Time to have a discussion about hero bans.

Here goes my karma, but I’ll say it: hero bans are an absolute necessity in hero shooters like Overwatch. They can work and will make the game better. We have real life proof of this by looking at other game. It makes the game 100% better when you can ban broken heroes, so you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall every game trying to somehow counter them.

Imagine Havana or Circuit Royal without Widow. Zen or Sigma. Think about how much more diverse the game could become. Are you a Hog main and tired of being perma naded? Instead of begging one of your supports to go Kiriko, you could just ban Ana. Is it that time of year when Hog is giga broken? Just ban him. If the devs screw up the balance and refuse to fix it, there’s no need to wait on them the community can balance the game per match.

Hero bans also give developers the best kind of stats. At what rank are certain heroes banned the most, This data could guide balancing decisions better than just listening to the vocal majority. Of course, bans should only apply to Competitive mode.

Sure, there could be situations where someone bans your hero just because they know you main them, but one tricking is already a problem. The community as a whole should strive to be more flexible. There are enough heroes in the game already.

I’ve been having a blast in other game where I can just ban the most broken heroes. Even in high elo, the weak heroes can still be played, because we ban one or two heroes that gatekeep the entire game.

I’m 99% sure that hero bans in Competitive mode would make Overwatch much more enjoyable.