[Idea]Reworking the pick/bans in Pick/Ban Prolander Tournament: So I have had this idea for a long time now. Never tried to actually make an illustration because I was too lazy. But now finally I have done it.

First of all I want to make it clear that this post isn't to point out flaws in the current system and disrespect it. It is a great idea, no doubt about it. These are mere suggestions which can definitely help teams break apart from the stale meta gameplay and give some more fun to the competitive scene.

To begin with, some observations I made in the current system:

1) Players not using saves judiciously in most cases as they have not much idea what the other team will ban.
2) Teams concentrate on only 1 player(MVP) often and the bans are related to his/her class.
3) Though you ban the weapons of choice of a really good player, that player often ends up with a similar performance more or less. (Bans have less effect on the strategy. They might help prevent side support strategy mostly.)
4) Stock weapons are the most preferred due to them being the most balanced and strong.

I am not an expert, so I am staying away from naming the flaws in this. If you observe the matches from season 1 of RGL.GG you would notice thaf there was surely much more variation from the regular metas but still it wasn't switched up much.

Here's what I propose:

1) Default Bans:

A. Remove the default bans of Razorback and Darwin's Danger Shield. (After the Pyro update both have gone design reworks.)
B. The reason they were default bans is most people banned them most of the times.
C. There will still be two default bans but of weapons banned by other teams in the tournament the most number of times till now. (Can't be stock*)
D. If weapons are at a tie, then default ban the weapon which got that number of bans first.
(Example : Say Jarate was banned 5 times and Gunslinger 4 times till now. Big Earner is currently at 3. If someone bans Big Earner and it gets banned 4 times in total, as Gunslinger was first to 4 it will be included in default bans. {If 2 matches are together include data till the previously completed match}).
E. For first match in the tournament use the data from last tournament.
F. Also, counting a weapon as default ban won't increase its ban counter by 1( like the Big Earner went from 3 to 4).

*I'll come to that later

2) Ban/Save order:

A. Reworking the order of bans and saves for teams which makes it more balanced.
B. Again I am not an expert at how tournament formats are made to be "fair". But this is my attempt which seems fair to me. Not much mathematical logic used in the order though.
C. Home team decides who goes first and accordingly the order will change.
D. In this example the away team goes first.
Default Save #1 is Medigun and Default Bans #1 & #2 were discussed above.
Then the orders are as follows.
●Team 1 Ban
●Team 2 Ban
●Team 2 Save
●Team 1 Save
●Team 2 Ban
●Team 1 Ban
●Team 1 Ban
●Team 2 Ban
●Team 1 Save
●Team 2 Save
●Team 2 Ban
●Team 1 Ban
Here is a pictorial representation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rKj6yL9tvq-xwt6ajJIQC6jss4S95Spf/view?usp=drivesdk

3) Banning Stock Weapons:
A)The most controversial point so far. I asked few of my friends and some liked the idea and some said that it doesn't remain TF2 if you remove a class completely from the game. I agree. I thought about it and found that this is the best way to keep all the classes intact and also helping the game shift away a little from the stock meta.
B. Let the medic have the option to use the MediGun always.
C. Some way I find this could be boring for players is the weapons of MVP will be banned again and again and it can become frustrating to play. So teams will be given 1 weapon of their choice to save from stock weapons.(2nd last)
{Note that like other saves and bans these apply to both teams}
D. Teams will have to ban one and only one stock weapon which will be banned for both the teams. So every game will have only 7 stock weapons.
E. Reskins(The Original, etc.) will obviously get banned.
F. In order to prevent a team from exhausting all weapons in some slot of a class, (This will rarely happen as this means using all bans on one player) a weapon cannot be banned if rest of the weapons in that class slot have already been banned.
G. I added the weapon saves and ban last in the order because it kind off gives the strategy the team is going to play off in the game.

Here, I conclude my explanation.

Thank you for reading. Do share your views and criticisms on this. Suggestions would be much appreciated. If you like it please share this post and upvote it so that we would see this becoming a reality some day. :)

Here's my suggestion thread on Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/7b3asd/reworking_pickbans_in_pickban_prolander/
https://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comments/7b3fop/reworking_pickbans_in_pickban_prolander/