"PSA" About wanting more bans

gubigubi·Sep 3, 2015·3 votes·850 views

Not saying we should or should not have more bans. Just my thoughts on why putting in more bans for balance reasons is not good.

Bans should be used for banning out champions you hate to play against and direct counters to you or someone on your team. They should not have to be used to perma ban over power champions. Yes you should use bans to block out some of the current OP champions. There will always be strong champions that will be a good idea to ban out. But If the reason we need more bans is to ban over power champions. Then the balance team has failed. Not the pick/ban system.

So if we get more bans each game it needs to be for reasons other than "There are 6 perma ban champions right now" and there are good reasons to put in more bans, balance is just not one of those reasons.

13 Comments

NiyumiSep 3, 20155 votes

Honestly, the whole concept of banning is just silly. When people go up against champions who "counter" them, they refuse to try and learn how to deal with them, and instead just throw up their hands and give up. League isn't like rock paper scissors, and there is no true "counter" to anything. Sure, it might be harder for a certain champ to fight another one, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. All the "OP" champions have weaknesses you can exploit, and ways to beat them -- but people aren't willing to try and figure it out.

So, I just kind of laugh at all the people crying for more bans, though I bet Riot will eventually cave. It's disappointing though how even the "good" players will whine and cry and throw a fit when they're forced to play against a champion they can't just faceroll and beat. I remember when gaming was all about skill and outplaying your opponents, and not just building items that beat other people. Riot is slowly making the game a lot more skill-based, and people are getting upset about it.

Anyway though, I definitely don't think there should be more bans (I actually think banning should entirely go away), and I think the balance is fine -- people just need to learn (SCARY word I know) how to play against the new champions / reworks. The only thing that might be a little strong is Sated, but that's only because of how a few champions work.

NiaphimSep 3, 20151 votes

You have valid points, but let me explain why we do need more bans. Every champion has a counterplay. This game is quite well balanced, although in this patch damage might be overtuned, but this is not the case. It is balanced more than not. The problem is some champions require the whole team effort and coordinated play to be shut down, some champions who are made strong on purpose. And well coordinated teamplay is something you rarely to never see in soloq, so these champions become "broken" in this sense. They still remain balanced, there are counterplay patterns, but to execute them you need to be already mechanically skilled to focus on counterplay. And if your team is mechanically more skilled that your opponent, you'd win against most other comps\champs in the same scenario. So that's why we need more bans to ban out this pool of champions that is not very large but is growing slowly with every released champion.

NiyumiSep 3, 20151 votes

Really though, any player in high silver or better will be able to recognize situations where the team needs to work together to down someone (Hello, Garen!). So, that's not so much of an issue. The only issue is when people refuse to focus the proper targets because they just gotta kill that squishy over there. :P

Why not ban teammates who won't cooperate, instead of champs? :3

gubigubiSep 3, 20151 votes

Yeah this is all pretty good. No bans would be really interesting. Would really force people to learn counter picks. I'm not sure how it would go though when champions like skarner slip through testing and end up on live with 64% win rate though. If anything it would make Riot really think before nerfing or buffing a champion because there is no fall back of just ban them for 1-2 months.

NiyumiSep 3, 20151 votes

Skarner wasn't even that bad before the hotfix nerf. You just had to be smart about how you fought him; you couldn't fight him in his little areas, and you couldn't let him CC lock you. Outside of that, he's kind of a pushover, because he needs to be right in your face to do anything. Most teams have at least one ranged champ, usually two (mid lane), so just have them kite Skarner -- and if he goes in for a squishy, your whole team can punish him. If he has Deadman's, have the ranged people build a Frozen Mallet and permaslow him, and his stacks will go away. The only reason he ever had a 64% win rate is because people didn't know how to play against him. Now a lot of people do, so he's not that big a deal (and he was nerfed too).

Nothing is really OP, and there are ways to play against everything. You just gotta be willing to figure those ways out. ^^

Nerfing and buffing will happen anyways, bans or not. I just think that the harder champions need to have a better payout for the effort they put into their damage. People like Vayne and Jinx, who quite literally just click on you, out-DPS close to the entire game -- in what world is that fair?

gubigubiSep 3, 20151 votes

Skarner was pretty flat out broken. Yes there was ways to play around him but even his counters had like 45% win rate against him. His roughest match ups were not even that hard. And the easy match ups for him where he didn't get counter picked were just a free win even for people with almost no experience playing skarner.

Jinx is pretty immobile and very squishy. She is a pretty free target to most dive characters. Not to say she isn't strong but you can put an end to her with 2-3 spells and an auto attack with most characters. Vayne is strong. Not very many cons for picking vayne right now. Her short range can be punished and she can get taken out by assassins but long range mages arnt being picked right now and assassins are basically an almost extinct class at this point. They made a bit of a comeback recently but they are still no where near the power they used to have. I think if they make the champions that counter vayne stronger again she wont be so op.

AdderTudeSep 24, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Yeah this is all pretty good. No bans would be really interesting. Would really force people to learn counter picks. I'm not sure how it would go though when champions like skarner slip through testing and end up on live with 64% win rate though. If anything it would make Riot really think before nerfing or buffing a champion because there is no fall back of just ban them for 1-2 months.

As far as I've seen, no champion has ever really been super OP upon release than Jinx. The immediate next patch saw her nerfed fairly hard largely due to Zap! being immensely high in the damage department and too hard when applying slows. Both were nerfed the next patch after her release.

LadyRenlySep 24, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Honestly, the whole concept of banning is just silly. When people go up against champions who "counter" them, they refuse to try and learn how to deal with them, and instead just throw up their hands and give up. League isn't like rock paper scissors, and there is no true "counter" to anything. Sure, it might be harder for a certain champ to fight another one, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. All the "OP" champions have weaknesses you can exploit, and ways to beat them -- but people aren't willing to try and figure it out.

That really isn't true. There are rock/paper/scissor matchups that are so painful to the point you just want to afk and cry yourself to sleep, but cant because thats an offence

K54Sep 3, 20154 votes

The reason I've always stressed 10 bans is giving 1 per ban per summoned, which will be in the same order as pick order. Been too many times when an asshole bans his 3 counters and screws the rest of the team, then still gets raped by one of his counters. When I go MonkeyKing top lane, all I ask is that Darius , I can outplay the rest of my "counters" but Darius passive bleed damage destroys me.

gubigubiSep 3, 20151 votes

Yeah there are champions my brain just does not work against at all. No matter how many guides I read or matches I play against them I just do not understand how they are beatable. IK they are beatable. I just don't know why I can't do it. So I prefer to ban them.

FadedpfSep 3, 20153 votes

You're right the balance team has failed when the last 5 reworks are perma banned every game. This needs to change.

a1sockSep 3, 20151 votes

I dont think the argument of power and balance really plays any part of why we should have bans and/or more. We need to think of the pros and cons of our current system and compare them to the theorized pros and cons of having extra bans

current pros -does allow broken outlier champions to be barred until riot can catch up(because riot allows new champs to be used in ranked as soon as they are released and do not listen or utilize pbe) -allows teams to deny key picks for certain comps -forces people to be more than fotm freelo one trick ponies

cons -could bar certain(healthy but strong) comps outright -some champs have very few counters and lots of bans could leave them unchecked

5 ban depending on amount of current strong picks could leave leave one team with a stronger team from the start of the game so it is very difficult to compare 3vs5 bans in that sense. I do feel that 5 bans would mean

-enforce people to learn slightly more champs, rely less on freelo balance outliers, -people would have to get better to increase rank

actually give a team the option to ban who they want instead of just banning the top 3 permabanned champs -give people more options to ban from multiple roles instead of trying to cover up one fotm role(for example after big role changes such as jungle items making a lot of jungle champs very strong)

Personally I feel 5 ban(either 5 at start of game or 3 at start, pick 2 champs, then 2 more bans) would add more advantages than cons, but Ive only given this a few minutes of thought. Would be interesting to see 5 bans implemented on pbe just to learn a little about how it affects the game.