League of Legends Worlds: Should Yone be Disabled?

League of Legends Worlds already has some controversy before the event has even started. Riot Games announced that Yone will be banned. Yone burst on to the scene after his release in early August and currently sports one of the highest play and ban rates.

While he has been received extremely well by the community, he has also been nerfed already and Riot has admitted they aren't confident that he is completely balanced yet. Let's take a look at the arguments both for and against Yone being disabled at Worlds.

League of Legends Worlds: Should Yone be Disabled?

The Argument for Yone

We have to ask ourselves what Worlds is really about. For a lot of fans, its about seeing the world's best players make big plays on our favorite champions. ROX Tiger's PraY's cross-map Ashe arrow remains an immortal part of League of Legends history for a reason. Ashe is a widely played champion that many players main and enjoy playing. With the amount of hype that has followed Yone since he was teased, most of the community would like to see nothing more than the likes of Faker, Caps, or Doinb make insane plays on League of Legends' newest champion.

Yone has the benefit of being highly skill expressive and rewarding good mechanical play. He has great outplay potential and seems primed to make professional highlight reels in the future. Its good for the sport of League of Legends to have montages of exciting plays and create a buzz about the exciting things pros are able to do with such a unique champion. Keeping Yone disabled for Worlds would miss his period of peak hype and deprive fans the chance to watch a new fan favorite champion at the highest level of competition.

The Argument Against Yone

The role of Riot Games is to ensure that the product put on screens all around the world this September is of the highest quality possible. In short, it's simply too risky to have such a new champion with extremely high ban rates be featured in Worlds. As Mark Yetter, Lead Gameplay Designer for League of Legends, put it, "Yone would be going in a bit too blind. We’ve had risky new releases in the past and they can end up 100% pick/ban."

He's right. Having Yone be so unbalanced that he reaches 100% pick or ban status in Worlds would erode the quality of the matches at Worlds and could force Riot Games into taking aggressive action to tone down the new champion. It's better if Yone stays disabled until he is in a stable state and makes his professional debut next season.

The Verdict

Unfortunately, Yone should be disabled for Worlds--there's simply too much at stake. He is powerful enough to ruin Worlds should he fall into the wrong hands. Nobody wants to see pick or ban status during the peak level of our sport, and it seems that Yone will be in that category if he is allowed to appear at Worlds.