Ranked Draft Pick improvements
There are a few things about (ranked) draft pick that people have been complaining about a lot. In this thread I will bring up two at once because the second one kind of needs the first one to work.
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Add a 'swap position' button during the champion select phase (from the first second until your champion has been locked). This will be like 'swapping champion' but instead it will swap your position. Why? Because swapping champions is a mess in soloQ. People don't have all champions so you have to waste time and efforts to make sure you have eachothers' champ. Secondly, there can always be trolls who just don't switch champs after saying that they would or simply forget to switch the champs afterwards (afk and stuff). Switching position is a more intuitive way for what champ switch usually accomplishes in soloQ. However, Swapping champions should still exist because it allows for flex picks to be swapped around (like trundle top -> support). The champion swap is in a different stage of the champion select so these two buttons won't conflict.
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New requirement for playing a champion in ranked: At least mastery level 2 on that champion (which means at least 2 wins or a lot of losses on a champ). This will accomplish multiple positive things:
- No more first time this champion in ranked which everyone hates. Test your champs in normal before picking it up in ranked.
- This preserves the feeling that ranked is something where you play competitively and not just a second draft pick mode.
- New players will need to have played some sort of champion diversity in order to play ranked. (You need 16 owned champions with mastery 2 or above). Mastery 2 is not hard to get, but it makes sure that someone doesn't have played only one champion in his life and still doesn't know anything about the game despite being level 30.
- Smurf accounts who spam one champion will have to spend some time on others. Everyone hates smurfs, including some Rioters, so everything that makes them sad makes us happy.
I think that with the new client in alpha phase, this is a good moment to suggest such change to champion select and champion mastery has been out long enough to use it as a requirement now. I feel like it does a better job than the 1-30 level system.