Bring back bans to ARAM

If you played ARAM during the last patch, you got to ban champions. And if you played enough games, you would have noticed the same 10-20 champions being banned EVERY game (outside of those few outlying cases where someone just has a grudge against or something and never wants to see her in their game).

Here's the list: these seemed to be the worst offenders who regularly saw DOUBLE bans

then we had

obviously there was some slight variance, but you could with basically 100% certainty bet that at least 3 of these champs would be banned 100% of the time.

And pretty much all of these champs (except release Morg whom has subsequently been nerfed), Pyke, and Blitz, are NOT often banned on SR. So the community does not typically see them as OP. In fact, the double ban cases are probably seen as UNDERPOWERED on SR. Fiddle is a carry jungle who sucks at clearing and falls behind on XP; so as a carry he is underleveled so his damage is low. Sona can be strong, but is very squishy and easy to burst. Ziggs is free gold for meta champs.

The difference is these champs saw huge ban rates because of the nature of the mode. In a thin corrider with increased mana regen and little punishment for dying, all these champs excel because they are (mostly) long range damage champs with CC. Even soft CC can secure a kill in ARAM because there are always multiple teammates to jump on a CC'd target, so even a well placed Ziggs W means certain death. Their other strength is waveclear, which is premier on such a mode where 5 players are always ready to burst down a turret if they can stack minions. Lastly, not all, but many of these champs have AoE damage, which again is premier on a narrow map with no where to go, so they get incredible value out of 1 spell cast by regularly being able to damage multiple enemy champs (and minions).

The exceptions here are Brand, Blitz, Teemo. Teemo is banned because of shrooms, that's it. That ability is so OP on ARAM it has a dedicated item included to balance it. Brand is not long range, but he has multiple forms of huge AoE damage and the safety of his 4 allies, so he ends up being quite effective because of the nature of the mode. Blitz Q is instant death.

So now that we have established why these champs are OP on ARAM, we can see why they were banned so often. Before the power adjustments, many of these champs had 55-70% (highest I've seen was Sona and Ziggs hitting 74% and 73% winrates). They are simply overpowered on ARAM because of the way their kit synergizes with the nature of ARAM.

It's similar to why Kassadin and Leblanc's silences were removed. Because of their kits, silence limited retaliation and thus broke them.

So the bans were a beloved addition to ARAM to remove champions many players considered overpowered on the mode. And it turns out, there really aren't that many champions that players consider OP. Even , one of the most hated and banned SR champs, is never complained about; because what makes him strong on SR isn't allowed on ARAM.

Bans made the mode so much more exciting because we got to see many different champs and variety. I got stomped many times by full melee comps, 2 tanks and 3 bruisers, things like that, which is just not gonna happen very often when these long range, waveclear, AoE dmg, CC champs are the must picks now.

I would venture that removing bans will actually lower diversity because of the "reroll pool". Multiple rerolls by multiple players can typically find these (or A tier champs like ). So now we get to have some of these champs in every game again, and ARAM feels stale again.

This is why we should return bans on ARAM.