Riot Games has announced that the Fearless Draft, a whole new Champion drafting system, will be introduced into tier 1 LoL Esports in 2025, but how exactly does it work? Here’s what you need to know about it.
June 11’s Dev Update was perhaps one of LoL’s biggest ever, as Riot not only dropped the trailer for Arcance Season 2 but also announced the merger of several leagues in LoL Esports. Namely the LCS merging with CBLoL and LLA, and all of APAC’s leagues merging into one (excluding LCK and LPL) in 2025.
Also adding a new international tournament to the schedule, the 2025 season is adding a lot, and one of the major changes is the Fearless Draft, a new drafting system made specifically for esports.
So what is the Fearless Draft, how does it work, and how long has it been around?
What is the Fearless Draft in League of Legends?
The Fearless Draft is a type of Champion drafting system that doesn’t allow teams to pick Champions that were already played in the last game.
According to Riot, they will be using “a version” for the Fearless Draft 2025, which means the new version may be different, however, it will most likely look quite similar to what it does right now.
Currently, the Fearless Draft that is used in tier 2 works like this:
In game one, the drafting process stays the same, with teams banning and picking their Champions as per normal.
In the second game, any Champions a team picked cannot be picked again for this game, however, their opponents are free to pick the Champions they used in the last game.
If the series reaches game three, all Champions that a team picked in the last two games cannot be picked again, however, the opponent will be able to pick those Champions.
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This is all in an effort to introduce more diverse team compositions as teams will need to be very careful about which Champions they want to use at that point in the series.
Of course, you may be realizing the Fearless Drat system only goes up to three games, which is a problem as a lot of series’ in LoL are Best of 5. This is why Riot is most likely coming out with an updated version of the draft.
What is the difference between hard and soft Fearless Draft?
There are actually two different versions of the Fearless Draft, a hard and soft version. Essentially, the one most commonly used is the soft version, with the hard version being more restrictive in bans.
Where in the soft version, opponents can pick a Champion the enemy has picked, just as long they haven’t already picked it, in the hard version once a Champion has been picked it cannot be picked again for the rest of the series.
The LCK CL was the first, and so far only, league to use the hard Fearless Draft.
Has the Fearless Draft been used before in LoL?
Yes, the Fearless Draft has been used before in League of Legends.
Right now, the LPL is the only one from the top four regions to be using the draft. it shouldn’t surprise as the region was the first to use the draft format.
The first competition to use this format was the LDL, the second tier of competition in China, which introduced the format in 2022 during their Summer split. The LCK CL has also recently introduced a modified version of the Fearless Draft, called the hard Fearless Draft.
NACL, LCS’ second tier of competition, will use a modified version of the Fearless Draft where in game four only three Champions can be banned by each team, and in game five no Champions are banned by teams.
