@Riot, Addition of More bans

On Reddit, and on Meddler's ASK.FM page, they've been having a huge discussion on how to possibly improve the banning phase.

There are a few things to consider with bans

1. The Fear that simply increasing the bans will cause pro play to have teams simply ban out a single player
2. The fear that it doesn't change anything
3. It doesn't change the strategic use of bans or simply removes it

These are all things that Riot has said on why they're hesitant to increase the number of bans.

HOWEVER, there is something that we can look at for a very stong method for including 5 bans per team (And leave room for the potential addition of more bans if necessary).

Let's Look at Dota 2's Captains Mode.

How it works: Each team gets 2 bans to start in an alternating pattern. Then each team get's 4 picks with 1-2-1 pattern (Blue would get one pick, Red get's 2 picks, then blue gets one more) Then another round of bans with each team getting 2 bans. Then it goes into another 1-2-1 pick phase, this time with Red starting the phase instead of blue. Then a final round of bans with each team getting one final ban, then each team picks for their last player.

Let's look at the pros and Cons of this method:

PROS:

• Allows for lots of strategic use of picks and bans

• Prevents players from being completely banned out

• Allows more champions to see play because of strategic niches

• Allows more diverse team comps to exist by way of being able to ban counters to specific teamcomps

CONS:

• Drafting phase takes longer to do

• Would take a long time to get used to for some players

• Would require a revamp of the champ select code taking up lots of resources

• Could possibly limit champion pools.

Overall, I think that the Pros outway the Cons and using this method to increase the ban count from 3 to 5 or even to 7 (simply increase the number of bans in ban phases 2 and 3.) Would be worth the time and resources it would take to make this a reality:

TL;DR Riot has discussed increasing bans in draft phase, but don't really have a solid way to do so that they feel comfortable with.