What is Fearless Draft in League of Legends?

Riot Games intends to implement Fearless Draft across its entire competitive ecosystem next year. While there is no indication that the format will continue to exist in the various regions after the Winter Split, it will test the waters, and find out what the public thinks of this new format. If all goes well, it would become permanent, especially if the community responds positively to it.

From the top all the way to ERL leagues, everyone will be adopting the Fearless Draft at the beginning of next year. First Stand, a new international tournament Riot Games is setting up will be fully played with Fearless Draft as well. So what is the Fearless Draft, which could well take over in the foreseeable future?

Soft and Hard Fearless Draft Explained

Let’s me explain this new draft in practice..It’s actually a lot simpler than it sounds.

The fearless draft mode only concerns the draft phase and has no direct impact on the Rift. It is only effective in the case of multi-game matches: the famous “best-of-series” – BO3 or BO5 in a LoL competition. When a team chooses a champion for a game, that champion is removed for the rest of the series, he cannot be reused in the next games. If, for example, I choose Ashe in Game 1 of a BO3, she will automatically be removed for the next two games. The five bans per team are still effective in this mode, which will allow staff to create unique draft strategies.

You’re probably wondering whether the champion chosen by a player is removed until the end of the BO for both teams, or just for his own. Well, it depends….

There are two forms of Fearless Draft, and it’s not yet clear which one Riot Games will prioritise early next year:

• Soft Fearless means only the team that chooses the champion has him removed until the end of the BO, meaning that the other team can choose him in the next game.
• Hard Fearless is when both teams are stripped of their chosen champions each game. This means that 10 champions are removed after each game of a BO, in addition to the 10 bans per game.

In my opinion, the second option is far more exciting, as it could result in 50 champions being banned for both teams if we reach the end of a BO5 (40 with the FD, and 10 classic bans). Between the pressure of playing the last game of a long series and getting out of the comfort zone in terms of champion pool, a Fearless Hard Game 5 would push both teams to the very limit…

Why is Riot Games implementing Fearless Draft?

First introduced in LDL in the summer of 2022, followed by the LPL and LCK CL last summer, Fearless Draft mode seemed inevitable. Despite Riot’s countless attempts to balance the game, getting 169 champions with unique kits on an equal footing – at the highest level – is no simple task. Especially when the game is constantly evolving and new features are introduced at least once a year.

They’ve tried, though, with patches every fortnight to adjust the power of champions, items and runes. But to no avail, the same champions keep cropping up too often when it comes to competitive matches. At this year’s Worlds Main Stage, 88 unique champions were chosen, which sounds encouraging on paper.

But in the end, it’s barely half of the champions available in the game played in the space of three weeks of competition… It’s important to remember that the main interest of esport for Riot Games is to promote their game. But it’s hard to achieve this when half of the champions available are not represented and the same patterns of play are repeated, making the viewing experience sometimes too redundant for the audience.

In a BO5 Hard Fearless Draft match that went all the way to the end, there would be no fewer than 50 unique champions played in a single match, which would greatly increase the variety of ways to play, particularly if you take the length of International competitions. For comparison, the Worlds final between T1 and BLG saw 28 unique champions battle it out after 5 games, and it was still a rare case of diversity…