First Time Champion in Ranked

Last night I was playing with a friend who said “I’ve only played champion X twice, but both times were in a Ranked game…” which raised some alarm for me.  I thought that people who did that were the minority of the League, a small population of trolls and perturbed fanatics who wanted to inflict pain to others.

I don’t have stats on how often this happens, but with the popularity of sites like lolking.net it seems like the ability to see if someone has played a champion before is at our fingertips.

I don’t feel that players should be allowed to play champions that they have almost no experience with in solo queue.  I feel as though this isn’t giving the summoner ample opportunity to learn different match-ups and how to operate as part of a team as that champion.  I have a lot of experience with many different champions and I would be one of the first to argue that most spell mechanics are the same.  I would say that if I was trying a new champion in any game I would want to see how they operate in team fights and against different lane opponents.

I think Riot should instigate a rule that players need to finish a certain number of Normal games with a champion before they can use them in Ranked.  It would almost be like unlocking the champion again.  When you completed three to five games as each champion you would get a pop-up, much like the new Honor pop-ups, that would tell you that you may now play that champion in Ranked.

What would this do for the community?  This would encourage players to actually learn each champion they wanted to compete with in Ranked.  This would encourage players to play in Normal games and see how a champion operates in a team mechanic.  This could help people re-discover champions that may have been forgotten, helping us move away from Flavor of the Month champions.  Sometimes I forget about champions only because there are more than 100 to choose from.  If I was forced to go back and play each champion to prove that I’m capable of using them in Ranked I would learn a lot more match ups, and have experience playing each champion in up to five different match-ups.

Before I ramble too long I want your insight.  Should Riot implement something like this or do you feel it would be too restricting?  If good players would just do this anyway, wouldn’t making each player do this make them slightly better?