North American Pokemon Unite team Luminosity Gaming just seized their second championship victory in as many years at last weekend’s Pokemon World Championship Series in Yokohama, Japan. The team, formerly know✅n at BLVCKHVND before getting picked up by Luminosity after their historic win last year, proved once again to be the most dominant and versatile Unite team out there. They swept the competition, going undefeated through the entire tournament, and only dropping a single game in the first round to the APAC region’s second ranked team, Orangutan. No one in the world knows Unite better than Luminosity, so after their win I took the opportunity to ask them what changes they hope to see most as the game moves forward. Unsurprisingly, almost all of them gave the same answer: add draft to ranked mode.
One of the things that makes Luminosity such a great team is that they aren’t afraid to share their insights into competitive strategy or criticize Unite’s shortcomings. They love the game and they want it to succeed long-term, but they’re honest about the things that need improvement. After winning Worlds last year, I asked them what they hope Unite will change, and they gave a variety of answers. Kihyun ‘Kyriaos’ Lee wanted a better, more consistent way to earn emblems, Sean ‘Slash’ Tucker wanted mobile custo🃏mization, and William ‘Overlord’ Byrnes III wanted to see improvements to ranked rewards. I asked them the same question this year, but this time most of them had the same answer.
“I would like ꧅to see maybe draft, maybe bans, something to change ranked,” Overlor🍃d says. This has been a recurring request this year ever since draft was introduced to tournament mode, but the call for a draft option in ranked, which would allow players to choose specific Pokemon to ban from their matches, has only gotten louder ever since Zacian joined the roster. Zacian entered Unite in an overpowered state and dominated the ranked ladder for weeks before seeing a single nerf, and more recently, Mewtwo joined the game and has made a similarly negative impact.
Slash agrees with Overlord's sentiment. “I feel like the game is actually really fun if these Pokemon didn’t exist in the meta. I enjoy playing ladder, then I face a Mewtwo and I’m like ‘I no longer enjoy playing ladder’. That’d probably be my number one thing.” Slash adds, “I would add bans to ranked, that’ll fix it.” Yet another teammate, Elo, then chimes in, “Adding drafts or bans to ranked will solve most of the problems.”
Later in the day I got to interview Unite commentator and YouTuber Spragels, and he echoed Luminosity’s thoughts about ranked. “Everybody wants it. It would l🅰et the ranked mode of the game look a lot more like the competitive version of Pokemon Unite. I think that would be huge for the game, that would be massive.” As Spragels goes on to explain, drafting can be a quick fix for balance issues. When overpowered Pokemon like Zacian and Mewtwo are introduced to the game, a draft system will allow players on the ladder to immediately remove that Pokemon from the playable pool. That’s how the game works in a competitive setting, so it only makes sense that ranked mode would work the same way. Spragels says, “Making sure that the game mirrors competitive more, because competitive is so exciting, would be a really good way for Unite to go.”
It’s been nine months since draft mode was added to custom battles and tournaments, and while Unite has changed in a lot of ways, the ranked ladder still suffers from poor balance. It might not be realistic to expect every new Pokemon to release in a perfectly balanced state, considering🅘 the quick c🥀adence of new releases, but adding draft to ranked mode would be an immediate solution to the problem, and would give the devs more time to assess the performance of each Pokemon and make measured balance changes. This would be the biggest positive change Unite could make as it begins its third year, and one that everyone, including the world champions, would appreciate.