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Serious Suggestion: Limited Champions Available in Ranked

Secimius·10/7/2014, 2:35:32 AM·1 votes·851 views

There are champions, that from bronze to challenger, just do not work in the current game. I think it would be for the best if in ranked mode certain champions were disabled.

  1. I think any champion slated for a rework should be shelved, since by definition they are in the worst place.

  2. Then there are other champions like Veigar and Taric, who just aren't allowed to be strong enough to be serious picks.

  3. Urgot.

  4. Champions the first week they are released.

  5. Maybe some community voted picks or Riot specialty picks,e.g., pre-rework Soraka (the OP midlaner and the massively un-OP support)

Keep in mind, THIS IS ONLY A SUGGESTION FOR RANKED. I don't want any champion to go away forever. They should just be kept out of ranked where competitiveness should be the top priority. I think, at max, this would disable 15 champions, which still leaves over 100 champions who are competitively fair and viable.

A fair amount of people get lured into these trap champions when they forget about the competitive aspect or ranked and focus solely on having fun. You should have fun in ranked, but all the while picking champions that maximize your chance to win. We have normal mode for a reason: focusing solely on having fun.

Thoughts?

5 Comments

OhBoyItsaMegaman10/7/2014, 3:13:26 AM1 votes

You have 4 teammates. You have 5 opponents.

If you believe that there are champions who are just too weak to exist as serious picks or too new to be played to their full potential, you should be happy. The other team is more likely to have them as long as you don't pick any of them. Easy game easy life.

themaddscientist10/7/2014, 3:33:19 AM1 votes

Whether something is "viable" or not is highly subjective and very much based on your opinion of the game and the context with which you see it. For instance, I do not personally like to play support if my ad carry is playing Quinn , but not because she is a "bad" ad carry. I don't like to talk about balancing from that perspective, simply because I know my opinion is too subjective and I don't keep up with the pro scene/stats in general to have a good opinion. My reason for not liking to lane with her is because she is very different from any other ad carry, more akin to an mid lane caster, and I have to play very differently in response to that. However, I have also seen plenty of good Quinn players that were able to take advantage of her toolkit to genuinely carry games, and even if I might not be the most comfortable playing alongside her in the laning phase, I won't force someone away from their main champion.

By trying to determine what is or isn't "allowed" in ranked beyond just the bans we currently have, I feel that would only cause an even more strict meta to be enforced. Now, not only are you not allowed to deviate with an unconventional build or laning strategy, you aren't allowed to play certain champions because they "just do not work" for whatever reason. You mention Soraka, and about how annoying she was pre-rework as a mid laner and how weak as a support, but back in the middle of season 3, she was also the primary champion I used to climb up the ladder, using a similar strategy. By utilizing her free harass and attack damage marks, I could outlast the enemy early game, and bait out the wannabe gold assassins that thought they were the best thing ever. For what I ran into at Gold, despite being in the "bad" role for her according to many back then, she got me into and through most of gold in a time when I was still reeling from the Taric nerfs. I definitely had people who told me not to, and there were a couple of times in which I didn't budge and we went on to win because I had gone a certain pick. The reason it took me so long to even find Nami as my main champion was because Soraka was so good at shutting her down early on.

Trying to artificially limit the champion pool available in Ranked is counter-productive. In doing so, you create an issue of whether or not they actually are viable in Ranked, as it's harder to conclude anything about balance from looking at normal Summoner's Rift alone. It's definitely annoying when someone picks someone who isn't as "good" and does poorly with them, but it's through trying new champions and eventually running them in Ranked that we determine whether something is good or not, or more importantly whether or not we are good at that champion in that role. We already have a strict meta as it is, why should we make it even more artificially strict, or try and force someone into a position where they aren't as comfortable and won't play as well? I can imagine very few scenarios where artificially limiting the champion pool, apart from when a champion has a gamebreaking bug that needs to be fixed, is ever a good thing overall.

Mikayle10/7/2014, 4:08:40 AM1 votes

I don't see the point of your suggestion. People are in your game because they are equal skill level to you with the champions they play.

If they are a viegar main with the same Elo as you, even though you play far superiour champs, whats it matter? If they removed viegar from the pool, and that viegar played started playing Swain all the time, he wouldn't be in your games as he'd be playing a stronger champ in higher elo compared to you.

They are only holding themselves back, not their team.