League of Legends: 10-Ban System Working as Intended

The days where the ten-ban system could be considered “new” are now behind us, and it’s time to take a look back at how it’s done. The response of the player base has been overwhelmingly positive thus far, as the new system streamlines champion select, allows players to ban more niche champions than the previous system, and ensures that Yasuo is a thing of the past. Even champions like Fiora, who are usually not considered “overpowered” so much as “annoying”, are starting to see high ban rates.

So how does Riot feel about it all? Well, it turns out that they’re pretty happy with the new system as well. There were some fears that the new system wouldn’t result in more bans at all, and that teams would instead opt to ban the same five overpowered champions. Meddler came to the forum to let everyone know that the exact opposite has been the case, and that ban diversity was higher than even the most optimistic projections could have guessed.

“We did a bit more analysis of the impact of 10 bans earlier this week. Particularly interesting there was the distribution of how many unique champs are banned per game, which ended up being a higher number than expected. Two key data points from that below, bear in mind that these are averages though and will vary based off your MMR and the server you play on:

-Around 70% of games have 9 or 10 unique champions banned

-Less than 1% of games have 5 or 6 unique champions banned

We’ll keep monitoring how ban usage changes over time of course, so more info to follow again at some point. Overall we’re still really happy with how the revised ban system in matchmade games has gone, particularly the amount its sped up getting into game (lets players spend a larger proportion of their time on the more fun bits).”

His data is largely corroborated by the data that third party sites have collected. Double bans are exceedingly rare, and only extremely reviled champions like Yasuo or, at higher elos, Fizz tend to get banned by both teams. Even an oppressively overpowered champion like Zac was, at the highest, drawing a 10% double ban rate.

So if you were hoping that the ten ban system would actually result in ten bans, then it’s time to rejoice! Plenty of champions are getting banned, and Yasuo appears in less than ten percent of all games! I think we can all agree that makes the new system a rousing success.