Will additional bans ever be added?

Darnyouoldtom·10/27/2014, 8:50:43 PM·8 votes·1,502 views

Season 1 worlds: 76 champions. 6 bans accounts for about 8% of the champions, 20% of the champions would either be played or banned in any game.

Season 2 worlds: 106 champions. 6 bans accounts for 5.6% of the champions, 15% of the champions would either be played or banned in any game.

Season 3 worlds: 115 champions. 6 bans accounts for just over 5% of the champions, 14% of the champions played/banned in a game.

Season 4 worlds: 120 champions. 6 bans is exactly 5% of the champions, about 13% of the champions played/banned in a game.

Right now 3 bans do not allow for creativity or strategy, it allows teams to ban out champions that are not balanced correctly. I think we can we all agree that it was a complete joke that alistar was available to play for worlds everyone knew that iteration of him was absurdly strong. Before Alistar you had champions like Kassadin or nidalee were basically mandatory bans for periods of time, not because a player was a threat on them, but because ANY player was a threat on them. Teams were forced to waste a ban on alistar/kassadin/nidalee not for strategy but because the champion itself demanded the ban. This is where the current picks and bans fall through. Bans should not be determined by a champion clearly being better than the competition, they should be determined by strategies teams wish to employ, whether it is a specific team comp or target banning a player.

There are a ton of options for picks and bans that can work. Right now the number of bans simply needs to increase otherwise strategy is going to stagnate (I would argue it already has, and games between even teams are not strategy games as much as rock/paper/scissors matches), with bans going to champions that demand it, followed 2-4 popular meta champions. The end result is through the majority of games a single player will play 3-5 champions. Yes you see a couple players breaking this trend, but even the players that play multiple champions still have a core of 3-5 champions they play.

My thoughts on the matter: 5 bans. For us plebeians in solo queue/normals everyone gets a ban, simple enough.

Competitive play again 5 bans, have them at the start, do it like dota where you break up the bans through out the draft phase (This creates actual draft strategies since you can prevent a specific strategy or force a team onto "weaker" champions.) While I think general dota vs lol comparisons should be avoided, the pick/ban phase for dota is infinitely better for the competitive scene compared to LoL's. It promotes strategy and diversity in champion pools, it doesn't matter if one champion is overwhelmingly strong since using 1/5 bans on it is far less punishing compared to 1/3 bans. It allows teams to actually ban to develop a team strategy or truly force a player outside their comfort zone. It is just all around better.

If Riot is really set on the 3 bans, then for competitive play let the teams blind vote on a weekly/tournament basis on champions they want banned collectively. If there is a majority vote on a champion it is simply removed from the pool for that week. This would effectively remove champions teams agree are not balanced at a give time (like say alistar at worlds). If there is no majority then no champion is banned. This is really only a bandaid fix though, either way it is better than the current set up which punishes teams because a champion is not balanced.

I guess my final thought on this matter. Imagine a worlds where Alistar was simply removed from the pick pool and Yasuo, Maokai, Lucian, Lee Sin, Kha'zix, Ryze, Zed, Corki, Tristana, and Zilean could all be banned at one time. What would the games have been like? What champions would have been played? Would it have improved the quality of the games? Would worlds have been more entertaining?

14 Comments

Sailor Mint10/27/2014, 8:57:26 PM2 votes

Season 1 ranked only had 4 bans. It was increased to 6 in S2's pre-season patch. The number of played champions has always remained stable at ~60.

We could get away with 2 bans. Right now the only purpose of having more bans is screwing with fotm pickers (i.e.: banning Lucian and Tristana).

Secretbeef10/27/2014, 9:00:01 PM2 votes

I think that the number of bans should go up per team...

I would be okay with 4 bans per team but would not be opposed to 5.

Darkwind10/27/2014, 9:35:14 PM1 votes

No, it won't . rito clearly only wants us to have 3 bans each, ppl have been asking for this since like the beginning of season 3

DracosKasu10/28/2014, 3:02:29 AM1 votes

I do believe they need to increase the number of ban. It will help the variety and also break the current meta system with the most used champ.

wolfax10/28/2014, 3:39:21 AM1 votes

The point of bans is not to ban X% of the champion pool.

Minrog10/28/2014, 3:53:59 AM1 votes

After watching the Worlds, it seemed like the biggest issue wasn't the number of bans. It was the fact that certain characters in patches are too strong and the Worlds freeze the patch #. So everybody knows in the tournament that Alistar, Nidalee, Tristana, Zilean are super steroid and you either get one of them on Blue side first pick or ban them out.

It would suck to see all 5 bans targeted toward a support player like LemonNation, given that there are only 8 or so supports total. Maybe they should keep the number of bans at 3 and instead lock out the broken characters tournament-wide. I dunno if that would work though.

Also:

5 bans? So when Jinx, Graves, Corki, Twitch, Draven, MF, Cait, Trist, Kog, Vayne get banned and blue first picks Lucian...what ya gonna do?...Go full AD Kennen on their butt?

There are 18 Marksmen characters, if you count Teemo (heh?). If both teams do ADC mutual destruction you'd end up seeing Urgot vs Ashe or something. The supports you'd have to switch to a secondary AP mage if both teams banned all support characters.

warpenguin55510/28/2014, 7:25:31 PM1 votes

I would agree. too many of the same champions are being played. more bans could mean more variety