Two suggestions for Ranked Drafting
I see a lot of posts asking to ban new champions for the first few days from ranked whenever one's released. But Riot stated a while ago that they don't want to do this because it would delay the feedback to balance the champ, etc. It would just postpone the issue, they said. On top of this, there is the frustration of having that teammate that tries out a champion for the first time ever... in ranked. This brings me to the first suggestion.
1. Champion mastery level 2 required to pick a champion in ranked. Achieving Mastery level 2 requires only two wins in normal games. It's a low threshold, but it's one that feels just right. As a side-effect, it may keep new players a bit longer away from ranked (since you'll need 20 lvl 2 champs), which I think is good because you're not really ready when you just hit 30 and having played a variety of champions certainly helps to improve. The Champion Mastery system has been out long enough now that almost all seasoned players should meet this requirement already on their champ pool. "But what if I want to pick a champ I don't play for my buddy?" Continue to the second suggestion.
2. Ability to swap pick order with teammates in draft normals and ranked. Add a button next to every player like the one to swap champions, but in the previous phases of the draft. Click on the button of the player you want to swap positions with. Many times people are like 'can you first pick me this?' or 'Can I pick for someone else, I'd like to counterpick' but then issues arrive regarding what champion pool you own. This would also be a necessary change to go with the first suggestion here since a level 2 mastery requirement would make it much harder to pick champions for eachother. Instead, we could simply swap pick order which is much more reliable: no longer requires eachothers' champ and no more trolls who promise to swap and then don't. The only downside here is for Riot's wallet. I'm not sure how big of an impact this will be on the purchases of champions with RP, but I can imagine that less people would go for an instantly full champion pool. That being said, I believe that champion purchases is a tiny fraction of their income and most of these are probably people pre-level 30.
