Just....wow.
A lot of people like to brag about the quality of the community in League of Legends, and while I think it’s pretty solid, we should also try to keep a little perspective and police accordingly. For instance, if I were a rapidly growing developer, I wouldn’t want the phrase “Bitchesluvmycock” to appear ANYWHERE on my website, even if it is user-generated content.
A friend and I wanted to play a couple quick games tonight to try to bump our solo 5v5 ELO beyond the levels of absurdity in which we currently wallow. I really wish this post was about our success.
We started out fine, with an easy win because of some feeding on the part of our opponents. For our next game, though, the feeders were on our side. I had first picked Nidalee for a bit of variety. She’s not a strong first pick, but I am a strong player so I figured I’d be okay. The other team picked Shen and Annie, two very strong picks with high CC, a point I was sure to make to my team in no uncertain terms. We would need CC.
Our next two picks were Yi and Karthus. I was right on the verge of losing my mind, but I just tried to even more emphatically express a need for hard CC. Our opponents chose Ashe and Morgana, which is a sealed fate, but I guess we still had two picks. Our teammate picks Katarina and my friend, seeing the comp, says screw it and picks Nasus. They last pick Janna. You can see the results above.
I really thought there would be a serious ELO discrepancy based on the picks. These guys were obviously clueless, right? Well, right, but that doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to ELO. Despite my position at the top of the ELO list, my teammates were right in line with the enemy and fairly close to me. They just don’t know that zero hard CC versus a mix of the best CC in game is almost guaranteed to lose (barring some SERIOUS problems on the other team).
This post isn’t only about Shaco, but about the ban process in general. While by and large I think bans are good and that draft mode is a big improvement for the game, I do wonder what Riot will do about champions that are getting banned in most every game.
Your experience may differ from mine, but nearly every game has Heimer/Shaco/Shen banned and then either Soraka, Xin Zhao, or Taric. For now this has encouraged much more variety in champion selection, but even now I see a few champions popping up more than I think is reasonable. Ashe, for one, is in just about every game – I mean like 90 percent. So what can Riot do to make sure the ban system continues to encourage variety, both in bans and the champions played?
One solution is obviously nerfs, and I think Heimerdinger is a great candidate. He is still too strong a lane presence for most characters to be successful against, and in solo queue that’s a big problem. Players are largely focused on picking a team with synergy, and not necessarily a team that can play against the opponents.
Another solution would be buffing the marginalized toons. I haven’t seen Kog’Maw once in draft mode other than a game in which I picked him. I haven’t seen Kennen. I don’t see Karthus or, much as it pains me to say it, Eve. Give those characters the tools to be successful in a draft setting and maybe we’ll get more variety.
I also wonder if Riot would ever consider global bans – toons that change from week to week that are unplayable, just as some champs are free each week. Part of being a good player, in my mind, is knowing a wide variety of toons. It seems pretty important to the competitive environment, then, that the best players know how to play more than a handful of champions. In most cases I think that’s already true, but it would encourage a breadth of knowledge that could help every player improve.
I understand that balancing a game like League of Legends must be pretty tough. If you cater too much to the best players you’ll make a lot of casual players extremely unhappy. The skill ceiling for many toons will simply be too high, exacerbating the gap between competitive players and casuals. Too far in the other direction and the game seems to lack a team dynamic.
As things currently stand, most players organize the champs into tier lists to give a sense of where they fit within a team dynamic. Since the holidays, Riot has released a fair number of champs, only one of which really makes the highest tiers – Nidalee. She’s often first pick in competitive play and typically swings the battle in a big way. With every new champion announcement I always wonder if we’ll see a new competitive champion, but it has yet to happen. Ezreal is probably the closest, but next to Nidalee he seems fairly lackluster. She has many of his benefits plus better map control and more gankability. She’s also much more mana efficient.
In part, I think the lack of more “top tier” champions is that competitive play typically involves a ban system. Implement too strong a hero and it gets banned immediately. Since the Jax buff I see him banned first in every draft game I play and for good reason. If he gets any farm at all he kills entire teams. I would like to see the release of a some top tier champions, though. Currently the best picks for tanks are Alistar, Taric, Malphite and Amumu, probably in that order (Taric and Alistar could be reversed depending on your team). Most games see two of those banned, leaving few options for either team.
I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for the next champion release after Shen. Shen, like Gragas, will likely be in an odd position with regard to a team. He could fit well with other AOE disable toons, like a Malphite, but there will likely be better options. Malphite ult with an Annie ult is infinitely better because of the AOE damage from Tibbers. More often than not, if you’re living for more than 10 seconds or so in a team fight it’s because your team is dying or the other team is woefully low on DPS, in which case you were likely going to win anyway.
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