Introduction of Two Ban Phases

The League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) is the first international tournament to use the new competitive rule changes, specifically the move to ‘two ban phases’, that Riot put in place prior to the Spring Split. According to Riot, this change was made mainly to allow for more champions to see the rift and to reward a bigger champion pool.

While these goals were achieved, one contentious debate about the change was whether it lowered the game impact a team’s star player and further accentuated the weakest link in the team.

Will Teams Centered on a Single Star Player Suffer?

If a competitive team relies heavily on single player to always carry the team, this star player would have a more challenging time doing so if two or even three of his best champions always end up on the ban list.

It used to be a strength, even a goal in some cases, for a star player to be able to ‘consume’ two (sometimes three) of the enemies bans which are targeted solely at him. This opens up room for his team to pick up their best comfort champions, elevating the team’s performance in general.

However, with this new two ban phases, the opponents will still have a second ban phase and two extra bans to counteract the team’s traditional comfort picks, as well as the type or style of play the team appears to be going for.

With regards to the weakest link, if the player is able to play only a handful of champions at a competitive level which has a place in the current meta, he or she might potentially become a burden if the opponents targets his smaller hero pool in the first ban phase (leaving the second ban phase for tactical bans based on team composition).

Even if the team is more mechanically skilled on a whole as compared to the opponents, the rest of the team has to spend a lot more resources on covering their weakest link instead of building on their advantages in other aspects of the game. It is hard to imagine a team with such an exploitable weakness being successful in the long run.

West Versus East: Impact on the Competitive Scene

At first glance, this change to two ban phases might appear to be a good thing for the western scene, as it appears to lower the impact an exceptionally skilled player can have on the game, shifting the emphasis towards the holistic skill level of the team. One might actually think that this benefits western teams a lot more than eastern teams, which some in the scene might perceive to be more individually skilled in general.

However, I beg to differ – the top players in the west were never really behind the best players in the east (it might be a different case if we are talking about overall skill level of teams though). A case in point can be seen in the finals of MSI – Perkz put on a show for the neutrals when he took Faker head on and triumphed on a few occasions (see early parts of video below). This is not the first time where players managed to keep Faker down in the laning phase – sure it is not a common occurence, but it would be inaccurate to say it is a rare one in recent times.

Two Ban Phases Does Not Erode the Korean’s Advantages

In my opinion, the sustainable edge that the Korean LoL teams have over the Western teams is their teamplay – everything from drafting, shot calling in-game, tactical vision to team fight. We have seen on many separate occasions where teams seem to win the laning phase against the Korean overlords, only for Korean teams to get back into the game bit by bit due to superior shot calling which fully capitalizes on every small misstep of their opponents to claw their way back into the game.

The Koreans firm mastery of objective control and rotation around the map has an iconic effect of choking out their opponents slowly, whom are often forced into making scrappy and disorganized players under such pressure.

Although it is still early days in terms of concluding the true implications of moving to two ban phases, one can potentially argue that the change only serves to widen the gap between the Korean teams and the Western teams – after all, perfectly executed teamplay is not something that bans can target.