The devblog says that the highest ranked player bans for their side. If rank = mmr, that would mean that the player with the highest mmr bans. If the visibly highest ranked player is not the one banning then:
- ranked points and mmr can deviate (likely from penalties, even if only temporary*)
- it means highest attained rank, not highest current (I don’t recall any topics considering this option, so maybe easy solution for some oversight there)
- party mmr gimmicks somehow affecting it (have my doubts on this one)
Iirc, I’ve seen a few cases firsthand where I’ve been the one banning without having the highest rank (not about to sort through thousands of replays to find an example as I didn’t rename any to highlight that) I didn’t keep up on playing SL and would decay out of diamond, so I’ve assumed my decay created a gap in my mmr and rank, even if only temporarily. Outside of my faulty speculation/recollection, other posters have made topics to ask why the highest rank wasn’t banning in their games
e.g.
however, those are older examples, so perhaps the system got better at keeping mmr/rank stable. Eanked isn’t my jam, so I don’t track topics about that as well as I did years before.