What Is The Fearless Draft in League of Legends

A more competitive season will come in 2025 after Riot incorporates the Fearless Draft system. This will be their new drafting format in the upcoming tournaments to stir up the champion selection and strategies of teams. So, here’s everything you should know about he Fearless Draft in League of Legends.

What are the Basics of Fearless Draft

Next year turns out to be more exciting after a new drafting system will take over the League of Legends esports. This Fearless Draft is a pick-and-ban system where teams are restricted to reusing previously selected champions. It will definitely be a test of the champion pool depth between teams and players in the series.

They have to be strategic in picking their champion in every match of the series. So, with Fearless Draft, you can only use the champion once within the same series. For example, if a team picks Ahri for Game 2 in a best-of-five (BO5) series, it won’t be available in the remaining matches.

Teams now have to be careful when to shell out their best champion to avoid playing with their weakest ones. It’s certainly a challenge for everyone in the league to level up everything for the next season.

Two Variations: Soft vs. Hard Fearless Draft

Now, this Fearless Draft system has its two distinct variations. With this, its levels of restriction vary depending on your selection. With that, they may use a Soft or Hard Fearless Draft system. So, how do they differ from one another?

Soft Fearless Draft: When playing in Soft Fearless Draft, the team cannot reuse a previously picked champion. However, their opponents have the ability to select that champion once for their side in the next match. So teams have to carefully think of their strategy when to deploy their strongest picks. Or else it may bite them back and lose them their match.
Hard Fearless Draft: For Hard Fearless Draft, it’ll be more restrictive or tougher, to say. On this one, the champion selected by either team becomes completely unavailable for both sides in the remaining matches. Only the team that selects it first in the match gets to play it for the entire series. In this, viewers will see 50 unique champions played by teams in the competitive stage during a best-of-five series.

Fearless Draft in Professional Play

Currently, the Fearless Draft format has been tested across challenger leagues in League of Legends. South Korea’s LCK CL and China’s LDL already implemented this drafting format and showed promising matches. However, in Riot Games announcement, the rollout of this system across competitive tournaments in 2025 will be gradual.

The first international tournament that will use this new format will be in March 2025. But the LCK Cup happening in January and February will also use the Fearless Draft format. This starts the shift in the professional play of League of Legends with the new drafting system in play.

Its gradual implementation in the first splits of major competition serves to assess the impact of the new drafting system. It’ll determine whether Riot Games will continue to use the new format in bigger tournaments and future seasons.

Impact on Viewership

Many expect the season to be exciting with the new Fearless Draft challenging the way of teams in the league. For viewers, this means they will get to see more champions in matches, making it unpredictable every drafting phase. Plus, it’ll open up potential for underrated champions to be in the spotlight.

This also reduces the repetition of meta picks in the league to show versatility of players in picking. It’ll possibly introduce new strategies as well to make the matches even more thrilling. So far, the system sees success in other esports titles like Arena of Valor. Since 2019, they’ve been using the “Global Ban Pick Rule,” which heightens the competition.

Conclusion

Are you excited to see teams play with Fearless Draft in League of Legends for 2025? This time, they have to be experts in most champions to claim success in the tournaments. It’ll be a back-and-forth fight of champion pool between teams for all series to come.