League of Legends players are fed up this week with Riot Games’ approach to balancing and an ever-stale meta featuring the same champions, but the community—inspired by arch-rival MOBA Dota 2—believes a simple change to the drafting phase might fix the problem.
The debate was sparked in a Sept. 16 Reddit thread following the release of Briar in Patch 13.18, and the solution many believe can work is to increase the number of bans during the champion draft. With a total of 165 champions to choose from now and only ten bans during the draft, players believe that they should take notes from Dota 2’s ban phase and scale accordingly.
When Dota 2 was established, a match saw ten heroes banned during the draft phase. But, following the March 7 release of Muerta, Dota’s playable hero count is now 124 and the game has adapted, now allowing up to 16 characters to be banned—albeit with a bit of random chance.
Players can place a vote to ban a unique hero each, with a 50 percent chance of the ban succeeding. The system will then automatically ban additional heroes based on their ban rate in the MMR bracket of the specific match.
While this exact pick-and-ban method may not be every League player’s cup of tea, the idea of introducing more bans is one players agree with. “There should definitely be more bans,” one commenter said, remarking that players at each skill bracket would basically balance the game for themselves.
With so few bans on offer for a standard League match, the limitations have left one player debating between banning their worst counterpick, or the flavor of the week rate champ. Another player is keen on the idea of playing against a wider variety of champs, believing versatility when playing League is as much a necessary skill as anything else.
The argument is not entirely unanimous, however, as some players show concern that it may impact one-tricks such as Zed or Irelia, with the decision stemming from frustration rather than necessity.
The specific question of increasing the number of bans in a League match is long-standing, with the issue addressed by Riot Games three years ago in a 2020 edition of Ask Riot aptly titled “I Want More Bans.”
In the blog post, Riot considered the upsides to increasing bans, primarily the fact players would have more control over matchups and greater potential for strategy. However, Riot also identified numerous drawbacks, from the complexity of the champ select, to entire positions and classes being banned from matches.
In the beginning, League only had six bans, and shifting it up to ten to give all players an equal say makes complete sense. However, with more champions being released every year, the complexity of the game state has increased—and they’re not planning on slowing down.
Despite the consistent flow of new champions, Riot has not mentioned any changes to the pick and ban phase, at least for now. With a new season on the horizon, they may be open to revisiting some old ideas, even if Dota thought of it first.
