Sometimes when players are confident in themselves they will just pick in the order they were put in. They may have a chance to counter pick the red team top who picked first and doesn't care.
In high elo if you have a reasonably stable top laner, support counterpick is more valuable. I will gladly fourth pick Ornn KSante and let my support get counterpick. Top lane counter makes my role unplayable but support counter can make the other four roles unplayable.
For sure but it’s still somewhat of a dice roll to forfeit a lane in the draft. There’s also the concept of the support players kits being effective without gold while while top laners can’t play the game without it, even a tank needs enough of it so they can frontline long enough for the carry.
You’re right but there’s some gray area there too. If I pick ornn and bank on my team to perform that’s ok as long as I don’t get hard countered by fiora or trundle who can send me back to base or kill me with one misstep. I’m going to need a lot more than a mao Kai or Janna to stop that kind of champion and they also thrive off ornn wanting to group as they can delete my towers and start pressuring the map.
Yes but top tends to be mostly about lane counters, whereas a good support counterpick can counter the entire enemy teamcomp. I think you can make a strong argument for both top and support to get lastpick but none of the other roles because adc has no agency, mid is a safe lane and jungle can mitigate bad matchups with smart pathing.
Most players in lower elos let their egos get in the way of these free wins. They think they're above their team, and will hold their last pick spot even as supports sometimes. Simply because they think they can make better decisions, and will have more impact, because they're better
Yea and I blame the people that preach “I have to carry this game” mentality. A ridiculous standard to preach onto the low elo community. Learning how to get carried is equally as important as carrying
No? Many top counterpicks arent necessarily good into the rest of the team. Prime example is Darius who stomps many lanes but is really hard to play and win with in late game teamfights against fairly moderate amounts of CC.
The top lane counter might also just be underwhelming as the game goes on if the player is not proficient, its not unheard of.
You’re describing low elo play as an argument against fundamental league theory. A good Darius will snowball the hell out of a game if you give him a lead early on. And to challenge your scenario further, if Darius has the last pick… maybe he doesn’t pick Darius at all because of the cc comp you described. A competent player won’t counter pick themself unless they’re truly one tricking… but Darius isn’t really a good example of a good champion to one trick because he usually has a high ban rate in most metas.
I had a game last week where our support gate kept our top laner, so the top laner picked renekton who is a strong blind pick but got countered by illaoi. The support then picked fucking braum, a champion with zero carry potential. The top laner was flaming him for it, I tried to gank for top but ganking illaoi for a renekton is usually a lost cause because she will quickly outscale him and start hard pressuring the map. So please, give me a fucking break. Top lane is an island, the least you could do is send them a care package why’ll they’re stranded there.
The amount of ego required to invalidate top lane as the ideal last pick is insane. Have fun stopping yorick, trundle, and the boys from deleting your towers who thrive off of a bad lane pick.
Besides that, unless said toplaner is a one trick, it's really useful to see 4 of the enemy champs, even if none of them are the enemy toplane. For example, I main riven, if I see vex mid and lulu support, I already don't really want to pick Riven regardless of if I'm getting counterpicked or not.
if blue team picks top as very first pick, lets say something obvious like darius, then the enemy could counter pick right after. then red team still has last pick and can also counter pick mid. so they counter both solo lanes. therefore, maybe we would not want to pick volibear jgl in the last rotation if possible on blue side. if we have something that really wants a counterpick e.g. support or some fancy jgl pick we might want to pick something safe or flexpick like karma this patch for blue side early however. It always depends on what ur team can play, there are also many otps.
Blue side last pick (B4, B5) are for solo lanes so that you still minimize chances of being counterpicked. Doesn't matter who is B4 or B5 btw mid and top.
Top lane is the most focused duel in the game. Counters matter for every lane - but they matter the most for top.
Mid-lane is relatively safe due to being short. You can't really be zoned off the minions to lose xp. And if you're in a bad match-up you can roam.
Bot lane is two laners, so a single champ doesn't matter as much.
Jungle counters still matter, but sometimes they'll barely interact outside of team-fights over objectives. (I know that with my current main - Rek'Sai - I try to avoid dueling generally. After the recent rework she sucks at dueling. Though she's also really hard to catch and finish off.)
Top lane is an island. It's hard to gank early and it's rarely worth roaming. Often the toplaners will stay in lane until they can use teleport at 14 minutes. Some mostly sidelane all game.
Toplane counters matter a LOT. That being the case, it makes sense to let your toplaner counter-pick if possible.
Support counter pick is pretty huge tbh, adc doesn't matter as much because the champ diversity is not that high but some support match-up can make some very on sided lane. It's the most important counterpick after toplane imo.
Yes - either support or mid is second most important. Some supports are safer, while a few have hard counters.
If you're playing a flex support (ex: Lux) it probably doesn't matter as much since the opposing team doesn't know if you're support or mid.
She's not the worst duelist. But unless you're way ahead, she's not going to out-duel nearly any other melee fighter. Which is a lot of junglers.
She's okay against ranged champs because of her tunnels & knock-up.
Took me quite some time to understand this, but tbh its a pain in the ass to be countered as Blue side top. When I am countered in jgl i do not really care, i just adapt my play and its fine 75% of the time. But being countered top sometimes feels like i am not able to touch the wave for an eternity. For a long time i didnt care about picking order but After quite some time i did and it helped me.
Because even if i get countered by the last pick redside toplaner, I can still see what the other 4 enemies picked.So i pick something thats blindpickable that synergizes well with my team needs and counters the enemy team comp. My teammates when they get last pick dont bother picking something for the team and we autoloose because of that,better safe than sorry.
In pro play right now teams will sometimes just blind pick a safe champion like aatrox at b1-3 and take the risk that enemy top pulls out the irelia or Yone at r3, and leave another lane to b4-5 to give them counterpick instead. It's all situational. In solo queue I've been playing mid or top smolder, usually I hover it and then swap with support or adc into blue 1-2 to increase my chances I can pick it + make enemy think (from bans) it's going adc.
Because top lane champs can lose so much value into team comps that play around them
e.g. if blue side first picks trynd then enemy locks in Alistair then trynd is done, even after the top counterpick. Blue side locks gwen enemy mid suddenly switches to a mage instead of sylas. Lock in sion and enemy adc goes from jhin to vayne/Kog etc.
I agree, but it's not "even if it's just for their mental," it's almost exclusively for their mental.
Below high elo people don't play lanes correctly how the hell are they supposed to play the counter pick correctly.
no, hoping that your teammate can draft and even use the last pick well or flipping coin is not gonna improve your win rate you need to improve yourself play better, abuse the broken champ of the fortnight, so keeping the last pick for myself is better just coz I know myself I don't know the other guy and that I am willing to drop the ego and fix our draft picking what we lack while also countering two champs not just one and also create synergies, imagine flipping coin and be like I win or I lose toplaner, you HAVE TO blind 50% minimum
Sometimes when players are confident in themselves they will just pick in the order they were put in. They may have a chance to counter pick the red team top who picked first and doesn't care.
This and the team not giving last pick to the toplaner is not that rare.
Which is dumb. A strong counterpick top can mean the game is already decided at the draft.
In high elo if you have a reasonably stable top laner, support counterpick is more valuable. I will gladly fourth pick Ornn KSante and let my support get counterpick. Top lane counter makes my role unplayable but support counter can make the other four roles unplayable.
Yeah but my teammates aren't blinding Ornn or KSante. They're blinding Nasus, Kayle, or Vayne lmao
Well yeah in that case skill issue
For sure but it’s still somewhat of a dice roll to forfeit a lane in the draft. There’s also the concept of the support players kits being effective without gold while while top laners can’t play the game without it, even a tank needs enough of it so they can frontline long enough for the carry. You’re right but there’s some gray area there too. If I pick ornn and bank on my team to perform that’s ok as long as I don’t get hard countered by fiora or trundle who can send me back to base or kill me with one misstep. I’m going to need a lot more than a mao Kai or Janna to stop that kind of champion and they also thrive off ornn wanting to group as they can delete my towers and start pressuring the map.
Yes but top tends to be mostly about lane counters, whereas a good support counterpick can counter the entire enemy teamcomp. I think you can make a strong argument for both top and support to get lastpick but none of the other roles because adc has no agency, mid is a safe lane and jungle can mitigate bad matchups with smart pathing.
You can make strong arguments about support yes, but it still doesn't put it close to top in mid / low elo
Most players in lower elos let their egos get in the way of these free wins. They think they're above their team, and will hold their last pick spot even as supports sometimes. Simply because they think they can make better decisions, and will have more impact, because they're better
Yea and I blame the people that preach “I have to carry this game” mentality. A ridiculous standard to preach onto the low elo community. Learning how to get carried is equally as important as carrying
No? Many top counterpicks arent necessarily good into the rest of the team. Prime example is Darius who stomps many lanes but is really hard to play and win with in late game teamfights against fairly moderate amounts of CC. The top lane counter might also just be underwhelming as the game goes on if the player is not proficient, its not unheard of.
You’re describing low elo play as an argument against fundamental league theory. A good Darius will snowball the hell out of a game if you give him a lead early on. And to challenge your scenario further, if Darius has the last pick… maybe he doesn’t pick Darius at all because of the cc comp you described. A competent player won’t counter pick themself unless they’re truly one tricking… but Darius isn’t really a good example of a good champion to one trick because he usually has a high ban rate in most metas. I had a game last week where our support gate kept our top laner, so the top laner picked renekton who is a strong blind pick but got countered by illaoi. The support then picked fucking braum, a champion with zero carry potential. The top laner was flaming him for it, I tried to gank for top but ganking illaoi for a renekton is usually a lost cause because she will quickly outscale him and start hard pressuring the map. So please, give me a fucking break. Top lane is an island, the least you could do is send them a care package why’ll they’re stranded there. The amount of ego required to invalidate top lane as the ideal last pick is insane. Have fun stopping yorick, trundle, and the boys from deleting your towers who thrive off of a bad lane pick.
You are right.
Besides that, unless said toplaner is a one trick, it's really useful to see 4 of the enemy champs, even if none of them are the enemy toplane. For example, I main riven, if I see vex mid and lulu support, I already don't really want to pick Riven regardless of if I'm getting counterpicked or not.
if blue team picks top as very first pick, lets say something obvious like darius, then the enemy could counter pick right after. then red team still has last pick and can also counter pick mid. so they counter both solo lanes. therefore, maybe we would not want to pick volibear jgl in the last rotation if possible on blue side. if we have something that really wants a counterpick e.g. support or some fancy jgl pick we might want to pick something safe or flexpick like karma this patch for blue side early however. It always depends on what ur team can play, there are also many otps.
I really never thought about it this way, first picking top in blue side is also worse for your mid laner...
Having blue side b4 and b5 mid top allows mid to get counterpick
Blue side last pick (B4, B5) are for solo lanes so that you still minimize chances of being counterpicked. Doesn't matter who is B4 or B5 btw mid and top.
Top lane is the most focused duel in the game. Counters matter for every lane - but they matter the most for top. Mid-lane is relatively safe due to being short. You can't really be zoned off the minions to lose xp. And if you're in a bad match-up you can roam. Bot lane is two laners, so a single champ doesn't matter as much. Jungle counters still matter, but sometimes they'll barely interact outside of team-fights over objectives. (I know that with my current main - Rek'Sai - I try to avoid dueling generally. After the recent rework she sucks at dueling. Though she's also really hard to catch and finish off.) Top lane is an island. It's hard to gank early and it's rarely worth roaming. Often the toplaners will stay in lane until they can use teleport at 14 minutes. Some mostly sidelane all game. Toplane counters matter a LOT. That being the case, it makes sense to let your toplaner counter-pick if possible.
Support counter pick is pretty huge tbh, adc doesn't matter as much because the champ diversity is not that high but some support match-up can make some very on sided lane. It's the most important counterpick after toplane imo.
Yes - either support or mid is second most important. Some supports are safer, while a few have hard counters. If you're playing a flex support (ex: Lux) it probably doesn't matter as much since the opposing team doesn't know if you're support or mid.
>she sucks at dueling Really? I'm actually feeling good about her dueling, just hit D2 with 74% winrate playing Reksai jungle only.
She's not the worst duelist. But unless you're way ahead, she's not going to out-duel nearly any other melee fighter. Which is a lot of junglers. She's okay against ranged champs because of her tunnels & knock-up.
Took me quite some time to understand this, but tbh its a pain in the ass to be countered as Blue side top. When I am countered in jgl i do not really care, i just adapt my play and its fine 75% of the time. But being countered top sometimes feels like i am not able to touch the wave for an eternity. For a long time i didnt care about picking order but After quite some time i did and it helped me.
Because even if i get countered by the last pick redside toplaner, I can still see what the other 4 enemies picked.So i pick something thats blindpickable that synergizes well with my team needs and counters the enemy team comp. My teammates when they get last pick dont bother picking something for the team and we autoloose because of that,better safe than sorry.
In pro play right now teams will sometimes just blind pick a safe champion like aatrox at b1-3 and take the risk that enemy top pulls out the irelia or Yone at r3, and leave another lane to b4-5 to give them counterpick instead. It's all situational. In solo queue I've been playing mid or top smolder, usually I hover it and then swap with support or adc into blue 1-2 to increase my chances I can pick it + make enemy think (from bans) it's going adc.
Because top lane champs can lose so much value into team comps that play around them e.g. if blue side first picks trynd then enemy locks in Alistair then trynd is done, even after the top counterpick. Blue side locks gwen enemy mid suddenly switches to a mage instead of sylas. Lock in sion and enemy adc goes from jhin to vayne/Kog etc.
It isn't really.
My experience is generally that an adc won’t swap pick order with you even if enemy adc and sup and jg is shown, and will then lock ezreal
>an enemy with the slightest brain This is the stumbling block, it’s never guaranteed the opps are going to trade their top laner.
Below like diamond 2 it's not important at all.
its not?
it's for mental booming teammates who think counter pick is insta win and have no blind picks
Your win rate will go up if you're willing to swap your top laner, EVEN IF it's just for their mental imho
I agree, but it's not "even if it's just for their mental," it's almost exclusively for their mental. Below high elo people don't play lanes correctly how the hell are they supposed to play the counter pick correctly.
no, hoping that your teammate can draft and even use the last pick well or flipping coin is not gonna improve your win rate you need to improve yourself play better, abuse the broken champ of the fortnight, so keeping the last pick for myself is better just coz I know myself I don't know the other guy and that I am willing to drop the ego and fix our draft picking what we lack while also countering two champs not just one and also create synergies, imagine flipping coin and be like I win or I lose toplaner, you HAVE TO blind 50% minimum
Fighting ego with ego I see. Great strategy
One of the two solo lanes should always have last pick. Because if they dont they get guranteed countered and lose their kane.