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2016 And People Still Playing Champs In Ranked For The First Time

Xonra··21 votes·1,731 views

I get it, you get a new champ, you want to try it out, but you don't want to waste the time you have playing today to play a normal. You want that LP, but...the champ you are about to pull out you've never actually played before.

I know people don't like the suggestion, but there really needs to be a barrier of entry attached to the mastery system for people playing champs in ranked. I know that is unpopular (Cause people like you, you know who you are, that pick up that champ and don't care if it is your first time playing the champ or not), but you should really have to get at least Mastery 2 with a champ to play it in ranked. that is what, 3 games? 4 if you lose half of them.

I've played with a jungler this week that would just toss her ult in random directions cause she somehow didn't know how it worked. I just played with a Kalista that didn't know how Kalista actually worked, so would attack move completely out of fights and auto attack range every single fight. A master Yi that didn't level his heal because the "ability sounds dumb". Sure, I'm ranting a bit, I admit that, but realistically, it is 2016, and there NEEDS to be something in place to keep people from playing a champion in more than just bots before hopping into ranked completely clueless as to what they are doing. I mean we have the mastery system already in place, and from playing SMITE, I can tell you, it works wonders there.

tl;dr It is obvious players can be trusted to just not go into a match with a champ for the first time in ranked, so Riot really should help, because it gets real old. Most players aren't LCS level to pick up a champ and be decent with it, and really with people doing this for years with new champs, it should have been handled years ago. Normals, fine. Ranked, not so fine.

21 Comments

MISTAFUNKTASTIC4 votes

Mastery 2 is reasonable. I'd support that.

philosifer3 votes

So I like this idea in principle. Im mostly a normals player myself and really only play ranked occasionally and only on a few Champs that I feel comfortable that I know well. However let me play devils advocate.

  1. how does this work with trading champs? Say there is a contested top laner left unbanned and top is last pick. How does mastery requirements affect this if the first pick doesn't have mastery?

  2. reworks. I played vlad a ton before his rework and while it's not drastically different, there are new mechanics to play around. Do I have to regain my mastery level? Some reworks are essentially new champs, while some are simple tweaks.

  3. free week champs. Say I play a champ all week on free rotation while saving the ip to buy him. I could play 15 games with the champ and learn a lot without gaining mastery until I owned the champ.

  4. some champs I haven't played in a while. Maybe I played them a lot back in the day but I haven't played them much since the mastery system was introduced.

  5. counter/situational picks- this one is kind of a side effect to most of the above. But limiting the champ pool when you have an opportunity to play a strong counter just because you don't have the requisite mastery is dangerous. I'll give an exaple. Say I'm qued as jungle and I am last pick. The enemy is all AD and we lack a tank. Rammus would be a perfect pick. I've played him on and off thoughout my career but not really recently and I don't have the required mastery. His kit hasn't changed in a long time and he is not a complex champion to play so I am in little danger of poor performance due to knowing the champion. But if these changes were to go live I would be locked out.

TL-DR I agree with the sentiment but I think that there would be too many times that It would backfire and cause problems

Xonra1 votes

{quoted}

So I like this idea in principle. Im mostly a normals player myself and really only play ranked occasionally and only on a few Champs that I feel comfortable that I know well. However let me play devils advocate.

  1. how does this work with trading champs? Say there is a contested top laner left unbanned and top is last pick. How does mastery requirements affect this if the first pick doesn't have mastery?

I think with the current system, this could be a problem, you are right. I think this could easily be fixed by allowing say, first pick to trade positions. So instead of whoever is first having to pick for the last, just trade positions so last now is picking first (after the ban phase of course). Think that would be pretty simple to implement, and I've thought that would be a good idea for a long time. Even with the previous champ select there were plenty of times I would have traded first pick to someone else.

  1. reworks. I played vlad a ton before his rework and while it's not drastically different, there are new mechanics to play around. Do I have to regain my mastery level? Some reworks are essentially new champs, while some are simple tweaks.

This is a bit of an extreme case, and I won't say this is grasping at straws for the sake of argument (as you aren't actually "Arguing"), but realistically I don't see this being an issue. I get that some reworks as excessive compared to others, but I think implementing a system like this far outweighs cases like you bring up.

  1. free week champs. Say I play a champ all week on free rotation while saving the ip to buy him. I could play 15 games with the champ and learn a lot without gaining mastery until I owned the champ.

I don't really see the problem here. You don't own the champ, you don't get the mastery, you don't unlock it in ranked. I mean, if we are talking mastery level 2, I don't see how playing 3 more games with that champ is out of the question or unrealistic.

  1. some champs I haven't played in a while. Maybe I played them a lot back in the day but I haven't played them much since the mastery system was introduced.

If playing 3 games to get mastery level 2 is too much of a hassle, then I'm not sure what to say. Also, if you haven't played the champ in so long that the games didn't even register in the mastery system (that has been implemented for a while now) then I think you essentially have your answer without me really having to say it.

  1. counter/situational picks- this one is kind of a side effect to most of the above. But limiting the champ pool when you have an opportunity to play a strong counter just because you don't have the requisite mastery is dangerous. I'll give an exaple. Say I'm qued as jungle and I am last pick. The enemy is all AD and we lack a tank. Rammus would be a perfect pick. I've played him on and off thoughout my career but not really recently and I don't have the required mastery. His kit hasn't changed in a long time and he is not a complex champion to play so I am in little danger of poor performance due to knowing the champion. But if these changes were to go live I would be locked out.

I don't think the "counter pick" argument is realistically relevant. If you don't know the champ you are using to counter, what good is it then? I mean, if they know the champ, but you pick a champ cause it "counters" theirs, but you have no idea how to play it, do you really think you are countering them? No, you will feed, look silly for losing a winning matchup, and why are you playing a champion you don't know anyways in ranked, which just goes back to the point of the entire thread. I mean, I get your "devil's advocate" thing, but really...3 games. You get mastery level 1 with like...1 win. If you can't play 3 games on a champ, or are choosing not to, then again, I don't really know how to respond to that.

TL-DR I agree with the sentiment but I think that there would be too many times that It would backfire and cause problems

I really don't think there would be issues, and some of your points were a bit...not actually realistic. Like, x champion counters y champion, but I can't play x champion cause I haven't played it much. You pretty much answered your own question as to why you shouldn't be playing it in ranked in the first place.

Maximum Morde2 votes

I had to quit playing ranked because I first timed every champ already in ranked, now im done.

Xonra1 votes

First time I've gotten upvotes with no comments. Granted usually I get the same 2 guys making some negative comment and downvoting by now (You know the ones I'm talking about :P. The ones that make arguments on two threads with opposing sides just for the sake of arguing).

Guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth <_<

TargaryenRule1 votes

But you can ignite anivia's passive

Xonra1 votes

?

Dangerous Man1 votes

I'd say once you hit mastery level 3 you can play that champion in ranked. Mastery Level 2 can be gotten to in 1-3 games which is kinda dumb.

TurquoiseYoshi1 votes

At the same time, it would put a pretty huge barrier on ranked for players who either one-trick or just hit Level 30. You would have to get (I think) 16 different champions to Mastery Level 3, which is quite a lot to even play ranked. Plus, you might have something that really fits the team comp, but not have played the 5-10 games required to get to Level 3 on the champ. Mastery Level 2 makes sure the person can play a champ to some degree, requiring at least two games, which, in that situation, would both have to be wins.

jwn81751 votes

That's what they did with HOTS ranked. 15 heros at level 5 before you can even play ranked.

Xonra1 votes

{quoted}

That's what they did with HOTS ranked. 15 heros at level 5 before you can even play ranked.

That one is a little excessive, seeing as the grind to get to max level in HoTs is like double the time of League (Even before), and grinding 15 heroes to level 5 would take almost that same amount of time unless you were only playing those 5 and no others ever the entire leveling process.

Xonra1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Pi Xel Moloto V,realm=NA,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=jKqVXReo,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-06-23T20:25:10.837+0000)

I'd say once you hit mastery level 3 you can play that champion in ranked. Mastery Level 2 can be gotten to in 1-3 games which is kinda dumb.

Which is why I suggested only level 2. I think 3 games is fair. I just don't think ZERO games is fair. You can at least figure out abilities and very basic builds in 3 games.

Mandang01 votes

Agreed. Mastery should be the system used to keep first-timers out of ranked, not whether you own the champ.

Another huge benefit of doing it this way is that it lowers barrier to entry in ranked from 16 champs owned to 6 (if you had the required mastery on all of the free rotation champs). This clears the way for increasing number of bans without raising the barrier to ranked.

TheEvilQueen1351 votes

i agree that now that you can preference your roles attaching a mastery is reasonable(3 at the highest though).

However I will say that last season i got forced to top(they let me jungle after i locked) and as a sup/jungle main i had to go malphite(who i had played maybe 1-2 games with) and play him first time in the jungle. we actually won cause malph ults on point but I know that's not usually the case.

Xonra1 votes

{quoted}

i agree that now that you can preference your roles attaching a mastery is reasonable(3 at the highest though).

However I will say that last season i got forced to top(they let me jungle after i locked) and as a sup/jungle main i had to go malphite(who i had played maybe 1-2 games with) and play him first time in the jungle. we actually won cause malph ults on point but I know that's not usually the case.

I'm not too sure why you "had" to go Malphite to be fair. There seems to be some context missing to explain why you would HAVE to go a champion you've rarely played. If they told you to, I think explaining you haven't played much of it would solve that problem pretty easily. If you picked it and then someone picked your roll AFTER you, then that is a completely other situation and not much can help that, sadly (except this season's changes in champ select).

TheEvilQueen1351 votes

{quoted}

I'm not too sure why you "had" to go Malphite to be fair. There seems to be some context missing to explain why you would HAVE to go a champion you've rarely played. If they told you to, I think explaining you haven't played much of it would solve that problem pretty easily. If you picked it and then someone picked your roll AFTER you, then that is a completely other situation and not much can help that, sadly (except this season's changes in champ select).

sorry I had only just started practicing top lane. i did sup/adc/jungle/hiemer mid. malph was basically my only top lane, and i had very little experience. and i had already locked before they told me to just go jungle because i had stated BEFORE locking i was not that comfortable top

Schàdenfreude1 votes

lol i went first time Anivia in ranked and went 18/7 and got S+. There is no problem with playing new champs in ranked unless you have retarded people on your team.

Xonra1 votes

{quoted}

lol i went first time Anivia in ranked and went 18/7 and got S+. There is no problem with playing new champs in ranked unless you have retarded people on your team.

  1. I don't believe you (true or not, that just sounds far fetched)
  2. 18/7 isn't likely to get you an S+ on Anivia this season
  3. Even assuming all of the above is true, which I don't think it is, you are like 1 in a million (maybe literally) that go into ranked never playing a champ, and come out better than a 1 KDA at BEST.
Schàdenfreude1 votes

First of all, grading is not just based on KDA. It's also based on other things such as damage dealt. But the real mechanic behind grading is your performance in comparison with others. Just because you went 18/7 does not mean you get an S+, but if others did unwell on the same champ, your odds of getting a higher performance rating is increased.

You can op.gg my ranked games and scroll down the page until you see a 18/7.

Teklm1 votes

Get rid of blind normals and replace with normal draft in OCE and I'm cool with it.

The Deckowner1 votes

Rito weight smurfs heavier than us so they had never implimented this, but I think they do need to.

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