Hajrudin Krdzic is a gaming and esports writer with over five years of experience covering live-service updates and competitive scenes. His first love was RTS games, which naturally grew into a long-term passion for MOBAs like League of Legends. He has also occasionally dipped into tactical shooters like Counter-Strike 2, roguelikes like Hades, and hero shooters such as Overwatch and Marvel Rivals.
Chadley Kemp (preferably just "Chad") has nearly a decade of editorial experience spanning esports, gaming, crypto, and betting content, covering everything from Counter-Strike and VALORANT to League of Legends and Dota 2. Outside of esports, Chadley holds a Ph.D. in Physiology and has published research in several peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Image credit: Riot Games The League of Legends pro circuit used to have a drafting problem, but has Fearless Draft actually changed that?
In the past, you could finish game 1 of a best-of-five, load into game 2, and see half of the same champions again. Maybe they swapped sides or banned a priority pick, but more often than not, you are basically watching another version of the same draft.
Even at Worlds, things could get stale by the time we reached the knockout stage. Teams end up handshaking drafts, and suddenly, we’re watching the same boring Corki vs. Azir matchup in mid lane over and over again. Fearless Draft was supposed to change that.
On paper, the format inevitably creates variety. If a best-of-five series reaches game 5, 40 champions have already been removed through the previous picks before the regular bans even begin. But that raises a more interesting question:
Has Fearless Draft created genuinely different strategies, or are teams simply being forced to use weaker versions of the same compositions?
Fearless Draft — at least in its current format – is described by Riot as “an evolution of the traditional pick/ban system.” It follows one simple rule: once a champion is picked by either team, it cannot be picked again for the rest of the series.
Riot standardized the format across its tier 1 leagues in 2025, following earlier experiments with different versions of the format. In a Mar. 16 blog post , Riot said they wanted to create greater game-to-game variety while giving players more opportunities to demonstrate deeper and more unusual champion pools.
Image credit: Riot Games Fearless Draft has increased unique champion picks To examine the numbers, we compared how drafts played out in the last three Mid-Season Invitationals (MSI).
These tournaments are particularly useful because they bring together different teams and meta tendencies from every major region. They were also similar enough in size to allow for a reasonable comparison.
MSI 2024 was played before Riot rolled out Fearless Draft, recording 78 games and 86 unique champions. MSI 2025 was roughly the same size with 80 games, but Fearless Draft was active, and the number of unique champions grew to 107. At MSI 2026 , only 71 games were played, yet teams still picked 101 unique champions.
The increase from 86 champions in 2024 to 107 in 2025 means 21 additional champions appeared, reflecting roughly a 24% increase, despite the tournament having only two more games. Even MSI 2026, with seven fewer games than 2024, still featured 15 more unique champions.
Importantly, this is not a perfectly controlled comparison.
Balance patches, new champion releases , participating teams, and the broader tournament meta can a…