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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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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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