8 Man League Strategies
Riot·5/15/2014, 10:52:07 PM·0 votes·3,263 views
An 8-man draft has a few crucial differences from other, smaller of drafts.
First, there are long gaps between your picks, making it harder to predict what will be available for your next pick. Take extra careful stock of what your priorities are!
Second, unlike in 4-man drafts, you actually have to think about the depth of your picks, as you'll be going well into the bottom half of teams and players (80 players will be drafted out of 96 weekly starters). Opportunity costs should drive your every decision, so be ready to make sacrifices.
If the bottom-of-the-barrel picks are much worse than those in the top tier, it's dangerous not to pick a position up early. On the other hand, if they are pretty close to average, there's no harm in leaving them off until much later. Just think, "How would I feel if I got the worst player of this position?” If the answer is "not that bad", you can probably wait on the pick until later. Don't think about how badly you want Bjergsen on your team, think about how badly you don't want to end up with your last choice for Mid.
For example, if we use our summer projections, the gap between the No.1 ranked Jungler (Meteos) and the No. 16 ranked Jungler (Snoopeh) is a whopping 16.1 pts/week, while the gap between the No. 1 Mid (Froggen) and the No. 16 Mid (cowTard) is 11.1 pts/week. This should make a basic sort of sense. A Jungler who is unable to make plays ends up low on gold and can only fall farther and farther behind. A Mid laner will pick up at least a few kills and assists as the game goes on, as long as he’s able to keep farming. If we rank the positions in terms of difference between the bottom of the barrel and the middle of the pack, we get:
Take out the top few picks and bottom few picks. What remains are your average picks. How much do they vary? Take a look at the North American ADCs, for example. They're pretty much all good, and many teams center their play styles -- to a significant degree -- around these players. Sure, you might prefer Imaqtpie to Cop, and I may prefer Cop to Imaqtpie, but the fact of the matter is that they're both pretty good players who will probably put up similarly good numbers. Last season, Imaqtpie only earned half a point per week more than Cop. So if you put off picking Imaqtpie and I take him, you still end up with Cop and it's probably not that big a deal. This summer, after Rekkles and Sneaky, there are 3 ADCs who only differ by about 0.5 pts/week, then further down, another group of 5 ADCs who only differ by about 0.5 pts/week. For every pick, you should be thinking, "Who would I get if I waited until my next pick?"
There is a huge fall-off in some cases. If you have the chance to get Meteos, the next big Jungler pick is a long way off. On the other hand, if you miss Sneaky, there are tons of ADCs who are only slightly less valuable. So who are the big bargains? They’re the players who have a gap of 2 pts/week or more points between them and the next pro.
In Top laners, you have Balls, sOAZ, and Dyrus. After that, there’s a 4-pts/week drop off over the next two Top laners, Darien and Kev1n, and from there, they’re all about the same.
For Junglers, Meteos is 2 pts/week above Dexter ,Cyanide and Diamond, and then it’s almost 3 pts/week down to the next Junglers.
In Mid lane, Froggen, Bjergsen, and xPeke only have about 1 pt/week difference between them, but from there, it’s 2.7 pts/week to the next clump of Mid laners, Hai, Overpow, Shiphtur, and Link (who are all separated by a total of about 1 pt/week).
ADCs come in 3 clumps: first, there’s Rekkles and Sneaky, 2 pts/week below them comes CandyPanda, Doublelift, and WildTurtle, and 2 pts/week below them sit Imaqtpie, Vasilii, Cop, Tabzz, and Genja.
Supports may have the biggest priority picks. YellOwStar is 2.5 pts/week above LemonNation, who is almost 3 pts/week above the next Support, Xpecial.
Finally, keep an eye out for sleeper subs. For example, Shiphtur would have been a decently strong starter pick last split, but he would have been incredibly strong as a sub, because you could have run him every week Coast played against EG/XDG (he averaged 24.3 pts/game against those 2 teams), and let him sit on the bench or the flex spot otherwise.
Finding the Best Pick, Not Player
Don’t always pick the best player each round. A pick's strength relative to its category is much more important than its absolute strength. You may want to sacrifice “better” players in order to get a better pick. Last Pick If you waited until the very end to fill a position, what would you be left with? If you're trying to decide what position to prioritize, an important consideration is "what will be left at the end?"
If the bottom-of-the-barrel picks are much worse than those in the top tier, it's dangerous not to pick a position up early. On the other hand, if they are pretty close to average, there's no harm in leaving them off until much later. Just think, "How would I feel if I got the worst player of this position?” If the answer is "not that bad", you can probably wait on the pick until later. Don't think about how badly you want Bjergsen on your team, think about how badly you don't want to end up with your last choice for Mid.
For example, if we use our summer projections, the gap between the No.1 ranked Jungler (Meteos) and the No. 16 ranked Jungler (Snoopeh) is a whopping 16.1 pts/week, while the gap between the No. 1 Mid (Froggen) and the No. 16 Mid (cowTard) is 11.1 pts/week. This should make a basic sort of sense. A Jungler who is unable to make plays ends up low on gold and can only fall farther and farther behind. A Mid laner will pick up at least a few kills and assists as the game goes on, as long as he’s able to keep farming. If we rank the positions in terms of difference between the bottom of the barrel and the middle of the pack, we get:
- Jungle
- Top
- ADC
- Teams
- Support
- Mid
Take out the top few picks and bottom few picks. What remains are your average picks. How much do they vary? Take a look at the North American ADCs, for example. They're pretty much all good, and many teams center their play styles -- to a significant degree -- around these players. Sure, you might prefer Imaqtpie to Cop, and I may prefer Cop to Imaqtpie, but the fact of the matter is that they're both pretty good players who will probably put up similarly good numbers. Last season, Imaqtpie only earned half a point per week more than Cop. So if you put off picking Imaqtpie and I take him, you still end up with Cop and it's probably not that big a deal. This summer, after Rekkles and Sneaky, there are 3 ADCs who only differ by about 0.5 pts/week, then further down, another group of 5 ADCs who only differ by about 0.5 pts/week. For every pick, you should be thinking, "Who would I get if I waited until my next pick?"
There is a huge fall-off in some cases. If you have the chance to get Meteos, the next big Jungler pick is a long way off. On the other hand, if you miss Sneaky, there are tons of ADCs who are only slightly less valuable. So who are the big bargains? They’re the players who have a gap of 2 pts/week or more points between them and the next pro.
In Top laners, you have Balls, sOAZ, and Dyrus. After that, there’s a 4-pts/week drop off over the next two Top laners, Darien and Kev1n, and from there, they’re all about the same.
For Junglers, Meteos is 2 pts/week above Dexter ,Cyanide and Diamond, and then it’s almost 3 pts/week down to the next Junglers.
In Mid lane, Froggen, Bjergsen, and xPeke only have about 1 pt/week difference between them, but from there, it’s 2.7 pts/week to the next clump of Mid laners, Hai, Overpow, Shiphtur, and Link (who are all separated by a total of about 1 pt/week).
ADCs come in 3 clumps: first, there’s Rekkles and Sneaky, 2 pts/week below them comes CandyPanda, Doublelift, and WildTurtle, and 2 pts/week below them sit Imaqtpie, Vasilii, Cop, Tabzz, and Genja.
Supports may have the biggest priority picks. YellOwStar is 2.5 pts/week above LemonNation, who is almost 3 pts/week above the next Support, Xpecial.
Subs and the LCS Schedule
Subs in your weakest positions are far more important in an 8-man draft. If your team is already 5 top-tier players (a possibility with 4-man drafting), you don't really need to sub them out because they are all superstars. On the other hand, in an 8-man draft, if you went all-in on the "Last Pick" strategy, it's perfectly possible that you could end up with 2 Mid laners of about the same value. At that point, it matters a lot which one you choose to play each week. Let’s say you have Shiphtur and Overpow, two equally strong Mids. If Dignitas is playing against Cloud 9 one week, you might just want to run Overpow for that week. Even if you have Bjergsen, you may want to run a backup Mid laner when TSM plays against Cloud 9. If you have two decent Mid players from non-dominant NA teams, you want to make sure they're not both playing against Cloud 9 in the same week, leaving you without a good choice for your Mid pick.
Finally, keep an eye out for sleeper subs. For example, Shiphtur would have been a decently strong starter pick last split, but he would have been incredibly strong as a sub, because you could have run him every week Coast played against EG/XDG (he averaged 24.3 pts/game against those 2 teams), and let him sit on the bench or the flex spot otherwise.
