Boards›Esports

This year Worlds has the lowest champion diversity

7thHeaven·10/25/2016, 5:28:04 PM·3 votes·1,800 views

Season Champ contested Champs available Contested rate 1 -------------------------46 ------------------------- 76 -------------------------61% 2 -------------------------59 -------------------------102 -------------------------58% 3 -------------------------69 -------------------------115 -------------------------60% 4 -------------------------61 -------------------------120 -------------------------51% 5 -------------------------74 -------------------------126 -------------------------59% 6 -------------------------56 -------------------------132 -------------------------42%

Thx Rito and their meta Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/595tda/worlds_had_highest_champion_diversity_last_year/

Meanwhile in DOTA 2: 103 / 111 heroes were ban/pick in TI6 http://i.imgur.com/7SZE95h.png

Edit: Highlight comment

You can have 90% champions picked in League as well, but the cost would be the total destruction of low elo soloQ balance.

Dota balances for competitive play first and foremost. If that results in something being busted at low elo, well, bummer. Better stop being bad and climb out of low elo then.

Consider picks like Amumu or Volibear, which are not viable at the competitive level because they have very exploitable weaknesses (weak early game/extremely kitable respectively), but are still very strong at low elo. Then imagine Riot buffed those champions to the point where they were viable competitively. Now those champions would be absolutely fucking broken at low elo with 60%+ win rates.

That's what Dota does. And when people say "but Omniknight is so OP it's unfair" the response is just "get gud".

I'm not saying that's a better or worse approach, but you have to understand Valve and Riot have fundamentally different balance philosophies. Valve balances for competitive, at the expense of some champions being busted for most players, while Riot balances for the majority at the expense of lower champion diversity in competitive play. Just the way it is.

Also the pick/ban structure is different in Dota, and there are champions that are legitimate hard counters to others (which doesn't really exist in league, and can't because not all champions are free). It's just a different game, apples to oranges.

11 Comments

Dryditch10/25/2016, 5:40:45 PM2 votes

There's an important difference here.

Dota's pick/ban phase and playstyle is entirely different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-69joJzP4_A is a pretty good explanation.

Pandemic Punch10/25/2016, 5:36:56 PM1 votes

DOTA who?

hotarse10/26/2016, 2:52:17 AM1 votes

I actually think one of the largest factors contributing to low champ diversity is the lack of a sandbox tool. So much of competitive League of Legends has come down to match-ups. Teams have to play entire games to practice one match-up, and it would simply take too much time to try out an out-of-meta pick and practice it against all the available meta match-ups to try and get an advantage. And also since we have no sandbox, teams can only get good practice against other teams, which means that once again, out-of-meta champs used during these practices will become recognized and "Downloaded". Any innovation is either stolen or given up as information for other teams so they can ban it if they've heard it's been successful. Sandbox tools would allow teams to learn multiple match-ups more efficiently, and to experiment with different team comps in replicated scenarios to practice champ to champ synergy.

BigBellBrute10/26/2016, 6:41:35 AM1 votes
  1. It is impossible for pro players to have every single champ in their arsenal and play them all at an extremely high pro level against anything that might come along.
  2. Pros really don't have the time to practice each week with more than 2-3 comfort picks, a couple of meta picks and maybe an off meta hard counter or two.
  3. This results in a fairly small pool of champs used.
SarcasticShepard5/2/2017, 8:41:33 PM1 votes

But Riot does balance around the top levels of play, as confirmed by Ghostcrawler in the thread cited below. As a result, I see both Dota and Lol having much the same balance philosophy after reading your take on Dota's balance.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/o8AXMUVu-why-riot-struggles-with-balance-response-to-riotcezium