Hero bans have some bad side effects that don’t seem to be considered:
- Earlier and more extreme counterswapping.
E.g. if the enemy bans Ana (in low ranks), you know that their tank will likely play Hog / Mauga or whatever. Instead of rolling out on a hero that you want to play, you can easily just pick counters to ruin the tanks day by counterpicking straight out of spawn.
Why wouldn’t you go Orisa, Bastion, Soj, Zen and idk, Juno/Bap/Kiri from the very start and make it even more difficult for the enemy to get at least a little bit of progress before the counterswapping?
- Not so oppressive heroes suddenly become really oppressive
E.g. I’m talking primarily about heroes like Dva, who under normal circumstances aren’t extremely oppressive, but then turn out to be way too strong the moment Sym / Zarya are banned.
Sure, there are still options to shut the Dva down, but it’s way more limited, especially when your teammates don’t have these heroes in their hero pool (more bans = less chance at least one person can counter)
- Rank manipulation / lack of interest to play ranked
E.g. people going afk if their hero is banned but also players either not queueing for a role anymore / purposefully losing to stay in a rank where their main isn’t banned as much.
- Based on 3): “Smurfing”
I’m not talking about otps deranking because their hero is banned here (I doubt they derank that much). I’m talking about players who keep their rank low so they can play their favourite hero more often (since he’s banned in high ranks every game) , even if their skill level is way higher.
Just look at Sojourn: in low ranks, most people wouldn’t even consider banning her, but in high ranks she’s almost always banned. Why would you not just not try at all some games to stay in like plat where Soj isn’t banned
- Lack of adaptation
If you can ban a hero you struggle against every game, why would you bother learning to adapt to one if that hero isn’t banned? It takes away a crucial skill that you need to have in every game: being able to adapt to any enemy and your teammates to coordinate. This isn’t necessarily that bad of a problem, but still something to keep in mind.
Not to mention that this can boost you to a rank you don’t deserve because your overall skills are still lacking in some aspect that kept you in your previous rank. Which leads to even more stomps if you come across such a boosted player.
- Demotivating flexing
There are a lot of people who occasionally flex to other roles, but don’t have a massive hero pool on those roles. With hero bans, it’s likely that one of their most played heroes on that role gets banned, which leads to them being flamed and overall demotivates them from playing said role again.
This is especially problematic when said players would offrole to tank (role which needs players the most) as this removes potential tank players from the tank queue. Longer queue times incoming.
- Teammates banning your preferred hero.
It should be pretty obvious that this leads to even more toxicity and tilting than there already is. And guess what? It makes people play worse because they can’t play the hero they want.
