We Need to Address "Beta" Testing.

Moved from Champion / Game play.

I'm not one for excluding others from events, games, or betas, but it does get a little ridiculous when the majority of PBE games unfold as follows:

Chapter 1: Champion Select

(S = Summoner)

S1: Mid S2: Top S3: (locks in newest beta champion) S2: Wtf I wanted to play (New champion) S4: Mid S1: Sorry, I called mid already. S4: Insta locks S1: Fuck you double mid. S5: I'll ADC. Can one of you support? (S3 and S2 fight about lane and champion until match begins)

Chapter 2: God Help You, Bot Lane

Over half of my last 10 PBE games have consisted of either a solo bot due to top/mid fighting and double laning, or an ADC with no support; something like garen bot who just builds as he normally would.

This leads to bot getting crushed. If you're (un)lucky, S3 who got the new champion will jungle. Or he'll just lane somewhere else, fighting with top to get CS while mid keeps trying to get the other one killed and taunt them in ally chat.

Chapter 3: Oh... I see it's 42-4 at 17 minutes... AGAIN...

So while mid/top have been arguing all game and the poor bot lane is trying their hardest, a massive disparity is made clear. In normal games you're queued based on wins. On the Beta wins are worthless. Players that are diamond 2 with 2104 wins in normals are playing against bronze 3 players with 61 normal wins. Games are rarely, if ever close. One team usually has strict jungle and objective control, massive kill leads and double if not TRIPLE the cs of the enemy team. How can someone properly test anything besides game breaking bugs in these conditions?

Fin

What I'm saying here is that the PBE needs SOME sort of restriction, or linking to the main account. For the smartasses out there that say "try bots" or "the beta is for testing not serious play," you are both shallow and pedantic.* Want to know why the last 10+ champions all got released incredibly overtuned? Because although their skills and kits were fixed and worked fine, their damage and ratios/build paths were out of control.* Synergy with other lanes and team comps were broken. Why did this get through the beta? Because it was near IMPOSSIBLE to test it in a fair normal setting. People weren't given the opportunity to test a champion properly because they either stomped and it was basically a bot game, or they got wrecked every single time they tried to play, or they had to deal with gnar kassadin top every game.

So yes, you can test bugs and glitches. You can not test the strength or synergy of a champion in the PBE as it stands to a degree to make informed balance decisions. There might be a few good games, but the majority will show "X is weak" or "X is balanced" where in the actual game / meta with equally skilled players, the champion is completely broken.