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Banning is a crutch for players who refuse to learn.

Der Lindwurm·12/20/2014, 5:12:57 AM·2 votes·843 views

Ban Kat! Ban Yi! Ban Fizz! Ban Sona! Etc. etc... But they can't ban everyone they want, so Yasuo slips into the game and totally owns everyone on the other team who can't deal with a champion who you can't beat by just going in like a boss and pressing enough keys.

Okay, I can see how it might make things more interesting in tournament play where carefully deciding which champions to ban is an important tactical decision (not sure if Lux would agree when she gets banned), but all the usual suspects getting banned every time in modes like Legend of the Poro King just means players who refuse to learn how to deal with tricky characters never have to. And then when Fiddlesticks goes 30-0 instead of "I really need to learn how to deal with Fiddlesticks" it's "Fiddlesticks needs to be nerfed! Ban him too!"

In fighting games, you can't ban your opponent's character. If a character gives you trouble, you have to learn to deal with it, even if it means (gasp/shock/horror) having to use a different play style from what you're normally comfortable with. Some characters are OP, but players for whom part of the fun of the game is the challenge of learning how to handle those (often predictable) OP characters with their own mains invariably attain an infinitely higher level of play than those who just whine and give up whenever they are confronted with their nemeses.

I know how many people complained about how they couldn't ban characters from Hexakill, but letting them ban Kat (and several others...) every single time in Legend of the Poro King just ensures that they never learn, never benefit from being forced to adapt, and remain trapped in that defeatist mentality.

7 Comments

Moriss12/20/2014, 5:25:35 AM3 votes

Without that this game would be crap and everyone could easily abuse the crazy op champ[s] at the time. It also inspires teamwork in the pre game lobby which I'm sure you feel in some cases there just nearly isn't enough.

The banning system is really our greatest defense against the meta-game. Take that away and the meta-game will suck all the life out of this game a vast majority of the time.

I could list many more reasons but I'm sure you can think of them yourself.

Br4ndon12/20/2014, 5:59:02 AM2 votes

If we didnt have bans it would be the same 10 champions every game. until patch day then another rotation of 10 champions.

i understand where youre coming from and what point youre trying to get across. but balancing is imperfect and banning is our tool against that imperfection.

as a side note, banning is sometimes used to target specific players in the pro scene. teams will deny other teams carries from their best champions. if that makes you feel better about it

Oleandervine12/20/2014, 6:22:26 AM2 votes

I have to disagree. There's a reason why characters like Katarina and Yasuo get banned every game. Sure, they may have counters, but those counters are deceptive. Want to stop Kat? Build early MR. What are you not building? AP or AD. What does this mean? It means you can't effectively deal with the opposing team because you're trying to build tankier to defend against an OP slaughterfest from Katarina and your damage output is severely outclassed by even the lowliest members of the opposing team. Same goes for Yasuo. These characters in technicality have weaknesses, but these weaknesses tend to be non-existent in a game mode where erupting team fights are the core of the game. Who has time to deal with just Yasuo when there are four other threats that are pressing against you? You sure as hell can't snowball and outpace them dramatically in level and item build due to the nature of the Howling Abyss. This is further exacerbated by both characters, and many other toxic assassins' extreme mobility that makes them irritatingly hard to pin down short of Taric's Dazzle. The problem with these characters is that their mere presence creates a "play me or counter me" game. This has proven to be the near death of any game with any kind of competitive scene in the past, as the play-or-counter severely limits character choices and pigeonholes selection into the same few champs for every game. In this game, with over 120 champs, you'd think there would be more options to counter characters like these, but there are surprisingly few. Yasuo has an absurd ability to shred through tanks and one hit most of them, which essentially nullifies their class altogether. Katarina is worse because she's AP based, and most MR items tend to be colossally specialized items that don't benefit every character, and even then, if she builds a few items like Haunting Guise and Void Staff, MR may as well not exist with the extreme damage her abilities can dump out. These characters are unfortunately toxic in most game modes, and the ways to counter them drain as much fun out of the game as constantly getting destroyed by them in matches. Who wants to play 10 games against Katarina and be forced to pick the same counter champion for all of those games? It gets stale after 2 games, and at that point, most people quit. So the bans are less out of "crutch" and more out of stripping away the toxic pigeonholing champs to allow for a wider champion diversity.

TL:DR: Champions like Kat, Fizz, and Yasuo are toxic and pigeonhole who to play and who to not play. That's no fun. Bans diversify the game by removing this pigeonholing.

BRBGTGBOWFLEX12/20/2014, 9:33:38 AM2 votes

I disagree.

Since different players are banning every time, everyone has their own ban strategy for the game and gets to use it to their advantage. For Poro King, it keeps every game from becoming a Katarina, Sona, Cait, Galio, etc spam and allows for a lot more champion variety. People will learn to play against them in the games that they are not banned, which is, a lot of games.

Most of the characters you mentioned appear more than any other character in Poro King. They almost all have 20% pick rates. Assuming every one of the 120 champions had an even pick rate, all of them would be less than 1%. You are 20x more likely to see these champions than many other champions.

You're also talking about games where there is in fact, a counter. League of Legends is not a fighter where what you start with is what you get for the rest of the game, rather, it's a game where advantages are built through play and accumulate. There is no strategy to overcome inevitable disadvantages. The champs that are frequently banned are banned because they are absolutely superior to the alternatives. Add that you can't know what the other side will pick and you aren't even presented with the opportunity to execute a counter-pick strategy.

So you get to pick what are the 3 champs you want the least in the game mode. Everyone has different preferences, and its often the case that players want to play the banned champions, and don't ban them. There are more than 6 total champions that are insanely powerful in Poro King.

They aren't banned as a crutch-- they are banned because they are an annoyance and remove uniqueness from the game. So, I think you're just wrong. You're talking like there is something to do about these champions, but you're ignoring that its not just the champions, but the way they scale and the things they are really really good at, that cannot be countered feasibly.

I appreciate your commentary, but I don't think you are right.

SeCKS Egai12/20/2014, 11:38:17 AM2 votes

Banning can serve as a crutch, but it can also facilitate strategy.

Believing its all or nothing is effectively ignorance.

LordGeovanni12/20/2014, 5:49:31 AM1 votes

i have to agree with you