Draft Bans 101

by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

As you have probably heard by now, bans are being added to Hero League in the March 29th patch. If you follow Heroes eSports the new ban system will be quite familiar, as it is essentially the same system that is used in competitive play.

For those not familiar, each team will be able to ban two Heroes. The first round of bans will take place before the draft begins, with the team that wins the coin toss going first. The second round of bans will take place after halfway point of the draft, with the team that lost the coin toss going first. The player on each team with the highest MMR will be the person responsible for choosing the bans.

Competitive teams spend countless hours planning and preparing their draft strategy, but solo queue players only have seconds to develop their plan of action. With such little time to communicate, it is imperative that each player have a solid understanding of draft fundamentals. Those fundamentals must now expand to include bans, which adds another piece to an already complicated puzzle. To help make that puzzle easier to solve for the solo queue player, lets look at some basic principles involving draft bans.

First Pick, First Ban

When you have first ban you don’t necessarily want to ban the most dangerous, overpowered Hero. This may seem counter intuitive at first, but the reason is quite simple. When you have first ban, you also have first pick. You are better off banning the 2nd or 3rd “best” Hero, which will then force your opponent to either use their ban on the OP Hero or let you have him. Now of course this all changes if the person who is picking first on your team is unwilling or unable to play that Hero. This is why it is more important than ever that players preselect the Hero that they intend to play. The person making the bans needs as much information as possible to make the best decision.

Things are much simpler when the other team has first ban. As the second team you basically just ban the “best” Hero to deny it from the enemy team. Remember, which Hero is “best” can influenced by which map you are playing on, so keep that in mind.

Mid Draft Ban

The second phase of bans takes place after the third round of picks. At this point the team that won the coin toss will have selected three Heroes, while the other team will have selected two. The team that lost the coin toss bans first this time around. The process of deciding which Heroes to ban during the second ban phase is much more complicated than the first ban phase, mainly because there is more information available and that information should influence the bans.

Ideally, the biggest consideration on mid draft bans should be team composition. Unfortunately, this dependent on the players involved having a good understanding of the meta and which Heroes synergize well together. Depending on the skill level of the players in question, this may not be a realistic expectation. Here are a few questions to ask yourself if you aren’t sure which Hero to ban.

Does the enemy team have a tank and/or healer? Every team needs a tank and a healer. While there are some exceptions to this rule, it is generally true, especially in solo queue. If your team has one of these roles filled, but the enemy team does not, it can often make sense to ban a Hero that fills that role. For example, you might want to ban a Hero like Muradin or Johanna if the enemy team still needs a tank and you already have E.T.C. picked. The same hold true for healers. If you already have Rehgar, you might ban Uther or Malfurion. This can be especially powerful if a Hero from that role was also banned in the first phase, as it will severely limit the enemy team’s options. Remember, the same holds true in reverse. If your team is the one that needs the tank while the enemy is covered, then don’t ban a warrior! Not only does it make things more difficult for your own team, but it is also basically a wasted ban since teams rarely run double tank or double support in solo queue.

What is my team vulnerable to? Maybe your team picked Jaina and Li-Ming with their first two picks. You are very susceptible to ganks, so you might want to ban Zeratul. Maybe you picked E.T.C. and Li Li. In this case you are worried about stuns interrupting your Heroics so you might ban Sylvanas. Figuring out what you don’t want to play against, and banning it, is a viable strategy.

What does the enemy team need? What do they already have? Bans aren’t just based on what they enemy team might pick, they are also based on what the enemy team has already picked. Even if Rehgar is the best healer in the game, you probably don’t need to worry about banning him if the other team already has Uther. Keep both of these factors in mind when considering what to ban.

These are just a few examples of the type of questions you want to ask yourself when deciding which Hero to ban. Keep in mind, if you are on the team that lost the coin flip you will be picking two Heroes after this round of bans. Which Heroes your team intends to take should have a strong influence on which Heroes you ban. Going back to the Jaina/Li-Ming example, you wouldn’t need to worry about banning Zeratul if you knew one of your next two players was planning on picking him. Preselect those Heroes and encourage others to do the same.

Don’t Get Fancy

If you watch competitive Heroes games you have undoubtedly seen some very creative bans. Maybe it is a Rexxar ban on Dragon Shire, a Cho’gall ban on Tomb of the Spider Queen, or a ban on The Lost Vikings on Towers of Doom. While these bans make perfect sense at the pro level, the odds of someone picking Cho’gall in a rank 30 Hero League game are pretty slim. Don’t let a little bit of knowledge delude you into wasting your bans on niche Heroes. You will get the most value from your bans by using them on popular, top tier Heroes that have a high likelihood of being picked by your opponents. There is no point banning something that your opponent is unlikely to pick anyway, so think twice before choosing to ban a rarely seen Hero just because you have seen the pros do it.

Bans should add an interesting new level of strategy to Hero League. I wouldn’t be surprised to see HOTSLogs or a similar site come out with a draft ban calculator to determine the “correct” ban based on the Heroes remain, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Most players should be able to make reasonable ban decisions if they just take a few seconds to take in the information available to them. I am interested to see the affect on bans not just on the meta of solo queue HL, but also on how teams interact to when faced with deciding which Heroes to ban.

If you would like to read more about the many changes coming to Hero League along with the March 29th patch just click here.