I jumped online for a quick game with my buddy this morning . We typically duo queue a couple times during the day, especially after there’s a patch. Bans went Kog’Maw, Amumu, Shen, Vladimir, leaving Morgana open for first pick. I didn’t really feel like playing her, but I definitely didn’t want to play against her. My friend has been on a Morgana kick, so he offered to swap if I chose her, which I did.

Our opponents first picked Ezreal and Miss Fortune, so I figured Malphite would be a good tank. He’s a blast since the buff and the armor was definitely going to help out against those two. Once everyone’s selection had been placed we traded and popped into the load screen. My friend doesn’t own a ton of skins, so I was surprised to see him with Fallen Angel. He said he didn’t own it (I do, though). Then I realized I had Shamrock Malphite, which I definitely don’t own. My friend does, though.

As it turns out, swapped champions will retain whatever skin the owner put on the champion. I don’t know if it’s intended, but it could be a cool way to get players to buy skins. When I was running around as green Malphite, I actually started to like the skin. I think the glow of Brutal Strikes on his regular skin is much cooler, but being big and green is kinda neat. I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that once players see themselves in a given skin, they might be more willing to drop down some cash on it.

It’s one of the shortest lines in this week’s patch notes, but one of the sweetest. I actually reread this three times late last night when I was browsing the notes – “You can now request a trade with other players at the end of Draft Mode.” Say hello to the best feature since Season One launched. this is a big deal, especially for premade teams. You no longer have to have your Morgana/Amumu/Vlad player create the game.

This could also help a lot of solo queue players, depending on the community reaction. In DotA, swap was huge, and players were pretty cool about trading if they didn’t want to play a given champion but had the coveted first pick. Other players don’t like having first pick, and might use trade to barter a later pick slot with other players.

I’m more excited about this than I am about anything else in this game right now.

Plain and simple. DotA had this feature, whereby you could choose a hero that your teammate might want. It’s a great feature because often the guy with first pick rights on your team doesn’t want to play a highly desired character. Swap allows him to pick a more contested character, making much better use of the early draft position than would otherwise be possible.

There is one big drawback here – the champion unlock system. Because most players don’t have access to every champion, the draft system can be a bit ugly. When I was playing a lot with players from SoloMid I would often end up with a less than desirable comp or a toon that I wasn’t great with, if only because we wanted to have the strongest comp and I was the only player on my team with a given toon unlocked.

This all goes back to a post I made some time ago regarding champion balance as the primary matchmaking problem. Balance problems encourage players to use a limited subset of heroes, meaning they don’t get to know the rest of the available champions. Ranked play might even exacerbate this problem, simply because players will get the idea of a strongest comp, post it in the forums, and the mob will follow.

Still, swap would be better than no swap. Every team, even those in solo queue, should have a chance to make the most of their highest draft positions.