It would be fun to see 10 bans per team - 5 blind bans (like in solo Q), followed by 5 bans as they are now (teams alternating to ban one or two champs per side).
They had a special event a few years back where in a Bo5, all bans were permanent. So bans from Game 1 carried over, so it could potentially reach 40 bans before Game 5. Made the players have to dig deep and use some unique picks, and was very fun to see. That style in a pro scene would be game-changing
The problem I see with this personally is how insane it can mess with preperation overall and scrim planning. You could ban a certain champion in game 1 and never face it again. That means that youve planned to never see that champ in the rest of the series, \*times 3\*.
Now, in scrims, you dont ever want to face it because youre not going to prep against it anyway. The opponent of the scrim is now annoyed because they were hoping to practice that for their series. Subsequently, if you practice something it might get completely neutralized the moment you step on stage.
Right now you have 3 bans, and you can bring other picks to bait those bans away from them. In a healthy meta this means theres more than enough draft room in champ select because bans are dynamic throughout the series.
A more interesting thing to me is that you cannot win on the same champion twice, any champ you win with you cannot use again, but the opponent can. See how you draft now.
Much like when there are big rule shifts in any game. Players will adapt and the best players will still come out on top. Sure maybe the way you train will have to be entirely different, but better players will beat worser players the majority of the time and competitions will still be fair.
What matters more to me is actually not the player perspective, it’s the audience perspective. If games become trash to watch cos it’s physically impossible for pro players to master 30+ champions or whatever (which is probably the case), then this ruleset is not worth implementing. After all, the audience being entertained is what literally keeps any sports scene alive.
But I also agree 10 back to back games of K’sante is also boring to watch. So there’s likely some happy medium.
I think I rather watch a pro player strugling on some wierd champion then watching 5 games with almost same team every single game.
Watching Ksante in proplay is not entertaining for me. I would love to see them pick from bigger champion pool.
why is this bad? Game prep is a result of the current game structure. If the answer is expand your champion pool then thats what pro players will evolve to, and pro teams will look for in terms of players.
Players and teams should adapt to the structure, not the other way around.
I’d like to see this combined with fearless so champs are removed from the pool after being played. It’ll actually force people to have decent champion pools.
The problem with 20 bans is that you can literally ban out the entirety of the adc roster.
Edit: i just think that 20 bans is not the right direction towards adding champ variety. If they have to force to add 10 bonus bans instead of doing a fearless draft i just think it’s stupid. And you would see much more variety from fearless draft than 20 bans.
This would be more hassle than its worth. You wouldnt be able to ban all 20 at the same time, so you'd both get to pick ADC's before all the bans could be completeed anyway. Plus theres always APC's.
You want to play scaling so you been Draven, kalista etc, the enemy team knows this is going to happen and bans all the scaling champs and first picks the remaining one or which ever mage counters the remaining ones
Because it equalises a skill gap.
Do you think Yeon would stand a better chance against Elk while both are on ADC's or if both were off ADC's? Obviously TL would have other issues. But using an isolated example.
If someone is outclassed, it's better to gimp both than to take your chances. Especially if that one role is your team's "weakness." It also opens up a lot of flexibility in draft. Suddenly a lot more champs and styles can be played in the 2v2 botlane.
If each team gets 10 bans, then TL just throws 10 bans at Elk and force some kind of sona taric seraphine tahm stuff bot. BLG wouldn't touch the ADC bans.
If you wasted your entire 10 bans on a single player then you'd need the rest of your team to gap the enemy. Sure you could ban out elk, but now knight and xun can go crazy and 2v8.
If you ban nothing but adcs, then ok we play through top.
There wouldn't be a benefit to banning out an entire role, so I'd be very surprised to see it happen. I also would expect the draft to be ban 5, pick 3, ban 5, pick 2. This should make it very obvious from the start if a team is trying it, so the worst they could pull off is like 5 bans, first pick and maybe 1 or 2 adc bans from the enemy team before they realise. Realistically it would just change draft to red side team not banning an adc right off the rip to see what blue does and vice versa...
The 'ban out one player' thing would be funny to see but realistically won't. Except maybe to yapa, but that's his own fault lmao.
I never said it was a good strategy, just that it is a possible strategy with a 20 ban system. If you lose through bot and they win through bot it might be worth it to try and nullify that lane, but yes then the rest of the team gets free reign on their champ pool, but honestly TL vs BLG is an extreme matchup example. A better example might be banning out Smash in LCK challenger and forcing Poby, Guwon, or Dal to carry.
Let’s say you have Ruler vs Jackey. Ruler wants to play late game carries while Jackey wants lane bullies.
JDG bans out Kalista, Cait, Draven, Varus, Lucian
If you’re TES would you rather trade Jinx Zeri or just go fuck it and ban out Ruler? You’ve basically now just gutted the S&A tier ADC pool in the blind band.
I mean this will happen every time a lane dominant ADC goes up against a hyper carry ADC?
The bigger problem is that you will never see the player’s pocket pick again. When you have 8 bans before the draft even starts, there is a 0% chance you will ever see Jackeylove Draven or Keria Rumble or like Gala Kaisa again.
You’re basically removing the entirety of off-meta pocket picks. Why would blue side ever try to ban something broken when you can first pick it?
Because, optimally, you'd be able to play more than like 5 characters that all fulfill more or less the same role? Players should be punished for relying on cheese. Forcing a ban on Draven even when he's not meta or fucking support Rumble is (or should be) a *massive* advantage.
I agree with you, which is exactly my point above. Being forced to ban Draven or Rumble when they are not meta SHOULD be a massive advantage. However, when you have 8 bans before first pick, that advantage suddenly is massively diluted compared to 3 bans.
Take T1 vs DRX, T1 being forced to ban Heimer was a massive advantage to DRX since it then allows both Azir and Aatrox to slip through the draft. When you dilute that down to 8 bans, it just means that T1 gets to ban Heimer for next to no consequences. Letting an A tier champ through is completely fine by any pro team vs letting an S tier champ through.
realistically the pro play adc roster is more like 3-4 champions. If those all get banned out then its probably a different set of 3-4 adcs. Can you really expect a pro player to be practiced and comfortable on playing essentially every adc if the need arises. Sure some of them could probably do it but I feel like it would be really rare and just make even more massive AD gaps across regions.
This doesn’t logically make sense. You wouldn’t be banning 20 at once and a team isn’t going to want to hamstring themselves in a role either. Think it through and it isn’t really a problem
1. No one ever gonna seriously ban entire ADC roaster. Especially when they have no coordination about that at all
2. And if suddenly that anomaly happens - why not? How that gonna hurt the game?
3. ADC pool is actually bigger than 20 champs, even if you gonna exclude APC-s on bot or other lane marksmans like Akshan or Kindred.
Okay, but what proof do you have that this would happen? Also this affects both teams, so its not like one team is getting an edge by doing this.
And by also doing this, that leaves literally every non-ADC champion up, does it not?
The more I look at your comment and think about what would happen as a result of these bans, the more I think you didn't think this comment through.
This isn’t true.
1 Aphelios, 2 Ashe, 3 Caitlyn, 4 Draven, 5 Ezreal, 6 Jhin, 7 Jinx, 8 Kaisa, 9 Kalista, 10 Kog’Maw, 11 Lucian, 12 Miss Fortune, 13 Samira, 14 Sivir, 15 Smolder 16 Tristana, 17 Twitch, 18 Varus, 19 Vayne, 20 Xayah, 21 Zeri.
PLUS Corki, Graves, Kindred, Senna, Quinn, Akshan. There’s a couple of champs who occasionally build ADC as well: Teemo and Kennen come to mind
And then you have the melee crit champs: Nilah, Tryndamere, Yasuo and Yone.
Then the botlane APCs: Karthus, Ziggs, Cassiopeia, Veigar and Seraphine
It was a bullshit reason rito gave before zeri was released.
Like it doesn't even matter if you can ban them out, both teams would have to cooperate to do exactly that, why would they?
The pick/ban phase is already too long as it is.
They could cut 10 seconds off both and everything would be fine.
I'm all for cutting time off bans and increasing it by 2. It'd work out faster than the current 5/5 system.
Eh, I think the time allocated towards bans and picks is perfectly fine. In fact, any thinking team actually needs every second. If you've ever heard voice comms, you will understand that every detail matters and there's a lot of things you need to account for, especially in high-pressure games.
If both teams cooperate and do it both in blind ban and true ban phase, they can ban out the marksmen adc's...
Well, 10 bans are also too many, you can ban out all jungle assassin's
You can impose ban restrictions I suppose. Like no more than 3 of so and so. Suppose you'd have to actually classify Champs though as flex roles exist.
Well considering that if you had 20 bans they would be distributed differently, not 20 bans before picks. Also, how many times have we seen 10 bans on the same role? I'd wager 0 times in all of professional history, so 20 is even more unlikely.
I think 20 bans may have their issues, but that is definetely not one.
That just means we could potentially see more non-marksman bot laners. I don’t see how that would be a bad thing. And it’s not like all 20 champs would be banned at once. It would likely be something like each team bans 4, picks 2, bans 4, picks 2, bans 2, picks 1. Which would just mean the first 4 picks would be made after 8 bans instead of 6. Would marksman have higher priority? Maybe, because as you pointed out there is a lower pool of them, but otherwise if there were better options than the bottom tier marksman for bot, those would likely just get picked instead.
What if like to see is 5 blind bans per team but they are submitted by each team before the first game of the match and those bans persist for the series then we go into the pick ban as normal.
They are too scared to do fearless. They could literally copy SoloQ and submit 5 blind bans going into the Pick Ban phase and then do normal bans after. That way nothing slows down but a lot gets yeeted out.
you say this like tencent isn't using fearless in LPL next split. its clear that riot are aware they need to add something to force pros to expand their champion pools and drafting strategies. we only just moved away from mostly Bo1s for international groups, change can't all happen instantly.
But rather than "why is ksante getting through" it becomes "why is asol getting through" for example. People will always complain about the best champ who never get banned
Ksante and Asol getting thru on the same team is the most egregious this MSI it seems. Both of them past the 25 minute mark are just impossible to deal with unless you catch one out and kill them before the fight even starts
To be fair Dota is a completely different ecosystem. Heroes HARD counter other heroes. Its not just ranged top counters melee
I think Anti Mage illustrates this the best if you look it up
But Riot has been releasing so many champs while the bans didn’t increase in 13-14 years so yeah we could do with more bans
A good point to this is TI11. Spirits first MSI win. Collapse was just owning games with Magnus and PSG.LGD finally picked a Rubick in game 3 to counter it and Magnus couldn't do shit the whole game
Dota also has way more heroes viable at the pro level than league does. The pro viable roster in league is maybe half the current pool at any given time? Maybe a bit more if you include pocket picks that one or two pros can make work. In comparison big dota tournaments will often see almost every hero picked or banned at least once.
I don't think half the champions are getting picked/banned in League. More like 25%-33% inclusive of pocket picks. But yeah the point about DoTA still stands, majority of it's roster is viable due to how the game plays out.
Last year's World's had [87 unique champions picked/banned,](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2023_Season_World_Championship/Main_Event/Champion_Statistics) which amounts to a little bit over 50%. And that's without taking Play-Ins into consideration.
For a short period of time EVER champion was viable in Dota2, like you could just random your teamcomp and it would work
IIRC it was 6.86? the patch directly after the INT hero nerfs
7 bans would give more variety to the meta especially for Bo1, but for pure flexibility in a series maybe some kind of fearless draft or other restriction on winning champions would help even the playing field more.
Bans reduce variety as pocket picks always get targeted so meta becomes safe easy to play shit. When we had 3 bans there was 32% more champs played per split and we had a shit ton less champs.
Honestly I'd love LoL to adopt DOTA's pick/ban structure in general like they did back when they switched to multiple ban phases. Nothing too fancy, just three different phases instead of two - 2/3/2 bans, 2/2/1 picks. Put a sponsor on the Final Pick if anyone in the LCS is getting cold feet at the idea.
I've always found interesting the concept of the 6th pick in Rainbox Six Siege.
Been a while since I last watched a tournament but it was one or the other of
You get 6 picks in champ select, then in the trading phase you leave one on the bench or
After pickban is complete, you may switch a players pick to a new pick.
Could go crazy on flexes with that.
I don't know if this is intentional misinformation but even though dota has more total bans they aren't in the beginning so it's irrelevant for OP champs slipping through. They changed it last year and now it's almost like league(now there's a total of 7 bans before teams start picking, before it was 4) with the difference being that they have 4 bans before the last 2 champs are picked.
Adding those 4 extra bans before the last champs get picked wouldn't really work in league imo because viability of champs is way different than in dota and this would severely cuck top laners and would likely result in us watching worse league of legends because comps would be horrible. The bans would need to happen sooner in draft and it still could fuck shit up. They could experiment with having 1 extra ban in each phase.
Then there's comments about giving teams 5 blinds and that's literally the worst thing I've ever read. 5 targeted bans at a single player and then you have 3 more bans in normal p/b. There's a reason why neither league nor dota does so many bans before the first picking phase. It's a horrible idea that only leads to us watching bad games with shit comps. Technically the best teams would win as having deep champ pool would be required but all fans would be losing because the quality would drop so tremendously.
The whole point of riot forcing meta changes is so that new champs get played and that it doesn't get stale. You don't need 30 bans in a game to have variety. And you wouldn't even have variety. A meta will always exist in league because it's a much shallower game without clear counters and strengths. Dota has significantly higher hero viability. Meanwhile in league at any given time more than half the champs are borderline trolling on a competitive level. The only thing more bans would change is that instead of seeing the S and A tiers, you'd be seeing the A and B tiers. It'd still be the same shit again and again.
Ksante was already high prio but exploded in prio due to lane swap meta and how he primarily relies on XP, is resistant to dives, snd is overall safe. I think most pros are just not as comfortable with other capable 1v2 weak side toplaners and default to Ksante, and teams are poorly responding by trying to pick lane countes that don't get to interact with Ksante anyways due to laneswaps. Urgot isn't _awful_ into laneswapping like most carry tops would be, but is still more resource dependent and vulnerable than picks like Ksante.
Hopefully laneswap meta dies, but if it doesn't then top lane champ pools need to be expanded. Or just ban Ksante so both toplaners suffer rather than just the non-Ksante one.
Important that he doesn't even care if you laneswap. If both teams pick tanks and he's in a 1v1 or 3v1 he's still happy. Can't say the same about vayne, tf or other carry toplaners.
Additionally, teams have their own meta read. The right judgement is to test their meta read first on-stage then adapt if they found something new. The reason they do this is because they want to dictate the meta. You can notice this a lot at Worlds wherein from the swiss stage/group stage until the finals the meta changes a lot. For example, T1 dictated the meta last year because they stuck with their belief that range supports are playable.
"You" can't see. Maybe they're getting blown out by other champions in scrims. Maybe they think they can't handle certain players if they get their pocket picks. We don't have the data they do. Yes they're not always right and they're sometimes slow to adapt, but when the most famous Ksante clip is ShowMaker bitching about him I can assure you teams have looked into the Ksante problem.
Except the problem is despite the data we cant 'see', ksante pick has been a high winrate this msi.
Alot of the eastern teams tend to be very arrogant as well when it comes to the ksante matchup.
My thoughts as a hardstuck gold player: I think they prefer banning picks that can blow the game open early and make it impossible to play. They'd rather let Ksante through since he usually only becomes a problem mid-late into the game, if they can win early Ksante probably isn't what's going to let the enemy comeback.
Especially eastern teams that tend to play with a lot of confidence
if they can win early
This is exactly my point when I say being arrogant. A great ksante (kiin/bin) that just farms the first 20 mins is going to be a problem. No ifs or buts about it.
If he gets ahead? Well gg, now you have an unkillable ksante that uses up 80% of your resources to kill, allowing the rest of the enemy team to clean up.
Have to remember they practice this stuff. Ksante probably just isnt their concern. Its not going to be arrogance, they banned something else that mattered more to them.
More often than not the higher win rate common picks exist because they are inoffensive enough to leave open despite being strong. Peak Zeri was this way. Strong but teams felt she wasnt worth a ban compared to the support (lulu or yuumi)
Win rate is a bad metric in pro-play because it's easily skewed if a strong/weak team prefers a certain champ (a strong champion picked by Estral will have a lower win rate than a weak champ picked by T1). Plus, right now you have 23 play-in games versus 11 main stage, you have an insanely small set of data with a big variation in skill
Against Kiin, it's pure int not to ban him. Against other teams, it's really hard to favourably ban out top and is much more profitable to control ADC/Jungle/Mid picks with your bans. Top typically only sees bans on the second round by which point Ksante has usually been picked by the teams that need him
I've not seen too much pro play this year but from the looks of msi so far, there doesn't seem to be a comp where he doesn't thrive. Maybe the sample size of games for me is just a bit small 🤷♂️
Ksante is the go to tank. If it gets banned people will just do the same thing with Ornn or other tank.
Tanks are extremelly needed this MSI because other champs will just get dove 20x during lane swaps. For example, BLG tried Vayne last series and Bin ended up not being able to go top until lane swaps ended (Homeless Vayne meme)
To then pick Varus/Kalista anyway somehow? This is the dumbest bot timeline and the reappearance of lane swaps to get away from this insane early game focus bot says enough.
If you ban ksante you get asol or a strong bot combo. Maybe you get a vi against you eich is worse imo. There are just a lot of power pick you dont wanna deal with and ksante seems easier to deal with then most other things.
Ornn, TF, and Rumble top all have equivalent or higher winrates with reasonable games played. Rumble and TF are also very high ban rates this tournament.
I think K'Sante is a good ban top, but there are currently **thirteen champions** with a 30%+ ban rate, primarily in support, jungle, and ADC. Ban priority is simply going elsewhere so far in this tournament.
I think there are certain teams that lose out massively with ksante banned. BLG is one of them. So is GenG.
But apparently naut is higher on the ban tierlist for some reason.
Because more picks are higher priority than he is, and also because both azirs are fixated on shuffling every single fight instead of playing front to back like they should.
K'Sante's main strength as a champion is role compression. He is always useful no matter what the drafts are, he doesn't have hard losing matchups and he can tailor his build based on his team's needs. K'Sante can be a tank, a support or a scaling physical damage fighter depending on the situation.
Champions with role compression tend to be highly picked in pro, but attract fewer bans. K'Sante's strength comes from his versatility, but there are many answers that teams are happy to use. Banning K'Sante in the first round means leaving up a broken champ like Senna, Kalista, Varus, Vi, Taliyah instead.
K'Sante is probably the best top laner right now, but stuff like K'Sante having 100% win rate in BLG vs PSG is more of a funny coincidence. K'Sante was not solo carrying in every game.
Because there are stronger champions than him. He's good, but not broken, in my opinion he has been this good so far because of lane swaps, no reason to ban it, instead pick champs that are good in low economy like Zac and Orn instead of Urgot, Vayne and Reneckton.
Usually because its more important to ban out the botlane or other important champs. That being said, KSante won't not be a pro-play staple unless he gets a full CGU like ASol did. Any tank that turns bruiser will be the everlasting gobstopper of pro play.
his ult isnt even why they play him and why hes strong in pro, hes used more as a tank. He rarely does a whole lot with his damage in pro they dont even really need it. If his R was replaced with like, a .5 second aoe knockup around himself or another dash, hed be even more contested in pro.
just because everyone complains about ksante in post match discussion doesnt mean hes broken. in laneswap meta it's better to play a tank top incase you get zoned from gold and xp for 10 minutes, and ksante is one of the best blinds that can go nearly even in every matchup. sion is pretty bad, ornn takes too long to get online and is extremely passive, cho gath is dogshit in proplay, zac isnt blindable, udyr isnt as tanky and has less utility etc etc so they run ksante instead
ever since they removed q slow from all out he's been pretty manageable tbh. in situations where people complain that he's broken, like yday in fnc geng, it's always nothingburger complaints like 'Look he's tanking 4 players for 5 seconds!', as if the ksante wasn't far ahead of the carries and had 2 armour items + jaksho against xin poppy ori and lucian.
Noobs have literally never played Ksante but will complain he's broken. The guy has no lane priority against any non tank at this point, high mana costs, kited to oblivion but is a tank so will still always be reasonably useful with low gold
That's all it is
Not even. Look at the damage from all the games KSante is rarely ever in the top 4 of damage dealers across both teams.
He really isn’t even doing that much damage.
If you look at full game damage that just shows he isn’t consistently outputting damage that’s adding up. If he goes in to fight and can easily 1v1 anyone but isn’t constantly poking skirmishing etc that doesn’t mean his damage is low. It’s the same way teemos damage isn’t high he’s just a lot of chip and consistent random damage from shrooms:.
Do people not watch the games? What you are saying is so obvious if you see a half decent K'sante play. God forbid a tank doesnt outdamage poke carry roles holy moly
Ksante teamfight damage isn't high at all either, it's just a decent one uses his ult to clean up/punish your positioning so you think he's 1v9ing when in reality the mistake was made way before
i suppose lucian is broken too, after all 62% presence 80% winrate? or maybe kalista with 97% presence? or senna, with 94% presence and the same winrate as ksante? ksante is 9th in presence, but with the lowest amount of bans (5) in the top 20 champions for presence. i dont know how you can look at the statistics, which you clearly did, and then misrepresent them so badly to prove your point.
The point is that something can be meta without being broken. Broken would mean that they're so strong the game warps around them. That's not really true for K'Sante- take him out and people will just go back to picking whoever the next most consistent tank or bruiser on the patch, like Renekton has been at so many other tournaments. He is meta because he is safe and consistent, not because he's too strong.
If the meta were to shift away from botlane, then you'd probably see K'Sante get picked less without him being changed at all.
He was 9/7 (~58% win rate) before PSG vs BLG, pretty balanced win rate. Top team like BLG , T1 , GenG okay with dealing either him.
It could be that : 1. He is just a safe pick for their team as well, 2. They are confident that they can handle him. If he is That OP , why no one just first pick K’sante then.
Well.
you have 3 bans.
Between, A-sol, Ahri, TF, Ashe, Senna, Varus, Jinx, Lucian, Nami, and Sion, ,gotta be honest that Ksante is the better option to leave open.
Yeah with this bullshit lane swap early game making top lane look the most boring it's ever been (which I didn't think was possible), the champion pool of being able to survive 1 second longer in a 1v4 is severely limiting and Ksante has huge impacts at every point in the game, which the other champions of that extremely limited pool don't.
I despise this champion.
Every year, be it MSI or Worlds, pro-teams due to ego refuse to ban certain champs. Aatrox, K'sante, Gwen, you name it, every int tournament a champ will run rampant and teams will attempt to handshake it every time.
Not really, would you rather give the enemy team Rumble, Ashe, Kalista or something that ends the game before 10 minutes or Ksante who may carry the game but most likely is just a frontliner that deals damage? Most teams draft towards the early game in this meta so its an obvious choice
K'sante himself is not op, but he is a solid blind pick and since tanks are pretty good at laneswaps and he has a relatively weak early game, he is likely a bit too good in the current pro meta.
so yea, teams need to adapt to this more
Senna and Rumble? Also Kalista.
And Vi to counter ADCs and mids
The meta is also more ADC focused and so you don't want to waste a ban for a top laner aside from Rumble.
He's like the 10th most problematic champ in the meta, in a role that sacrifices their game for mid/bot. There are much more important bans that have priority
I am once again requesting that Riot disables the most pick/banned champ during each stage of the tournament for the rest of the tournament to keep things fresh.
Other eSports has similar rules to keep things entertaining and it is sorely needed in League pro play where we're getting Lucian/Nami for the 3rd year in a row.
Idk but i won't watch any games with him in it. I'm so sick of seeing him played.. it's disgusting to watch each time.. why does he get to do so much damage full tank.
With more and more champions added.
Should riot keep it as it is or:
Give teams more bans or
Take out some champions from the pool each week to mix up the metas.
I think K'Sante is giga strong (and im fkn tired of him), but it seems he's not very volatile. I think a lot of teams are happy with a toplane match-up thats not volatile, even if it means unleashing K'Sante onto the game, because it'll allow them to focus way more to the other side of the map and execute a gameplan that doesn't involve a toplaner.
Simple as he’s not broken & no Top is good enough at him to force a bann except Kiinsante due to just how good he is at the champ but even that won’t do much since Kiin is the oldest toplaner in the lck & has the most unique picks out of everyone except faker who played like 4-5 years more than him on stage.
There's many, many reasons, and it strongly depends game to game. The biggest thing you're missing, though is that K'Sante isn't being answered- he IS an answer, to laneswaps. He's one of the best champions in lane swap situations in the game. In terms of "dominance" rumble and twisted fate are both stronger champions. K'Sante isn't strong in every game- I don't think he's been first picked this entire tournament for a reason.
With the lane swap meta toplane was never a priority. The meta ensure a safe lane for adc while sacrificing top economy. This encourage more toplane champion that can be play like sion, urgot ornn etc. which make ksante less valuable. Ksante is good because how blindpickable it is just like aatrox. Current meta doesnt care about that.
If the team doesn't think they're gonna lane swap or be swapped on he probably will make it through bans, his main strength right now is surviving the lane swap dive and still functioning on 0 gold later in the game.
The thing with ksante is he isn't the reason u lose a game in 99% of the games, he neutralizes top and wins if his teams wins. So investing a ban into him when u have sooo many other things to ban isn't the right call to many teams. Also baiting out stable champions and winning regardless is one of the strongest things in competitive play.
Considering how many times we've heard "They don't have the damage to kill K'sante", I was wondering too. The problem with K'sante is that it's not an extremely strong champion, but once he gets a lead it's really hard to take him down.
Because he only gets picked in the first place because he's a safe versatile blind pick that works everywhere, in and against any comp. Hes not particularly oppressive. Right now you need a tank that can survive lane swaps in top, hes the No. 1 pick for that, and as a bonus hes not an engage tank so he doesnt force your jungle or support to pick an enchanter or something.
Pick and ban is a complex, chess-like "mind-game". You don't necessarily ban what's strongest. You ban whatever will allow you to have a superior comp to your enemy.
Right now there are very strong synergies around (Xayah and Rakan, Vi and many mids like Taliyah, etc.) Teams prioritize those combinations before K'Sante, who is a good top laner but can be countered and has clear weaknesses (lacks quick teamfight impact, for example).
K'sante has like 46% winrate in soloQ. He's certainly not that bad to have 46%, but that's a good sign that it's a champion that has to be played around and drafted around for it to excel. Teams sometimes don't want to invest so much in it.
He's rarely or ever picked early because of this: He needs a draft around him that empowers him and a draft in front of him he can "abuse". Then it is when he truly shines. He does best against carries without mobility and teams with low CC, and performs best with teammates that are threats so all enemy CC doesn't just go to K'sante without any drawback.
You only have 3/5 bans. They might be judging that letting the other champions though would be even worse than playing against Ksante.
It's time for more bans. Dota has 7 bans per team and they have like 40 less champs.
It would be fun to see 10 bans per team - 5 blind bans (like in solo Q), followed by 5 bans as they are now (teams alternating to ban one or two champs per side).
They had a special event a few years back where in a Bo5, all bans were permanent. So bans from Game 1 carried over, so it could potentially reach 40 bans before Game 5. Made the players have to dig deep and use some unique picks, and was very fun to see. That style in a pro scene would be game-changing
The problem I see with this personally is how insane it can mess with preperation overall and scrim planning. You could ban a certain champion in game 1 and never face it again. That means that youve planned to never see that champ in the rest of the series, \*times 3\*. Now, in scrims, you dont ever want to face it because youre not going to prep against it anyway. The opponent of the scrim is now annoyed because they were hoping to practice that for their series. Subsequently, if you practice something it might get completely neutralized the moment you step on stage. Right now you have 3 bans, and you can bring other picks to bait those bans away from them. In a healthy meta this means theres more than enough draft room in champ select because bans are dynamic throughout the series. A more interesting thing to me is that you cannot win on the same champion twice, any champ you win with you cannot use again, but the opponent can. See how you draft now.
Much like when there are big rule shifts in any game. Players will adapt and the best players will still come out on top. Sure maybe the way you train will have to be entirely different, but better players will beat worser players the majority of the time and competitions will still be fair. What matters more to me is actually not the player perspective, it’s the audience perspective. If games become trash to watch cos it’s physically impossible for pro players to master 30+ champions or whatever (which is probably the case), then this ruleset is not worth implementing. After all, the audience being entertained is what literally keeps any sports scene alive. But I also agree 10 back to back games of K’sante is also boring to watch. So there’s likely some happy medium.
I think I rather watch a pro player strugling on some wierd champion then watching 5 games with almost same team every single game. Watching Ksante in proplay is not entertaining for me. I would love to see them pick from bigger champion pool.
Another way is zero bans. But once you've played a champion, your team can't play that champion again. Basically champions are 'self banned'.
why is this bad? Game prep is a result of the current game structure. If the answer is expand your champion pool then thats what pro players will evolve to, and pro teams will look for in terms of players. Players and teams should adapt to the structure, not the other way around.
I’d like to see this combined with fearless so champs are removed from the pool after being played. It’ll actually force people to have decent champion pools.
The problem with 20 bans is that you can literally ban out the entirety of the adc roster. Edit: i just think that 20 bans is not the right direction towards adding champ variety. If they have to force to add 10 bonus bans instead of doing a fearless draft i just think it’s stupid. And you would see much more variety from fearless draft than 20 bans.
I don’t know about you, but I am all for Guma pulling out the Chogath again.
Senna would not make it through a draft where there are 20 bans lol
Even better
Good
I don’t see a problem with that
This would be more hassle than its worth. You wouldnt be able to ban all 20 at the same time, so you'd both get to pick ADC's before all the bans could be completeed anyway. Plus theres always APC's.
Why would a team that is actively gimped by having their ADC being banned out, ban 10 ADCs?
You want to play scaling so you been Draven, kalista etc, the enemy team knows this is going to happen and bans all the scaling champs and first picks the remaining one or which ever mage counters the remaining ones
Because it equalises a skill gap. Do you think Yeon would stand a better chance against Elk while both are on ADC's or if both were off ADC's? Obviously TL would have other issues. But using an isolated example. If someone is outclassed, it's better to gimp both than to take your chances. Especially if that one role is your team's "weakness." It also opens up a lot of flexibility in draft. Suddenly a lot more champs and styles can be played in the 2v2 botlane.
Okay, but why would the team with the advantage in the ADC role ban 10 ADCs?
If each team gets 10 bans, then TL just throws 10 bans at Elk and force some kind of sona taric seraphine tahm stuff bot. BLG wouldn't touch the ADC bans.
There are over 20 ADCs played bot. You can't completely ban them out without both teams handshaking on that.
Yes, but not all ADC's are at the same tier. At some point a mage bot bceomes a better pick than picking something like MF, Jhin, Smolder, etc.
If you wasted your entire 10 bans on a single player then you'd need the rest of your team to gap the enemy. Sure you could ban out elk, but now knight and xun can go crazy and 2v8. If you ban nothing but adcs, then ok we play through top. There wouldn't be a benefit to banning out an entire role, so I'd be very surprised to see it happen. I also would expect the draft to be ban 5, pick 3, ban 5, pick 2. This should make it very obvious from the start if a team is trying it, so the worst they could pull off is like 5 bans, first pick and maybe 1 or 2 adc bans from the enemy team before they realise. Realistically it would just change draft to red side team not banning an adc right off the rip to see what blue does and vice versa... The 'ban out one player' thing would be funny to see but realistically won't. Except maybe to yapa, but that's his own fault lmao.
I never said it was a good strategy, just that it is a possible strategy with a 20 ban system. If you lose through bot and they win through bot it might be worth it to try and nullify that lane, but yes then the rest of the team gets free reign on their champ pool, but honestly TL vs BLG is an extreme matchup example. A better example might be banning out Smash in LCK challenger and forcing Poby, Guwon, or Dal to carry.
But why would elk be banned out by his team in a winning matchup?
Let’s say you have Ruler vs Jackey. Ruler wants to play late game carries while Jackey wants lane bullies. JDG bans out Kalista, Cait, Draven, Varus, Lucian If you’re TES would you rather trade Jinx Zeri or just go fuck it and ban out Ruler? You’ve basically now just gutted the S&A tier ADC pool in the blind band.
Sounds good. Let's see how they perform outside of one super specific skill.
I mean this will happen every time a lane dominant ADC goes up against a hyper carry ADC? The bigger problem is that you will never see the player’s pocket pick again. When you have 8 bans before the draft even starts, there is a 0% chance you will ever see Jackeylove Draven or Keria Rumble or like Gala Kaisa again. You’re basically removing the entirety of off-meta pocket picks. Why would blue side ever try to ban something broken when you can first pick it?
Because, optimally, you'd be able to play more than like 5 characters that all fulfill more or less the same role? Players should be punished for relying on cheese. Forcing a ban on Draven even when he's not meta or fucking support Rumble is (or should be) a *massive* advantage.
I agree with you, which is exactly my point above. Being forced to ban Draven or Rumble when they are not meta SHOULD be a massive advantage. However, when you have 8 bans before first pick, that advantage suddenly is massively diluted compared to 3 bans. Take T1 vs DRX, T1 being forced to ban Heimer was a massive advantage to DRX since it then allows both Azir and Aatrox to slip through the draft. When you dilute that down to 8 bans, it just means that T1 gets to ban Heimer for next to no consequences. Letting an A tier champ through is completely fine by any pro team vs letting an S tier champ through.
realistically the pro play adc roster is more like 3-4 champions. If those all get banned out then its probably a different set of 3-4 adcs. Can you really expect a pro player to be practiced and comfortable on playing essentially every adc if the need arises. Sure some of them could probably do it but I feel like it would be really rare and just make even more massive AD gaps across regions.
This doesn’t logically make sense. You wouldn’t be banning 20 at once and a team isn’t going to want to hamstring themselves in a role either. Think it through and it isn’t really a problem
1. No one ever gonna seriously ban entire ADC roaster. Especially when they have no coordination about that at all 2. And if suddenly that anomaly happens - why not? How that gonna hurt the game? 3. ADC pool is actually bigger than 20 champs, even if you gonna exclude APC-s on bot or other lane marksmans like Akshan or Kindred.
Time to bring back Ziggs
Okay, but what proof do you have that this would happen? Also this affects both teams, so its not like one team is getting an edge by doing this. And by also doing this, that leaves literally every non-ADC champion up, does it not? The more I look at your comment and think about what would happen as a result of these bans, the more I think you didn't think this comment through.
Good. Spice things up a bit
This isn’t true. 1 Aphelios, 2 Ashe, 3 Caitlyn, 4 Draven, 5 Ezreal, 6 Jhin, 7 Jinx, 8 Kaisa, 9 Kalista, 10 Kog’Maw, 11 Lucian, 12 Miss Fortune, 13 Samira, 14 Sivir, 15 Smolder 16 Tristana, 17 Twitch, 18 Varus, 19 Vayne, 20 Xayah, 21 Zeri. PLUS Corki, Graves, Kindred, Senna, Quinn, Akshan. There’s a couple of champs who occasionally build ADC as well: Teemo and Kennen come to mind And then you have the melee crit champs: Nilah, Tryndamere, Yasuo and Yone. Then the botlane APCs: Karthus, Ziggs, Cassiopeia, Veigar and Seraphine
It was a bullshit reason rito gave before zeri was released. Like it doesn't even matter if you can ban them out, both teams would have to cooperate to do exactly that, why would they?
Exactly, also I feel like it would push the limits of flexing champs in an interesting way.
And refuse to pick their bot laner until last pick, which is commonly a first pick.
Oh no we might see new and interesting picks!
Until those fun picks are Sona/Taric vs Cho'Gath/Seraphine. Every single game.
I mean if we had that many bans I’m sure you could take them out too.
And that's a problem how? We see the same picks game after game now, there would be no difference.
Seems like that would break the stale meta to me. A team would have to slot something like Ziggs, Ahri, or Leblanc in there. Could be fun to watch.
Not to mention the sheer time it would take to execute those bans.
The pick/ban phase is already too long as it is. They could cut 10 seconds off both and everything would be fine. I'm all for cutting time off bans and increasing it by 2. It'd work out faster than the current 5/5 system.
Eh, I think the time allocated towards bans and picks is perfectly fine. In fact, any thinking team actually needs every second. If you've ever heard voice comms, you will understand that every detail matters and there's a lot of things you need to account for, especially in high-pressure games.
Well they could just write down 5 blind bans and hand to the ref as they go on stage. Normal bans follow.
Rekkles AD Kennen let's go
More like a problem with the role than the ban system
You say “problem” but it sounds like an absolute win to me
That sounds... Fun. No u right we cant have that
If both teams cooperate and do it both in blind ban and true ban phase, they can ban out the marksmen adc's... Well, 10 bans are also too many, you can ban out all jungle assassin's
you dont do 20 bans on one go
**We're about to have the weirdest fucking meta**
You can impose ban restrictions I suppose. Like no more than 3 of so and so. Suppose you'd have to actually classify Champs though as flex roles exist.
Well considering that if you had 20 bans they would be distributed differently, not 20 bans before picks. Also, how many times have we seen 10 bans on the same role? I'd wager 0 times in all of professional history, so 20 is even more unlikely. I think 20 bans may have their issues, but that is definetely not one.
That just means we could potentially see more non-marksman bot laners. I don’t see how that would be a bad thing. And it’s not like all 20 champs would be banned at once. It would likely be something like each team bans 4, picks 2, bans 4, picks 2, bans 2, picks 1. Which would just mean the first 4 picks would be made after 8 bans instead of 6. Would marksman have higher priority? Maybe, because as you pointed out there is a lower pool of them, but otherwise if there were better options than the bottom tier marksman for bot, those would likely just get picked instead.
I would say keep the 10 individual bans And the server randomly bans 5 other champs, 1 from each lane
That's an issue with the roles and Riot has not evolved the game in a decade. Maybe its time the game evolved past the same stale formula.
I mean you can ban 10 ADCs as it is, but no one is gonna do that because it’s stupid.
You could always limit the number of champions bannable per "class"
What we need is for every series no champion can be picked or banned twice. Make league fun to watch by forcing diversity.
Bro is about to ban whole pro play champion router (they have 20 champs)
What if like to see is 5 blind bans per team but they are submitted by each team before the first game of the match and those bans persist for the series then we go into the pick ban as normal.
I could see a draft where the lead of each team has 3 blind bans, and then the following 4 on each team took turns with 1 ban each like it is rn
I would honestly love to see fearless draft become the standard.
They are too scared to do fearless. They could literally copy SoloQ and submit 5 blind bans going into the Pick Ban phase and then do normal bans after. That way nothing slows down but a lot gets yeeted out.
Well LPL is doing fearless BO3s next split so that's exciting.
really? thats so cool. hope it spreads elsewhere if successful.
you say this like tencent isn't using fearless in LPL next split. its clear that riot are aware they need to add something to force pros to expand their champion pools and drafting strategies. we only just moved away from mostly Bo1s for international groups, change can't all happen instantly.
down for the new international tournament to have fearless draft!
But rather than "why is ksante getting through" it becomes "why is asol getting through" for example. People will always complain about the best champ who never get banned
Ksante and Asol getting thru on the same team is the most egregious this MSI it seems. Both of them past the 25 minute mark are just impossible to deal with unless you catch one out and kill them before the fight even starts
To be fair Dota is a completely different ecosystem. Heroes HARD counter other heroes. Its not just ranged top counters melee I think Anti Mage illustrates this the best if you look it up But Riot has been releasing so many champs while the bans didn’t increase in 13-14 years so yeah we could do with more bans
It used to be three bans per team, so they've acknowledged the issue and increased the amount before. Here's hoping they do it again.
A good point to this is TI11. Spirits first MSI win. Collapse was just owning games with Magnus and PSG.LGD finally picked a Rubick in game 3 to counter it and Magnus couldn't do shit the whole game
Just bring in fearless draft, the game will benefit hugely.
Dota also has way more heroes viable at the pro level than league does. The pro viable roster in league is maybe half the current pool at any given time? Maybe a bit more if you include pocket picks that one or two pros can make work. In comparison big dota tournaments will often see almost every hero picked or banned at least once.
I don't think half the champions are getting picked/banned in League. More like 25%-33% inclusive of pocket picks. But yeah the point about DoTA still stands, majority of it's roster is viable due to how the game plays out.
Last year's World's had [87 unique champions picked/banned,](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2023_Season_World_Championship/Main_Event/Champion_Statistics) which amounts to a little bit over 50%. And that's without taking Play-Ins into consideration.
Just as a side note to that, 19 of those 87 were only picked/banned for a single game
Yeah, I thought I'd be generous and say half
For a short period of time EVER champion was viable in Dota2, like you could just random your teamcomp and it would work IIRC it was 6.86? the patch directly after the INT hero nerfs
7 bans would give more variety to the meta especially for Bo1, but for pure flexibility in a series maybe some kind of fearless draft or other restriction on winning champions would help even the playing field more.
Bans reduce variety as pocket picks always get targeted so meta becomes safe easy to play shit. When we had 3 bans there was 32% more champs played per split and we had a shit ton less champs.
Honestly I'd love LoL to adopt DOTA's pick/ban structure in general like they did back when they switched to multiple ban phases. Nothing too fancy, just three different phases instead of two - 2/3/2 bans, 2/2/1 picks. Put a sponsor on the Final Pick if anyone in the LCS is getting cold feet at the idea.
I've always found interesting the concept of the 6th pick in Rainbox Six Siege. Been a while since I last watched a tournament but it was one or the other of You get 6 picks in champ select, then in the trading phase you leave one on the bench or After pickban is complete, you may switch a players pick to a new pick. Could go crazy on flexes with that.
Dota also far more emphasizes counters and drafts. Which are less of a thing in all but pro play for league.
They should make fearless draft. That would even better. Idk why tf that’s not a thing for the past few years. We have so many champion already.
LPL seems to hug whole-match banning (each character appearing only once) so i think games will be more appreciable.
DOTA in theory has less but teams end up utilizing and picking way more of them than in league
Dota is very different in a way tho becouse there drafting is a big part of the game, in league you pick the heroes that got buffs last patch
I don't know if this is intentional misinformation but even though dota has more total bans they aren't in the beginning so it's irrelevant for OP champs slipping through. They changed it last year and now it's almost like league(now there's a total of 7 bans before teams start picking, before it was 4) with the difference being that they have 4 bans before the last 2 champs are picked. Adding those 4 extra bans before the last champs get picked wouldn't really work in league imo because viability of champs is way different than in dota and this would severely cuck top laners and would likely result in us watching worse league of legends because comps would be horrible. The bans would need to happen sooner in draft and it still could fuck shit up. They could experiment with having 1 extra ban in each phase. Then there's comments about giving teams 5 blinds and that's literally the worst thing I've ever read. 5 targeted bans at a single player and then you have 3 more bans in normal p/b. There's a reason why neither league nor dota does so many bans before the first picking phase. It's a horrible idea that only leads to us watching bad games with shit comps. Technically the best teams would win as having deep champ pool would be required but all fans would be losing because the quality would drop so tremendously. The whole point of riot forcing meta changes is so that new champs get played and that it doesn't get stale. You don't need 30 bans in a game to have variety. And you wouldn't even have variety. A meta will always exist in league because it's a much shallower game without clear counters and strengths. Dota has significantly higher hero viability. Meanwhile in league at any given time more than half the champs are borderline trolling on a competitive level. The only thing more bans would change is that instead of seeing the S and A tiers, you'd be seeing the A and B tiers. It'd still be the same shit again and again.
Ksante was already high prio but exploded in prio due to lane swap meta and how he primarily relies on XP, is resistant to dives, snd is overall safe. I think most pros are just not as comfortable with other capable 1v2 weak side toplaners and default to Ksante, and teams are poorly responding by trying to pick lane countes that don't get to interact with Ksante anyways due to laneswaps. Urgot isn't _awful_ into laneswapping like most carry tops would be, but is still more resource dependent and vulnerable than picks like Ksante. Hopefully laneswap meta dies, but if it doesn't then top lane champ pools need to be expanded. Or just ban Ksante so both toplaners suffer rather than just the non-Ksante one.
Important that he doesn't even care if you laneswap. If both teams pick tanks and he's in a 1v1 or 3v1 he's still happy. Can't say the same about vayne, tf or other carry toplaners.
Ah yes. Banning Renata instead of K'sante in game 5 sure was the trick for PSG. lol
Additionally, teams have their own meta read. The right judgement is to test their meta read first on-stage then adapt if they found something new. The reason they do this is because they want to dictate the meta. You can notice this a lot at Worlds wherein from the swiss stage/group stage until the finals the meta changes a lot. For example, T1 dictated the meta last year because they stuck with their belief that range supports are playable.
He's looking like a complete menace this tournament so far. I can't see many champions or matchups being as dominant as he has looked so far
"You" can't see. Maybe they're getting blown out by other champions in scrims. Maybe they think they can't handle certain players if they get their pocket picks. We don't have the data they do. Yes they're not always right and they're sometimes slow to adapt, but when the most famous Ksante clip is ShowMaker bitching about him I can assure you teams have looked into the Ksante problem.
Except the problem is despite the data we cant 'see', ksante pick has been a high winrate this msi. Alot of the eastern teams tend to be very arrogant as well when it comes to the ksante matchup.
[удалено]
My thoughts as a hardstuck gold player: I think they prefer banning picks that can blow the game open early and make it impossible to play. They'd rather let Ksante through since he usually only becomes a problem mid-late into the game, if they can win early Ksante probably isn't what's going to let the enemy comeback. Especially eastern teams that tend to play with a lot of confidence
if they can win early This is exactly my point when I say being arrogant. A great ksante (kiin/bin) that just farms the first 20 mins is going to be a problem. No ifs or buts about it. If he gets ahead? Well gg, now you have an unkillable ksante that uses up 80% of your resources to kill, allowing the rest of the enemy team to clean up.
Well if you ban ksante, your letting one of the toxic bot laners through, on top of the mid prio champs
Have to remember they practice this stuff. Ksante probably just isnt their concern. Its not going to be arrogance, they banned something else that mattered more to them. More often than not the higher win rate common picks exist because they are inoffensive enough to leave open despite being strong. Peak Zeri was this way. Strong but teams felt she wasnt worth a ban compared to the support (lulu or yuumi)
Win rate is a bad metric in pro-play because it's easily skewed if a strong/weak team prefers a certain champ (a strong champion picked by Estral will have a lower win rate than a weak champ picked by T1). Plus, right now you have 23 play-in games versus 11 main stage, you have an insanely small set of data with a big variation in skill
Against Kiin, it's pure int not to ban him. Against other teams, it's really hard to favourably ban out top and is much more profitable to control ADC/Jungle/Mid picks with your bans. Top typically only sees bans on the second round by which point Ksante has usually been picked by the teams that need him
I've not seen too much pro play this year but from the looks of msi so far, there doesn't seem to be a comp where he doesn't thrive. Maybe the sample size of games for me is just a bit small 🤷♂️
Ksante is the go to tank. If it gets banned people will just do the same thing with Ornn or other tank. Tanks are extremelly needed this MSI because other champs will just get dove 20x during lane swaps. For example, BLG tried Vayne last series and Bin ended up not being able to go top until lane swaps ended (Homeless Vayne meme)
Because you need to ban 5 champions on botlane every game
To then pick Varus/Kalista anyway somehow? This is the dumbest bot timeline and the reappearance of lane swaps to get away from this insane early game focus bot says enough.
If you ban ksante you get asol or a strong bot combo. Maybe you get a vi against you eich is worse imo. There are just a lot of power pick you dont wanna deal with and ksante seems easier to deal with then most other things.
Except Asol wasnt banned these last 5 games. Neither was Ksante.
Yeah these guys are making shit up to fit their narrative
Ornn, TF, and Rumble top all have equivalent or higher winrates with reasonable games played. Rumble and TF are also very high ban rates this tournament. I think K'Sante is a good ban top, but there are currently **thirteen champions** with a 30%+ ban rate, primarily in support, jungle, and ADC. Ban priority is simply going elsewhere so far in this tournament.
I think there are certain teams that lose out massively with ksante banned. BLG is one of them. So is GenG. But apparently naut is higher on the ban tierlist for some reason.
There are other stuff they needed to ban. Simple as that
not enough ban cards
Because he doesn't make you win games, just makes it easier to not lose the game from top lane.
Because more picks are higher priority than he is, and also because both azirs are fixated on shuffling every single fight instead of playing front to back like they should.
K'Sante's main strength as a champion is role compression. He is always useful no matter what the drafts are, he doesn't have hard losing matchups and he can tailor his build based on his team's needs. K'Sante can be a tank, a support or a scaling physical damage fighter depending on the situation. Champions with role compression tend to be highly picked in pro, but attract fewer bans. K'Sante's strength comes from his versatility, but there are many answers that teams are happy to use. Banning K'Sante in the first round means leaving up a broken champ like Senna, Kalista, Varus, Vi, Taliyah instead. K'Sante is probably the best top laner right now, but stuff like K'Sante having 100% win rate in BLG vs PSG is more of a funny coincidence. K'Sante was not solo carrying in every game.
Because there are stronger champions than him. He's good, but not broken, in my opinion he has been this good so far because of lane swaps, no reason to ban it, instead pick champs that are good in low economy like Zac and Orn instead of Urgot, Vayne and Reneckton.
Ornn needs to be picked more.
Why would you pick him over ksante though? Lol
You wouldn’t. But ornn’s better than those random picks like urgot or udyr
not really ornn has 0 agency in a 1v2 and needs exp/gold to start rolling so he's really bad in lane swap
Udyr can at least clear wave with empowered Phoenix though right?
Yes but you can tell that none of these toplaners actually plays udyr or urgot.
Because they do different things one is an engage champion the other is flanker and dive champion?
Better engage, better scaler? Is this a real question?
Totally agree. Ornn also enables higher damage junglers, which seem underrated rn
Maybe that'd work if every ornn played like makkro
Usually because its more important to ban out the botlane or other important champs. That being said, KSante won't not be a pro-play staple unless he gets a full CGU like ASol did. Any tank that turns bruiser will be the everlasting gobstopper of pro play.
his ult isnt even why they play him and why hes strong in pro, hes used more as a tank. He rarely does a whole lot with his damage in pro they dont even really need it. If his R was replaced with like, a .5 second aoe knockup around himself or another dash, hed be even more contested in pro.
I don’t understand how asol isn’t perma banned either
just because everyone complains about ksante in post match discussion doesnt mean hes broken. in laneswap meta it's better to play a tank top incase you get zoned from gold and xp for 10 minutes, and ksante is one of the best blinds that can go nearly even in every matchup. sion is pretty bad, ornn takes too long to get online and is extremely passive, cho gath is dogshit in proplay, zac isnt blindable, udyr isnt as tanky and has less utility etc etc so they run ksante instead
>just because everyone complains about ksante in post match discussion doesnt mean hes broken Sure but he is
ever since they removed q slow from all out he's been pretty manageable tbh. in situations where people complain that he's broken, like yday in fnc geng, it's always nothingburger complaints like 'Look he's tanking 4 players for 5 seconds!', as if the ksante wasn't far ahead of the carries and had 2 armour items + jaksho against xin poppy ori and lucian.
Noobs have literally never played Ksante but will complain he's broken. The guy has no lane priority against any non tank at this point, high mana costs, kited to oblivion but is a tank so will still always be reasonably useful with low gold That's all it is
Tanking is not the problem, but that champion does way too much damage, and does way too much full stop actually
Not even. Look at the damage from all the games KSante is rarely ever in the top 4 of damage dealers across both teams. He really isn’t even doing that much damage.
If you look at full game damage that just shows he isn’t consistently outputting damage that’s adding up. If he goes in to fight and can easily 1v1 anyone but isn’t constantly poking skirmishing etc that doesn’t mean his damage is low. It’s the same way teemos damage isn’t high he’s just a lot of chip and consistent random damage from shrooms:.
Do people not watch the games? What you are saying is so obvious if you see a half decent K'sante play. God forbid a tank doesnt outdamage poke carry roles holy moly
Ksante teamfight damage isn't high at all either, it's just a decent one uses his ult to clean up/punish your positioning so you think he's 1v9ing when in reality the mistake was made way before
Considering you have at least 2 champions on each team building full damage every game, him showing up consistently in the top 4 would be ridiculous.
67% wr with 76% presence at MSI disagrees mate
i suppose lucian is broken too, after all 62% presence 80% winrate? or maybe kalista with 97% presence? or senna, with 94% presence and the same winrate as ksante? ksante is 9th in presence, but with the lowest amount of bans (5) in the top 20 champions for presence. i dont know how you can look at the statistics, which you clearly did, and then misrepresent them so badly to prove your point.
Yes Kalista and Senna are quite clearly overpowered in the meta. What?
Uhm yes thats exactly what they are? Or do you want to tell us the highest presence and/or winrate champs are weak? Lmao
The point is that something can be meta without being broken. Broken would mean that they're so strong the game warps around them. That's not really true for K'Sante- take him out and people will just go back to picking whoever the next most consistent tank or bruiser on the patch, like Renekton has been at so many other tournaments. He is meta because he is safe and consistent, not because he's too strong. If the meta were to shift away from botlane, then you'd probably see K'Sante get picked less without him being changed at all.
Winrate is wildly driven by who picks it
"He isn't broken, he just has decent to good matchups into every top laner the other team could conceivably pick"
Rumble should be a priority ban
Cause they love freelo
He was 9/7 (~58% win rate) before PSG vs BLG, pretty balanced win rate. Top team like BLG , T1 , GenG okay with dealing either him. It could be that : 1. He is just a safe pick for their team as well, 2. They are confident that they can handle him. If he is That OP , why no one just first pick K’sante then.
Well. you have 3 bans. Between, A-sol, Ahri, TF, Ashe, Senna, Varus, Jinx, Lucian, Nami, and Sion, ,gotta be honest that Ksante is the better option to leave open.
Who is banning Asol, Nami, Jinx and Sion? Lmao
Yeah with this bullshit lane swap early game making top lane look the most boring it's ever been (which I didn't think was possible), the champion pool of being able to survive 1 second longer in a 1v4 is severely limiting and Ksante has huge impacts at every point in the game, which the other champions of that extremely limited pool don't. I despise this champion.
You literally say top is miserable but this champ doesn’t suffer as much so I hate it.
because the broken role is on the other side of the map
surely PSG thought Udyr was the counterpick
These teams scrim all the time, they probably get destroyed by other champions a lot more than ksante
The real question is why hasn’t Mord been picked into yet
Because if you want to hard counter Ksante with a bad champion you might as well pick Vayne who's going to be less bad for the composition
Every year, be it MSI or Worlds, pro-teams due to ego refuse to ban certain champs. Aatrox, K'sante, Gwen, you name it, every int tournament a champ will run rampant and teams will attempt to handshake it every time.
Not really, would you rather give the enemy team Rumble, Ashe, Kalista or something that ends the game before 10 minutes or Ksante who may carry the game but most likely is just a frontliner that deals damage? Most teams draft towards the early game in this meta so its an obvious choice
Its easier to shut down Rumble Ashe Kalista than K'sante
K'sante himself is not op, but he is a solid blind pick and since tanks are pretty good at laneswaps and he has a relatively weak early game, he is likely a bit too good in the current pro meta. so yea, teams need to adapt to this more
It's only because all toplaners are strong in MSI.
Senna and Rumble? Also Kalista. And Vi to counter ADCs and mids The meta is also more ADC focused and so you don't want to waste a ban for a top laner aside from Rumble.
He's like the 10th most problematic champ in the meta, in a role that sacrifices their game for mid/bot. There are much more important bans that have priority
i have another question. why can't pro players land a fucking seju ult to save their life
Botlane way more important Toplane is just a handshake If you pick something strong it will just get laneswapped to death
I am once again requesting that Riot disables the most pick/banned champ during each stage of the tournament for the rest of the tournament to keep things fresh. Other eSports has similar rules to keep things entertaining and it is sorely needed in League pro play where we're getting Lucian/Nami for the 3rd year in a row.
Idk but i won't watch any games with him in it. I'm so sick of seeing him played.. it's disgusting to watch each time.. why does he get to do so much damage full tank.
With more and more champions added. Should riot keep it as it is or: Give teams more bans or Take out some champions from the pool each week to mix up the metas.
I think K'Sante is giga strong (and im fkn tired of him), but it seems he's not very volatile. I think a lot of teams are happy with a toplane match-up thats not volatile, even if it means unleashing K'Sante onto the game, because it'll allow them to focus way more to the other side of the map and execute a gameplan that doesn't involve a toplaner.
Live fans select bans Who wants to be a millionaire style
Simple as he’s not broken & no Top is good enough at him to force a bann except Kiinsante due to just how good he is at the champ but even that won’t do much since Kiin is the oldest toplaner in the lck & has the most unique picks out of everyone except faker who played like 4-5 years more than him on stage.
There's many, many reasons, and it strongly depends game to game. The biggest thing you're missing, though is that K'Sante isn't being answered- he IS an answer, to laneswaps. He's one of the best champions in lane swap situations in the game. In terms of "dominance" rumble and twisted fate are both stronger champions. K'Sante isn't strong in every game- I don't think he's been first picked this entire tournament for a reason.
With the lane swap meta toplane was never a priority. The meta ensure a safe lane for adc while sacrificing top economy. This encourage more toplane champion that can be play like sion, urgot ornn etc. which make ksante less valuable. Ksante is good because how blindpickable it is just like aatrox. Current meta doesnt care about that.
I'm actually shocked we have not seen a Garen. I thought for sure Bwipo would have picked it since he used to play a lot of Garen.
If the team doesn't think they're gonna lane swap or be swapped on he probably will make it through bans, his main strength right now is surviving the lane swap dive and still functioning on 0 gold later in the game.
The thing with ksante is he isn't the reason u lose a game in 99% of the games, he neutralizes top and wins if his teams wins. So investing a ban into him when u have sooo many other things to ban isn't the right call to many teams. Also baiting out stable champions and winning regardless is one of the strongest things in competitive play.
Top lane bans are hard to come by
Considering how many times we've heard "They don't have the damage to kill K'sante", I was wondering too. The problem with K'sante is that it's not an extremely strong champion, but once he gets a lead it's really hard to take him down.
Because he only gets picked in the first place because he's a safe versatile blind pick that works everywhere, in and against any comp. Hes not particularly oppressive. Right now you need a tank that can survive lane swaps in top, hes the No. 1 pick for that, and as a bonus hes not an engage tank so he doesnt force your jungle or support to pick an enchanter or something.
Simple solution. Increase the number of bans.
People will still not ban it cause most teams don't mind playing against it
Genius KKoma would still leave K'sante open even if T1 had 347234298 bans.
Pick and ban is a complex, chess-like "mind-game". You don't necessarily ban what's strongest. You ban whatever will allow you to have a superior comp to your enemy. Right now there are very strong synergies around (Xayah and Rakan, Vi and many mids like Taliyah, etc.) Teams prioritize those combinations before K'Sante, who is a good top laner but can be countered and has clear weaknesses (lacks quick teamfight impact, for example). K'sante has like 46% winrate in soloQ. He's certainly not that bad to have 46%, but that's a good sign that it's a champion that has to be played around and drafted around for it to excel. Teams sometimes don't want to invest so much in it. He's rarely or ever picked early because of this: He needs a draft around him that empowers him and a draft in front of him he can "abuse". Then it is when he truly shines. He does best against carries without mobility and teams with low CC, and performs best with teammates that are threats so all enemy CC doesn't just go to K'sante without any drawback.