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a lot of the individual champion analysis is rather weak, assassins became increasingly weaker as the level of competition got higher (later rounds) Gragas and Orianna 2 champions not even listed in your mid lane analysis were the priority picks by the end of the tournament, Ahri for instance was <50% winrate in any series where each team won at least one game and I did that calculation before the finals. I also feel Zed ban rate is a testament to balance (although I am sure I am alone on this one) there really isn't anything in the game right now forcing you to ban anything else so why not just ban Zed. tl;dr Assassins excel in one sided games, worlds was not exactly the most evenly matched tournament.
Irelia/Riven/Fiora comparison is worth a mention to me. first Irelia has traditionally been played as a bruiser with the exception of Wickd's lightning build while Fiora and Riven are both damage dealers, Fiora is an auto attack damage dealer more akin to Trynd or Jax, while Riven is a caster in the vein of Talon or Zed. I'm actually really suprised we didn't see Irelia at all as she can use both trinity and visage well, I think had Jax been exploited in the earlier rounds we might have seen it as it is a decent lane for her, and she can actually duel late game Jax.
Where did Jayce go? is this a real question? I went over this before but I can go over it again, Jayce OP was mostly an abuse of an item timing that would get him into snowball mode where he would be 1-2 items ahead of everyone else on the board before the timing wore off (not unlike cutlass Zed). Before the CJ teams unveiled the manamune rush build Jayce had a ~30% pick ban rate in OGN, yet when manamune was nerfed they chose to nerf Jayce as well, which resulted in a 30% pick/ban champion receiving a 100% increase on his main spell at level 18, it's not a tricky concept to understand.
I really like the thought behind the article, and I share the sentiment but I think some of the analysis is just a bit off.
if they would change one thing interweaving bans would make the most difference if they would change two, I think something akin to tp scrolls would be the 2nd best thing for making more champions viable, that said the map is so small it could not be just a direct copy of tp scrolls as they exist in DOTA without creating just as many problems as they alleviate (but the game does need some way to force 5v5 aside from Baron and Dragon because they aren't cutting it at the moment.)
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United States23745 Posts
Jayce wasn't a troll pick, Dade just can't play anything else lol.
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I agree with the above poster who mentioned that both Gragas and Orianna were very high priority picks by the end of the tournament. Leaving this fact out of your analysis of mid lane weakens it significantly.
Generally, I agree with the basic premise. Competitive champion diversity in League needs to be improved.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 08 2013 19:10 Capped wrote: Multiphase bans or more bans wont happen because of SoloQ.
The thing is, this isn't valid because the competitive game mode does not have to be (hell, it SHOULDN'T) be the same as the solo queue game mode.
3 pre-emptive bans in solo queue makes sense because nobody drafts in solo queue. Solo queue bans act as a safety net for the case where there's accidentally a hero that's way out of line and you can use bans to catch that rather than making the game miserable to play until its patched. It doesn't have gameplay the way bans in competitive play do because 5 players that don't know each other aren't going to put a coherent team comp together on the spot. They're just going to pick what they want to play.
The ruse is up. 5s play and solo queue have diverged far enough that you have to accept that the two game modes have different needs, and you have to make the draft different for 5s play if you expect the game to remain healthy.
On October 08 2013 23:46 Capped wrote: So you're between a rock and a hard place, seperate modes for top teams and soloQ (even differences between tiers like suggested) creates a rift. Having a complicated pick/ban phase creates a rift. The rift already exists, trying to pretend it doesn't is stupid and naive.
From people on amateur teams I've talked to trying to go competitive, learning how to B/P properly is probably the biggest divide in trying to go from solo queue stars to a professional team.
Everyone the difference between solo queue and competitive play is actually relevant to already recognizes that gap. Making the ban/pick phase in competitive play doesn't widen that gap because solo queue drafting is already 0% relevant to competitive play even if ostensibly the format is the same.
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On October 09 2013 01:12 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 19:10 Capped wrote: Multiphase bans or more bans wont happen because of SoloQ.
The thing is, this isn't valid because the competitive game mode does not have to be (hell, it SHOULDN'T) be the same as the solo queue game mode. 3 pre-emptive bans in solo queue makes sense because nobody drafts in solo queue. Solo queue bans act as a safety net for the case where there's accidentally a hero that's way out of line and you can use bans to catch that rather than making the game miserable to play until its patched. It doesn't have gameplay the way bans in competitive play do because 5 players that don't know each other aren't going to put a coherent team comp together on the spot. They're just going to pick what they want to play. The ruse is up. 5s play and solo queue have diverged far enough that you have to accept that the two game modes have different needs, and you have to make the draft different for 5s play if you expect the game to remain healthy.
I completely disagree with this. I think it's extremely important that the game the fans are playing and the game the professionals are playing are the same game. There are any number of reasons why this is the case.
That said, I'm not really sure why you can't have phased bans in solo queue.
Lets say just to throw it out there that the way they phased the bans was something like:
3x ban <> 3x ban 1x pick <> 2x pick 1x ban <> 1x ban 2x pick <> 2x pick 2x pick <> 1x pick
So we're adding one more round of bans after the first 3 champions are picked. I'm not going to say that's the best way to do it but it's fairly simple and works for explaining my point.
If you want to add strategy and complexity to your drafting in this situation, you can. If the first pick is an ADC you can ban a support that works well with that ADC for example, or if the first pick is a solo laner you can ban counterpicks to that lane. That's just a simple example of the sort of things a team can do and that's awesome.
But the key thing here is you don't HAVE to do it that way. If having 4 bans at the start means you just mindlessly ban what you think the OP champions are, you're still perfectly capable of doing that with phased bans. Basically what you've done here is added to the ceiling of how strategically complex drafting is, but you haven't made the requirements any more stringent.
That's also not to say that adding more bans at the start of the game is bad. I'm a fan of phased bans and I would like to see them, but more bans at the start of the game I think would also be helpful. Perhaps not as helpful, but better than nothing.
Just to give an example of the 2013 finals, if there were 1 more ban allowed per team I imagine Royal would have been banning Jax and the entire series could have looked a lot different.
Also Xeris, you said you were going to say what champions you considered to be troll picks and then never did, far as I can see.
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They aren't playing the same game already. It's a lie people use to justify the lack of change.
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To be honest Jax (The champion in itself) was not the problem in the finals, in game 1 the malphite pick served it's purpose, he was able to out cs Jax while holding his tower at a significantly higher health in the 1v2, to the point that he was able to bully after the swap, but the TP mid that gave up ~3 waves and 3/4 of his towers hp for literally 0 gain, the decision making, made Jax a problem, Malphite with a lead vs Jax is not going to lose his team the game the way that Expession's farm made it look like at the end of the game.
It's unfortunate the Analyst desk opted to point this out as a champion issue, rather than the player/decision making issue that it was.
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United States47024 Posts
But the key thing here is you don't HAVE to do it that way. If having 4 bans at the start means you just mindlessly ban what you think the OP champions are, you're still perfectly capable of doing that with phased bans. Basically what you've done here is added to the ceiling of how strategically complex drafting is, but you haven't made the requirements any more stringent.
You've missed the point.
The difference is that with no interwoven bans, banning only OP and obvious signature heroes becomes the optimal play in most scenarios. This is because you have limited information about your opponent and thus trying to make more "strategic" bans in this case is entirely a gamble because the opponent is not committed to anything. Except in cases where the teams are SO familiar with each other's drafts that pre-emptive bans are equivalent to reactive bans (only the case in sister teams from the same region, and almost never the case at Worlds) can you make strategic bans with first phase bans and not just blanket OP/signature hero bans.
Second-phase bans make the risk of strategic bans that are low-value in general but high-value to a specific team-comp far lower because the enemy is committed to something in their first 2 picks. You can guarantee that your strategic bans accomplish something. Yes it is possible to waste those bans on just blind-banning OP heroes, but when the enemy is committed to 2 picks, it is very rarely still the optimal play to do so, compared to targeted bans at potential teamcomps that can be formulated from their first 2 picks.
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No I get that. That's why phased bans are cool.
But adding them to solo queue doesn't make solo queue any more difficult. You don't have to be strategically sound with your bans, it's not like the game is going to kick you out if you just ban whatever and don't think about it.
So the people who want to have strategy in their drafting get to have it, and the people who don't aren't required to think about it. Adding phased bans to solo queue doesn't cause any problems at all.
What it does mean is that the people who are good at drafting will probably climb the ladder faster than people who aren't, and that is 100% a good thing.
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United States47024 Posts
It won't make a difference in solo queue because everyone picks their own shit. It won't make teamcomps any more or less coherent.
All it does in solo queue is make the draft longer, and therefore more annoying when someone dodges in champ select.
On October 09 2013 01:27 Numy wrote: They aren't playing the same game already. It's a lie people use to justify the lack of change. Amusingly, we got the same shitty argument at the start of competitive WoL, when we got those absolutely god-awful default Blizzard maps in every tournament. So instead of having real competitive maps that did exist, we had a shit-tastic map pool for months that honestly probably turned more people off from the competitive game than any similarity to ladder games drew in.
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Does Solo Queue need drastic improvements?
Adding more bans at the start of the game would have the same time delays. The point is that it doesn't cause problems and remains the same format that's being used for competitive play.
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United States47024 Posts
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Another possible argument that I think could work would be to have bans at the start of the game in the solo/duo queue ladder, and phased bans for the 5v5 ladder where it would actually matter more. Same number of bans, just at different times.
But I don't think having a draft format that's only used at the LCS level and not in the actual game the fans play is a good idea, especially with Riot saying the way you get into the LCS is to go through the in-game 5v5 ladder.
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Though Yango keeps advocating interwoven bans, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with just all front bans. We still see really deep ban strategies from the highest tier of teams. Also, considering only 3 bans and 5 picks, and the recent item fuck up (triforce+SV changes), some champions became increasingly dominant, I thought champion spread was perfectly fine. I believe it was like 65 or 66 champs ban/pick'd.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2013 03:43 Ketara wrote: Another possible argument that I think could work would be to have bans at the start of the game in the solo/duo queue ladder, and phased bans for the 5v5 ladder where it would actually matter more. Same number of bans, just at different times.
But I don't think having a draft format that's only used at the LCS level and not in the actual game the fans play is a good idea, especially with Riot saying the way you get into the LCS is to go through the in-game 5v5 ladder. I think interwoven bans makes sense for 5v5 ladder. The point is that if you are playing as a 5-man stack, drafting does have value, whereas in solo queue people just pick what they feel like playing.
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I think the idea is that there's nothing wrong with frontloaded bans, but phased bans would just be better. I think that's pretty self evident and hard to argue against.
Either way, I think it's difficult to not agree that more bans would improve the competitive scene at this point.
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You can't expect people to be amazing with more than a small pool of champions. They practice the same 5 or so champions as much as they can and they want to get strongest with the strongest champions.
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On October 09 2013 03:57 wei2coolman wrote: Though Yango keeps advocating interwoven bans, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with just all front bans. We still see really deep ban strategies from the highest tier of teams. Also, considering only 3 bans and 5 picks, and the recent item fuck up (triforce+SV changes), some champions became increasingly dominant, I thought champion spread was perfectly fine. I believe it was like 65 or 66 champs ban/pick'd.
Front loaded bans are extremely boring because they are extremely predictable. They also offer pretty much zero strategic depth (apart from one-time niche comps).
This is the case with betting in poker. In machine poker your bet is a priori given any rerolls and so the EV table is pretty much completely fixed. It is stale and lacking in variety.
In any variation of hold'em you have interwoven bets which are based on updated conditional inferencing, allow much more adaptive and thus varied play.
Basically if your complaint is the competitive champion pool is stale, then you cannot ignore that front loaded ban system will always have a weakly inferior complexity than interwoven bans.
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I'd have to agree.
For soloq, the 6 bans are basically going to be the OP's. Honestly what I think you could do to make ban phase go faster while adding bans in solo q is just do a 2/2/1/1 for bans, and then after 2(3) picks by either side, you have another 1/1(2/2) phase for bans. Still have a total of 6 ban turns, just get more bans. You'd now need 20 different champions for ranked play, but honestly that shouldn't be a big issue.
Ranked 5v5/competitive can have the full draft mode with 1/1 ban phases where it actually matters.
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On October 09 2013 04:10 seoul_kiM wrote: You can't expect people to be amazing with more than a small pool of champions. They practice the same 5 or so champions as much as they can and they want to get strongest with the strongest champions.
If the fans wanted Faker to play Zed every game, you'd hear them cheering super loud and freaking out every time he picks Zed.
But they don't. What they cheer for is that rare Jayce pick or even the troll Teemo pick. Fans want champion diversity. Saying a professional player can only be good at 5 champions is a cop out.
In fact, even 5 champions is more than we are seeing from some of these pro players, some of the people who got out of group stages in worlds this year we only ever saw on 2-3 champions. 5 would be a huge improvement.
The only argument I've ever really seen for "more bans is bad" that I think has some merit is this idea that some players are known for specific signature champions and Riot doesn't want that player to be banned out in 100% of games, like what we used to see with say Froggens Anivia in season 2. I think there's some credibility to that concept.
However, if that is a legitimate worry, phased bans can solve that problem too. If you were to increase the ban count to 4, only have 2 at the start and then the other 2 woven in, you're actually reducing the ability of a team to ban a signature champion before it can be picked, while simultaneously increasing the total number of bans and drafting complexity.
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