You should have to have someone at least rank 4 before you can play them in ranked. Because honestly im tired of these people who pull something out because it counters someone, or they saw it in the lcs, and they do terrible because they're just bad with the champion. By now most people should have 4-5 rank 5's, and multiple rank 4's. It doesn't take much to get to rank 4.
z14GaKI7TO1 votesThat's a pretty bad idea imo. Just because I haven't gotten rank 4 on a champion doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to play them, especially as someone who has accounts in different elos. I don't wanna grind all my mid champions to rank 4 just so I can counter pick. If you main 2 roles you should, in my opinion, be good on at least 7 champions in that role (obviously knowing most champions in that role is advised for max efficiency) . That's 14 for 2 roles, which is 12,600 XP each champion, which will take you around 10-14 WINS on that champion depending on game length. Now you're not going to win every game, so let's say it takes 20 games to get a champion level 4. I refuse to play 280 games JUST to get 14 champions in my pool, and that's just on one of the accounts I use.
Icestar11861 votesI've seen this idea thrown around ever since Champion Mastery was introduced. I've never seen a convincing argument in favor of it. Here is my argument against it, which I have split into two parts:
Part 1: What Champion Mastery Really Is.
Champion mastery is not really a measure of skill. It is a measure of what champions you play the most. Sure, you will be better at your higher ranked champions than your lower ones, since you play them more often, but you can reach rank 5 and still be bad at the game. Conversely, someone with sufficient game knowledge can pick up a new champion that is somewhat similar to one they already play and become reasonably skilled with the champion fairly quickly. For example, a Lux main shouldn't have a lot of trouble picking up Vel'koz or Xerath - all three are long-range mages with good poke, AOE damage, and a bit of CC. They may have slightly different play patterns (Vel'koz is best in teamfights, Xerath excels at sieges, and Lux is best for catching someone out of position), but overall the skillset should be relatively similar. Therefore, someone who is skilled at one of the champions will not need many games to pick p the others and may reach a reasonable level of skill well before reaching a high mastery rank with the new champions.
Part 2: Math.
Currently, you must own 16 champions to play ranked (6 bans + 10 players) to ensure that you will always be able to pick something in every ranked game. Under this system, you would need 16 champions all at rank 4 or higher. Let's do some math. I will make some assumptions, for the sake of numbers that are easy to work with. Let's say that your win/loss ratio is 50/50. We'll also assume that you earn about 200 mastery points on a loss and 1000 on a win. That means that on average, you should get 600 points per game ([200 + 1000] / 2). To reach level 4 on one champion, you need a cumulative total of 12600 mastery points. That works out to about 21 games on that champion. Now, let's say you're a relatively casual player who plays two or three games a day on average. That's more than a week of playing only one champion. Multiply that by sixteen. That's sixteen weeks - three or four months - to have the bare minimum champion pool to play ranked. Frankly, though, only sixteen champions is far from ideal. Three champions per role (that's fifteen) is considered a minimum requirement, and for your main roles, you should have 5 or more.
In Conclusion:
Having mastery rank 4 on enough champions to play ranked is far more work than you seem to think it is, and mastery rank is not always the best metric of skill. This system would create a huge barrier to entry (beyond what is already there) and be rather inconvenient in general.
