(Detailed) New idea to implement 10 Bans
I made a previous post on why I think the new ban system is possibly the worst way to implement 10 bans. I will post a quick link to that forum post for reference. If there's a lot of debate, I may just re-write the post into a full-fledged argumentative essay. The link for the other forum post will be at the bottom of this post.
Now, onwards to this little idea I had in mind. Here's a recap on the criteria outlined in their little post which can be found here . Here's my idea in a nutshell (though it will have some minor adjustments): Give every single player a ban, and have that player ban at the same time that they pick. This removes the factor of random pick order, ensuring that everyone is allowed a ban rather than having two people on each team not be allowed a ban. This also speeds up champion select a lot. More on the pros of this idea below, followed by a few minor adjustments to the idea.
Riot said that their main problem with the competitive format is that the last two picks get role targetted in terms of bans, and it's easy to cut a role's champion pool down to size in this way. (There simply aren't enough viable champions to make ban targeting insignificant). The benefit of the method that I propose, in regards to the aforementioned problem, is that each player will only have one ban. This prevents massive ban targeting for those picking last or near last. With the currently proposed plan, it's possible that some champions will never see the light of day. I know that a lot of players hate a specific champion with a burning fiery passion, but this still isn't conducive for game health.
Now, here are some adjustments that I propose to accompany this new method. There are three concerns that are obvious to me thus far:
- That means blue-side can always just pick the most op champ in all of solo queue whenever there is one, and there's no way to ban it.
- Red-side last pick is meaningless.
- Blue-side's last two picks can target ban a single player, on top of everything that's already banned. I think it is beneficial to slightly modify the ban order to remedy these problems. Three bans will occur in total before blue-side first pick: red-side first pick, red-side last pick, and blue-side last pick. The idea of letting red-side's first pick get a ban out early is so that red-side gets to pick two champions that are so OP they could be picked right away and they have no way to counter.
Here's a bullet list that outlines my proposed ban/pick order.
- Blue-side last pick bans.
- Red-side first pick bans.
- Red-side last pick bans. (3 total bans to this point)
- Blue-side first pick bans and picks a champion (4 total bans; 1 total pick to this point)
- Red-side first pick picks a champion, and red-side second pick bans and picks a champion. (5 total bans; 3 total picks to this point)
- Blue-side 2nd and 3rd pick both pick and ban a champion. (7 total bans; 5 total picks to this point)
- Red-side 3rd and 4th pick both pick and ban. (9 total bans; 7 total picks to this point).
- Blue-side 4th pick both picks and bans. Blue-side last pick just picks. (10 total bans; 9 total picks to this point)
- Red-side last pick picks. (10 total bans; 10 total picks to this point).
Now I will try to bring peace to the minds of those of you thinking: "But then everyone can just pick
whenever they want!" (sorry if I missed a few, which I probably did).
There are very very few champions that are OP period with practically 0 counter-play. If there is a champion like this, they normally don't survive a single patch before getting hit with nerfs. Three/Four bans ought to be sufficient for teams to ensure that they can prevent each other from getting the end all be all champoin that will win them the game, while preventing the possibility that some champions just never see the light of day again (which is most likely to occur with the new ban phase). The idea is that having fewer bans for earlier picks encourages people to focus on what they know they don't want to play against at all. It also leaves a lot more open, and whatever blue-side first picks, there are plenty of things still open for red-side to counter with. Rather than taking away strategic thought from the whole pick/ban process, the method I propose encourages it.
If there's even a chance that Riot changes their mind on this front, the chance probably won't exist for long. So comment or write your own post if you disagree with the way that Riot currently intends on implementing 10 bans. Upvote if you think the method I propose is a good idea, comment if you think there's something horribly wrong with it, or go write your own post if you have a new idea all together!