Views: 2260 I tried Team Builder
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Hello everybody!
So the live beta test of Team Builder was on, and I did get a chance to try it out. Unfortunately just one day, as I thought it will continue today, and, well.. it's not. :D
So no screenshots, as I did not do a single one yesterday :(
I tried it as a freelancer and as a captain, and I must say: Team Builder is a Blind Pick mode finally made playable.
It's great. You just pick the champion you want to play, role and lane you want, put on your summoner spells, rune page and masteries page, and hit big "Join" button. Then you wait. I did
Thresh support. Estimated time was 0:43, and someone accepted me to his group within next 5 seconds. I guess I picked very demanded champ and position for any team.
I joined, there were 3 others waiting already. Volibear top, Yasuo mid and Caitlyn bot. Everyone was nice and friendly, as nobody was fighting over the position. Another good thing is, you can check other players runes, masteries and summoners while waiting for others. At first, I didn't do it. But then... captain accepted my all-time favourite Master Yi for jungler. They all presesd READY button, while I typed: "really? Yi jungle?" I got 2 answers. "yes" (from Yi himself), and "problem?" from captain. Then I checked captain's rune page that had about 10 different stats (that guy must have about 8 different types of runes in there), and it was clear I should dodge. So I apologized for wasting their time, but I can't play in that team. And I left.
It was great! With this, I saved myself 20-40 min of life, and didn't have to play a game, I would most likely not enjoy at all. And since I was just a freelancer, their group didn't get disbanded, and I am sure quickly enough they filled my position and started the game. Definitive win-win situation. What more can you ask for?
So I tried it the other way around. Again the same champ and position. Then I put my expectations, like what type of champion you want for certain positions (I put assasin jungle, marksman bot, mage mid, fighter top).
All in all the waiting time for my team to get complete was about 3-5 min, which is like normal time when waiting for blind/draft pick.
You just wait, until some player pops in. You see his selected champion, summoner spells, rune page and masteries. And you have few seconds to accept/decline that player. One by one I got Varus (decided to take him as he has CC), Renekton (also has stun and I love Rene top) and Xerath (don't see much of him in game so why not give him a chance). Then, Master Yi appeared in my jungle slot. With a pleasure beyond measure, I clicked that nice red X button and waited few more seconds, until Kha'Zix poped in. I accepted him immediately. Dunno if I was just lucky, but everybody was really friendly and nice, said hello, one said "teamwork = OP" another one "pls no rage trolling" and I was happy as ever. I knew at least 3 of us will play cooperatively. The game began...
Good thing is until the loading screen, you - as a captain - can kick anyone out of your team (if you get trolls or rude kids), or as a freelancer - you can leave. Great thing.
Second, funnier part of the story - our oposing team went double top + double ADC bot ( Caitlyn Kog'Maw Vel'Koz Volibear Fiora). We stomped them so hard, they surrended in about min 25. But what was so cool - nobody raged.
So, what does it say? You can still play "break the meta" compositions, that some people just have to try. You can still see double ADC, double jungle, Soraka mid and such... but if you don't like it, you don't have to play in that team.
And if you dodge, you can que again without restrictions. And I think there is very small chance to find more than 3 bad groups you would like to leave in a row. Pity I didn't try how many times can you dodge, before getting punished (and what is the punishment. My guess is time ban as usual in normal Q).
All in all - Team Builder is the answer for Blind Pick. No instalockers, no internal team-fight in the lobby over places and champions - you either like it and play, or you dodge and they can find another person to fill up. I really think this can help clean up community's toxicity and hopefully it will spill over to the draft pick as well. (You can say - you don't like pick order? Well, go play Team Builder game).
I really hope, when teambuilder will be permanent, they delete blind pick mode. Would be useless.
And last but not least - with this mode you can finally practice another roles. Nowaday I say "fill" in draft, but usually I get support or jungle. But sometimes I would like to practice mid or top, but unless you are very aggresive in lobby (or get lucky to have nice team mates), those positions are out of option, as everybody wants them.
But with this feature - sure you will have to wait more than supports or ADC's, but then you can be sure, nobody else will ask for your role, once you get into the team.
GJ Riot, keep it up. I'm very pleased with the way this is going and hope for more stuff like this to come :)
And for the rest of you - when it comes to your server, try it out. Seriously. It's great.
So the live beta test of Team Builder was on, and I did get a chance to try it out. Unfortunately just one day, as I thought it will continue today, and, well.. it's not. :D
So no screenshots, as I did not do a single one yesterday :(
I tried it as a freelancer and as a captain, and I must say: Team Builder is a Blind Pick mode finally made playable.
FREELANCER
It's great. You just pick the champion you want to play, role and lane you want, put on your summoner spells, rune page and masteries page, and hit big "Join" button. Then you wait. I did
Thresh support. Estimated time was 0:43, and someone accepted me to his group within next 5 seconds. I guess I picked very demanded champ and position for any team.I joined, there were 3 others waiting already.
Volibear top, Yasuo mid and Caitlyn bot. Everyone was nice and friendly, as nobody was fighting over the position. Another good thing is, you can check other players runes, masteries and summoners while waiting for others. At first, I didn't do it. But then... captain accepted my all-time favourite Master Yi for jungler. They all presesd READY button, while I typed: "really? Yi jungle?" I got 2 answers. "yes" (from Yi himself), and "problem?" from captain. Then I checked captain's rune page that had about 10 different stats (that guy must have about 8 different types of runes in there), and it was clear I should dodge. So I apologized for wasting their time, but I can't play in that team. And I left.It was great! With this, I saved myself 20-40 min of life, and didn't have to play a game, I would most likely not enjoy at all. And since I was just a freelancer, their group didn't get disbanded, and I am sure quickly enough they filled my position and started the game. Definitive win-win situation. What more can you ask for?
CAPTAIN
So I tried it the other way around. Again the same champ and position. Then I put my expectations, like what type of champion you want for certain positions (I put assasin jungle, marksman bot, mage mid, fighter top).
All in all the waiting time for my team to get complete was about 3-5 min, which is like normal time when waiting for blind/draft pick.
You just wait, until some player pops in. You see his selected champion, summoner spells, rune page and masteries. And you have few seconds to accept/decline that player. One by one I got
Varus (decided to take him as he has CC), Renekton (also has stun and I love Rene top) and Xerath (don't see much of him in game so why not give him a chance). Then, Master Yi appeared in my jungle slot. With a pleasure beyond measure, I clicked that nice red X button and waited few more seconds, until Kha'Zix poped in. I accepted him immediately. Dunno if I was just lucky, but everybody was really friendly and nice, said hello, one said "teamwork = OP" another one "pls no rage trolling" and I was happy as ever. I knew at least 3 of us will play cooperatively. The game began...Good thing is until the loading screen, you - as a captain - can kick anyone out of your team (if you get trolls or rude kids), or as a freelancer - you can leave. Great thing.
Second, funnier part of the story - our oposing team went double top + double ADC bot (
Caitlyn Kog'Maw Vel'Koz Volibear Fiora). We stomped them so hard, they surrended in about min 25. But what was so cool - nobody raged.So, what does it say? You can still play "break the meta" compositions, that some people just have to try. You can still see double ADC, double jungle,
Soraka mid and such... but if you don't like it, you don't have to play in that team.And if you dodge, you can que again without restrictions. And I think there is very small chance to find more than 3 bad groups you would like to leave in a row. Pity I didn't try how many times can you dodge, before getting punished (and what is the punishment. My guess is time ban as usual in normal Q).
All in all - Team Builder is the answer for Blind Pick. No instalockers, no internal team-fight in the lobby over places and champions - you either like it and play, or you dodge and they can find another person to fill up. I really think this can help clean up community's toxicity and hopefully it will spill over to the draft pick as well. (You can say - you don't like pick order? Well, go play Team Builder game).
I really hope, when teambuilder will be permanent, they delete blind pick mode. Would be useless.
And last but not least - with this mode you can finally practice another roles. Nowaday I say "fill" in draft, but usually I get support or jungle. But sometimes I would like to practice mid or top, but unless you are very aggresive in lobby (or get lucky to have nice team mates), those positions are out of option, as everybody wants them.
But with this feature - sure you will have to wait more than supports or ADC's, but then you can be sure, nobody else will ask for your role, once you get into the team.
GJ Riot, keep it up. I'm very pleased with the way this is going and hope for more stuff like this to come :)
And for the rest of you - when it comes to your server, try it out. Seriously. It's great.
Selecting Role (or "Any Role" ofc still possible), getting queued with ppl who don't got that role - that's it!
In a way, if you don't see your enemy, it is good. You never know who are you going to be against, so you may play your champion against all odds, which can make you better player. Also as a captain, you can think about what possibly is the best team t owin in a blind pick, and judging by that, you can select your team mates.
Btw. you can see their runes and masteries, so you cvan see they are not yet lvl 30 and refuse them, if needed.
Only thing left to fix is a matchmaking. If I am bronze, it should look for bronze team mates, and bronze enemy team. Ofc. But since this is not working even in rankeds, I odn't think it'll happen any time soon.
I agree, I wouldn't play this mode often (still prefer draft picks), but as I would like to practice my
Apart from that (which only happened once to me) I see no other problems.
It's lovely :D
When it works fine, it works like a dream. When it doesn't work, the issues are very apparent and don't really help any more than blind pick does. You can get people dodging forever and never getting into a game. It's like the L4D2 lobbies, holy ****, those were annoying.
Other issues include having to pick your champion and then being unable to change your champion when you're in lobby.
It feels really superficial to me. I hope it never gets used for ranked at its current stage. It needs to see a lot of work before I think it's good for anything except blind picks.
Even teams, fun games and no toxicity.
I guess I'm lucky :P
1. 90% of the time, i will pick ryze anyway.
2. i only play normals, so i don't really care about the comp.
3. i am a scrub so i don't really know too much about teamcomps either.
however, choosing champs together doesn't really have any downside(it might get tricky when two people want to play the same champ though), so riot might as well do that.
hopefully they do something about it, I hated to go against 5 challengers with 30 lvls without any normal games
We did win but their
Didn't realize you could pick the champ beforehand...that's really dumb. If you could just pick the role you want then choose champs together in champ select that would be 10000000x better.
^this. Like sometimes I have a ranked game and then four people turn out to be maining the same role. That's no one's fault really. I was hoping teambuilder would function like 'hosting' a game and get four random people to join it, then pick roles and discuss a strategy, bans, etc. and then you get matched against another team and normal champ select starts. However this is just a slightly better version of blind pick.