Potential solutions to the counter pick issue.

Don’t know if this was suggested anywhere, came to this reasoning after watching videos from Hashinshin and Imaqtpie/Scarras Beyond the Rift ft. Hashinshin. Bringing blind pick back into league sort of, how it could be implemented to help make counterpicks less punishing.

A mode where you lock in your pick and only if the opposing team picks the same thing will it then prompt 2nd player to repick. So you lock in, nothing shows for your opponent except the random/blank placeholder as well as them not being able to look into the champ pool to find them, the champs won’t be greyed out. 2nd side can pick anything, however if they match their lane opponent then first pick gets the champ and then 2nd pick counter/repicks another one. First pick has to keep it/gets to keep it. To counter or prevent swapping in this case, most swapping happens because of fear of countering and wanting to get priority picks. So role swapping should be able in champ select, so if jungler wants khaz first pick he can swap with first pick in the first 15 seconds after bans are shown and swaps with top and this lets top do the blind pick top to prevent counter and allows for first pick to get khaz, cause jungler was getting khaz anyways, and the trade-off for this is that you now might lose your blind pick lock in status because your now 2nd or more pick and their first pick can be top lane and lock in something that is a good first pick. I think you should/need to keep role swapping but swapping would need to be put to the first 15-20 seconds after bane phase. For flex picks, you can choose to hide or show, so for flex you would both look to hide the champ or one could look to show the champ. To keep in line with the current standard of picking based on composition, I think that after your counter lane picks your lane pick is revealed. For instances where your champ is picked in another lane it’s the same situation, you have to repack and reveal the countered champion and potentially our lane as well, 2 for 1. Top hides top Tahm support hides Janna, you want Tahm as support, your prompted to repack you lock in Alistar, revealing both Janna and Tahm upon lock in.

-Desired pick -Ban phase -Swap Phase -Pick phase (counter pick phase) -Shorter post phase for runes

This would potentially increase lobby times, but rarely in my games or any I’ve seen from streams do all 5 summoner use the full time in pick phase (more often its 1 player maybe 2). So overall I don’t think this will be that much of an increase in time, except those off cases where all 5 lanes are hidden and double picked. Large overhaul and changes but I think if such a system was implemented it would be healthier overall and add more thought process to pick ban phase.