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If you have reached at least Level 15 and Gold III rank in Competitive mode, congratulations! You now have access to character bans! If every player in a match are also at least Gold III or higher, you can begin banning characters at the start of each game. This guide will go over this season's best characters to ban and why it's effective.
Quick Ban Overview
At the round start, you and your team can all select one character you would like to see banned for that match. Each vote contributes to a percent chance of getting picked. The more votes a character gets, the higher the chance they get banned. If four players vote to ban Iron Man, but you vote to ban Thor, you still have a 20% chance of Thor getting banned despite a majority voting Iron Man.
Each team will vote to ban three characters each. If both teams ban the same character, you essentially lose out on additional bans. This means each match will have a minimum of 3 total characters banned and a maximum of 6 characters. Now onto the best characters to ban!
Venom
After the update with CC immunity, Venom has been extra potent. He isn't a mandatory ban, but he does keep your backline a bit safer by removing a potential diver. Not only that, it takes away a team-up with Hela, making it more valuable.
Doctor Strange
Thanks to the massive 9.0 update, Doctor Strange is very popular once again. With a big buff to his shield and a increased volume of poke and hitscan, his shield has become invaluable to a lot of strategies. If your team isn't planning on utilizing him as your anchor (and you don't need to bank on a portal), it's a safe ban most of the time.
Cloak & Dagger
Cloak & Dagger used to have several ways to get countered during their ultimate. Now, thanks to the new team-up system, they can utilize Luna Snow's team to make themselves invulnerable to damage. Between that and being beneficial to many solid team-ups now, their popularity has skyrocketed. This is a great way to take care of Rival's newest annoyance.
Daredevil
Daredevil has been a constant annoyance for players in previous seasons. Now that Black Cat got heavily nerfed, Daredevil is more popular than ever. As long as you don't have a Daredevil main on your team, this ban should help you ease the pressure put on your backline on a constant basis.
Star-Lord
The buffs to Star-Lord in season 8.0 make him a menace to deal with. If you aren't getting constantly dived, you are getting hit with his newly buffed ultimate (thanks to the extra ammo). A vast majority of players won't know how to deal with him, even if you do, so a ban makes sense simply for your sanity.
Phoenix
For some reason, the devs thought a good character needed to be buffed, so Phoenix has quickly become one of the best characters in the game as of the 8.0 patch. This ban is an obvious choice, as you won't constantly want to play the game of "which team's Phoenix is better". Hela is a good alternate if you want to use Phoenix still, but Hela is no longer the ban target.
Hulk
If you haven't noticed, Bruce Banner (Hulk) has a huge amount of strong team-ups after the 9.0 update. Besides being a strong tank outright, enabling these team-ups to be stronger can really hinder your capabilities. If your team isn't planning in using him, a ban can potentially make your matches much more pleasant across the board.
