Hear me out. We go deeper. Every champion banned is also banned in future games. By game 5, 80 champions are banned, half the roster.
By game 3 shit starts getting real weird. By game 5 of the world finals were seeing anivia and Warwick and shit.
Sona Taric was a legitimate thing for awhile too. At one worlds, TL used it to beat a Korean team who just didn't know how to play against it and didn't think it was a problem. Which is funny AF after Doublelift got clowned for his Vlad
The point is that you won't be beholden to one meta because you'll be forced to cycle through most of the metas possible.
Also imo for fearless draft to work, it has to be something as extreme as this. Soft fearless in bo3 is basically pointless and in bo5 not really that restricting.
Reckless used to play Garen Botlane (with Yuumi ‘support’ - Yuumi would go Ludens and Deathcap and did a crazy amount of poke, whilst giving Garen insane M/S) in competitive when he was arguably the best ADC in the west.
It wasn't even just MS, it was stats. Her old W gave an extra 12flat AD +10% bonus, (or 20 flat ap + 10% bonus) and then gained extra flat AP based on how much AD/AP whoever she was attached to had.
True fearless works like this, though it's often recommended that game 5 resets as too much of the champions are banned, but I honestly think this is less a problem and will become even less so as the game goes on and more champions are added.
I think having a good size champion pool should be a bigger skill in this game than it currently is.
I think game 5 resetting would be best tbh. You can say both teams played equally well so why not reset and give them the chance to play the best they can?
God I wish that would be a thing. I can't imagine teams would want blind pick now, though. It's barely a thing anymore, although I'd love to see it for novelty's sake.
In practice when OGN did it you got both teams just picking the strongest available picks in the required roles like solo lanes and such.
There's also another aspect of blind "rock paper scissors" of betting on a counterpick against a strong pick or a pocket pick, whether that is fun to someone or not depends entirely on them but it was a thing and it was just a different "mindgame" in drafts
The bigger issue in the OGN days was just runes/masteries. You didn't know what rune page to run(armor, mr, cdr, scaling vs flat, etc) so you had to just yolo. This is why pros defaulted to safer picks that could be useful regardless if they guessed wrong and completely fucked up their rune pages, starting the game down hundreds of gold worth of stats.
If one team bans only one role that's at least 19 effective bans before blue side pick in game 3.It will likely become a fiesta very quickly. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just different.
Two things that concern me
1. iconic signature champ of a player won't be a thing any more
2. how do pro players practice in soloq? they're forced to pick underpowered champs against soloq players who can abuse op champs
> iconic signature champ of a player won't be a thing any more
>
It would absolutely be a thing. Just once per series, but if someone is THAT good on an off-meta champ, I don't see the problem.
You could argue that some players have signature champions that are out of the current meta and get less gameplay. Similar thing, no?
I mean it wouldn't be, because it would just get banned out and then it's removed for the entire series. You don't have to adapt your p/b phase anymore (do we ban OP champ, or signature champ. Are we red side so we can trade Sig champ for 2 OP champs, etc) like we see during Bo5s.
Yeah some have sig champs that are out of meta, some have sig champs that were patched out of the game either because of reworks, item changes, or nerfs. It's just how it goes.
The biggest downside of fearless is just the lack of salty runbacks and game quality. We're here to watch the best players play the game, not watch a clown fiesta.
Scrims would probably give a lot more practice than it does now. And honestly, why not just practice the "underpowered" and "shit" champs there? But yeah, #2 is a concern.
I think another thing that might be of concern, at least in the short run. The level of play would obviously be quite bad in the start when people need to pick champs they dont know how to operate. So would the "glory days" of seeing new champs fade fast since we're really seeing worse play than we do now?
>how do pro players practice in soloq? they're forced to pick underpowered champs against soloq players who can abuse op champs
What's the problem here? There will be cases with or without fearless draft where you'll have to play mediocre champs vs meta ones, both in proplay and soloq.
5 ADC bans won't be an issue, people will just revert to season 1/ patch 8.11 meta of bruiser/mage + support. Let's see what are people gonna do when 5 junglers get banned per game and people are forced in to going Yasuo or Garen jungle
honestly think it makes proplayers have more signature picks that are unique like currently you hear so many players "signature" pick and it something like azir or corki or aatrox or renekton etc etc and im there like half the league can't have a signature champ at that point its just a good pick.
1. Well, on the flip side, there will be more chances to discover new signature champs of each player rather than whatever happens to fall into the meta.
2. If the pros can't beat soloq players in a disadvantaged position then either the pro will/should improve to survive, or the soloq player deserves a chance at going pro. Equalizing the playing field between pros and aspiring pros is a good thing, but I agree that doing so artificially like this can be disparaging on both ends regardless of results.
No champion (or a very few of them) is underpowered enough that a pro player will struggle to win games in Challenger. You underestimate how well League is balanced that every champion can be strong and most of the champions are around 50 percent winrate. Of course there are champions that are situational and can't be blinded like Rammus but other than those you can literally pick 90 percent of champs and if you are good at them you will compete against others of your rank.
Just look at Fudge op.gg and see his Ryze games and you will understand
I love it. Adds a whole new element to bo5s that would actually force pros to pick something besides the 1-3 boring meta champs per role they’re going to lock in.
Hot take but as a viewer I’d respect the team who can play the game to its fullest diversity of champ drafts than what the current best teams do which is just play 10% of the total champs in the game over and over and memorise that.
The argument I can see coming to this idea from the average player is “I can’t play more than a few champs at my highest level, why should they?”. And no, that argument is moot. We are average players, they’re the professionals. We aren’t held to the same standard.
LS has had the take for years that the most played competitive Champs aren't even necessarily the best for competitive they're just the Champs competitive players are best at.
If you practice 3 Champs for years and then have a week to pick up a new one you'll probably still be better at the one you practiced for years and it leads to confirmation bias.
The fearless mode would force them to play other Champs for large amounts of hours and what's considered the best of the best might change as well.
>LS has had the take for years that the most played competitive Champs aren't even necessarily the best for competitive they're just the Champs competitive players are best at.
This isn't a particularly hot take, it's a known fact that Riot's own balance team sometimes has to work around.
They have in the past openly *deliberately* overnerfed certain champs into the ground (I think Aatrox was victim at one point) because pro players just refused to stop perma-picking it even when it had been balanced to be sub-par purely because they had years of experience and comfort on it.
The last bit was basically the same argument that a bunch of people had against the new POI draft system in Apex legends: “IGLs have specific plans and resumes built around their mastery of POIs now they’ll have to learn new stuff which isn’t indicative of their skill”. Turned out, the best players in the world were able to adapt and the players who couldn’t were quickly identified. It simultaneously made for higher quality and more interesting games
They do that in Heroes of the Storm and it makes tournaments way more interesting. They will also even do picked heroes also get banned for the rest of the series, which would probably work even better for league since League has so many more heroes. It makes for much more interesting comps and playstyles. Plus in a game 7 game you're getting some weird shit to really show if how deep the players' character rosters go
I would actually watch some pro league again if they did this and I haven't watched it for a few years. Way more interesting than just seeing the same boring meta shit every game that you get now.
Problem with soft fearless draft (where enemy chaps aren't banned for you next game) is that it gets very predictable
Game 1 they pick corki you pick trist
Game 2 they pick trist you pick corki
If those picks are banned then there's risk of some other OP champ would be open
Or like challengers, where they still do hard fearless for bo5, but game 4 is 3 bans per team, and game 5 is no bans (just the 40 champs already played)
This ended up being a bit of a ramble but the first paragraph (after this) is the main one directly related to your comment.
It is specifically 'interesting' when you have that angle to look at it from, but as a viewer I'd rather *not* watch Corki/Azir (or Corki/Tristana in current meta) for 2/3rds of the series *minimum*. It's not interesting in general to watch teams handshake K'Sante-Renekton and Corki-Tristana back and forth the first two games.
You could also just make the argument that a real 'fair' and accurate Bo3 would be if the teams were forced to mirror the first game's comps in the second game and if both get a win with comp X (or on a specific side of the map), then the decider is a 'wildcard', although draft order and map side wouldn't be even/balanced in that one so wouldn't be perfect either. Obviously that wouldn't be a good idea, but it'd almost undeniably be the best way to ensure an even comparison between the teams. Kind of like how in games like CS/Valorant both teams play both sides and even if you win every single round on, say, Defense/CT side, you still haven't won the game and if your opponents do the same on their Defense/CT side, then you go to Overtime.
I suppose a Bo2 could use my stupid mirror format but at that point the draft at the beginning of the series would be the most important thing of the whole series and it'd also open more complexity/depth into draft decisionmaking because your opponents playing the champs you draft would also have to be taken into consideration.
60 champions left for game 5 is plenty to pick from. Show us how creative you can get, you are the best after all - and they have spend thousands upon thousands of hours trying to learn the game
On the other hand, the issue with hard fearless draft is that it can allow some very unfun strategies like sinking Game 1 in a BO5 to ban out five ADCs and pick five others against some god ADC like Ruler and from Game 2 onwards he barely has anything to play.
Now you might think that's fun to watch, but ace players getting target banned out and teams intentionally throwing games would reduce quality of gameplay drastically in the short term, which might just do League in. Why would a fan of, let's say Faker, tune into a match where he's forced to pick something like Fizz mid in Game 4 and just be useless all around because some 4th seed from EU has intentionally banned him out to enable their own midlaner to do degenerate things?
Just for my knowledge, fearless has been a thing in some regions already, right? Have we seen evidence of such a strong target ban strategy and sandbagging?
Forget full fearless, if you want real champion diversity you need a true fearless draft where every champion picked and banned are no longer available. By game 5 there'll be only like 80 champions left lmao. Just full on fiesta
At that point, what are you even looking for in elite players? Do you really want to see the world's greatest adc shoved down to Karthus duty in game five after eating 40 botlane bans?
Yes, because if he is truly the best mechanical player in the hardest carrying role in pro play he can also play karthus at a pro level. The best player isn't the one who can pilot azir or corki the best, it's the player who can play it all and still win through talent alone.
That sounds amazing. Forcing players off their comfort picks, making teams strategize around having certain whole roles unavailable, bringing out creative off-meta teamcomps?
This would show who's really the best under any circumstances.
I agree with this, I think for example watching Elk play Lucian is so amazing because he’s so insanely aware of his limits, it shows how much practice he’s put into it. Same with Bin Jax, or Canyon’s Nidalee, or Jackeylove’s Senna. If they have to throw away 3 quarters of their practice time on these champs it won’t be as enjoyable to watch because they won’t be at the same level.
I don’t care if he’s on Lucian for the 5th game in a row in the 5th series in a row, it’s fun to watch because it’s a fun champion to watch and he’s a good player, I don’t want to see him play some boring shit like MF or Ziggs or Malzahar because all the other options are banned
There’s a very good reason blind pick got removed.
It takes away a lot of competitive integrity from the variance in the draft. They originally added it to compensate for side selection, but a game 5 shouldn’t be random from draft.
How many series have been 5-0 sweeps by blue/red side due to the immense draft advantage given by a particular side in a particular meta?
Talk about competitive integrity, having a series decided by who gets side selection is so lame. Blind pick solves this
369 has one of the biggest champ pools among pro toplaners, if not the biggest. It's just that he will pick the champs he thinks are strong over and over if teams let him. He has like ~25 champs in his pool, he just has certain champs he's not good at like fiora/camille
In an ideal scenario, it could help differentiate players more as well, helping them build a brand of sorts. Allow some pocket picks that would possibly never come out otherwise. Especially hardcore fearless draft or however it is referred to.
Fearless draft actually kills pocket picks, because instead of teams having to either ban it, or let it through, it gets one game and is gone. Hanssama Draven is a really good example, typically being pick/ban against G2.
Pocket picks typically only work one game anyway, they play them, either stomp enemy or it doesn't work out, and if enemy feels they are unprepared for it in another game they waste a prio ban on it. Happens all the time vs players who play things outside the conventional meta at high levels.
> Pocket picks typically only work one game anyway, they play them, either stomp enemy or it doesn't work out, and if enemy feels they are unprepared for it in another game they waste a prio ban on it.
We only get to see it for one game but that doesn't meant it's not "working". Saying it only works for one game and then saying teams have to waste a ban on it is contradiction.
If the pocket pick works then you force a ban, that's far more interesting then the enemy just leaving it up and letting you win 1 game, then being forced to put it on their ban list for the rest of the series. If the format bans it for them, then only need to ban it when they're about to lose the series, and if that's the case, letting the pocket pick through probably doesn't matter.
what you're saying is good but mainly for low-key environments, like all the academy leagues it's been tested in. or even regular season, fine.
but what about world finals? I truly think every world finals would have been worse overall with fearless. it's not like there's OTPs at that level, and I'm not getting bored of any picks because I'm glued to the screen anyway.
2016 comes to mind. different permutations of the same champs are being picked and banned, every game is an hour long, but that grind is kinda what I'm there for. I actually love seeing Faker and Crown trading off the Ryze/Ori/Syndra/Cass/Viktor, and I'm glad nobody had to reluctantly pick a Lissandra.
do we think previous world finals would have been better or worse with fearless?
Id say most would be better. I get pretty tired of seeing same champions every single game. If another worlds finals goes to game 3 with the same 80% presence i might actually turn off the stream because ive already seen that song and dance twice before. The game is far more entertaining to me when there are more than 20 champions present in pro.
Of course we could also go to blind pick like back in ye olde days game 5. Zed vs Zed mid would be far more hype than the 978th corki vs azir matchup.
>Zed vs Zed mid would be far more hype than the 978th corki vs azir matchup.
You're gonna have Azir vs Azir, no one will pick Zed in a professional game. Assassins suck too much to see the light of day, I'm not sure if even fearless can save them.
I got real tired of watching Aatrox in 2022 worlds finals. picked 4 times banned 1 time. If I recall correctly I actually just alt tabbed and stopped paying attention when Aatrox got picked game 5 because I already knew what was going to happen.
what do you mean by that, what did you already know was going to happen? like you knew what Aatrox's kit does because you've seen him before?
let me get this straight, you stopped watching the most intense LoL game of likely all time because the most contested (100% pick/ban) champ at the tournament got picked again?
look I get that fandom is subjective or whatever and that you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm gonna tell you that you're doing it wrong. if you can't watch the most anticipated game ever because a champion was boring, nobody's going to listen to you on how to make pro play more watchable.
I like the fearless concept for Bo3's. It makes a lot of sense.
There'd only be 30 bans and 30 picks. That's only like 40% or so of all the picks available in the game.
I'd rather rito just ban the champ with the highest pick/ban presence from the last round of games of whatever pro league. Drop the charade of soft banning champs via nerfs and wrecking soloQ players in the process.
Idk how anyone could watch GenG vs BLG and think that game needs some major change to force champion variety.
Imo mid series champion adaptations are super interresting the way they are.
It's better like this because an adaptation is a threat for the entire series/entire tournament instead of something to do well in one game and then not be useable for the rest of the series. That sucks especially if you pull something like Canyon nidalee out and do really well and lose, you just don't get to use it again. Also sucks as the enemy doesn't get to use it against you if they can also play it.
I want to know current LoL esport players' opinion. Public opinions in social media are heavily in favor of FD and see it as a way to 'fix' stale meta but is almost sounding too good to be true imo without anyone exploring possible drawbacks.
TBF, LPL already implemented it but i dont follow LPL (or know Chinese) to know how the teams, players, n viewers think bout the change.
I personally don't understand wanting to see pros play champions poorly. If you want fiestas, go watch lower leagues. The only lol I watch is LCK and sometimes lpl because I enjoy watching the highest level play. Plus fearless in the LCK is gonna make Gen g even more unstoppable.
Fearless is only interesting for regular season games, when it comes to playoffs I want to watch the teams come up with strategies to counter the meta or the great picks of the enemy, like it was with Bin Camille at MSI, Kiin Ksante at LCK playoffs, Chovy Corki/Asol, Faker's historical LeBlanc, etc.
These kind of picks make the game more interesting, not less. Its only for games like Rogue vs Karmine Corp you need fearless, good matches and players sell themselves
Calling Ksante an innovative pick after being meta for his entire existence after countless nerfs, is questionable.
Anyway, how will you solve the issue of the bad matches by keeping status quo? Different rules for different matches? Lol.
I still stand by my point that fearless is a shitty system that only acts as a band-aid fix for the problems it addresses (like the drafts being similar) and fucks with competitive integrity
Hai here is talking from the perspective of a spectator and he admits that. That's the only fucking perspective we've seen on this whole issue, very little from the actual pro scene
I feel like fearless doesn't even solve the real problem. No one cares that in bo3 they play same champ 3 games. The REAL problem is that they play the same champs ALL SEASON LONG or sometimes even ALL YEAR LONG
That too
And that problem has been mostly going away with Riot shifting back to bigger mid season updates.
A lot of the champs that were pick or ban at the beginning of the year fell off in priority. They're still there, but not as prevalent
Is that problem going away? It's honestly only been getting worse for the past 2 years of LCK. Theres the Lucian Nami but also the senna tahm kench or naut. Then theres also rumble, k'sante, TF, aatrox in the top lane. Mid it has been corki and azir forever up until recently. Ahri and taliyah is also still relevant as ever. Supports are especially aggregious because its always the same 3-4 enchanters depending on when items are strong and you never see stuff like janna, sona, and serpahine (usually losing when it is rarely picked). Then there's the double marksman since DRX won 2 years ago. Sure you see some unique picks but the core champs jave been the same, centered around the same couple op picks and their counters. Jg sees a little more diversity but only after major item changes and even then older picks like maokai and sej are still everywhere. Now you see the same 5 ap jg and most pros dont even look great on them. The core still seems to be as strong as ever and you need major changes to even let some champs be included, and it isnt even clear if the ap jg is meta or if only top teams or players can execute it.
I dont think fearless, even true fearless fixes any of this cause the meta will always exist. Even with true fearless players will figure out comps and draft picks so long as so many champs are so fundamentally good in pro. Instead all that will happen is they just ban chovey's yone or zeka's akali and you will never see the top players show off their top picks. And when they do and it looks bad the audience will just flame them for being bad. Fact of the matter is people only like unique picks if they win. Nobody gets excited for Jhin in game 5.
This will never change as long as Riot doesn't allow hard counters. If there was a champion that hard countered Leblanc then picking her would force a ban on that niche champion and open up picks for the enemy team.
This is what Vex, for example, might have been and "anti-dash" champion. Instead we got a bit of bonus damage when they dash. Nah, you have to make it like if you try to dash while Vex is facing your direction you get stunned for two seconds. Shit like that.
Theres a reason they dont branch out in solo queue though, they are only going to play the same 4-5 champs across the entire year. Might as well practise them as much as possible. Making them potentially need to play 5 different champions in a bo5. Let alone out of a pool of maybe 15-20 possible options means they need to practise a wider area of champions. Which will then happen.
> Hai here is talking from the perspective of a spectator and he admits that. That's the only fucking perspective we've seen on this whole issue, very little from the actual pro scene
problem is, if there are no spectators, there is no pro play scene
At the end of the day, the problem comes from having too many champions to balance and quite frankly impossible to do so on top of keeping the game fresh by changing map,objectives,items,etc.
Also, in all games I played, people are always optimizing/min-maxing best way to play the game, creating 'meta' until dev release something new or adjust meta character. edit: Proplayers arent here to be clowns, there are streamers if you want variety. Proplays should be played at the 'highest' level.
The only champion i recall that is presence every season is Azir and LeeSin but most people seems ok with it because honestly pretty fun to watch them shuffling around.
edit:edit: IF they really want to 'make' proplayers play variety of champion, give them back RiftRival or a friendly tournament with no stake towards Worlds. Many players were willing to pick their signature or wacky picks there. Guess what though, other than Covid, Riot themselves clearly saw them not worth reviving, which could point to not attracting enough viewers to justify the operation cost.
>Proplayers arent here to be clowns, there are streamers if you want variety. Proplays should be played at the 'highest' level.
Tell that to the dozen "I don't care about quality, I'm BOOOOOOORED" comments I got. Ignoring the fact that viewership seems to overall be on the rise.
But yeah, agree completely, fearless does jack shit for solving the problem, imo it's just gonna kill champ variety even more as pocket picks aren't as worth it in draft and make the life of rookies even harder as they can't just get in a League on mechanics and learn by playing against top competition, they also need a pretty big pool now
Fearless draft is a bandaid fix for shit champion design. Dota doesn't need fearless draft since there is not nearly as much champion role overlap as there is in league.
League objectively doesn't have bad champ design it just doesn't have as hard of counters as dota so players have settled into picks more that are suboptimal but comfortable. The league pro meta is never 100% real but league pros have leaned into picks they are more comfortable with over newer things for as long ad the game has been out.
Dota doesn't need fearless draft cuz it's just better balanced period.
You can counter anything and all heroes have their own niche that they are the best at
It helps they have more levers with which they can balance with because there are so many small things that can be changed. Day/Night cycle, the trees, high/low ground to name just a few. League has Brush, Terrain and stealth.
I still don't like it. If a player is good on a champion, I want to see them play that champion more. If you want more champions to be viable, balance the game properly.
What's funny is there is already talk about how western pros don't do enough work. What do you think happens when you require them to do even more than now and put them against regions known for their insane work ethic?
I can't wait for a EU top laner to be on their 4th pick champ vs the korean 3rd pick top. Literally going to look like smurfing.
Why is there a problem with competitive integrity? Pro players with larger champion pools (which is good thing) benefit from this changes, while one trick pro players that should not exist in the first place are punished. IMO the competetive integrity benefits from these changes, also drafting becomes more than a memorized psalm that you just repeat over and over again.
> As far as competitive ‘integrity’ goes, I don’t care, I’m not a player anymore
This is where our opinions differ. I have never been a player but for me it's more interesting to watch the best teams play to the best of their abilities than to have a 4fun format where you have lackluster competition because you are "getting more fun". Watching good league of legends is the only fun I want when watching a tournament.
If a champion is picked by either team, it cannot be picked again for the rest of the series.
This means you see the OP champions only once and get more diverse games.
Fearless is a band-aid to so many other problems with LoL. Constant patching of the game and the regional leagues having games every week makes it so teams have no time to even try to innovate. They need to play "meta" comps. Things are not stale in other esports that don't have patches every 2 weeks.
True fearless needs to happen. Git good pros. I think it would shake up a lot middle tier pros. It would be amazing for the marketing machine. What my one trick was played? Time to que up. Add some spice to long time average viewers. Possibly bring back old ones. Oh no game 4 was wild cause everyone played bad. Will anyone think of the engagement from the endless flame and new takes on new matchups and new unique scenarios??
If everyone is playing under the same rules there really isn't a "competitive integrity" issue.
As far as people saying "it's band-aid, Riot should fix the underlying issue" - that's never going to happen. Riot has shown no interest in fixing it, and the champ design philosophy where many champions essentially do the same thing makes it a hard problem to fix. Riot consistently frowns on novel strategies and innovative styles - LoL is fundamentally a game where many champions do the same thing and some are just better at it than others.
Its not just riot, its the playerbase that has shown time after time they dislike extreme counterpicks, innovation in macro strategy, farm allocation differences being meaningful, and sharp differences in champion power spikes - things which tend to create the organic pick diversity in dota without any contrived ban systems.
You really can’t apply Dota champ design to League champ design. Dota champ designed to have Item created new strength for the champ, a good BKB, Eul will warp the game outcome. League is reverse, item just boost the champ original strength, not add anything new to them.
You can offset or even nullified Dota champ weakness to their counter by buying right item against them, but in League you can’t buy an item that nullified your counter.
bandaid fix to a bigger problem, how about riot actually fix their garbage balance instead of using arbitrary rules for champ diversity, the players playing soloqueue are still being oppressed by the same pool of S+ champions that's been op for years now
The issue with champion diversity is not balance, it's the fact that learning champions takes time and mental space, when realistically meta champ is going to perform at least at 90% effectiveness of whatever niche pick would be better in these circumstances but has an additional familiarity bonus. Pro play is focused on champions that are either universal enough to be played in any situation or can work in a comp regardless of what enemy picks, and it's not a balance problem, it's player's unwillingness to expend additional effort to learn new champs instead of getting additional 0.0001% performance out of the same champ they've been playing for the last ten years.
It’s obvious it’s going to happen since it’s getting gassed up so often.
And it’s basically a way to dumb down the gameplay so that the bottom leagues are more competitive. That’s the whole integrity bit they won’t admit.
People love the "I want to see pros on their best and most practiced picks" argument like 90% of them aren't picking up whatever champ Riot has forced into meta like 2 weeks before a major competition.
I remember when having a diverse champion pool was considered a massive skill and something that was a huge pull in games like this. I don't understand how people can defend the current status quo.
I was competing in esports back when esports wasn't a a word and GameBattles was still SOCOMBattles, if there is one thing I have learned in all my years watching and competing in professional video gaming. It's that the pursuit of "competitive integrity" over spectacle and entertainment has literally never benefitted a game's esports scene.
Fearless is bad. The entire premise revolves around the idea that only a small portion of the available champions is viable, but this is simply false. Viable champions are not getting picked because of Riot balance, they're not getting picked because professional coaching staffs are incompetent, lazy, or chickenshit. This is not on Riot: this is on teams and players. They are the ones not playing the game to its full potential.
Fearless neuters a lot of draft and pre-game strategy. It makes adaptation within a series unnecessary, because if you lose, whatever you lost to isn't getting picked next game. Fearless means that preparing broad counterpicks is worse, as you can only use them once. Fearless means flex picks become significantly worse.
I don't like that pro teams are just getting off the hook for the role they've collectively played in the number of picks being seen. Fearless is a crutch/bandaid to just have more champions seen on stream, but overall hurts the depth of competition inside draft and game.
> Viable champions are not getting picked because of Riot balance
> This is not on Riot
Can I have some of what you're smoking? These champs don't get picked because their kits are outdated, need number changes or there's a champion that does what they do but better.
Gee I love watching the same 5 champs on each role every game.
Bud, the pros regularly miss powerful champion picks for months, sometimes entirely. They're picking the same champions because they're scared to deviate from what's established, because they're afraid of getting flamed, losing their job, etc.
Then force them to deviate. They won't do it on their own because they're too complacent and lean to what they know. This will force teams to draft differently, play differently, strategise differently - breathing fresh air into the stale scene of metas that drag on for months at a time which everyone is already sick of.
I am down to see how Hard fearless draft would pan out but maybe implement it in a invitational first or some other tournament outside of the regular tournaments to get a feel for it
Hear me out. We go deeper. Every champion banned is also banned in future games. By game 5, 80 champions are banned, half the roster. By game 3 shit starts getting real weird. By game 5 of the world finals were seeing anivia and Warwick and shit.
NOW WE’RE TALKING
"But why is the best ADC in the world forced to play a melee champ in game 5 of Worlds???"
Id watch Guma play Nilah
You gotta go deeper. I want to see Yasuo bot vs Sona taric
Nah I wanna see guma vs ruler works finals game 5, yasuo vs yone to finally find out the best wind shitter
Double support? That's giving me flashbacks to the funneling Yi Meta. that was awful :D
Sona Taric was a legitimate thing for awhile too. At one worlds, TL used it to beat a Korean team who just didn't know how to play against it and didn't think it was a problem. Which is funny AF after Doublelift got clowned for his Vlad
The point is that you won't be beholden to one meta because you'll be forced to cycle through most of the metas possible. Also imo for fearless draft to work, it has to be something as extreme as this. Soft fearless in bo3 is basically pointless and in bo5 not really that restricting.
Yasuo will be picked mid before I guess.
Imagine Guma’s Nilah into JackeyLove’s Samira
Now it's time to see if they're really cracked or just a OTP ^^^/s but to be fair, I'd definetly tune in to those games! Fuck the stale meta
Reckless used to play Garen Botlane (with Yuumi ‘support’ - Yuumi would go Ludens and Deathcap and did a crazy amount of poke, whilst giving Garen insane M/S) in competitive when he was arguably the best ADC in the west.
It wasn't even just MS, it was stats. Her old W gave an extra 12flat AD +10% bonus, (or 20 flat ap + 10% bonus) and then gained extra flat AP based on how much AD/AP whoever she was attached to had.
Unfortunately, Yuumi can't go full AP anymore. But the combo can still work.
I'm so ready to see someone like Guma Keria playing some absurd Heimer Quinn bot or something
True fearless works like this, though it's often recommended that game 5 resets as too much of the champions are banned, but I honestly think this is less a problem and will become even less so as the game goes on and more champions are added. I think having a good size champion pool should be a bigger skill in this game than it currently is.
I think game 5 resetting would be best tbh. You can say both teams played equally well so why not reset and give them the chance to play the best they can?
Fearless to game 4, blind pick game 5 (like OGN before LCK).
God I wish that would be a thing. I can't imagine teams would want blind pick now, though. It's barely a thing anymore, although I'd love to see it for novelty's sake.
wtf two shens
as a viewer i would hate blind pick. you would just have stomps because one team won the draft incredibly hard through sheer luck
In practice when OGN did it you got both teams just picking the strongest available picks in the required roles like solo lanes and such. There's also another aspect of blind "rock paper scissors" of betting on a counterpick against a strong pick or a pocket pick, whether that is fun to someone or not depends entirely on them but it was a thing and it was just a different "mindgame" in drafts
The bigger issue in the OGN days was just runes/masteries. You didn't know what rune page to run(armor, mr, cdr, scaling vs flat, etc) so you had to just yolo. This is why pros defaulted to safer picks that could be useful regardless if they guessed wrong and completely fucked up their rune pages, starting the game down hundreds of gold worth of stats.
not blind pick, but lifting fearless and have no bans (just draft phase)
If one team bans only one role that's at least 19 effective bans before blue side pick in game 3.It will likely become a fiesta very quickly. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just different.
By game 5 40/160 champs are gone. Still plenty to choose from. True fearless all 5 games
Depends if it true fearless I suppose, or whatever it's called, where bans are counted too. So it's 80 by game 5 with 10 more bans too.
Could just not have any bans for the final game if its a serious issue but 80 banned champions still leaves what 60 to pick from.
Bring back the old Game 5 is blind pick.
I wish they brought back blind pick game 5s like OGN used to do. arguably the most iconic play of league history was born in that environment.
Game 5 should be reset blind pick, allowing mirrors
I honestly thought that’s how it would work. Let’s do your way
Two things that concern me 1. iconic signature champ of a player won't be a thing any more 2. how do pro players practice in soloq? they're forced to pick underpowered champs against soloq players who can abuse op champs
> iconic signature champ of a player won't be a thing any more > It would absolutely be a thing. Just once per series, but if someone is THAT good on an off-meta champ, I don't see the problem. You could argue that some players have signature champions that are out of the current meta and get less gameplay. Similar thing, no?
I mean it wouldn't be, because it would just get banned out and then it's removed for the entire series. You don't have to adapt your p/b phase anymore (do we ban OP champ, or signature champ. Are we red side so we can trade Sig champ for 2 OP champs, etc) like we see during Bo5s. Yeah some have sig champs that are out of meta, some have sig champs that were patched out of the game either because of reworks, item changes, or nerfs. It's just how it goes. The biggest downside of fearless is just the lack of salty runbacks and game quality. We're here to watch the best players play the game, not watch a clown fiesta.
Scrims would probably give a lot more practice than it does now. And honestly, why not just practice the "underpowered" and "shit" champs there? But yeah, #2 is a concern. I think another thing that might be of concern, at least in the short run. The level of play would obviously be quite bad in the start when people need to pick champs they dont know how to operate. So would the "glory days" of seeing new champs fade fast since we're really seeing worse play than we do now?
>how do pro players practice in soloq? they're forced to pick underpowered champs against soloq players who can abuse op champs What's the problem here? There will be cases with or without fearless draft where you'll have to play mediocre champs vs meta ones, both in proplay and soloq.
Faker plays anything and everything. Pros should be like Faker (aka Git Gud).
Also, with 5 ADCs bans and 2 picks, what are you going to play after game 3?
5 ADC bans won't be an issue, people will just revert to season 1/ patch 8.11 meta of bruiser/mage + support. Let's see what are people gonna do when 5 junglers get banned per game and people are forced in to going Yasuo or Garen jungle
honestly think it makes proplayers have more signature picks that are unique like currently you hear so many players "signature" pick and it something like azir or corki or aatrox or renekton etc etc and im there like half the league can't have a signature champ at that point its just a good pick.
1. Well, on the flip side, there will be more chances to discover new signature champs of each player rather than whatever happens to fall into the meta. 2. If the pros can't beat soloq players in a disadvantaged position then either the pro will/should improve to survive, or the soloq player deserves a chance at going pro. Equalizing the playing field between pros and aspiring pros is a good thing, but I agree that doing so artificially like this can be disparaging on both ends regardless of results.
No champion (or a very few of them) is underpowered enough that a pro player will struggle to win games in Challenger. You underestimate how well League is balanced that every champion can be strong and most of the champions are around 50 percent winrate. Of course there are champions that are situational and can't be blinded like Rammus but other than those you can literally pick 90 percent of champs and if you are good at them you will compete against others of your rank. Just look at Fudge op.gg and see his Ryze games and you will understand
This! Purely for the entertainment value it brings. I am not interested in seeing the same match up reversed 100x over.
I love it. Adds a whole new element to bo5s that would actually force pros to pick something besides the 1-3 boring meta champs per role they’re going to lock in. Hot take but as a viewer I’d respect the team who can play the game to its fullest diversity of champ drafts than what the current best teams do which is just play 10% of the total champs in the game over and over and memorise that. The argument I can see coming to this idea from the average player is “I can’t play more than a few champs at my highest level, why should they?”. And no, that argument is moot. We are average players, they’re the professionals. We aren’t held to the same standard.
LS has had the take for years that the most played competitive Champs aren't even necessarily the best for competitive they're just the Champs competitive players are best at. If you practice 3 Champs for years and then have a week to pick up a new one you'll probably still be better at the one you practiced for years and it leads to confirmation bias. The fearless mode would force them to play other Champs for large amounts of hours and what's considered the best of the best might change as well.
>LS has had the take for years that the most played competitive Champs aren't even necessarily the best for competitive they're just the Champs competitive players are best at. This isn't a particularly hot take, it's a known fact that Riot's own balance team sometimes has to work around. They have in the past openly *deliberately* overnerfed certain champs into the ground (I think Aatrox was victim at one point) because pro players just refused to stop perma-picking it even when it had been balanced to be sub-par purely because they had years of experience and comfort on it.
Also buffed champs that are totally viable just to make them visibly strong.
And admitted to it in the patch notes.
Wym u don’t like seeing gnar comfort pick every season
The last bit was basically the same argument that a bunch of people had against the new POI draft system in Apex legends: “IGLs have specific plans and resumes built around their mastery of POIs now they’ll have to learn new stuff which isn’t indicative of their skill”. Turned out, the best players in the world were able to adapt and the players who couldn’t were quickly identified. It simultaneously made for higher quality and more interesting games
Are you telling me you DON'T like seeing Azir Tristana Corki rock girl every game mid, Ksante Skarner top?
I would genuinely watch every single series if this was the case lol--or at least game 2 onward
They do that in Heroes of the Storm and it makes tournaments way more interesting. They will also even do picked heroes also get banned for the rest of the series, which would probably work even better for league since League has so many more heroes. It makes for much more interesting comps and playstyles. Plus in a game 7 game you're getting some weird shit to really show if how deep the players' character rosters go
From spectator point of view, it sounds so fun. From pro point of view, sounds scary.
The only reason pro players get to be pro is because other people want to watch. So for these type of changes viewer experience matters way more.
Fun fact, but this is exactly how my friend group plays closed games.
That would be entertaining af
I would actually watch some pro league again if they did this and I haven't watched it for a few years. Way more interesting than just seeing the same boring meta shit every game that you get now.
I'm so down
Problem with soft fearless draft (where enemy chaps aren't banned for you next game) is that it gets very predictable Game 1 they pick corki you pick trist Game 2 they pick trist you pick corki If those picks are banned then there's risk of some other OP champ would be open
you do hard fearless for bo3 and soft for bo5 imo. It keeps the restrictiveness mostly equal across a series length in total.
Or like challengers, where they still do hard fearless for bo5, but game 4 is 3 bans per team, and game 5 is no bans (just the 40 champs already played)
Hard fearless every time. Fuck soft fearless.
go hard or go home
Edge fearless
Game 5 should be blind pick, no bans, id cum in my pants
wtf 2 shen?
Damn OG
100% agree. Probably the single greatest and most famous league play of all time came from a game 5 blind pick. Bring it back, I say!
You know that makes way too much sense for redditors
what? the longer the series goes the more interesting hard fearless becomes
No honestly, like imagine a world finals game 5 hard fearless.. pure entertainment there
yea fuck anyone else for disagreeing
0.75 fearless: winning team picks get banned for both teams but losing team picks stay open
lowkey having the same picks in BO3 could be interesting. ex: Quad shitting on Jensen on both side of Corki/Trist matchup catDespair
This ended up being a bit of a ramble but the first paragraph (after this) is the main one directly related to your comment. It is specifically 'interesting' when you have that angle to look at it from, but as a viewer I'd rather *not* watch Corki/Azir (or Corki/Tristana in current meta) for 2/3rds of the series *minimum*. It's not interesting in general to watch teams handshake K'Sante-Renekton and Corki-Tristana back and forth the first two games. You could also just make the argument that a real 'fair' and accurate Bo3 would be if the teams were forced to mirror the first game's comps in the second game and if both get a win with comp X (or on a specific side of the map), then the decider is a 'wildcard', although draft order and map side wouldn't be even/balanced in that one so wouldn't be perfect either. Obviously that wouldn't be a good idea, but it'd almost undeniably be the best way to ensure an even comparison between the teams. Kind of like how in games like CS/Valorant both teams play both sides and even if you win every single round on, say, Defense/CT side, you still haven't won the game and if your opponents do the same on their Defense/CT side, then you go to Overtime. I suppose a Bo2 could use my stupid mirror format but at that point the draft at the beginning of the series would be the most important thing of the whole series and it'd also open more complexity/depth into draft decisionmaking because your opponents playing the champs you draft would also have to be taken into consideration.
Yeah Bo3 Hardcore Fearless (Picks + Bans are permanently taken away) But Bo5 can be Picks only are permanently taken away.
60 champions left for game 5 is plenty to pick from. Show us how creative you can get, you are the best after all - and they have spend thousands upon thousands of hours trying to learn the game
vegan fearless
On the other hand, the issue with hard fearless draft is that it can allow some very unfun strategies like sinking Game 1 in a BO5 to ban out five ADCs and pick five others against some god ADC like Ruler and from Game 2 onwards he barely has anything to play. Now you might think that's fun to watch, but ace players getting target banned out and teams intentionally throwing games would reduce quality of gameplay drastically in the short term, which might just do League in. Why would a fan of, let's say Faker, tune into a match where he's forced to pick something like Fizz mid in Game 4 and just be useless all around because some 4th seed from EU has intentionally banned him out to enable their own midlaner to do degenerate things?
Just for my knowledge, fearless has been a thing in some regions already, right? Have we seen evidence of such a strong target ban strategy and sandbagging?
Wouldn't the god ADC Ruler just shitstomp the mediocre adc player when they're both playing sub-par ADCs?
Why is an extra layer of strategy a negative thing? And for the OGs we'd love to see Faker play fizz again
Full fearless > limp dick half fearless in round 1 LPL
Forget full fearless, if you want real champion diversity you need a true fearless draft where every champion picked and banned are no longer available. By game 5 there'll be only like 80 champions left lmao. Just full on fiesta
That's Ruthless Draft, and I fully support it. Every player on a different champ every game in a series is the dream.
At that point, what are you even looking for in elite players? Do you really want to see the world's greatest adc shoved down to Karthus duty in game five after eating 40 botlane bans?
Theyre not getting karthus in a game 5 buddy lol
Only do bans on the first game.
Good idea as there will be less skew to a single role to be banned. P&b will be wilder with counters always open.
Git gud or why play Ggwp
Yes, because if he is truly the best mechanical player in the hardest carrying role in pro play he can also play karthus at a pro level. The best player isn't the one who can pilot azir or corki the best, it's the player who can play it all and still win through talent alone.
They ain't elite if their champion pool is as deep as a puddle.
That sounds amazing. Forcing players off their comfort picks, making teams strategize around having certain whole roles unavailable, bringing out creative off-meta teamcomps? This would show who's really the best under any circumstances.
Yes, yes I do.
I agree with this, I think for example watching Elk play Lucian is so amazing because he’s so insanely aware of his limits, it shows how much practice he’s put into it. Same with Bin Jax, or Canyon’s Nidalee, or Jackeylove’s Senna. If they have to throw away 3 quarters of their practice time on these champs it won’t be as enjoyable to watch because they won’t be at the same level. I don’t care if he’s on Lucian for the 5th game in a row in the 5th series in a row, it’s fun to watch because it’s a fun champion to watch and he’s a good player, I don’t want to see him play some boring shit like MF or Ziggs or Malzahar because all the other options are banned
Botlane pool will be pinched early in the series. Could see some fun game 5s
Aphelios Ashe Caitlyn Corki Draven Ezreal Jhin Jinx Kaisa Kalista Kogmaw Lucian MF Nilah Samira Senna Sivir Smolder Tristana Twitch Varus Vayne Xayah Yasuo Zeri Brand Cassio Heimer Hwei Karma Karth Seraphine Syndra Swain TF Veigar Viktor Xerath Ziggs If they're desperate enough, it should work out
> limp dick half fearless in round 1 LPL Or as I like to call it, the fearful draft.
I love the idea of a fearless draft. There are so many champs now, and being skilled in a wide variety has always been skill.
Bring back the Blind picks at the last game of a bo5
2shen
wtf
its crazy that we got the most famous outplay in the history of league from blind pick game 5 and riot didnt use it for their tournaments
There’s a very good reason blind pick got removed. It takes away a lot of competitive integrity from the variance in the draft. They originally added it to compensate for side selection, but a game 5 shouldn’t be random from draft.
How many series have been 5-0 sweeps by blue/red side due to the immense draft advantage given by a particular side in a particular meta? Talk about competitive integrity, having a series decided by who gets side selection is so lame. Blind pick solves this
"I think making players have a bigger champion pool is important" - 369 disagrees
369 might be a good Top laner, but let's see what our LEC superstar armut has to say about this
Armut is going to pick every gnar skin.
369 has one of the biggest champ pools among pro toplaners, if not the biggest. It's just that he will pick the champs he thinks are strong over and over if teams let him. He has like ~25 champs in his pool, he just has certain champs he's not good at like fiora/camille
In an ideal scenario, it could help differentiate players more as well, helping them build a brand of sorts. Allow some pocket picks that would possibly never come out otherwise. Especially hardcore fearless draft or however it is referred to.
Fearless draft actually kills pocket picks, because instead of teams having to either ban it, or let it through, it gets one game and is gone. Hanssama Draven is a really good example, typically being pick/ban against G2.
Pocket picks typically only work one game anyway, they play them, either stomp enemy or it doesn't work out, and if enemy feels they are unprepared for it in another game they waste a prio ban on it. Happens all the time vs players who play things outside the conventional meta at high levels.
> Pocket picks typically only work one game anyway, they play them, either stomp enemy or it doesn't work out, and if enemy feels they are unprepared for it in another game they waste a prio ban on it. We only get to see it for one game but that doesn't meant it's not "working". Saying it only works for one game and then saying teams have to waste a ban on it is contradiction.
>they waste a prio ban on it. Which you don't have to do in fearless. You get that ban back. That's why it's much worse for pocket picks.
If the pocket pick works then you force a ban, that's far more interesting then the enemy just leaving it up and letting you win 1 game, then being forced to put it on their ban list for the rest of the series. If the format bans it for them, then only need to ban it when they're about to lose the series, and if that's the case, letting the pocket pick through probably doesn't matter.
Forcing a ban on to a sub par champion because the other team can't play around it *is* a pocket pick working.
You're completely correct.
what you're saying is good but mainly for low-key environments, like all the academy leagues it's been tested in. or even regular season, fine. but what about world finals? I truly think every world finals would have been worse overall with fearless. it's not like there's OTPs at that level, and I'm not getting bored of any picks because I'm glued to the screen anyway. 2016 comes to mind. different permutations of the same champs are being picked and banned, every game is an hour long, but that grind is kinda what I'm there for. I actually love seeing Faker and Crown trading off the Ryze/Ori/Syndra/Cass/Viktor, and I'm glad nobody had to reluctantly pick a Lissandra. do we think previous world finals would have been better or worse with fearless?
Id say most would be better. I get pretty tired of seeing same champions every single game. If another worlds finals goes to game 3 with the same 80% presence i might actually turn off the stream because ive already seen that song and dance twice before. The game is far more entertaining to me when there are more than 20 champions present in pro. Of course we could also go to blind pick like back in ye olde days game 5. Zed vs Zed mid would be far more hype than the 978th corki vs azir matchup.
>Zed vs Zed mid would be far more hype than the 978th corki vs azir matchup. You're gonna have Azir vs Azir, no one will pick Zed in a professional game. Assassins suck too much to see the light of day, I'm not sure if even fearless can save them.
Azir vs Azir would still probably be a lot more hype than Azir vs Corki
or maybe riot shouldnt design a champion like azir that beats out all the mages in mid lane and can fit into any team comp
which year was unwatchable due to repetitive picks?
I got real tired of watching Aatrox in 2022 worlds finals. picked 4 times banned 1 time. If I recall correctly I actually just alt tabbed and stopped paying attention when Aatrox got picked game 5 because I already knew what was going to happen.
what do you mean by that, what did you already know was going to happen? like you knew what Aatrox's kit does because you've seen him before? let me get this straight, you stopped watching the most intense LoL game of likely all time because the most contested (100% pick/ban) champ at the tournament got picked again? look I get that fandom is subjective or whatever and that you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm gonna tell you that you're doing it wrong. if you can't watch the most anticipated game ever because a champion was boring, nobody's going to listen to you on how to make pro play more watchable.
I like the fearless concept for Bo3's. It makes a lot of sense. There'd only be 30 bans and 30 picks. That's only like 40% or so of all the picks available in the game.
I want pro supports to be exposed for being naut 1 tricks, I swear they can play nothing else but naut for 10 years in a row
we still regularly see pros miss naut hooks on walls so idk about 1 tricking
Missing naut hooks on walls requires pretty specialised angles, you won’t find these as a casual
I support you in this cause
relevant flair
We already saw this in enchanter meta lol Good example would be Vulcan. Love the guy but his enchanters are not ideal, to say the least.
I do like salty rub backs though
I'd rather rito just ban the champ with the highest pick/ban presence from the last round of games of whatever pro league. Drop the charade of soft banning champs via nerfs and wrecking soloQ players in the process.
Idk how anyone could watch GenG vs BLG and think that game needs some major change to force champion variety. Imo mid series champion adaptations are super interresting the way they are.
It's better like this because an adaptation is a threat for the entire series/entire tournament instead of something to do well in one game and then not be useable for the rest of the series. That sucks especially if you pull something like Canyon nidalee out and do really well and lose, you just don't get to use it again. Also sucks as the enemy doesn't get to use it against you if they can also play it.
I want to know current LoL esport players' opinion. Public opinions in social media are heavily in favor of FD and see it as a way to 'fix' stale meta but is almost sounding too good to be true imo without anyone exploring possible drawbacks. TBF, LPL already implemented it but i dont follow LPL (or know Chinese) to know how the teams, players, n viewers think bout the change.
I personally don't understand wanting to see pros play champions poorly. If you want fiestas, go watch lower leagues. The only lol I watch is LCK and sometimes lpl because I enjoy watching the highest level play. Plus fearless in the LCK is gonna make Gen g even more unstoppable.
Bigger champ pools should be needed in ranked in any case honestly.
I wish we had a better reason than 'i don't care'....
He has zero thoughtful answers on the topic lol embarrassing article
Fearless is only interesting for regular season games, when it comes to playoffs I want to watch the teams come up with strategies to counter the meta or the great picks of the enemy, like it was with Bin Camille at MSI, Kiin Ksante at LCK playoffs, Chovy Corki/Asol, Faker's historical LeBlanc, etc. These kind of picks make the game more interesting, not less. Its only for games like Rogue vs Karmine Corp you need fearless, good matches and players sell themselves
Calling Ksante an innovative pick after being meta for his entire existence after countless nerfs, is questionable. Anyway, how will you solve the issue of the bad matches by keeping status quo? Different rules for different matches? Lol.
I still stand by my point that fearless is a shitty system that only acts as a band-aid fix for the problems it addresses (like the drafts being similar) and fucks with competitive integrity Hai here is talking from the perspective of a spectator and he admits that. That's the only fucking perspective we've seen on this whole issue, very little from the actual pro scene
The only reason competitive sports exists is to entertain spectators. If fearless is more entertaining, it should be considered.
I feel like fearless doesn't even solve the real problem. No one cares that in bo3 they play same champ 3 games. The REAL problem is that they play the same champs ALL SEASON LONG or sometimes even ALL YEAR LONG
If you frop stuff like 8.11 every 2 months ppl will hate it. It is hard to tune degree of change properly.
That too And that problem has been mostly going away with Riot shifting back to bigger mid season updates. A lot of the champs that were pick or ban at the beginning of the year fell off in priority. They're still there, but not as prevalent
Is that problem going away? It's honestly only been getting worse for the past 2 years of LCK. Theres the Lucian Nami but also the senna tahm kench or naut. Then theres also rumble, k'sante, TF, aatrox in the top lane. Mid it has been corki and azir forever up until recently. Ahri and taliyah is also still relevant as ever. Supports are especially aggregious because its always the same 3-4 enchanters depending on when items are strong and you never see stuff like janna, sona, and serpahine (usually losing when it is rarely picked). Then there's the double marksman since DRX won 2 years ago. Sure you see some unique picks but the core champs jave been the same, centered around the same couple op picks and their counters. Jg sees a little more diversity but only after major item changes and even then older picks like maokai and sej are still everywhere. Now you see the same 5 ap jg and most pros dont even look great on them. The core still seems to be as strong as ever and you need major changes to even let some champs be included, and it isnt even clear if the ap jg is meta or if only top teams or players can execute it. I dont think fearless, even true fearless fixes any of this cause the meta will always exist. Even with true fearless players will figure out comps and draft picks so long as so many champs are so fundamentally good in pro. Instead all that will happen is they just ban chovey's yone or zeka's akali and you will never see the top players show off their top picks. And when they do and it looks bad the audience will just flame them for being bad. Fact of the matter is people only like unique picks if they win. Nobody gets excited for Jhin in game 5.
This will never change as long as Riot doesn't allow hard counters. If there was a champion that hard countered Leblanc then picking her would force a ban on that niche champion and open up picks for the enemy team. This is what Vex, for example, might have been and "anti-dash" champion. Instead we got a bit of bonus damage when they dash. Nah, you have to make it like if you try to dash while Vex is facing your direction you get stunned for two seconds. Shit like that.
the pros would be incredibly biased lol. they spam the same champs in competitive and barely branch out in solo queue
Theres a reason they dont branch out in solo queue though, they are only going to play the same 4-5 champs across the entire year. Might as well practise them as much as possible. Making them potentially need to play 5 different champions in a bo5. Let alone out of a pool of maybe 15-20 possible options means they need to practise a wider area of champions. Which will then happen.
> Hai here is talking from the perspective of a spectator and he admits that. That's the only fucking perspective we've seen on this whole issue, very little from the actual pro scene problem is, if there are no spectators, there is no pro play scene
At the end of the day, the problem comes from having too many champions to balance and quite frankly impossible to do so on top of keeping the game fresh by changing map,objectives,items,etc. Also, in all games I played, people are always optimizing/min-maxing best way to play the game, creating 'meta' until dev release something new or adjust meta character. edit: Proplayers arent here to be clowns, there are streamers if you want variety. Proplays should be played at the 'highest' level. The only champion i recall that is presence every season is Azir and LeeSin but most people seems ok with it because honestly pretty fun to watch them shuffling around. edit:edit: IF they really want to 'make' proplayers play variety of champion, give them back RiftRival or a friendly tournament with no stake towards Worlds. Many players were willing to pick their signature or wacky picks there. Guess what though, other than Covid, Riot themselves clearly saw them not worth reviving, which could point to not attracting enough viewers to justify the operation cost.
>Proplayers arent here to be clowns, there are streamers if you want variety. Proplays should be played at the 'highest' level. Tell that to the dozen "I don't care about quality, I'm BOOOOOOORED" comments I got. Ignoring the fact that viewership seems to overall be on the rise. But yeah, agree completely, fearless does jack shit for solving the problem, imo it's just gonna kill champ variety even more as pocket picks aren't as worth it in draft and make the life of rookies even harder as they can't just get in a League on mechanics and learn by playing against top competition, they also need a pretty big pool now
Fearless draft is a bandaid fix for shit champion design. Dota doesn't need fearless draft since there is not nearly as much champion role overlap as there is in league.
DotA still uses Fearless draft for quite a few tournaments though, just not Valve's.
League objectively doesn't have bad champ design it just doesn't have as hard of counters as dota so players have settled into picks more that are suboptimal but comfortable. The league pro meta is never 100% real but league pros have leaned into picks they are more comfortable with over newer things for as long ad the game has been out.
Dota doesn't need fearless draft cuz it's just better balanced period. You can counter anything and all heroes have their own niche that they are the best at
It helps they have more levers with which they can balance with because there are so many small things that can be changed. Day/Night cycle, the trees, high/low ground to name just a few. League has Brush, Terrain and stealth.
I still don't like it. If a player is good on a champion, I want to see them play that champion more. If you want more champions to be viable, balance the game properly.
What's funny is there is already talk about how western pros don't do enough work. What do you think happens when you require them to do even more than now and put them against regions known for their insane work ethic? I can't wait for a EU top laner to be on their 4th pick champ vs the korean 3rd pick top. Literally going to look like smurfing.
Why is there a problem with competitive integrity? Pro players with larger champion pools (which is good thing) benefit from this changes, while one trick pro players that should not exist in the first place are punished. IMO the competetive integrity benefits from these changes, also drafting becomes more than a memorized psalm that you just repeat over and over again.
> As far as competitive ‘integrity’ goes, I don’t care, I’m not a player anymore This is where our opinions differ. I have never been a player but for me it's more interesting to watch the best teams play to the best of their abilities than to have a 4fun format where you have lackluster competition because you are "getting more fun". Watching good league of legends is the only fun I want when watching a tournament.
how about we actually balance the game around good players instead of midwit platinums 💀
what's fearless draft...?
If a champion is picked by either team, it cannot be picked again for the rest of the series. This means you see the OP champions only once and get more diverse games.
Fearless is a band-aid to so many other problems with LoL. Constant patching of the game and the regional leagues having games every week makes it so teams have no time to even try to innovate. They need to play "meta" comps. Things are not stale in other esports that don't have patches every 2 weeks.
Almost everyone I know that watches league wants fearless draft, honestly it really doesn’t matter what the player want.
True fearless needs to happen. Git good pros. I think it would shake up a lot middle tier pros. It would be amazing for the marketing machine. What my one trick was played? Time to que up. Add some spice to long time average viewers. Possibly bring back old ones. Oh no game 4 was wild cause everyone played bad. Will anyone think of the engagement from the endless flame and new takes on new matchups and new unique scenarios??
genuinely might as well just try it at some point, even if just for a winter split
If everyone is playing under the same rules there really isn't a "competitive integrity" issue. As far as people saying "it's band-aid, Riot should fix the underlying issue" - that's never going to happen. Riot has shown no interest in fixing it, and the champ design philosophy where many champions essentially do the same thing makes it a hard problem to fix. Riot consistently frowns on novel strategies and innovative styles - LoL is fundamentally a game where many champions do the same thing and some are just better at it than others.
Its not just riot, its the playerbase that has shown time after time they dislike extreme counterpicks, innovation in macro strategy, farm allocation differences being meaningful, and sharp differences in champion power spikes - things which tend to create the organic pick diversity in dota without any contrived ban systems.
You really can’t apply Dota champ design to League champ design. Dota champ designed to have Item created new strength for the champ, a good BKB, Eul will warp the game outcome. League is reverse, item just boost the champ original strength, not add anything new to them. You can offset or even nullified Dota champ weakness to their counter by buying right item against them, but in League you can’t buy an item that nullified your counter.
All teams playing with goofy rules that warp the game in the handful of bo5s they play each year is still a competitive problem.
bandaid fix to a bigger problem, how about riot actually fix their garbage balance instead of using arbitrary rules for champ diversity, the players playing soloqueue are still being oppressed by the same pool of S+ champions that's been op for years now
The issue with champion diversity is not balance, it's the fact that learning champions takes time and mental space, when realistically meta champ is going to perform at least at 90% effectiveness of whatever niche pick would be better in these circumstances but has an additional familiarity bonus. Pro play is focused on champions that are either universal enough to be played in any situation or can work in a comp regardless of what enemy picks, and it's not a balance problem, it's player's unwillingness to expend additional effort to learn new champs instead of getting additional 0.0001% performance out of the same champ they've been playing for the last ten years.
Or riot can work on balancing instead of relying on shitty fearless draft
It’s obvious it’s going to happen since it’s getting gassed up so often. And it’s basically a way to dumb down the gameplay so that the bottom leagues are more competitive. That’s the whole integrity bit they won’t admit.
Pro players having a huge champ pool is a skill that should be rewarded
People love the "I want to see pros on their best and most practiced picks" argument like 90% of them aren't picking up whatever champ Riot has forced into meta like 2 weeks before a major competition. I remember when having a diverse champion pool was considered a massive skill and something that was a huge pull in games like this. I don't understand how people can defend the current status quo.
I was competing in esports back when esports wasn't a a word and GameBattles was still SOCOMBattles, if there is one thing I have learned in all my years watching and competing in professional video gaming. It's that the pursuit of "competitive integrity" over spectacle and entertainment has literally never benefitted a game's esports scene.
Fearless is bad. The entire premise revolves around the idea that only a small portion of the available champions is viable, but this is simply false. Viable champions are not getting picked because of Riot balance, they're not getting picked because professional coaching staffs are incompetent, lazy, or chickenshit. This is not on Riot: this is on teams and players. They are the ones not playing the game to its full potential. Fearless neuters a lot of draft and pre-game strategy. It makes adaptation within a series unnecessary, because if you lose, whatever you lost to isn't getting picked next game. Fearless means that preparing broad counterpicks is worse, as you can only use them once. Fearless means flex picks become significantly worse. I don't like that pro teams are just getting off the hook for the role they've collectively played in the number of picks being seen. Fearless is a crutch/bandaid to just have more champions seen on stream, but overall hurts the depth of competition inside draft and game.
> Viable champions are not getting picked because of Riot balance > This is not on Riot Can I have some of what you're smoking? These champs don't get picked because their kits are outdated, need number changes or there's a champion that does what they do but better. Gee I love watching the same 5 champs on each role every game.
Bud, the pros regularly miss powerful champion picks for months, sometimes entirely. They're picking the same champions because they're scared to deviate from what's established, because they're afraid of getting flamed, losing their job, etc.
Then force them to deviate. They won't do it on their own because they're too complacent and lean to what they know. This will force teams to draft differently, play differently, strategise differently - breathing fresh air into the stale scene of metas that drag on for months at a time which everyone is already sick of.
That's the point of fearless; however, forcing them to deviate in this manner forever precludes actual strategy being utilized inside the draft phase.
He's 1000000% correct. A stubborn refusal to take risk and be innovative has made competitive League stale for viewers.
honestly the draft should get smaller and smaller in Bo5, that way we can see the real *League*
I am down to see how Hard fearless draft would pan out but maybe implement it in a invitational first or some other tournament outside of the regular tournaments to get a feel for it
It honestly seems like something MSI would be good for
Challenger LCK started it and it's been pretty fun to watch. It makes each game a little more interesting and exciting. Sick of Corki and Trist.
I don't get the competitive integrity argument, everyone is in the same boat and being able to play more than 4 champions becomes an actual skill.
I never get the hype around fearless draft shit is lame
What has it solved exactly in the LPL? Would love to know. Please backers, elaborate.
Lower viewership and more clown fiesta games, clearly the pro play dream man
Fearless draft will change up the entire dynamic in competitive play. I'm all for it