Aram is one of those games you either love or hate. I, for one, belong to the former camp. To some people, discovering that people actually play (and enjoy!) may leave them scratching their heads. However, make no mistake, ARAM is a fun take on the MOBA formula.
While it is a bit more casual when put side-by-side with ranked matches, it does have its place and can make for some truly wanton plays. Personally, it is a godsend when you know that you can’t commit to a full match (dinner starting in 20 minutes, maybe?), in which case a game of ARAM could be perfect.
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What is ARAM?
First of all, ARAM is a game mode that takes place in the Howling Abyss, a vastly different scene from the familiar Summoner’s Rift most of us are accustomed to. It stands for All Random All Mid, which is basically that. It’s a linear, one lane map with randomly chosen champions. You get a choice of 2, which isn’t a lot when you consider just how large League’s champion pool actually is over the years.
The game is designed to make both teams butt heads as soon as possible, and mostly forgoes the farming stage. Experience gain is increased, some skills and items are tweaked, and basically you’re just forced to engage that much quicker. It’s definitely overall more fast-paced, and it’s great for adrenaline junkies or just people that want to kill some time.
The Champion Pool Factors
It has actually been confirmed by Riot that there are several factors that the system takes into consideration when they determine what champions you get. They use a system called TeamBuilder, and basically what this does is check things like the champions you own, which options the enemy team has, the free-to-play rotation available, as well as some always available free champions specifically for ARAM.
Also, as specified by Riot, even when 2 people simultaneously press reroll, TeamBuilder still takes those into account in a transactional way. What does that mean? Basically, it takes in the command one at a time, and not all at once. This prevents people from rerolling the same champions, as miniscule as that possibility may be.
Because you only get a very limited amount of choices, it isn’t uncommon for you to get drafted with some champion options you may not like. That’s where rerolls come in. Rerolls basically give you an additional champion to pick from (still random, of course) and really helps out since the champions you don’t choose can be passed on to teammates, should they choose to go that path. Because of this, rerolls are understandably limited.
Don’t worry though, because there are different ways to get additional rerolls in League of Legends. Let’s take a look at some of those options!
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Your Passive Refresh
Rerolls wouldn’t be too useful if they were hard to get, right? Riot has a formula that keeps things truly random. Having no champions unlocked (say, a new player) gives you one reroll once per 2 games or so. On the other end of the spectrum, having unlocked all champions gives you one reroll per game, stacking at a maximum of 2.
It’s important to note that, while we did mention the free-to-play rotation availability, ARAM actually keeps the free rotation for the past 3 weeks, giving the system a significantly larger pool to choose from, regardless of how many champions you own.
A Closer Look at the Point System
What we discussed earlier was an oversimplification, as ARAM actually has a specific point system in order to determine how these things happen. A reroll is earned when a player hits the 150 ARAM point mark. These points are earned after the completion of each game, as we mentioned before.
Once more, it is dependent on the number of champions owned and can range from 65 to about 200 points. How much you get is dependent on the champions you own using a specific formula.
While it is hidden to players, we have determined that the formula is: Previous ARAM points + 65 + 1.5* available champions you can roll. This rounds down the value, should it be a decimal. If that’s a lot of math, don’t worry too much. It simply means that the actual benefit of points caps off when you own more than 124 champions, as that gives you 251 ARAM points, which is enough to get an assured reroll after every game.
Gaining 2 rerolls per game when you own every champion is currently impossible, because there simply aren’t enough ARAM points to go around with the current maximum champion pool available in the game.
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Conclusion
Because of the discussed factors, you really can only hold a maximum of 2 rerolls. Also, because you can only hold 2 rerolls, the point of this article is really just to show how you can maximize each game and increase the frequency in which you can reroll, rather than gaining rerolls in lump sum, which wouldn’t be efficient at all.
This has been implemented both to keep it still very random, as well as to prevent players with lower amounts of owned champions from abusing the system and statistically roll specific champions more often than they should.
When you reroll, the champion you were previously holding gets sent to the bench, which is a fancy way of saying that that hero is available for your allies to choose as well. If you all had 2 rerolls each, several champions would suddenly be available for you in any particular game, which would definitely take away from the random aspect of ARAM.
Like we mentioned earlier in the article, ARAM is a neat little time killer that offers a different kind of chaotic fun, and unlike other limited games, luckily this one is here to stay. Hopefully you gained some value from this article, as well as giving you an idea of how the point system works and how you can utilize the champions you own to your advantage.
We finally found a use for those intricate math problem solving skills we learned in high school. Having read this far, which camp do you belong to? Do you love ARAM, hate it, or feeling neutral? Let us know in the comments below!
