in regards to OP, I don't think supports are that stale. Annie, Leblanc, just to name a couple are two that are being utilized well.
I think all of the 'poke' champions are in a good place. Only thing I would change is to give them a slight bit more of tankiness(increased armor/mr gain per level) rather than buffing them in any other aspect.
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On October 10 2013 01:27 Agh wrote: I'm still surprised Jax basically eclipsed Trynd as the guaranteed pick. Just shows how much the ~1 sec of stun is valued.
I really think the best way to 'balance' j4 is to make it so the banner does not give vision. Maybe make it only grant vision if it strikes a champion. Doesn't change his strength at all but limits his control of positioning.
They should give Kass the Leblanc treatment and just baseline the ultimate. Longer CD, no increased dmg each use, Make it grant/count as two spells for the sake of his W. Maybe we would see a lack of tear every game.
I think we will see an Anivia resurgence soon, possibly Ziggs as well. Next season I'm sure they will look at mobility, and then zone control will be at a premium.
As far as supports go in regards to OP, I don't think supports are that stale. Annie, Leblanc, just to name a couple are two that are being utilized well.
I think all of the 'poke' champions are in a good place. Only thing I would change is to give them a slight bit more of tankiness(increased armor/mr gain per level) rather than buffing them in any other aspect. Problem with Tryn is that he needs quite a decent amount of farm to really get going. He's also really really weak to exhaust - same reason why Wukong isn't played. Exhaust them and they're a non-factor. Tryn also is pretty kite-able since he has no cc other than a slow.
I really don't get why Riot thinks Kassadin is a problem. Outside of Fnatic and xPeke being Fnatic and xPeke, Kassadin has never been a staple for a long period of time nor has he really ever dominating the scene, especially after his Q range nerf. To my knowledge, Fnatic is virtually the only team in which Kassadin is a not a non-factor. This is like Riot saying they want to nerf Anivia because Froggen is too strong.
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On October 10 2013 05:44 Ryuu314 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2013 01:27 Agh wrote: I'm still surprised Jax basically eclipsed Trynd as the guaranteed pick. Just shows how much the ~1 sec of stun is valued.
I really think the best way to 'balance' j4 is to make it so the banner does not give vision. Maybe make it only grant vision if it strikes a champion. Doesn't change his strength at all but limits his control of positioning.
They should give Kass the Leblanc treatment and just baseline the ultimate. Longer CD, no increased dmg each use, Make it grant/count as two spells for the sake of his W. Maybe we would see a lack of tear every game.
I think we will see an Anivia resurgence soon, possibly Ziggs as well. Next season I'm sure they will look at mobility, and then zone control will be at a premium.
As far as supports go in regards to OP, I don't think supports are that stale. Annie, Leblanc, just to name a couple are two that are being utilized well.
I think all of the 'poke' champions are in a good place. Only thing I would change is to give them a slight bit more of tankiness(increased armor/mr gain per level) rather than buffing them in any other aspect. Problem with Tryn is that he needs quite a decent amount of farm to really get going. He's also really really weak to exhaust - same reason why Wukong isn't played. Exhaust them and they're a non-factor. Tryn also is pretty kite-able since he has no cc other than a slow. I really don't get why Riot thinks Kassadin is a problem. Outside of Fnatic and xPeke being Fnatic and xPeke, Kassadin has never been a staple for a long period of time nor has he really ever dominating the scene, especially after his Q range nerf. To my knowledge, Fnatic is virtually the only team in which Kassadin is a not a non-factor. This is like Riot saying they want to nerf Anivia because Froggen is too strong.
Its because people are playing Kassadin again in SoloQ and his kit is inherently toxic. You have to be good at the game to play against him and we can't have that happening.
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United States47024 Posts
TBH any champ balance changes are going to be rendered meaningless by S4's massive systemic changes.
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On October 10 2013 06:34 TheYango wrote: TBH any champ balance changes are going to be rendered meaningless by S4's massive systemic changes. I keep hearing how big s4 is going to change the game. Have there been any info on this? All I remember hearing was changes to voidstaff and lw.
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On October 10 2013 08:31 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2013 06:34 TheYango wrote: TBH any champ balance changes are going to be rendered meaningless by S4's massive systemic changes. I keep hearing how big s4 is going to change the game. Have there been any info on this? All I remember hearing was changes to voidstaff and lw.
Xelnath I think it was alluded to major changes to jungler and support gold acquisition and vision changes to start.
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On October 09 2013 15:09 Wineandbread wrote: Solid discussion.
@Amarok: What do you think would be a reasonable timeframe to freeze the patch cycle then? Furthermore, does only Worlds matter in this regard? Would they have to stop patching prior to Regional Qualifiers as well because those directly influence the progression at the world stage?
I am also inclined to believe that lack of diversity comes around to the limited role diversities in LoL and huge influence of mobility champions, as some others have mentioned. Earlier mentioned that Riot would never make slows affect travel distance of flash/jumps, but why not? It sounds like something worth trying at least.
Something I thought of that would be fairly interesting is for bo3/5, maybe Riot could try making a format where picked heroes cannot be repicked in subsequent matches of the series. In terms of competive play, it obviously forces a larger diversity champion pool, which would be probably more entertaining to watch from a spectator standpoint. However it can't be worked into bo1 and bans would likely remain stagnant (not to mention completely game-changing bo3/5 is played). What do you guys think?
With any patch cycle there's going to be a period of feeling out new champs which will flow into the professional scene, and a period where bans/strategies become more conservative while players figure out the meta. I don't know whether regionals should be protected in the same way, but Worlds definitely should have a patch that's more mature than this one was. This is the tournament that showcases the game to the broadest audience. Players and casters should be as comfortable as possible with the strategic nuances that exist in such an environment. I think this tournament shows that unfamiliarity breeds conservatism, particularly in an environment where there is millions of dollars on the line.
I don't really think the suggestion of removing champs from an available pool in a BoX is a good one. The integrity of each game being a new entity should be preserved in my view. There's already enough debate about blue/red side advantage. As it's a far greater deviation from the experience of the average player they're more likely to implement an interwoven ban system anyway.
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United States23745 Posts
On October 10 2013 08:31 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2013 06:34 TheYango wrote: TBH any champ balance changes are going to be rendered meaningless by S4's massive systemic changes. I keep hearing how big s4 is going to change the game. Have there been any info on this? All I remember hearing was changes to voidstaff and lw. I mean the changes between S2 and S3 were pretty big (especially in terms of itemization) so I think most people assume it's going to be to a similar magnitude.
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Just read the OP and probably will read the rest of the comments later.
I'm happy that I'm not the one that is dissatisfied with the current state of Comp, and how it reflects on our commoners' games). To me, LoL used to be way more enjoyable in 2012 than this year. As mentioned on OP, all champions are following a template, otherwise they are rejected. Of course, lauching a Champ every month is understandable since this means more revenue but still, I think LoL lacks Champ centered strategies.
Since Shurelias patches (the one that nerfed all supports and made their roles to just wards and CCs), I think Riot balancing is going the same way as SC2, forcing people to play on strict rules. I don't follow the pro scene (just watch the games) but I heard that the community is partially to blame on that, since some people (including pros) are so proud of their positions that they doesn't accept changing it. IMO this is bad on the long term.
Personally I hate Morello, everytime I see him posting I feel like Jay Wilson was hired by Riot and changed his name...
Also, I have a real long wishlist of things that I wanted LoL to change, maybe I'll post if deemed necessary lol.
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Season 3 was pretty enjoyable imo. I think the only things that ruined it was, zed is dumb, triforce buff and sv changes is op'd.
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The e-sports/solo queue connection is Riots business strategy for this game. If anything these two need to converge more not diverge.
Also the active roster should be deep enough to force players to own certain amount of champions and shallow enough not to overwhelm newer players looking to buy greatness.
Also ADC's do too little dmg. I'd like to see more range/crits/life-strealing, less armor pls. Actually armor is flawed design trap. Maybe a special crit that makes someones corpse explode on death dealing aoe true dmg, for more pentas.
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On October 10 2013 17:16 wei2coolman wrote: Season 3 was pretty enjoyable imo. I think the only things that ruined it was, zed is dumb, triforce buff and sv changes is op'd.
To be honest, triforce needed a buff, no one bought it anymore. But riot also decided to buff corki a few times, THEN buff his core item, which made him pretty crazy. Same thing as with olaf nerfs + olafs core item nerfs, but in reverse, really.
Zed is dumb (but bannable), SV is stupid strong though.
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On October 10 2013 17:25 Pathos wrote: Also the active roster should be deep enough to force players to own certain amount of champions and shallow enough not to overwhelm newer players looking to buy greatness.
Most people that would play casually would only play champs they find interesting since they would spend less time than someone who it dedicated to the game. Since this is the case, I agree that the active roster that is viable should be expanded a little more. I think they have more that enough data to start to get an idea of what the avg dmg/stun/protections/etc are. The champs that are in a state where it's just math should have it adjusted more to the avg.
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On October 10 2013 17:16 wei2coolman wrote: Season 3 was pretty enjoyable imo. I think the only things that ruined it was, zed is dumb, triforce buff and sv changes is op'd.
I would say that is mostly true. After groups, however, I felt like there was a problem in mid/top. Top kinda devolved into a RPS between Jax, Shen, and Renekton. Now, I think RPS is decent, except there needs to be more than 1 viable champion in each part. If Singed and Kennen kept their popularity, plus like Vlad (although no one really wants to see Vlad), Rumble, and Malphite peeked out a bit more, toplane would have been fine.
In mid, the problem was Assassins>Everyone, except Orianna, and Gragas >= Orianna. Orianna needed a few friends, maybe Kayle, Ryze if he hadn't been gutted, same with Jayce. Also, only Peke made Kassadin really work, but I think he had potential to add flavor.
Junglers, IMO were selected from a pool that complemented these pools, so I think that that would have evolved if those 2 had changed.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
after watching some of the nacl games and the korean wcg qualifier, there has been quite a number of long, drawn out games simply because the teams are not skilled enough to be confident with game ending fights. they rely on baron and endless split pushing, which doesn't work to end games most of the time because they fuck up the fight right after.
high mobility heroes are only good when the teams are skilled enough to take advantage of that mobility it seems. hue
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On October 11 2013 03:00 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2013 17:16 wei2coolman wrote: Season 3 was pretty enjoyable imo. I think the only things that ruined it was, zed is dumb, triforce buff and sv changes is op'd. I would say that is mostly true. After groups, however, I felt like there was a problem in mid/top. Top kinda devolved into a RPS between Jax, Shen, and Renekton. Now, I think RPS is decent, except there needs to be more than 1 viable champion in each part. If Singed and Kennen kept their popularity, plus like Vlad (although no one really wants to see Vlad), Rumble, and Malphite peeked out a bit more, toplane would have been fine. In mid, the problem was Assassins>Everyone, except Orianna, and Gragas >= Orianna. Orianna needed a few friends, maybe Kayle, Ryze if he hadn't been gutted, same with Jayce. Also, only Peke made Kassadin really work, but I think he had potential to add flavor. Junglers, IMO were selected from a pool that complemented these pools, so I think that that would have evolved if those 2 had changed. Top lane turned into that cluster fuck cuz of SV and Triforce changes.
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On October 10 2013 08:36 lilwisper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2013 08:31 wei2coolman wrote:On October 10 2013 06:34 TheYango wrote: TBH any champ balance changes are going to be rendered meaningless by S4's massive systemic changes. I keep hearing how big s4 is going to change the game. Have there been any info on this? All I remember hearing was changes to voidstaff and lw. Xelnath I think it was alluded to major changes to jungler and support gold acquisition and vision changes to start.
Specifically what is changing about the gold acquisition (increasing? decreasing?) and what vision changes?
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