Why Champ Diversity Doesn't Get Better, Just Different

And it has NOTHING to do with the balance state of the game (I know, surprising, but stay with me here).

People have been complaining about the lack of "champion diversity" - saying things like "oh, this team picks the same/very similar comps every game with very few changes! there are 131 champions Rito get them closer together!" But... Do you walk up to the best Ryu player in Street Fighter and tell him "hey man, I know that you've put in thousands of games as this character and know his combos and frame links so well that you could do them with your eyes closed but... It's REALLY boring to watch you play Ryu. Could you work on your character pool? Get some diversity man, there's like 40 characters in this game!" Sure, a really great fighting game player has, generally, a couple of picks (for counters in best of 3s and to avoid playing really poor matchups - these characters are generally carefully selected to cover weaknesses that the first pick has), but they have a "main" that is their #1 best character.

LCS players, unlike a fighting game player, are playing against the same teams, week after week. With the same rosters. Barring Worlds or MSI or something like that, it's always that region fighting just that region. So you see the same sorts of teams emerging, week after week... And you say "omg these champs are CLEARLY the most overpowered, there's no room for niche picks! Rito buff weaker picks!" and then Riot buffs weaker picks and the next LCS it's a different 3 champs. same problem, different targets.

There's not room in the pool of a competitive player for more than 4-5 champions. Not at all implying that they can't play a large portion of the cast at a high level of skill, but on the LCS stage it's a completely different story. In solo queue if you pick a weak laner that scales you might get ganked or focused a bit early, but the ganks aren't very coordinated or well thought out - they just know they have to focus you. In LCS Alistar is at your lane at level 2 in position behind your tower with the whole team there to dive you and take your tower at minute 4. And then they continue to send ganksquads for you anytime you try to do anything, or force your team to group for objectives while you're trying to farm. If this weak laner is someone you have a ton of practice on with your team or something you're confident in playing, then you can pick it - but you can't just pick a niche pick for funsies because it might be good here, because if you don't play it at the same level of skill as the more conventional pick it's worthless and hampering your team.

It has NOTHING to do with the relative power levels of the champions (I feel this is actually largely irrelevant in LCS - a champion's popularity in LCS in large part has to do with how they function and synergize with their teammates, which doesn't always correlate directly to a champion being over or underpowered, at least not in non-competitive play) at least not directly. It has everything to do with the fact that if I've played 500 games of Viktor and 100 of Karma, I pick Viktor 100% of the time he's open in competitive play because that is what I have the most experience on. The problem then exacerbates as the season continues because if you've had lots of success on the "powerful" pick you want to continue to pick it for your team if it's open and fits the comp - because it's been successful. You can't blame Riot for something that LCS teams ultimately have control over - who gets picked and banned. There are plenty of mages that see play in LCS (Cassiopeia anyone?) on a couple of laners, but those kinds of picks are like Froggen's Anivia - it seems like it could spice up the field but in reality nobody is going to pick that unless they've had the experience and skill playing her to play her at the same skill level as they could play a Viktor or more "conventional" competitive pick.

Ultimately, while there are certainly some champions who are held back from competitive play due to problems with their kits, the large portion of the problem stems from the fact that unless a champion has already seen success in LCS there's very little reason to pick it, especially weeks into the season. This of course doesn't take into account things like pocket picks or "hidden" strats - but these of course are practiced as a team a lot before being used in professional play, and only are left unpicked to prevent them from being countered.

tl;dr: it's the teams picking the champions, and they will continue to pick what has given them success whenever it was open because that's what makes the most sense. "You don't expect a fighting game player to be good at the whole cast, why do you expect pro teams in mobas to play all of the champions?"

(and before anyone says it:

DotA2 doesn't have this problem. DotA2 also has trilanes, duo offlanes, non-mandatory jungling, much better gold access to supports and "non-farmers" and much harsher ways to shut a snowballing or even just farming champion down by removing gold from their inventory. This means that you can utilize a much wider portion of the cast because while you generally need at least 1 "hard support" who isn't accessing much gold, a position 4 in DotA2 can basically be anything you want it to be, and, especially with the introduction of Iron Talon, almost anyone can access the jungle as a form of gold if you farm it properly and utilize the right items. This makes the priority picking teamcomps that are hard to counter or that accomplish a specific goal very well, whereas in League it very much matters how and where the champion is getting gold and experience as comps can easily fall flat before they ever get off the ground. You can't buy a Midas to accelerate your farm in League, and similarly you can't shutdown that 8/0 Anti-Mage for 3 levels on both supports and 1300 gold. Additionally, especially on supports, as long as you've completed the items your team needs to counter the enemy team [force staff for ursa, glimmer cape against nuke damage, urn in skirmishing/teamfighting/deathball comps... whatever] you can basically be playing any hero you want. This opens up niche picks and makes the pick/ban phase generally more interesting, but it also means that hard counters are a very real threat in DotA2 and happen more often than they do in League by far. Not necessarily a bad thing, but Riot couldn't replicate that without more closely mimicking DotA2's gamesystems, which I think most people are not for since DotA2 already exists.)