There hasn’t been a consistent way to play tournament-style, 5v5 matches in League Of Legends for more than two years now. Ever since Riot removed the premade ranked queue, dedicated players with four buddies have had to jump on the flex queue, where wait times can be ridiculously grueling and long. After what feels like ages, Riot Games has finally stepped up to fix this hole in their client and just announced a new game mode: Clash.
A dev team blog post by Iamwalrus and draggles listed some of the problems facing this mode, as well as the features it’s going to include when it goes live. Clash will be a 5v5 tournament mode that happens a few times each month. During the week, players can assemble a group of five and then play games on the weekend. Winning earns you rewards, like skin shards, essence and unreleased team logos, giving you an incentive to keep playing. Teams should be matched by skill level rather than random luck, meaning Bronze scrubs won’t be included in the same bracket as Diamond LCS wannabes. Though smurfing is always a possibility, the blog post says that Riot Games is working on a new way to track high-level players pretending to be bad in 2018.
To give Clash a bit more of a competitive edge, players will have to spend tickets in order to compete. Tickets can be bought with RP, essence or by completing special missions available sometime in the future. The more tickets you spend, the greater your rewards, meaning players who have the confidence to put all their chips on a team they believe in could potentially earn massive rewards. It gives an incentive to play besides earning a flashy border at the end of the year, a reason to care about your team beyond not wanting to embarrass yourself in front of strangers. It doesn’t matter what rank you are, a Silver scrub can team alongside a Platinum genius, but get ready to play against a higher-tier opponent.
My favorite part of this change has to be the inclusion of the scouting phase, allowing players to see the most played champions of their opponents. Preparing before a game is an important part of the team-play dynamic, one that’s been sorely missing from League without the use of outside sites like op.gg. With this small inclusion, players will be able to figure out who’s the best bruiser, mage or support to bring onto the Rift. You don’t want to play a slow jungler against a Master Yi main or Annie against a Zoe one-trick, that’s just asking for disaster.
Once the game starts, players will use the same pick/ban phase as the pros, banning five different champions apiece. Nothing is more annoying than letting an enemy get an OP power pick because only five or six champions were banned, a problem I constantly have in ranked. In Clash, even the most amatuer League Of Legends tryhard will be able to adapt to real competitive play.
Though we still have to wait months for this mode to go live on the North American servers, it’s great to see Riot bringing back team-play. Once I find four other adults who still play League Of Legends , I’ll try and assemble a team to stomp the kids spending their weekends in front of their PCs. I’ll call us “The Spanking Grandpas.”
How do you feel about League Of Legends Clash mode? Tell us in the comments!
