can we stop pretending LCS represents EVERYTHING?

Every few days I see posts that say "IF CHAMP DIVERSITY IS SO IMPORTANT WHY IS LCS ONLY USING 10 CHAMPS HURRHURRDURRDURR"

Well, let me educate you guys on something - I've played fighting games for years. In a lot of the games I've played, the tiers are described as "close together" - a lot of the character matchups were close (6:4 was the general worst matchup for a lot of the cast, with nothing really more than 7:3 aside from some really obvious counterpicks). But you know what? You still ended up seeing the same 2-3 champs at tournaments, over and over, even though large portions of the cast were considered not only viable but good. The reason is the same reason that pros pick the same 2-3 champs over and over - their characters pools are influenced by what's strong. If I can pick Gragas and have engage, disengage, and some decent damage... why would I pick Sejuani? Gragas' clear is better early and he can effect the game more easily early on, while bringing a similar level of AoE CC to a teamfight. So even though Sejuani has been picked (and didn't perform poorly at all) and is generally considered to be an alright tank jungler, these things don't matter because Gragas is better. When you're playing a game for money (because at the end of the day, that's what the LCS teams are playing for) you play to win, and when you play a game to win you pick a few hardcore strategies and stick with them. So we see pro teams pick the same things over and over. does that mean everything else is useless? No, of course not. Does that mean they pick the best possible matchup in every scenario? I wouldn't say so - I've seen some matches where the laning phase could've been easier for a couple of players with different picks.

But at the end of the day, it's about familiarity. Not only the player's, but their team's familiarity with each champion. If you've played 20 games of Fiora with your team and 2 as Gnar, your team is gonna be much more comfortable with your Fiora as they have an idea of what your gameplay looks like. Choosing lots of different champs seems like it would be more fun for the casual player, but at a competitive level this just isn't how it goes. Watch any MOBA and the pattern is the same - there will always be at least 2-3 highly contested picks/bans, and in most tournaments I've seen for DotA2 and HotS there are more. And there is almost always at least one or two characters that are in every game (unless they're banned out).

Could League do better to promote champion diversity? Sure. That doesn't mean LCS is in any way a good view of how "diverse" the champion pool is. They're not going to learn new champions mid-split unless they're OP, and I don't think any smart team would make serious changes to their champion pool mid-season anyway. While I too yearn for the days of highly varied teams in League, it won't happen until the roles are more balanced - I think the part that encourages me is that one of the roles that has seen the greatest diversity is Marksmen with a bunch of carries picked, and they literally just got done with a Marksmen update. I think once the Mid Year Mage Update comes around (and maybe some reworks or VU's) we'll see diversity pick back up again.