I actually liked you pausing to explain or elaborate further on what LS was saying, actually helped me understand his point more.

What LS is describing in this video literally happens in Dota. Dota players can all play 40-50 heroes at a pro level. The meta is way more diverse and the game is way more interesting because of it. In my mind most League players lack creativity or the drive to even try things.

thats why I love S9 G2 so much, they reached such a high level with very unique and not meta champs select and gaming style(and I deem S9 the best season because of not having boring meta btw). btw the points of LS show why dota pro game is so fk interesting to watch, each player has so many champs in their pool, even with the same champs, they can play in different styles

I don’t think pro players being able to play most of the champions in their role is a stretch. There’s so much more staff and positional coaches out there now that it’s very quick to learn. You think 2019 G2 needed a lot of time to practice a Zoe bard Botlane, or Fudge learning Ivern in a week or first timing soraka and doing well. I don’t think it’s unrealistic and the idea of “getting worse” at the champs you’ve been good at is overrated. It’s like riding a bike, once you’ve learned it and played it, it’ll never be as hard to get back to it. Faker is still clapping on his Leblanc 5 years later. Pros can invest in new champions.

I think the biggest point of it is low variation. A pro team that is capable of playing at a high level wants to achieve consistency, and there are already SO many variables in a League of Legends game. One of the ways they can increase consistency is through "solved" match-ups that will always play out a certain way. It's also why teams so often "handshake" on objectives in-game as well, and don't go for risky plays. A high-risk high-reward play is less desirable than a low-risk low-reward play, because while it may work in one game, it likely won't work in another game, whereas the low-risk one can be replicated in every game.

I just want to have LS on a team where he gets at least a year, if not 2-3 years to build a top team with his philosophies. We all thought cloud 9 was going to be that and he's gone by week 3 of the first split. I want to see what a team controlled by LS can do given enough time and given a chance to make an impact on the international stage.

Here's the thing, everytime a champ gets reworked/introduced magically every pro player has time to dedicate to it and learn to play lol

So im pretty sure LS has made this point before himself, but I'll reiterate here. While players acquiring a 7/10 level on a new champ/counterpick may bring their level on their "main" pick to a 7/10 from an 8 or 9, the strength of either 7/10 would be amplified by the fact that it is being played in a more optimal game scenario, thus making it genuinely worth it to learn some of these champions because there really isnt a downside when you think about it logically and pick the right set of champs to all get to 7/10 instead of aiming for 8 or 9 on a small cluster.

Dont apologize for pausing when you're adding substance to the discussion.

FINALLY someone pausing the video in a reaction while talking

In my head, learning new champs shouldn't be this massive barrier to pro players. I can empathise with the worry that proficiency with Champion X may drop from a 9/10 to an 8 or 7.5, but if that means you now play Champion Y to a 7/10 level, who is actually a 9/10 in the matchup and with your team comp, surely that's worth it? We've seen for the last however many years that western teams attempting to beat the eastern teams 'at their own game' is very very difficult, surely teams would be better off trying to find something unique that they are good at, presenting a different challenge to the other regions? It's gotta be better to try something different rather than turning up to worlds, attempting to copy the eastern teams in week 2 of groups and losing out because they've been playing whatever meta it is to a higher level for longer

I really respect caedrel's opinion, but I think first point he makes in this video is dead wrong. LS is saying the problem is that pros revert to a classical counter when the current meta is nerfed, and cadrels response is that "well Lee sin is back because he is a classic counter to jarvan". LS's whole point is that you SHOULDN'T revert to the classic counter, and should look at the whole pool to see what is now the best counter. Eg lee is good into jarvan. Why? He ganks almost as quickly, is just as mobile and wins 1v1s. You know who else does that? Poppy. Now poppy might be worse than lee at the moment, bit after 3 of 4 cycles of lee nerf >> J4 nerf and people swapping back and forth, lee is no longer the best counter. Poppy is now the best counter. Second point, LS is talking about how pro's don't learn enough champs because they want to maximiser skill at a handful. Cadrels response is that "well if I learn a new champ I'll be slightly less good at a suboptimal pick" - you are saying the same thing as an answer!

The thing is it doesn’t matter if your renekton is at a 7 when you have a champ pool that means you don’t have to play renekton into. I think when you get to the pro level, champ matchups are pretty important. I would rather have someone who was able to play any pick for a team comp/matchup than a 2-3 trick who is technically more proficient.

Man it would be crazy if this guy was a coach...

If you know a matchup, it should take you like 1 or 2 warmup games to get used to the mechanics, and precisely because of the circles thing Caedrel said, once you've seen the circles happen, you shouldn't need 4 patches to realise what's the next circle and start playing it

I think one thing this discussion doesn't take into consideration is that there are 2 different ways a team can get an advantage 1. Getting a draft advantage by having a bigger pool as LS mentioned 2. Having a smaller pool but the team being very well trained on playing them. I think for teams that are better individually, there is more incentive to lean towards option 2. Also, since you don't always know if that non-meta counter pick you chose to practice for 1. actually functions, there is a risk that you wasted the time trying option1 when you could've gone for option 2. Using the same logic however, if the 5 players you have are individually outmatched and would lose if both teams went for option 2, it is in your interest to go for option 1 - this would be more on the lower tier teams.

There are other sports where players will practice an entire new system based on their opponents. In basketball say, teams will practice different types of pick and roll coverage in the lead up to a series to counter another teams star player. Or in the case of the raptors they will come out with some new funky zone defense every series. If you are a team going into MSI, and you know that Faker is going to take Ahri given the chance, there's no excuse to not be preparing your Veigar now.

5:35 but that's the point of this LS's video.. that people DONT do that almost ever. That they prefer to what he calls 'handshake' in draft and just not attempt to counterpick or gets such draft leads often. It might happens sometimes especially if certain counter has become stable for years (most obvious one being Lissandra into Leblanc) but pros refuse to look for now, less obvious answers to new metas.

Imagine a game of rock paper scissors. If you lets say, nerf rock, scissors become stronger, paper becomes weaker. Nerf scissors, paper becomes stronger rock becomes weaker. Etc. This is kinda what the cycle meant. So how do u stop the cycle if nerfs and buffs doesn't work? You restrict everyone from using rock, paper and scissors. You force them to find other cycle which would take years to find and once they find it, uplift the rock paper scissors and watch the interaction of 2 cycles 😊

really insightful video for casual league watching andies TY. good video

What if LS teamed up with exil for that kind of video he's talking about.

I kind of feel the problem is the lack of R&D from the teams, not the players themselves. The players as you say are time-poor. But knowing that Lee sin has been nerfed so much poppy is a better counter to jarvan now is something you can check with a spreadsheet and some diamond players. You can then go the the jabkos's of the world "yeah if they are playing a lot of jarvan learn poppy this week bruh", so he doesn't have to think about why that's best. Or even just have your academy team try out poppy and lee sin both as jarvan counters, to prove the point.

Akali/Eve are great examples. Back when eve was permapicked in proplay, me, a rengar main cringed for my life when no one picked an open rengar into eve. Rengar completly shits on eve, and is also very well into morde/akali

I think pro players don't have the time to explore and test that much those picks and it's better for them to stick either to their champ pool or learn what's arleady meta. This thing would be solved if the players had assistants, it could be easier for them if they had challenger assistants that test these ideas and give them back the info or to a data analyst that gathers all the data. Anyways, that would mean more money to spend, but I think that could give a team an edge at the end of the day

@ceadrel if we didnt want u to pause and say ur oppinion we can just watch the ls video

Imagine if LS made clones of himself, and then they were all coaches on different teams, I think that would be the only way of biweekly meta changes and teams out-metaing each other....lol. In some universe....this might be happening....🤔

Solution can come from the leagues themselves, not balance changes. Series are Bo3 (regular) and Bo5 (playoff). Series are Conquest format - once you win with the champion in the series, the winning team can't pick it again in the series. I feel like this would place a larger emphasis on teamwork, fundamentals, game knowledge, and overall strategy rather than brute forcing "meta" champions game after game. Ban pressure becomes more exagerated on the winning team because after game one win, there are five automatic bans in addition to the next 5 bans, and compunds after win two. If there is demand for more diversity in pro play and players don't want to come off of certain champions then force their hand.

They could make the first 3 bans and 3 picks while the desk is talking. Then you could make a summary of those first pick/bans and continue live. That way we wouldn't fall asleep i think. Especially if they make interesting picks

This is a minor point but I don’t think Malrang would play initiators if he didnt think they were super meta. Man was spamming Rumble Jungle when he was subbed in for Damwon. Malrang can play so many styles, I think he genuinely is willing to adapt to whatever he thinks the meta is.

POGO x10 combo in chat while caedrel is explaining lmao

Love you Caedrel

How about letting sups play after the pick and ban? Than you can let players practice specific champions and the possibilities are higher.

interesting idea with the longer draft phase

interesting concept, i like the skill level graph. Good question to ask when building a roster in the off season. which is more valuable for the 5 man im building, a mid laner that can play 5 champions at a 10, or a mid laner that can play 10 champions at an 8. Nisqy comes to mind as the player that can change up his champ pool and play style. alphari comes to mind that can only play like 5 champions (mostly gp) but can play them very well.

Caedrel mate, loved the video. Wish there was more content like this. I do want to say that I think you missed out on talking about part of LS's point. You don't really comment on when LS says that pro players aren't using certain champs even though they have similar power levels as the meta champs (16:29). The closest you come to responding is near the end (24:48) when you say that pro players are actually problem solving. Does this mean you disagree with LS? Are there not actually champs of equal power that aren't in the meta? Curious what your thoughts are. Cheers.

great idea at the end, extend draft timers and extra ban

I get the point where the’s this circle, but it gets bigger every season. We nolonger have the perma Azir-Corki meta, but there are lots of viable options like Vex, Sylas, Tf, Ori, Syndra, Viktor, Zoe, Ahri, Akshan, LB, Lissanda, Lucian, Galio, Akali, Veigar, Cassio, Ryze, etc… tho I agree that it would be more exiting to have unique crazy picks and combos (maybe botlanes like Rengar/Ivern, Singed/Cassio, Malph/Yassuo or Anivia/Poppy)

The shout-out to Jankos

WHY THEN LEE SIN CAME BACK IN META WHEN EVERYBODY SAYED HE IS SHIT

I have an idea. Pros play series right? Best of 3's, best of 5's. They pick 10 champs each game. After the game, the champs picked in the previous games can not be played in the next games in the series. This would result into a very small pool of champions to pick in the last games (games 4 and 5) and thus the teams would have to be able to be very flexible. This would also make it so that even the "bad champions" would be played out of necessity as game 5 would have 50 champions out of the champ pool. This would also add new layers to drafting.

I mean you could do the draft off air and show a condensed version of it on broadcast, couldn‘t you?

This is actually a complex topic because throughout the years of the game not being balanced, pros became comfortable with champs that are above average. So when you tell pros that everyone is balanced, then why pick other champs if the champ you're currently playing is good enough?

It's the fact characters gain too much power from items/masteries right now (divine sunderer good example), as well as masteries (lethal tempo, conqueror) this leads players to thinking.. Well, ill pick the character who abuses lethal tempo/conqueror and divine sunderrer the most, which is pretty obviously jax. It gets hard to even think of other options to build divine sunderer or go lethal tempo on because jax is so overpowered with it.

dang lee sin/jarvan/xin Zhao jg & gore drinker top lane, dang cant wait to see this joint, smh

09:30 then you have some caps and perks that can play a big champion pool being able to play almost everything and good, not only staying in some confort picks.

The problem is the stale circle of meta because some of these champions are just simply too pivotal either their end game burst or their general kit is just so strong. The only way to break it up is to just rework champions that don't actually ever have any presence in pro at all. This champs that never get picked up need to be changed so they will get picked.

I think a good work around for this could be having the draft off-screen, Make it so that the draft happens before the game goes on air, kind of like how football team-sheets work for players, where they are released only a few minutes or hours before the match. Have the 30 second increased to like a minute or so, but have drafts done off-air, and then show the drafts on the screens later quickly, saving time for the viewer while also giving more time for teams to deliberate and come up with a better draft as you suggested. Might be worth a ponder.

Noone play's those champions. Bwipo's 19 champs in spring

I think maybe also another reason why pros don’t practice old champs is because champs are getting released too frequently and so they are too busy practising the new champs which are known to be op on release. Maybe if riot paused releasing new champions, then pros might start to play strong hidden champs

dota draft is lowkey fun to watch, but thats a fundamental thing from the game where most heroes are 3-flexes

24:52 250 player * 10 games isnt 2500 games played though

They need to put in the effort it doesn't take that long to learn the matchups and lanes of your role.

What if they do dota’s way everyone is broken but counter pick hits like a truck

A champion being popular doesn't make it good? There's always a new build or new strategy or new play style to look out for on popular champions. Do you know why? There are more people experimenting and pushing the character forward. Not everything is in black and white, so think of the champions that are more popular and think of how often their runes or builds change.

I think picks and bans takes too long already. IMO it can be done as long as the players/coaches want it (off camera), and then we get a quick summary of picks and bans (and runes!) before the game starts. Literally even a day in advance is also fine, to give players a last lot of hours to practice that matchup.

What if in pro plays, for e.g. a BO5, a team cannot play the same champs they pick in the first round. That way, in the second round, they would for sure have to pick different champions. This would shake up the champions that will be seen in pro plays. All 5 rounds with different champions. Theres 100+ champions, for sure there is enough champions to play for both teams in BO5.

This is a big problem imo how stale it gets, im a big fan of league as a game and esport and ive been following for a while now but it gets so boring especially lately to watch the same matchup every game i think they need to adres this to keep the esport interesting to people

I’ve got a solution. 20 bans per team.

Holy fuck why is the audio so unbelievably low

And this is why I always do the A-Z challenge every year and play every role because it's just too boring to play the same champs over and over and be a meta slave.

One of the solutions I came up with, is making a tournament with large prize pools, BUT restricts every champion in that cycle. Not only will pros be forced to play never before seen champs, it will also not really hurt meta in any way. It will also force players to drop down their skill at previous champs played which might translate to this never before seen champs to be played in games that there's not a champ restricted. There's many examples of benefits of this happening. Maybe even make the restrictions seasonal. But the whole idea is tournament champion restriction.

With the coporatism that has grown in league over the years it's really not surprising that experimenting in draft isn't super common. League is not settled science it's actually very difficult to judge what is practically viable, but this is offset by having like however many billions of games being played and random people will consistently find optimal playstyles. Also for the most part champions have had very clear strengths and weaknesses, so a lot of the time champs shouldn't be picked in every context (like Viktor and corki were earlier this season) and if they are riot needs to get more bold with the nerfs of buff their counter matchups. It's so annoying that riot will leave champs dogshit for seasons at a time and then forcibly inject other champs back into the meta (Diana, Lee sin from last season). I feel like riot is incentivizing this kind of hesitancy as well with how they balance. Although the game atm is pretty much as balanced as it's ever been besides poke comps in general being generally stronger than they should be.

maybe have random bans for each series apart from strategic team bans. or maybe make it illegal to use a champion more than once per series/game in order to force players to have a wider champion pool. there are options, Riot just has to be brave enough to implement them.

mate react to g2 vs rogue/fnatic please

Ok, not to be rude or anything. But if u react to something u could give the link to the original video in the description.

I always thought that a solution to more diverse meta regarding champion picks could be, that each week the two champions with the most presence in each role are banned globally for the next week. (Disabled so to say.) It is transparent and gives more options to ban out players (two champ less for each player) It is good because it is transparent, noone can say oh riot banned my champ and not his. You will always know which champs will be banned. For tournaments you coud have one round groups one round semis and quartets etc. It would also reward teams that do some stuff differently, as their champs are less likely to be banned hence practice on those "non-meta" champs becomes more effective as it can be played on all weeks. I would be so curious on an academic level of a tournament/league where the draft happens the day or even a week before the game. So players can practice the individual matchups/comps specifically. I think it would help in identifying draft issues far more easily. I would be curious of the difference between the level of play as well. (Especially between top of the league vs mid tier teams, or see how much creative drafting can help/hinder in this case (help that you can practice your matchup/hinder that your opponent will be more ready for it)

I think Caedrel is right about the lvl you have on a champ - but if they practice champ A for 1 or 2 weeks they should get to a 6 lvl. That is worse then your 9 but what he (and others) always seem to forget is that his enemy has your 3 from last week in playing against this. So if you have 6 for your champ and 9 for playing against Corki you have a 15 - they have 9 for corki and 3 for your pick -> 12. So you can gain an advantage by them sucking vs your champ and you doing fine on it.

My man I been asking for longer pick times on reddit for years. All I got was hate in return. get on that band wagon!

Only for fans pepega and caedrel

I think this happens bcoz they can only ban five champions. LoL Esports really need to change things, this org only cares about money, not quality.

I think champ diversity fell off because Riot started balancing champions based on roles. For example, Maokai USED to be good vs mages top, specifically Ryze top since he loves spamming. Then they changed Maokai passive to require the ability to HIT him instead of being casted in his general direction. Point is, low champion variation started happening when the "niche" counters are "too weak" or "too niche" to be used outside of its intended role. *cough* Swain *cough* Riot buffed Nautilus' E damage on jg camps to seemingly "push" him into the jg but it NOBODY tried it.

Call me crazy but the easy solution for this is to EXTEND the roster for the pro teams. So for example, 5 on bench and 5 on stage.and a teamis allowed to swap between matches up to "1 player for example" So now you can have t benched players that have some awkward unique champion pool.

Why play new and unique champions and risk getting benched for no reason when you can play the same champions you are comfortable on and still take a million dollar pay check? Until management can agree to give players more than 2 weeks to invest into innovative gameplay, it will never happen, because teams now have too much money to throw around and cycle through players like used tampons.

Lol so fucking sad how league players normally are only good at 2-3 champs in 1-2 roles and are proud and claim to know the game. Like no, you just know how to win on

i suck at league, but if i can learn 99% of a champ's mechanics in 20ish ranked games...then how in the hell do pros not pick up new champs?

Their salaries only justify them playing 4 5 champions. Yeah, really hard job.

About the Ahri vs Veigar: The matchup was played 10 times and 6 times Veigar won the game. And in these games Ahri rarely does bad herself. Veigar does well into Ahri but not great enough that pros consider it as a great counter. Mostly just as a possible answer if the rest of the draft works with him.

I honestly think the meta right now is boring because supports have too much power. give that power back to actual carries flip up the items (properly this time riot, the item rework is the worst thing to happen to league) the game looks different

Lol isn't fun bcoz there is no comeback potential... In Dota it happens all the time... Maybe lol should be more like Dota.. 30-40 min games, hyper carries, I don't think perfect balance is good at all, when it urgot irelia athrox meta we get to see both teams pick OP champs and carry there was comeback potential as well

The problem I see with innovation is that most "off-meta" comps, especially the ones LS crafts and describes are absolute all or nothing comps. It always feels like (even when he himself is describing them) they are stronger than the meta or strong against the meta if and only if they are played at 100%. As soon as performance (in whatever shape or form) drops to say 95% it just falls apart instantly, whereas the ol' reliable that he mentioned usually stays pretty stable even in suboptimal conditions (one aspect helping with that is that they are mostly scaling picks/comps). So the cheesy/off-meta comps are just not worth it from a risk minimizing point of view (at least when teams are somewhat evenly matched). When a team is vastly outmatched, it is definitely a valid option to throw a "big block of cheese" at the enemy (as frequently seen by wildcard teams), but most western teams, orgs and players probably care to much about their carrers, image and domestic success to risk getting caught in the middle of that. Which is totally fair because the risk vs reward balance of these strats sucks terribly. If they work out perfectly you might sneak an extra win off a stronger team and be the "hero" for 5 seconds, anything else you look like a total arse who gave up on the game before it started, because good look explaining to people why that thing you tried makes sense on paper and in scrims when everyone just saw it crash and burn in front of their own eyes. I would guess that the whole real-world idea of "9 out of 10 innovations fail, deserved or not" does, to an extend, apply in League aswell, which is why most teams probably don't bother slumping through that process. Or maybe they do and we just don't get to see all the stuff they tried in scrims and then dropped it because it didn't work out. Because, as good and smart as LS is, he rarely is on the "inside" of teams and orgs, so how he could with any degree of certainty know what goes down in scrims is beyond me. Bottom line of my vastly derailed train of thought on the topic is that there is probably a lot more aspects to why pros and teams are reluctant with innovation than the "pros are lazy, stubborn, ..." that he and a lot of commenters are going on about.

Blue ezreal River shen Top nocturne Ivern mid Jg ezreal Enchanter top All of them was invented & popularized by streamer not pro player

its so easy to be an armchair quarterback with this kinda thing, people will play what they like and what they're good with so who cares, and most pros can probably learn new champs relatively quick

i don't mean to be rude to the pro players or anything but western players are probably the laziest pro players. looking at the innovation behind the eastern players is so inspiring but western players just regurgitate the same thing over and over. it's sad to watch bc the teams i enjoy most watching just feel insanely boring most of the time

20 ban?

just a crazy idea that will blow the pro stage in my opion : lets say that the teams can not play the champions that played last week . think about week 1 the play some champions next week they can not. week 3 they can play champs of week but not weeks2 etc etc

12/0 Lucian if he has 4 items and GP has 2 and a half GP will kill Lucian and be more usefull for hes team

Would be nice to hear what LS is saying without holding my ear to the speaker….

Either the pros or the coaches are boring as hell. Thats the issue. There are plenty of champs to play and they rather play the same 6. Thats on them not Riot. boring ass competitive scene

Could riot just add more bans to force people to play more diverse picks?

It's the Pro player's job to learn the champions of their respective role.... If you can't even play most of the champ pool in your role then what is your worth?? you'll just get countered giga hard by the opposing team and you on the other hand will just shit the bed cause you can't do anything in lane.

"maining" and "difficulty" of champs are SO overrated PRO PLAYERS (that basically LIVE for the game) imo should have like minimum 20 champs that they "Main" and use for example enchanters arent that "hard" to main right click champs too like tryndamere trundle etc etc the fundamentals in league are the same for every champ you need to learn what and how to build wave management counter champs tempo etc THE CHAMPION POOL IS NOT THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS THE PRO PLAY SCENE THAT IS (incluying players coaches etc)

It will always confuse me why anyone listens to LS. His takes are pretty mundane and obvious, his predictions are dog, he's neither elocuent or funny and his voice is annoying. I just don't get it.

While I know that LS is a smart guy on paper, it's always kinda fun to see him talk about what Pros apparently do and how scrims apparently worked, when he barely had any coaching positions for a significant amount of time. Just makes his assumptions seem kinda wild. And it always seems like he bases his meta takes and opinions on the assumption that everyone plays everything perfectly all the time which is somewhat fine for theorycrafting, but never applicable to actual play.

LS is a joke