Nemesis Draft is, quite possibly, the worst featured game mode yet.

Alright Riot, I understand.

You feel you can't just release URF mode over and over, so we get "Featured Game Modes". Poro King was disappointing (aside from that one time you got to make a sick play with the poro king teleport, but overall a boring experience). The Ascension game mode? Too linear (you didn't get gold from kills/anything, only from time passing, making the game static and theoretically "you can always come back" but it also means that you can't shut down a team early before they get rolling). And now... Nemesis Draft.

Nemesis Draft is singularly the most un-fun experience I've ever had playing League of Legends, both winning and losing. I'll give some examples from recent games I've played.

So in one game, we gave the enemy team all AP and their team gave me Galio last pick. I play Galio, went on a rampage - their mid laner rage quit and their team lost. All on the Galio pick. This is important, for later.

In another game, the enemy team was given Azir, Fiddlesticks, and Shaco. Basically what this meant was that in the early game Shaco ganks and applies pressure and then late you have huge AoE wombo combo (they were almost given Amumu, as a side note).

In neither of these games did I feel that the outcome had anything to do with my personal skill, the game I won OR the game I lost, and that is a marker for a bad game mode (in my humble opinion).

In the first game, I'm pretty sure I could've just rolled my face on my keyboard as long as I stacked MR - they didn't have a single good candidate for an AD build so early/mid they couldn't do anything and my AP and tankiness was high.

In the second game, we did fine in the laning phase and then got absolutely and completely dominated (they had a GP ult to lay on top of all their other AoE shit, as well). I didn't feel there was a single thing I could've done with the team we had to prevent this.

Nemesis Draft implies a certain amount of game knowledge. Understanding of synergy between champions, understanding of a champion's strengths and relative weaknesses, basically knowing what makes a team comp "good" or "scary". However, as a solo queue experience, Nemesis Draft is me hoping against hope that the 4 people I get matched with have a basic understanding of comp synergy and don't give the enemy team something stupid. I've had teams say "give them all 5 supports" and then get dominated by Soraka/Nami bottom lane into teamfights with huge AoE wombo combo (Braum, Nami, Janna all on the same team). They think "supports are weak!" and then get dominated by their synergy - the ability to keep each other player alive becomes more valuable when all of your members have shields/heals/etc. By the same token, I've had teams say "give them all AD" and you get 5 black cleaver's on the enemy team and still get dominated.

So here's my suggestion - you know what would make Nemesis Draft FUN? If it wasn't just a normal solo queue game with bad teams and bad teammates. Maybe... I dunno... if we played the URF MODE VERSIONS of all the champs?

Why are you so afraid to bring back the one (and only, iirc) featured game mode that the community has really enjoyed, as a whole? If you want to spice it up, SPICE IT UP! But I'm tired of playing normal solo queue draft games with shitty rules that end up playing exactly like a normal game. Featured Game Modes should be a difference, not just normal draft in a funny hat.