If I could vote for zero bans I would.

I hate bans with a passion, and it is kind of embarrassing to have so many. I feel that Riot should take responsibility instead of just saying "We give up on balance, we will just have this crutch in order for the game to be playable"

You know, we USED to use the 6 bans format for the DD tourney.
After awhile, we started to see the exact 4-5 champs picked over and over, with the order depending on who had first pick and which players played which OPs.

We still see a lot of "first pick" stuff, but teamcomps overall have only become a lot more varied because most of the overwhelmingly powerful champs stay out of the way.

Also, more bans does not "lower" skill level. I think you are confusing "playing OP champs" with actual skill.
Your skill has absolutely nothing to do with what champs you play, but the power of the champs you play can easily effect how well you do in game.

This is total nonsense.

Two players are the same elo level. One plays kassadin exclusively, one plays random guys, but not kassadin.

This statement here means that they are both EQUALLY SKILLED at using kassadin, which is of course false. there are many examples of top players being very very good with a certain guy, because they know many tricks and whatnot. Many champs have very high skill ceilings, and need very different skillsets to be successful

Quoted for Truth. +1

Oh hello Anders I've definitely played with you b4 and you gave me some tips and we talked about whether or not Zyra is a viable top. Anyways I think they at least need ranked teams for dominion considering TT has ranked teams although I'm much more interested in solo queue.

I wouldn't worry too much about masteries and summoner spells right now because Riot is making some changes in those regards for season 3.

Ive watched every tournament of dominion ever streamed, and even many that weren't. I find the statement about it having less variety than now, not true at all.
But even if it were true, it's a non problem, and if were a problem, is a problem riot is the one responsible for fixingit, not lame-balance through bans.

Well duh?
The guy who specializes in Kassadin will OBVIOUSLY be better at Kass than the guy who doesn't play him at all.

But that doesn't make him a more skilled player.

A good player is a good player no matter how you slice it or what champs they play.
When you put that player on an OP champ, he will have a greater impact on his games, but you haven't increased his skill level in the slightest.

There are different types of skill. Being able to use a champion well is only an expression of your skill.
There are things like map awareness, decision making, reaction time, knowing how to build, and basic character control to consider, as well as the ability to work with a team.

Of course most people will specialize in a few champs. That's normal.
But you need to be able to play at least 5-6 champions at a high level to be a competitive player.

Good players can adapt.
It's not that hard to learn new champions. It took me like, half a day to get really comfortable with Brand, and about 3-4 days to get really comfortable with him and work out the kinks.
Same story with Katerina, Cass, Ryze, and a few other champs I have up my sleeves.

Anyone who believes that more bans "lowers player skill" is just deluding themselves.
The ONLY thing upping the ban limit does is increase champion diversity by removing ubiquitous picks from the board, because the OPs stifle the playability of other, weaker/more niche champions.

Examples: Darius eclipses Garen, Jax makes the vast majority of the bruisers obsolete, Poppy out-shines Fizz and most other assassins, Jayce totally outclasses the other ranged ADs (except maybe Urgot, but hes an OP too), and my team would never run another tank besides Amumu if he wasn't banned against us all the time.

If these champs weren't banned, you can be damn sure most (if not all) of them would be quickly picked in a tourney setting. That's 5 essentially "must-have" champions the teams competing need to fight over.
That means that a lot of more niche champions have been completely passed over because something else does their job better.

Yeah, there are still a lot of common picks that happen, but I guarantee you that we would NEVER have seen Sauron break out Garen against my team had Darius been available to him.

TL;DR: there is no tldr.
Read it, you lazy fool : )

By removing the incentive to specialize in one champ you are reducing the level of skill a player can reach with a specific champ. You claim is like "a good gamer should be able to adapt to any game"

Skill with a speciifc champ is gonna be higher if a player specializes in that champ, instead of several.

By having bans you diminsh incentive for a player to specialize in a champ.

Imagine in sc2 for whatever reason a player is forced to play the 3 races (maybe because your opponent chooes your race or whatever). The game would have worse terran players, worse protoss players and worse zerg players.

Imagine in street fighter players would be forced to play a lot of champs (maybe because we have bans or whatever) then we would have worse ryu, worse t.hawk, worse guiles, all across the board.

Yes, forcing players to diversify, lower the skill ceilling attained with specific chars.

lack of specialization lower the level of skill on things. I thought that was a known fact.

About champion diversity, yes true some picks are obsoletes, that means there is a problem, adding bans do not fix the problem.

And if your team would always pick amumu as a tank, that's awesome, it doesn't mean every team would act the same, and if it happens that every team consider amumu a must pick for tanks, then there is an obvius problem with amumu. Just adding a ban covers under the rug a problem that should be fixed by the designer.

In the meantime we will not have the information if amumu is broken or not, because it's banned, so we can't analyze it's win ratio in tournaments etc.

I don't see how being good at a few different champions will "lower" someones skill ceiling.

With bans it's still perfectly viable to specalize in a champ.
I've specialized a ton into Brand, and I'm sure you know about POOTERSS Zilean, but the difference between us and guys like Wickd who are only extremely good with 1-2 champs is that we don't get screwed when our "main" is banned, so people don't bother using their bans on us (usually).

Yeah, trying to learn every champ in the league will probably result in you being a jack of all trades and master of none, but I think it's completely realistic to fully master 5-6 champs.

SC example is poor.
A more accurate example would be if a player only used a certain build order. Yeah, you could be the best 4-pool Zerg or Bunker rush Terran in the world, but you're kinda screwed if someone knows that's all you do.

You know, people don't just ban random **** in tournies. That's called wasting a ban.
You ban stuff that is either extremely powerful or counters their specific comp.

Not all the OP **** is a case of everyone knowing it's OP on release. Took people about a month to catch onto release Orianna.
The reason people know to ban Amumu against us now is because they found out through experience.
People didn't know Painkillars Amumu was OP at first. It took BPB a few weeks of getting consistently wrecked by it to finally start banning it.

If something is banned, there are already good reasons why they are banned. We don't really need more info.
If something is broken and not banned yet, it's only a matter of time till people either figure out what makes them broken, or players on the receiving end decide its strong enough that they don't want to deal with it anymore.

Also, I feel that win ratio in tournies can be a rather misleading metric. Player skill and/or teamcomp can go a long way towards shutting down a champion.
Jax is definitely an OP, but if you first pick him against us we're gonna take stuff like Malphite/Ez/Nunu/Nasus and completely rain on your parade.