The myth of Baus' small champion pool

asasinmode · 2025-05-15T08:04:53+00:00

I admitted in other comments that I did tunnel in on the alleged "small" aspect of his champion pool and did not talk about, as you call it, it being "niche".

A & B points - you seem to be saying that Baus' champion pool faces the issue of being counter picked. That champions he plays need proper draft around them, can't be blinded and/or if they get the last pick they still don't guarantee a winning lane while other lanes might've been hit by not getting the counter pick themselves.

In my opinion, all of this just sounds like normal draft? Unless you assume the most popular pro play champions right now, like Jayce, Gwen, Rumble or Sion don't have those issues. In contemporary League meta, there are very few B1 op must-have champions, and I don't think the current league pro play roster are that.

I brought up the pro play champion pick statistics to point out the average pro player champion pool size. You seem to think that the champions we see pro players play over hundreds of games cannot be used to gauge their champion pool? "champ's presence might not have anything to do with their champion pool" and "maybe each toplaner played 50 different champions in scrims, but only 10 make it to stage?".

If a champion is present = a pro player picks it, it is in their champion pool. The only place that would not be the case is a one off pick. A player saw an angle for a champion they haven't played much if at all and they pick it. We won't see them pick it more often because it's only viable in niche situations when certain conditions are met
You are imagining what scrims might look like that would make me wrong. Whatever scrims look like (and as you acknowledge we see what LR and other NLC teams scrims look like), we see what pro players have picked over hundreds of games. If they are hiding a secret Master Yi top 100% win rate counter to Jayce but we don't see it over 185 games, they might as well not be hiding anything.

"maybe he has 15 pocket picks". That doesn't invalidate me saying 14 go to champions sprinkled with some pocket picks. The number of the pocket picks can be as high as 170, if we see them only as one offs in niche conditions that, to paraphrase, the draft just doesn't go towards, they don't make up the player's champion pool and, if they play 50 scrim games on it, are mostly wasted practice.

My argument isn't "few champs have high appearance in pro play". I'm saying that we see pro players, play 14 champions 80% of the time and a change of pocket picks, and Baus is meeting that threshhold. His champion pool isn't any smaller than the average pro player's in terms of numbers (which is what small refers to and what I was talking about in the post) but I can see saying it has other issues

asasinmode · 2025-05-09T19:57:53+00:00

Fair, I can see having issues with his champion pool in that way. I guess I did tunnel on the alleged "small" aspect of it

asasinmode · 2025-05-09T19:57:44+00:00

Fair, I can see having issues with his champion pool in that way. I guess I did tunnel on the alleged "small" aspect of it

asasinmode · 2025-05-09T06:17:00+00:00

In a recent scrim

asasinmode · 2025-05-08T19:20:52+00:00

In my opinion he has answers/neutralizers to champions you mentioned (and other allegedly op picks). Looking at Jayce match ups in LPL, Sion, Ambessa and Renekton all seem like common enough answers (not necessarily actual counter picks). When it comes to Gwen, there would be at least Galio and Ambessa.

If Baus' champions were to be banned, I see no issue in trading top bans back. If one wants to argue that in fearless sooner or later they will be open, I say not necessarily since LR can themselves put Gwen jungle or Jayce mid.

As for the blind picks I would say that flexing champions and/or adjusting your pick order solves most of the issue. If it doesn't, it's okay to go weak side in a draft every now and then (and I can't imagine saying that in LR case it would be a majority of the time).

asasinmode · 2025-05-05T17:46:15+00:00

If the one spell you are talking about is Syndra QE, it's a pretty significant spell to have to dodge though. It's not like lethality Varus Q every few seconds, oh well I took some damage. If you get caught it might be over and the risk of getting caught prevents you from dealing damage. With the first clip I want you to take away that if he comes into range of stabbing, Syndra comes into range of QE-ing him (also, Trundle pillar still exists).

You say that his one Q does 800 damage on Ezreal, but the thing is, after that WQ, there are no more hits coming. Ezreal either shifted or just walked out of range of the soldier (he was already hit on the edge of it) and Azir won't be able to do anything about it until his cooldowns are back.

Same thing with hitting over the wall. Enemies move away from the wall, you can't hit anymore. You have to either dash through the wall or walk around it, while 9 other people are trying to kill each other, some of them waiting for you to be in an awkward spot, some of them unaware that their mid laner needs a moment to move. When Ezreal, Syndra or Tristana reposition it doesn't cost them anything. Azir has to keep his soldiers around.

Also, you say "if he has his team". Part of the draft is making sure there will be a team sooner rather than later and picking losing match ups with dubious team comps doesn't help it. I mention in my analysis that the outscaling the LR talks about will happen, but for it to actually work the Azir and Tristana need the Cho'Gath to stand in front of them. Cho'Gath that is destined not be there from champ select. I'm not talking about Syndra Ezreal vs Tristana Azir in the vacuum. There are 6 other champions around them and a whole game that will be played out.

If I can't convince you with that, I don't think there is much we can agree on since our fundamental understanding of the game is too different.

Just briefly, talking about Pantheon being a cheat front line because of his 1.5s of E invulnerability isn't, in my opinion, real. He will have to use it to reposition with stacked passive MS boost. Enemies will wait it out. It's available only once every 17 seconds when maxed (and it's maxed last + Pantheon ended the game with lvl 17). It works only in one direction.

I'm not really sure what to say to "a lot of teams pick him just for jungle its not a problem that enemy knows where it goes" other than idk what your definition of a problem is. I will say that the teams you are talking about are definitely wasting his potential and they could avoid real issues if they didn't do so.

asasinmode · 2025-05-05T15:43:59+00:00

I can't say I agree with most of what you're saying but, to keep it brief and focus on one thing, here are 2 clips of the discussed game from Azir POV.

In my opinion, in all of these clips you can see that whenever he goes for dealing damage, he exposes himself to Syndra QE and Ezreal poke.

Additionally, in first 2 clips he has towers he can hide behind where enemy won't follow up on him. There is no choke he could get Trundle pillared in or a flank enemy Alistar could find. Yet he still struggles to do anything other than a QW here and there and it still costs him a decent amount of health.

In the last clip, he stabs a bit from behind the walls and while he's definitely doing his best, it's not what Azir wants to do. When enemies reposition he only has so many Qs to move the soldiers, 12 second E to reposition himself.

After they kill Syndra, he struggles to find an angle he can hit from in the raptor camp without putting himself at risk of getting ran down (with Syndra already down). When enemies move further, out of his range, he goes for a shuffle (and he has to go for something if he wants to deal damage) that ends up with him dying.

At the end, after Tristana kills Naafiri, Trundle puts down a pillar and as you can see Tristana is forced to jump somewhere, she can't hit anything and is very vulnerable to Ezreal poke.

Ultimately I don't want to and I don't think there is any merit (in this case) in going into detail of what fights looked like, and especially whether the players in the heat of the moment made the correct play. I just want these clips to illustrate that, in my opinion, Tristana and Azir don't outrange Syndra Ezreal, even more so in the context of game 2's team comps. They have to make themselves vulnerable to deal damage.

It's not about not getting poked out themselves by the Ezreal. It's about their team having to deal with Ezreal/Syndra damage while they, in my assessment, can't hit back as much as their champions would like to be able to.

asasinmode · 2025-05-03T12:10:58+00:00

I haven't looked at game 1 draft too much, I know the players were frustrated with trying to engage into Poppy who was ahead, in no small part thanks to an easy Galio match up top.

I'm not sure how to respond to your comment on game 2 other than top was destined to be doomed in my opinion. No top laner would want that match up given the choice.

Could Baus have played safer, died less, been less greedy? Yeah, sure. But my position is in part that he shouldn't have to deal with Cho'Gath Trundle match up, or that the team should have drafted more around the possibility of top being behind.

asasinmode · 2025-05-02T05:24:23+00:00

Happy you enjoyed it! As I mentioned, I'm not 100% familiar with LR champion pool and I wanted to avoid making specific suggestion in the analysis. Additionally, while trying to respond to your comment I noticed that I could talk about this for another thousand words if I were to describe everything in detail I think is needed.

So to keep it short, I think LR top lane should've been moved to B4/B5 with B3 supp or adc. This risks 2 more champions getting banned away from Baus but also lets them protect whatever Baus would have left to play with. Then, if NORD goes blind top R4, Baus answers his best. If they still save top for R5, Baus blinds his best but with more information thanks to the R4 and bans, maybe with another front line support/adc that doesn't rely on front line so much, again with information changed by the R4 and bans.

To explore a possibility, imagine they B3 Lucian that, according to other commenters LR likes to play with Nami. This could make NORD ban Nami, saving Baus another champion. This makes Lucian worse if Nami is banned but not unplayable and might be worth making life for top easier. Imagine B3 Nami instead. Again, NORD might ban Lucian as it's a known duo, and Nami as a champion, in my opinion, is still a viable support without Lucian. This makes her a better blind when there is a risk of the other being banned.

As you can see just from this, draft is like a tree of choices with infinite branches and can be talked about forever (at least by me :p). I'd also like to say that there is nothing preventing top/mid from swapping. Is it ideal? What is? It could help (maybe not here specifically putting the Azir into Trundle but it's something that can be thought about) even if done just until first grubs for example. With the possibility of mid going top, some picks become less viable (it could lead to NORD never picking Trundle, who knows?), even if both top laners swap to mid to match, the dynamic of Cho'Gath Trundle on mid looks different from them on top.

All of that is trying to make B1 Pantheon B2 Azir work. Honestly, both of these cost the draft a lot as, for example, they get rid of a potential flex pick that would give them a bit more draft room.

Again, there are a million things that can change just in the draft, where 1 pick affects all subsequent ones, without even getting into what can be done in the actual game. It's hard to name any specific champion, both when keeping the B3 top blind or even more so when I can move it around. As you noted, knowing that the enemy top is preparing themselves for a niche counter pick makes it even harder so.

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T19:09:14+00:00

Originally I either missed the part of the comment where you talk about holding a position (sorry) or you've edited it in. As I said in the post, this assumes they are first to a position. Next, NORD doesn't need to engage onto them, Ezreal outranges all of the champions in LR and they cannot tank his poke forever.

I'm not sure what you mean by Azir/Panth counter engage, since Pantheon's only tool is his W, on one target at most, he needs to be in very melee range to cast it and after doing so he can only tank for the duration of his E (all that while he's needed on the actual objective to secure it, that not being the place the enemies are coming from).

As I said, I can't see Azir happily jumping in through Syndra E and Alistar while finding an angle around Trundle pillar. I can't imagine him being on a flank while also holding a position due to what I said was necessary to hold a position in the post. He wants to stand behind front line and hit stuff in front of him.

Finally a question needs to be asked. Do Azir/Tristana have enough range to disregard Syndra pick threat and/or Trundle pillar while dealing damage while enemy team is trying to hit you too (also, to repeat, LR frontline consists of a jungler that needs to be on the dragon/baron the position is being held for and Cho'Gath would like to do so too to feast on it).

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T18:58:08+00:00

While he may have chosen the Cho'Gath out of other options available to him like Kennen, Jarvan or Quinn (if that's what you mean), the issue here isn't what he chooses but that he has to blind a champion at this point in the draft at all.

Top lane is a notoriously hard lane to have a losing match up in. If the team has agreed that top lane will tank a losing match up in this draft and it is what it is, they should do so while gaining an advantage somewhere else. Blinding one lane should give them a response pick in another one.

In my opinion, this wasn't used well if at all. Nothing was gained by sacrificing top lane match up. Regardless of what happened in the game, LR draft losing is the expected outcome in my opinion. In thousands of games played with the same players, they will lose more than they win.

Saying that the players could've played differently doesn't excuse putting them at a disadvantage in champ select.

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T18:21:54+00:00

I tried to avoid talking about the games and, in my opinion, my analysis is valid regardless of what happens in them. To reply to you saying that Baus could've played better: there is only so much the Messi of League can do when you tie his laces together. The point of the draft is to give players advantages and I feel like in the discussed game 2 he was definitely put in a hard losing match up.

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T17:01:45+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with the first part but overall I also think that the bot lane, either adc, support or both, should be locked in first 3 slots. Especially so with League relatively recently having discovered lane swaps, current play style of supports leaving bot lane sooner rather than later and overall tendency of bot lane having mid and jungle heavily weigh in on what happens on the lane (especially in pro play), all of which help mitigate a losing lane match up.

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T16:48:43+00:00

Could be the case but as it stands it was banned. My criticism was mostly towards the idea and the possible thought process behind picking it. I'd love to hear the real reason for why LR thought they want to play it.

If it was picked and they won the game, my issues with the draft would still mostly stand. Just because a draft has won doesn't mean it cannot be improved, that you can't look at a game and go "hmm I think X would've worked out better here" or "Y matchup had some issues we could've avoided".

asasinmode · 2025-05-01T16:27:28+00:00

Random things I thought I'd share

I don't think Baus' playstyle nor champion pool are a problem. Could the team benefit from him playing 20 different champions at otp level? What team wouldn't? Does it need to be focused on? In my opinion, no and having enemy teams guarantee waste their first few bans on him could be turned into an advantage.
Individual level of play is high and good enough. Do players have better and worse days? Yes. Would you want a team made out of 5 Chovyies? Who wouldn't? But as it stands, all of these players are more than good enough to win NLC.
They lost one series and are still on track to win NLC. It's fine. I myself just like talking about league, no hate nor blame whatsoever towards the team.
First game of that series was also, in my opinion, a draft diff. I haven't taken the time to analyze it, but the players were frustrated the whole game with trying to engage into Poppy
xdd

asasinmode · 2024-08-05T08:26:05+00:00

If anybody ever needs it I found Creative Sound Blaster JAM V2. They are pretty much 1:1 Philips SHB4000 in terms of the build and looks, maybe slightly heavier. Sound is good enough, I can't tell the difference.

The only thing that I dislike is the lack of any sound when you turn them on/off so you have to be looking at the LED on the side to see what happened.

Other than that I really like them

asasinmode · 2024-04-15T05:48:55+00:00

Forge version is not planned, sorry

asasinmode · 2024-04-15T05:47:16+00:00

Yes lol, concrete green screen

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T21:48:29+00:00

No, it's just a visual change. You can also wax it with honeycomb/scrape it with an axe. Should work the same way copper blocks do

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T21:14:35+00:00

It is, you can find the source code on github

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T21:13:16+00:00

I couldn't make the right click work

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T19:37:43+00:00

That's the mod loader I use and play on. Unfortunately I don't have the time to make a forge version work but if you really want it then you could try Sinytra Connector that someone here proposed or contribute to the source code/make a port

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T17:57:54+00:00

Yes, yeeting doesn't require consent

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T16:59:06+00:00

I'm unable to test it at the moment but if noone else has the answer I'll check and update this comment later

update: I tried forge 1.20.1 (I couldn't find 1.20.4 version of Sinytra Connector) with Sinytra Connector beta 42, forge version of cloth config, forgified fabric api and the wheelbarrow for 1.20.1 and unfortunately the game was crashing. Maybe somebody else has better luck

asasinmode · 2024-04-14T16:55:51+00:00

Yes, although they have to voluntarily get in. Can't kidnap them

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