If you play League of Legends you most likely have stumbled across pro play at some point and, if you watch it enough, you may have realised pro play seems like a completely different game from your average solo queue game. There are games where first blood isn’t drawn until 15 minutes in, dives are occurring in the first 5 minutes, and the same champions are being seen and banned every game, but why is that? What makes pro play and solo queue so different even though they are essentially the same game? Well there are three main factors which I will be discussing.

1) Voice Communication

Pro Play

The pro scene is filled with players who have dedicated a huge portion of their lives into the game so essentially they know the game the best. Every patch, champions move in and out the meta due to various buffs and nerfs and as a result, these pros are setting the meta every patch, however there is a fine line between what is viable in pro play and what isn’t. Just because a champion excels in solo queue does not mean it will reciprocate those effects in pro play. Take Katarina for example. She is regarded as one of the best solo queue champions in the entire game due to her high snowball potential and holds a 19% ban rate and a 9% pick rate in Diamond +. However, Katarina is never played in pro play and her last appearance in the top leagues was all the way back in Season 8 with one appearance in the LCK. But why isn’t this champion or similar high snowball champions ever picked in pro play if it holds that much strength in solo queue? The answer is simple. The biggest factor that pro play has over solo queue is communication.

With voice comms being used by both teams, it makes it quite easy to shut down these “solo queue” champions. In addition, with voice comms, you can coordinate so many more intricate plays and strategies in your game. As shown in the video below, you can see a dive happening on both sides of the map 6 minutes in which is perfectly executed. You will hardly ever see this happen in solo queue even at the highest ranks as it is much harder to coordinate with your teammates with just pings and relies far more on game knowledge and micro coordination rather than communication.

Solo Queue

With the lack of voice comms, it is much harder to coordinate early game dives and implement any form of strategy and it is harder to shut down hard snowballing champions. In solo queue, the only form of communication you have with your teammates are the pings and chat but this is sometimes not enough to coordinate certain plays. A lot of players don’t take pings into consideration since they are focused on the game in front of them and muting players is quite common due to how toxic the game can be. As shown in the video below, a 12 minute dive happens with 4 members trying to kill the Yasuo but backfires giving the mid laner one kill. They end up wasting huge cooldowns and also gives Yasuo’s team a lot of breathing room as they dedicated 4 out of 5 team members for this play. Compare this uncoordinated dive to the video of the pro play dive, you can see the big difference and how much of an impact communication can have. For this dive to have worked, there would have had to be better micro coordination by both members on the team which was not present, coordinate the tanking of the tower better while also understanding the limits of their champion. Without voice comms this is extremely tricky especially for lower ranked players and shows how valuable voice comms can be to the game.

2) Champion Picks

Pro Play

As mentioned previously, these “solo queue” champions tend to have weaknesses that can be punished very easily in a coordinated setting and as a result you hardly see them in pro play. Katarina for example can be shutdown by hard crowd control, communicating her roams and can even be countered in the draft before the game even starts. As a result, the picks you tend to see in pro play are more team oriented rather than champions that can solo carry the game. With control mages such as Viktor and Orianna, and controlling engage-focused supports like Leona and Nautilus paired with hypercarry ADCs like Kaisa and Tristana, you can kind of get a sense of the meta in the pro scene

Solo Queue

As I touched on previously, every patch, champions move in and out of the meta due to various buffs and nerfs but there are always champions who will be popular for the more casual player, commonly referred to the community as “solo queue” champions. “Solo queue” champions tend to be champions that have a high snowball potential and can solo carry a game regardless of teamplay and thus have a high pick/ban rate, especially in lower elo’s. Some examples are Katarina, Yasuo, Master Yi, and Darius. These champions hardly ever get any spotlight in the pro scene as they flourish more in an uncoordinated setting due to the lack of communication and as a result, these “solo queue” type champions can take advantage of this and have a high potential to take over the entire game.

3) Draft

Pro Play

So I have talked about different champion picks and the strength of communication but one thing that is quite overlooked that does have a strong impact is the draft process itself. In pro play, the players are joined with their coach to discuss picks, bans and strategies.

In addition to this, there is an actual strategy within the whole draft. Draft in the pro scene is in a tournament format with both teams banning 3 champions each at the beginning then after the two teams have picked their first 3 champions, they are allowed to ban 2 additional champions. This means that the players and coach have to decide on a timer what they want to pick, ban and leave open as whatever role they don’t pick for in the first half of the draft can get target banned in the second half. With every choice in the draft, there is a consequence. For example, does the team target ban one of their opponents rather than banning a more meta champion, does the team first pick a strong meta mid laner for example but then that leaves the option of allowing the enemy to counterpick or even because of the nature of the opponents draft, forcing an off meta pick which could be a double edged sword as they are forced on a champion they are not comfortable on just like in the video below when Caps, one of the world’s best mid laners picked Vayne mid against a very tanky composition which did end up winning them the game.

Solo Queue

In solo queue, one thing that has a huge impact in pro play that at times is insignificant is the draft. Where draft has a lot of strategy in pro play due to the tournament format, the draft in solo queue is a bit different with all 5 bans happening at the beginning of the game. In addition to this, the premise of prioritising certain champions before others may not happen as well. This is because in order to do this, the players must own the champion and it is quite common especially in lower elos that not every player owns all the champions in the game. This makes counterpicking a lot more common in solo queue.

Conclusion

Although many, especially the casual players may think pro play and casual play are similar they are not. They are the same game but worlds apart with what may seem to be small factors, they have a huge impact on how the game is played. Realistically, solo queue will never get to a sophisticated point that pro play is played at but that’s what makes the game great and more fun in my opinion. The chaos is what makes League of Legends, League of Legends! However with the new Clash tournaments played on a bi-weekly basis, players can experience a competitive environment and get the best of both worlds.